King of Dragon Pass - Thoughts and advice requests

[Endemic]

Lol. Hope you roll a female Humakti then

 

[Apeman]

I'm playing KoDP for the first time, still getting a feel for it. I finished Expeditions Conquistador a few weeks ago and I've been looking for something else with resource management, long-term C&C, interesting narrative.

Can someone explain what causes time to pass/events to pop up? I've done a fair bit of clicking around the different menus to see all the things I can do, and a lot of times events seem to pop up when I didn't expect. Does rebalancing which crops you farm cause time to pass? Sending someone out trading or exploration missions? When does the season end?

EDIT: Sorry, I did 5 more minutes of looking around and discovered that the answer is that any action you take passes time, and you get 2 actions per season.

 

[Grunker]

I'm playing KoDP for the first time, still getting a feel for it. I finished Expeditions Conquistador a few weeks ago and I've been looking for something else with resource management, long-term C&C, interesting narrative.

Can someone explain what causes time to pass/events to pop up?

IIRC, whenever you do something, time passes. Events pop up at random interval of time passing.

 

[oscar]

Yeah, rearranging the clan Ring, changing crops etc count as a turn (10 turns in a year, 2 per season)

 

[Average Manatee]

There are a handful of things that don't pass time. The main one to know is that changing your shrine bonuses won't waste time. You can micro the farming bonuses on during sea/earth and switch them to war bonuses during other times for defense/raiding. May even only need them on during Earth for the harvest, dunno.

 

[Morality Games]

So, after buying this on GoG I now have 5-6 games under my belt. This game is fucking amazing. The gameplay, the lore, the event-based narrative, hell even the graphics are highly appealing. Seems a very good bit of love was put into this game.

I'm playing on easy, with a balanced clan mostly. Orlanth is main deity. because I figure once I've won my first game there I'll transition to normal. And I'm not exactly doing too hot, so I'm here for some advice.

Food: I'm actually doing quite well here. I had one game where people started starving quickly, but otherwise a combination of Earthblood and most other crop-related shrines have worked well.

Shrines: It seems like you can't have enough of these motherfuckers, but they're quite costly if you get enough of them. What seems to work really well is a bunch of crop-related stuff, a Curing shrine and then as many Combat bonuses you can afford. Trouble is, that rarely seems to be many.

Cattle: My numbers always start to dwindle here. While this is not the direct reason for my losses, it always starts here. I'm stingy with sacrificing them, I'm using the Cow shrine, and so on. However, once I start getting raided I can never make up for the losses of cattle I incur.

Questing: Is this shit really worth it? Even after figuring out the correct responses in the Cow Mother quest and succeeding (the only time I've succeded at a quest) I've failed on all other quests. First you have to figure out the correct way to do things - which doesn't always correspond directly to the myth, and is sometimes not even mentioned there - and then a good deal of luck comes into play. I guess it doesn't really cost that much to quest though, but it seems like a waste of time when you could be managing important stuff.

Relations: Sooner or later my relations begin to deteriorate. Devoting time to sending emissaries to all the clans to make friends is just a luxury I can rarely afford.

So in the end, I lose when I get cattle raided too often (regular raids I manage quite well), lose too much cattle, and things start to spiral downwards.

The King of Dragon Pass is indeed one of the most addictively fun games I've played in recent years, and one of the few I've felt any compulsion to play multiple times.

Among the strategies I utilized, the single most effective one was the mass trade route approach, with Orlanth as main deity and Issaries as as the deity I woke up. The world generator scripts one of the tribes as a mortal enemy for story purposes. In addition to that, you need another clan to be your enemy for the entire game so that you can fulfill the fighting requisites to prevent your Weapon Thanes from becoming socially unruly/sloppy in combat. The idea here is to fight as minimally as possible while still maintaining peak effectiveness for those scripted events that require you to fight. Anyway, you get one of your Clan Ring who has Issaries as a deity with a crazy level of diplomatic skill and then use him/her to form both trade routes AND alliances with every neighboring tribe (you'll need 2 or 3 of these guys throughout the entire game, so watch that age meter to ensure you are never without a diplomat, as he is the linchpin of your strategy).

This way nobody can attack you without passing through your ally's lands. Sometimes they screw you over, but in general it allows you to control combat so that you only fight when you want to. 5-10 trade routes combined with it allows you to accumulate massive amounts of Goods, which you'll want to trade early on for cattle (cattle becoming the most precious resource in the late game, with most clans being unwilling to trade any for any amount of goods) and crops. With these three resources operating at peak efficiency, you'll be able to build and upgrade the maximum amount of Shines while performing the maximum amount of Hero Quests. With enough laborers and trade routes, you'll have so many Goods you can bribe clans with 'gifts' whenever their disposition toward you lowers for pretty much the entire game. This keeps the bonds of your tribe strong.

Without having to focus nearly as much on combat, your Weapon Thanes are freed up so that you can send out expeditions to find magical treasures that allow you dominate the limited combat scenarios AND boost your civilization management scores.

When you have the choice to choose a little extra land or a moderate amount of extra land, I chose a little extra land. That gave me limited resources to keep my livestock (including cattle) in numbers large enough to support my population, but I was able to get by lean years by trading my economic partners for crops so that I could demote my Shinres and give my livestock a chance of regrow. This becomes more difficult Late Game, but it never becomes impossible. Obviously, you'll want to do the Uralda Hero Quest to get the treasure that makes your herds healthy ASAP (which is the same in any strategy).

 

[laclongquan]

That sound like my Craftman game.

Craftman game is the game where I concentrate on maximum craftmen and trade goods. It's about the only time I dont play warmonger.

War cost your thanes' lives, therefore cut into the available number for your craftman recruits. You need a reasonable number of thanes for defense, trade route escorts, and exploration. Pack your land with people until you literally have to expand or starve. Then just choose one to attack until they resettle in an untouchable location.

Interesting game, but I dont like it as much as One Kingdom games, where I conquered nearly every piece of land nearby. I am your very scary neighbour.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Say bros, is there any other factor other than RNG that decides if someone will begin a quest and enter the godsplane? I usually see to it that a follower of the god would attempt the quest but he'd not enter the godsplane, whereas, say a follower of Elmal doesn't seem to be so hindered in doing Humakt's quest.

 

[Garmik]

Say bros, is there any other factor other than RNG that decides if someone will begin a quest and enter the godsplane? I usually see to it that a follower of the god would attempt the quest but he'd not enter the godsplane, whereas, say a follower of Elmal doesn't seem to be so hindered in doing Humakt's quest.

Your current clan magic is very important, also allocating to "Quests" during Sacred Time (if you have a worshiper of Eurmal, you can allocate more).
And yes, if the quester is of the quests god, you'll have a better chance, but their actual stats are very important too (which stats matter depend on the quest, though their magic is always very important), so a quester with another god can actually be better if his stats are considerably better.

And try to get several worshipers if you can, by asking allies to come, or calling in some favors.

But be aware that there's always a chance to fail, even with the best stats and a shit-ton of magic.

 

[oscar]

Does that Humakti blessing really double the strength of your thanes? Seems quite overpowered.

And any way to get large number of thralls? I never seem to get more than about 30 as even with a big advantage in battle the enslave tactic seems to fail. They seem to be fairly economically insignificant if this is the case (no big slave plantations).

 

[Average Manatee]

Does that Humakti blessing really double the strength of your thanes? Seems quite overpowered.

Supposedly. Battles are always *highly* random though. Fyrdwomen is also quite nice since it lets your women defend the tula, doubling your available footmen when raids come and defending you when you are out raiding. But realistically you want to be stacking every bonus and artifact in your favour.

And any way to get large number of thralls? I never seem to get more than about 30 as even with a big advantage in battle the enslave tactic seems to fail. They seem to be fairly economically insignificant if this is the case (no big slave plantations).

Not really. KoDP thralls aren't really like that (children of thralls being born free). Having too many can lead to a rebellion anyway. I think they eat less food than farmers though, so there's that.

 

[you know what time it is]

Academagia aside, are there any other games like KoDP?

 

[laclongquan]

Nope!

 

[Endemic]

Gotta love this game, it even trolls you for being crap at playing it :D

 

[Bulba]

So, after buying this on GoG I now have 5-6 games under my belt. This game is fucking amazing. The gameplay, the lore, the event-based narrative, hell even the graphics are highly appealing. Seems a very good bit of love was put into this game.

I'm playing on easy, with a balanced clan mostly. Orlanth is main deity. because I figure once I've won my first game there I'll transition to normal. And I'm not exactly doing too hot, so I'm here for some advice.

Food: I'm actually doing quite well here. I had one game where people started starving quickly, but otherwise a combination of Earthblood and most other crop-related shrines have worked well.

Shrines: It seems like you can't have enough of these motherfuckers, but they're quite costly if you get enough of them. What seems to work really well is a bunch of crop-related stuff, a Curing shrine and then as many Combat bonuses you can afford. Trouble is, that rarely seems to be many.

Cattle: My numbers always start to dwindle here. While this is not the direct reason for my losses, it always starts here. I'm stingy with sacrificing them, I'm using the Cow shrine, and so on. However, once I start getting raided I can never make up for the losses of cattle I incur.

Questing: Is this shit really worth it? Even after figuring out the correct responses in the Cow Mother quest and succeeding (the only time I've succeded at a quest) I've failed on all other quests. First you have to figure out the correct way to do things - which doesn't always correspond directly to the myth, and is sometimes not even mentioned there - and then a good deal of luck comes into play. I guess it doesn't really cost that much to quest though, but it seems like a waste of time when you could be managing important stuff.

Relations: Sooner or later my relations begin to deteriorate. Devoting time to sending emissaries to all the clans to make friends is just a luxury I can rarely afford.

So in the end, I lose when I get cattle raided too often (regular raids I manage quite well), lose too much cattle, and things start to spiral downwards.

The King of Dragon Pass is indeed one of the most addictively fun games I've played in recent years, and one of the few I've felt any compulsion to play multiple times.

Among the strategies I utilized, the single most effective one was the mass trade route approach, with Orlanth as main deity and Issaries as as the deity I woke up. The world generator scripts one of the tribes as a mortal enemy for story purposes. In addition to that, you need another clan to be your enemy for the entire game so that you can fulfill the fighting requisites to prevent your Weapon Thanes from becoming socially unruly/sloppy in combat. The idea here is to fight as minimally as possible while still maintaining peak effectiveness for those scripted events that require you to fight. Anyway, you get one of your Clan Ring who has Issaries as a deity with a crazy level of diplomatic skill and then use him/her to form both trade routes AND alliances with every neighboring tribe (you'll need 2 or 3 of these guys throughout the entire game, so watch that age meter to ensure you are never without a diplomat, as he is the linchpin of your strategy).

This way nobody can attack you without passing through your ally's lands. Sometimes they screw you over, but in general it allows you to control combat so that you only fight when you want to. 5-10 trade routes combined with it allows you to accumulate massive amounts of Goods, which you'll want to trade early on for cattle (cattle becoming the most precious resource in the late game, with most clans being unwilling to trade any for any amount of goods) and crops. With these three resources operating at peak efficiency, you'll be able to build and upgrade the maximum amount of Shines while performing the maximum amount of Hero Quests. With enough laborers and trade routes, you'll have so many Goods you can bribe clans with 'gifts' whenever their disposition toward you lowers for pretty much the entire game. This keeps the bonds of your tribe strong.

Without having to focus nearly as much on combat, your Weapon Thanes are freed up so that you can send out expeditions to find magical treasures that allow you dominate the limited combat scenarios AND boost your civilization management scores.

When you have the choice to choose a little extra land or a moderate amount of extra land, I chose a little extra land. That gave me limited resources to keep my livestock (including cattle) in numbers large enough to support my population, but I was able to get by lean years by trading my economic partners for crops so that I could demote my Shinres and give my livestock a chance of regrow. This becomes more difficult Late Game, but it never becomes impossible. Obviously, you'll want to do the Uralda Hero Quest to get the treasure that makes your herds healthy ASAP (which is the same in any strategy).

hm... well I play the game in completely opposite direction - war clan. don't do any trading or diplomacy - just kill all enemies old and new. it's crucial that you don't have too many enemies fighting you at the same time, no more than 3, 2 ideally. basically the plan is to beat everyone into paying you tribute and keep 2-3 for constant raids, preferably non war clans and mid game you will have thousands of cows and goods plus constant attacks on your vil makes your soil very fertile. once you want to make a tribe just make peace with 3 chosen neighbors and feast endlessly until they love you. easy

 

[Morality Games]

So, after buying this on GoG I now have 5-6 games under my belt. This game is fucking amazing. The gameplay, the lore, the event-based narrative, hell even the graphics are highly appealing. Seems a very good bit of love was put into this game.

I'm playing on easy, with a balanced clan mostly. Orlanth is main deity. because I figure once I've won my first game there I'll transition to normal. And I'm not exactly doing too hot, so I'm here for some advice.

Food: I'm actually doing quite well here. I had one game where people started starving quickly, but otherwise a combination of Earthblood and most other crop-related shrines have worked well.

Shrines: It seems like you can't have enough of these motherfuckers, but they're quite costly if you get enough of them. What seems to work really well is a bunch of crop-related stuff, a Curing shrine and then as many Combat bonuses you can afford. Trouble is, that rarely seems to be many.

Cattle: My numbers always start to dwindle here. While this is not the direct reason for my losses, it always starts here. I'm stingy with sacrificing them, I'm using the Cow shrine, and so on. However, once I start getting raided I can never make up for the losses of cattle I incur.

Questing: Is this shit really worth it? Even after figuring out the correct responses in the Cow Mother quest and succeeding (the only time I've succeded at a quest) I've failed on all other quests. First you have to figure out the correct way to do things - which doesn't always correspond directly to the myth, and is sometimes not even mentioned there - and then a good deal of luck comes into play. I guess it doesn't really cost that much to quest though, but it seems like a waste of time when you could be managing important stuff.

Relations: Sooner or later my relations begin to deteriorate. Devoting time to sending emissaries to all the clans to make friends is just a luxury I can rarely afford.

So in the end, I lose when I get cattle raided too often (regular raids I manage quite well), lose too much cattle, and things start to spiral downwards.

The King of Dragon Pass is indeed one of the most addictively fun games I've played in recent years, and one of the few I've felt any compulsion to play multiple times.

Among the strategies I utilized, the single most effective one was the mass trade route approach, with Orlanth as main deity and Issaries as as the deity I woke up. The world generator scripts one of the tribes as a mortal enemy for story purposes. In addition to that, you need another clan to be your enemy for the entire game so that you can fulfill the fighting requisites to prevent your Weapon Thanes from becoming socially unruly/sloppy in combat. The idea here is to fight as minimally as possible while still maintaining peak effectiveness for those scripted events that require you to fight. Anyway, you get one of your Clan Ring who has Issaries as a deity with a crazy level of diplomatic skill and then use him/her to form both trade routes AND alliances with every neighboring tribe (you'll need 2 or 3 of these guys throughout the entire game, so watch that age meter to ensure you are never without a diplomat, as he is the linchpin of your strategy).

This way nobody can attack you without passing through your ally's lands. Sometimes they screw you over, but in general it allows you to control combat so that you only fight when you want to. 5-10 trade routes combined with it allows you to accumulate massive amounts of Goods, which you'll want to trade early on for cattle (cattle becoming the most precious resource in the late game, with most clans being unwilling to trade any for any amount of goods) and crops. With these three resources operating at peak efficiency, you'll be able to build and upgrade the maximum amount of Shines while performing the maximum amount of Hero Quests. With enough laborers and trade routes, you'll have so many Goods you can bribe clans with 'gifts' whenever their disposition toward you lowers for pretty much the entire game. This keeps the bonds of your tribe strong.

Without having to focus nearly as much on combat, your Weapon Thanes are freed up so that you can send out expeditions to find magical treasures that allow you dominate the limited combat scenarios AND boost your civilization management scores.

When you have the choice to choose a little extra land or a moderate amount of extra land, I chose a little extra land. That gave me limited resources to keep my livestock (including cattle) in numbers large enough to support my population, but I was able to get by lean years by trading my economic partners for crops so that I could demote my Shinres and give my livestock a chance of regrow. This becomes more difficult Late Game, but it never becomes impossible. Obviously, you'll want to do the Uralda Hero Quest to get the treasure that makes your herds healthy ASAP (which is the same in any strategy).

hm... well I play the game in completely opposite direction - war clan. don't do any trading or diplomacy - just kill all enemies old and new. it's crucial that you don't have too many enemies fighting you at the same time, no more than 3, 2 ideally. basically the plan is to beat everyone into paying you tribute and keep 2-3 for constant raids, preferably non war clans and mid game you will have thousands of cows and goods plus constant attacks on your vil makes your soil very fertile. once you want to make a tribe just make peace with 3 chosen neighbors and feast endlessly until they love you. easy

Hm. I never considered keeping the tribe intentionally small.

 

[MRY]

I've just gone through my third venture into KoDP and came away from it the same as the last two that I've made over the years: amazing lore, amazing art, amazing concept, amazing depth -- totally unsatisfying and boring. I think the answer is that it is simply too complex, and the complexity yields a kind of sameness to the entire experience. I realize this is heresy, and I myself am a prolific recommender of KoDP, so I will try to offer some thoughts as to why I might find it unsatisfying (other than that I'm just a lousy player who can't appreciate greatness).

(1) The huge quantity of variables, some invisible to the player, makes it very difficult to know whether you are advancing or not. For example, a huge number of successful raids, driving my enemies from the land and netting me large quantities of cattle, yielding huge morale meant . . . what, exactly? I wasn't losing, but there was no clear sense I was winning, since there were so many clans that I couldn't really conquer the area, and anyway the clans I was thoroughly trouncing still could keep raiding me in perpetuity. They would offer treaties, always offering a trivial number of cows (many less than I would take in a given raid), my ring would always say that I should ask for more, the enemy clan would always refuse and hire mercenaries, and I would continue trouncing them, etc., etc. Obviously I was making some kind of bad decision, but what, exactly, was the right decision? Accepting their surrender didn't end the feud, didn't stop them from raiding and killing horses, etc., it just limited my reprisal options.

In the background is some kind of "are you playing like an Orlanthi" metavariable, but there is no way to get a good sense of it. The advice I got from my ring was consistently contradictory (which is fine and verisimilar), and eventually I won (a short game on normal) but it all sort of happened. I made the tribe because I was bored, and won the kingship because I had accrued a huge quantity of goods and could share them with people. I suppose this was all in some way traceable to my raiding, but it felt very disconnected.

(2) The huge quantity of options, without much evident distinction among them, trivializes every choice. It is totally opaque what the difference between a swine blessing and a cattle blessing and an allocation of herd magic is, for example. It is unclear why it matters which direction I choose to explore. I still have no idea what the difference between charging and maneuvering is, or why maneuvering is autoselected if charging is the default Orlanthi behavior per the manual. The fact that one can successfully (albeit on normal/short) win the game while having not even a basic understanding of the game's options surely reflects poorly on the game. It's like if button mashing worked to beat Street Fighter. I have no idea why there are so many people on the ring, or what exactly I was supposed to do with them, how exactly their abilities mattered, etc. I mean, I could guess at it, but in any given interaction it didn't seem really to matter much -- the skills were all pretty similar among potential ring members, the god distribution pretty even, etc.

(3) I think the game makes some attempts to cue the player as to what he should be doing, but those cues are themselves opaque and don't accomplish much. Sometimes they are specific, such as, "We need more cottars," a problem that is resoluble with a click of a button. (I'm not sure how I was supposed to detect the need for cottars before then, perhaps by soliciting the ring's opinion in the farming screen or something.) But most of the time I don't understand them at all. For example, I made a half-assed effort to make a treaty with the Blackrock Clan, who owed me favors, and despite having spent the game trouncing other clans, despite having a large number of weaponthanes and a great warleader, the Blackrocks wouldn't join on the ground I hadn't proved myself in battle. Clearly I was supposed to do something . . . but what?

(4) The game does a very poor job (in my opinion) of sorting between useful and useless information, which means that given the sheer quantity of information you're given, it's pretty easy to get lost. Apparently the game expects you to rely on the ring for sorting that information, but my experience was (a) it is pretty painstaking to solicit the opinion of the ring, since you have to go person by person, subscreen by subscreen, and (2) their own statements were often not helpful, such that it was hard to judge between an action item and a bit of fluff. A lot of statistics seemed to me to be handled at a level of specificity that was unnecessary (451 cattle, 29 new births, etc.). All of this together made it frustratingly easy to miss key things -- like forgetting to fill a hole in the ring or forgetting to perform a required sacrifice.

(5) Whether a particular choice yields success or failure depends on so many things -- some invisible to the player and some simply involving a RNG -- that it is hard to feel satisfied about how things worked out. Sometimes there seems to be an intelligent basis for choosing among options, but often it felt like dizzily throwing a dart at a board whose numbers were concealed from me.

(6) Even the things that are supposed to be momentous -- completing a hero quest, driving an enemy from their tula, forming a tribe -- didn't have any more "oomph" than things that were totally random, like the results of an enemy raid upon you. There were no lasting goals to work toward -- the only really significant thing you can do in terms of the tula is building your defenses, but those were trivially cheap and also almost never referenced in the game, so I'm not sure to what extent they mattered. (From time to time in enemy raids, there was a mention of enemies stuck in a ditch. I'm not sure if that's because I built a ditch, as I think it might be the default defensive structure.) From time to time there were epic-seeming tasks (like maybe I once had an chance to fight some monster), which I failed at despite the resources I expended, but those never seemed to invite me to come back and revisit them. The single major multi-event arc that I got involved some guy being mutated by the Tusk Riders, and the amount of story effort devoted to this plot seemed totally disproportionate. (It ended with my failing to get him a wife, then he died in battle sad that he never got a wife. Amazingly, this arc apparently is meant to go on even further....)

I realize there are some players for whom figuring out the rules of the game is a huge part of the fun, and I suppose that for them KoDP is a great game. And then there's another set of players for whom the rules of the game are an obstruction to a walking/ruling simulator, and so just being able to do whatever and have interesting things happen is awesome, and I suppose that for them KoDP would be great too. For me, though, the game's lack of goals and steps to achieving those goals is more or less fatal. Everything about it is great, except the game part.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Tried this game several times, I really like the COYA, the lore and so on .. but I never really could wrap my head around the gameplay. Even though I tried my best to make sensible decisions I always ended up losing somehow without being able to figure out why, how, what I was doing wrong exactly or what to do to turn things around.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I might just be too for this game and watched a nice Lets Play instead. Good times.

 

[Alkarl]

I've just gone through my third venture into KoDP and came away from it the same as the last two that I've made over the years: amazing lore, amazing art, amazing concept, amazing depth -- totally unsatisfying and boring. I think the answer is that it is simply too complex, and the complexity yields a kind of sameness to the entire experience. I realize this is heresy, and I myself am a prolific recommender of KoDP, so I will try to offer some thoughts as to why I might find it unsatisfying (other than that I'm just a lousy player who can't appreciate greatness).

(1) The huge quantity of variables, some invisible to the player, makes it very difficult to know whether you are advancing or not. For example, a huge number of successful raids, driving my enemies from the land and netting me large quantities of cattle, yielding huge morale meant . . . what, exactly? I wasn't losing, but there was no clear sense I was winning, since there were so many clans that I couldn't really conquer the area, and anyway the clans I was thoroughly trouncing still could keep raiding me in perpetuity. They would offer treaties, always offering a trivial number of cows (many less than I would take in a given raid), my ring would always say that I should ask for more, the enemy clan would always refuse and hire mercenaries, and I would continue trouncing them, etc., etc. Obviously I was making some kind of bad decision, but what, exactly, was the right decision? Accepting their surrender didn't end the feud, didn't stop them from raiding and killing horses, etc., it just limited my reprisal options.

In the background is some kind of "are you playing like an Orlanthi" metavariable, but there is no way to get a good sense of it. The advice I got from my ring was consistently contradictory (which is fine and verisimilar), and eventually I won (a short game on normal) but it all sort of happened. I made the tribe because I was bored, and won the kingship because I had accrued a huge quantity of goods and could share them with people. I suppose this was all in some way traceable to my raiding, but it felt very disconnected.

(2) The huge quantity of options, without much evident distinction among them, trivializes every choice. It is totally opaque what the difference between a swine blessing and a cattle blessing and an allocation of herd magic is, for example. It is unclear why it matters which direction I choose to explore. I still have no idea what the difference between charging and maneuvering is, or why maneuvering is autoselected if charging is the default Orlanthi behavior per the manual. The fact that one can successfully (albeit on normal/short) win the game while having not even a basic understanding of the game's options surely reflects poorly on the game. It's like if button mashing worked to beat Street Fighter. I have no idea why there are so many people on the ring, or what exactly I was supposed to do with them, how exactly their abilities mattered, etc. I mean, I could guess at it, but in any given interaction it didn't seem really to matter much -- the skills were all pretty similar among potential ring members, the god distribution pretty even, etc.

(3) I think the game makes some attempts to cue the player as to what he should be doing, but those cues are themselves opaque and don't accomplish much. Sometimes they are specific, such as, "We need more cottars," a problem that is resoluble with a click of a button. (I'm not sure how I was supposed to detect the need for cottars before then, perhaps by soliciting the ring's opinion in the farming screen or something.) But most of the time I don't understand them at all. For example, I made a half-assed effort to make a treaty with the Blackrock Clan, who owed me favors, and despite having spent the game trouncing other clans, despite having a large number of weaponthanes and a great warleader, the Blackrocks wouldn't join on the ground I hadn't proved myself in battle. Clearly I was supposed to do something . . . but what?

(4) The game does a very poor job (in my opinion) of sorting between useful and useless information, which means that given the sheer quantity of information you're given, it's pretty easy to get lost. Apparently the game expects you to rely on the ring for sorting that information, but my experience was (a) it is pretty painstaking to solicit the opinion of the ring, since you have to go person by person, subscreen by subscreen, and (2) their own statements were often not helpful, such that it was hard to judge between an action item and a bit of fluff. A lot of statistics seemed to me to be handled at a level of specificity that was unnecessary (451 cattle, 29 new births, etc.). All of this together made it frustratingly easy to miss key things -- like forgetting to fill a hole in the ring or forgetting to perform a required sacrifice.

(5) Whether a particular choice yields success or failure depends on so many things -- some invisible to the player and some simply involving a RNG -- that it is hard to feel satisfied about how things worked out. Sometimes there seems to be an intelligent basis for choosing among options, but often it felt like dizzily throwing a dart at a board whose numbers were concealed from me.

(6) Even the things that are supposed to be momentous -- completing a hero quest, driving an enemy from their tula, forming a tribe -- didn't have any more "oomph" than things that were totally random, like the results of an enemy raid upon you. There were no lasting goals to work toward -- the only really significant thing you can do in terms of the tula is building your defenses, but those were trivially cheap and also almost never referenced in the game, so I'm not sure to what extent they mattered. (From time to time in enemy raids, there was a mention of enemies stuck in a ditch. I'm not sure if that's because I built a ditch, as I think it might be the default defensive structure.) From time to time there were epic-seeming tasks (like maybe I once had an chance to fight some monster), which I failed at despite the resources I expended, but those never seemed to invite me to come back and revisit them. The single major multi-event arc that I got involved some guy being mutated by the Tusk Riders, and the amount of story effort devoted to this plot seemed totally disproportionate. (It ended with my failing to get him a wife, then he died in battle sad that he never got a wife. Amazingly, this arc apparently is meant to go on even further....)

I realize there are some players for whom figuring out the rules of the game is a huge part of the fun, and I suppose that for them KoDP is a great game. And then there's another set of players for whom the rules of the game are an obstruction to a walking/ruling simulator, and so just being able to do whatever and have interesting things happen is awesome, and I suppose that for them KoDP would be great too. For me, though, the game's lack of goals and steps to achieving those goals is more or less fatal. Everything about it is great, except the game part.

The game really doesn't give you much of an idea as to what your goal is supposed to be in the game when you start out. It's fairly trivial for most players to assume they are supposed to be taking over territory or forcing their enemy out in an attempt to become king or something. However, this is not your typical Sid Meiers (American) Civilization game. Your main purpose IS to become the King, but how you do that is quite a bit different than in most games.

I have a bit of insight which might help ya out here, I have quite a familiarity with this game, having beaten the long hard game a couple times over the years.

1.) So, having several on going feuds isn't typically a good idea. You can definitely play as a war tribe, and raiding is respected in Orlanthi society, but so is benevolence and reconciliation. Raiding your neighbors into near extinction is seen as wicked or un-king-like and will net your clan a bad reputation amongst their peers. While some raiding is expected, once your neighbors are begging for a ceasefire, its probably a good idea to cut your losses, resolve the feud and pick on someone else. The clan isn't exactly surrendering either, their are merely seeking a ceasefire to rebuild, but they still hate you for all of their people you killed, and, more importantly perhaps, all the cows you stole.

I'll touch more on the Orlanthi "metavariable" (I like that term) as we go, and try to summarize at the end.

2.) So, as for those two blessings specifically, a cattle blessing is always going to be more worthwhile than a swine blessing. As cows are counted on the screen as an important resource, and it is how goods are measured (for instance, 100 goods is actually 100 cows worth of goods) they are the main sign of wealth in Orlanthi culture. Having a large heard of cattle is good. 600 is nearly poor while 1200+ is wealthy. Cows can typically be traded for anything you may need, and in the case of attempting to trade for them, other clans may refuse more often if they are not in dire need of what you're offering in exchange. Also, when an emergency is required, cows are worth more food, although you'll almost always have 2 to 3 more times as many swine or sheep, and they aren't worth near as much (though killing too many can peeve your cottars).

As for combat options, this is somewhat dependent upon any number of things:

If defending: Consider your defenses and the number of defenders to attackers ratio. If you have the advantage, with a bit of magic, a charge can typically sweep the field. Sacrificing to Orlanth will also help. If you are outnumbered, it may be a good idea to evade and try to survive. If you have a wall and pits, using maneuver can also allow your fighters and fyrdwomen to launch missiles at the enemy as they are attempting to attack. Sacrificing to Humakt will cause your warriors to fight with his goals in mind. Choosing to attempt to kill as many enemies as possible will improve your odds of winning, however, you may incur more casualties as well as a result of sacrificing to Humakt. This will also empower your Humakti warriors to perform better or your Orlanthi conversely if sacrifices are made to Orlanth. Its a good thing to remember if an event comes up in that battle concerning a warrior of either sect.

Another great way to cut down on homefront raids is to ally with your immediate neighbors and only feud with those who would have to cross their tula to attack you. Often times your allies will just send their asses home.

As for ring composition, a good rule of thumb is to use the best YOUNG people of their fields and make sure the leader slot (that is the first on the left) is always occupied by a noble who follows your patron God. The first thing I typically do when starting a new game is find a leader, and then use him to replace or empty the rest of the ring. Then I click on all of the categories and select the youngest people with the highest skills. Its also important to have a balanced ring in both gender and faith, meaning you typically want only one of each worshipper, with a focus on certain ones (you can look up the bonuses that each nobles faith contributes to the clan, it typically only comes up during select events and when allocating magic for the year.) Btw, Tricksters (worshippers of Eurmal) may be a pain in the ass from time to time, but they are definitely worth it, and their opinions on different issues are typically comedic gold, just don't listen to them in like 99% of cases!

As for skills, I recommend you look this up as well just to save space, but they typically effect the individuals opinion during events and effect the outcome if they are chosen to act during an event. The easy one is combat. Exploration should be led by able combatants, along with war parties. Bargaining is for traders, so when organizing a trade mission, pick your best bargainer. Custom is typically good for events concerning Orlanthi society, matters of kinslaying and "who gets to marry the girl" (p.s. she doesn't have a say) etc. Magic is for situations dealing with divination, spirits, talking foxes, omens, etc.

3.) So.. this one is a hard one. It depends on the size of land you have, how many people you need to feed, etc. Cottars are farmers, obviously, and if you don't have anyone working the fields, your harvests will suck. However, sometimes the game will prompt for more cottars due to an expansion of land which may have included your farms. Its typically good to get blessing like Field Song from Barntar etc to allow your cottars to do as much work as possible. How many farmers you really need is something you'll have to gauge for yourself based on how well you are meeting your food demands every year. Other blessings can help with this, like Preservation to keep food from spoiling, etc. On the year cap screen at the beginning of every new year, you can see just how much food everyone consumed last year, and plan accordingly based on births, new adults, etc. 1 food == enough food to feed ~8 people that year, barring feasts. Nobles and Weaponthanes eat the most, so keeping reasonable numbers of weaponthanes can counteract food consumption to a degree.

Clan relations goes back to how you are seen by the rest of your community. Even though they are saying they need to see you raid more, it could be you are raiding too much, or maybe that is just their excuse to stay out of an alliance with you. This is easily effected by simply resolving some feuds (get ready for a LOT of gifts) and feasting your immediate neighbors. The different people and leaders you meet in this game can and will lie their ass off if they need to. The only thing they are forbidden to lie about is if they will not kill you, or mean you harm (for instance, taking tribute from a tribe and then attacking them is nearly akin to murdering your brother/kin in Orlanthi society, you are just not supposed to do it.)

4.) This one should be fairly short. Your clan ring will typically consist of a bunch of narcissists. They all have their own goals and agendas, and sometimes they have great advice, other times not so much. The main things to always make sure you are doing (and this will see you through most years without issue) is to honor and be true to your ancestors:

For instance, if you were hostile to dragons, make sure you attack them when you see them and don't ever keep Dragon Paraphernalia. Destroy it or trade it away. If you chose trolls as your enemy, never accept a ceasefire DIRECTLY. For instance, if you chose beatfolk as an ancestral enemy, when the beastmen come to demand that you stop harassing their ilk, you can ignore them, and then cancel your tribute from the ducks on your tula and stop raiding any other beastfolk you find without betraying your ancestors without incurring a magic penalty or being seen as weak by your neighbors.

Also, follow the tenants of Orlanthi society:

Basically, think about how life functioned back then. When you're given the option of marrying a young girl off or letting her choose her husband, think about what was accepted. If your women come to you complaining that there are no more men left and one of the options is to allow them to form joint households, don't pick that one! Most of the events are easily navigated by learning and knowing Orlanthi law and culture. The game is a lot like a roguelike in this respect, since it will likely take you many failings before the pieces start to fit together.

5.) This is my major gripe with Hero Quests and the like. Usually, having an experienced clan ring and choosing options based on those found at the end of 4.) will give you the highest percentage chance for success and not making a right ass out of your clan. However, there is that RNG factor which may just critically fail you anyway, and you'll have to find another way to make up for that loss. This is part of the challenge, you just do your best, but then shit happens, hopefully you can be resourceful and survive. You'll have some bad years, your best hope is that they don't happen consecutively.

6.) Much of this is purely subjective, and I can't really refute how you feel. I can't say, even though I personally enjoy the game, that you're wrong. However, what I can say, is that maybe if you go back in and set your own goals, take baby steps till you're a bit more confident, maybe you might get more into it. Maybe. I definitely see your point though, and to a degree, it is just a ruling sim. It isn't about conquest, it's more about survival. I think maybe you were looking at it in an unfavorable light, and instead of trying to understand the mechanics, you just kinda smashed square pegs into holes hoping something would fit, and I mainly would blame your first impression of the game on this, as you said, when comparing its design (rather unfavorably, if I might add) to Street Fighter.

Maybe another go with a new perspective will change your enjoyment of a thing. Maybe not.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Didn't read the whole thread but I have found that important factors in successful campaigns are:
- investing in mysteries and shrines - shrines help with health and avoiding some very bad luck, mysteries help with paths to victory for hero quests
- hero questing (supported by mystery investment)
- Picking the right person for hero quests - make sure they are aligned with the deity for the quest they are taking and make sure their stats are good
- sometimes you need to choose a draw or sustain minor defeats when raided for the benefit of the long game
- hunt for, trade for, and hoard artifacts as gifts and concessions. You will need them.


Great post above.

 

[MRY]

Thanks Alkarl -- I'll keep this filed away for the day that I make another foray into the game.

That said, I think perhaps to some degree we're speaking past each other. It's not that I'm particularly interested in whether swine blessing or cattle blessing is more powerful (one could ask the same about Vigor and Sun and Bless Crops and Rain, for example, which I suppose may have some situational uses but are similarly opaque as to what is best for when). The thing is, the issue is not -- as it might be in a very challenging rogue-like -- that the game is consistently defeating me. After all, on default settings the game is actually pretty easy to win (I remember its being harder when I last played it -- perhaps this is a DOS->iOS thing). It's that the lack of discernible rules or meaning for the choices you make turns those choices into irrelevancies.

For example, your points about feuding and not being tyrannical are really interesting. (But note the opening lines of Beowulf praising Scyld as a "terror of the hall troops," "rampaging" among his foes until "each clan . . . had to yield to him and begin to play tribute.") But ultimately (again, with the caveat that this was normal/short), it doesn't really seem to matter because the game is easy enough to win even playing a balanced tribe that way. Moreover, aside from outside knowledge (like the manual), the game doesn't really give any indication that you're doing something wrong -- for example, no one on the ring ever said, "this is not our way," the fighters were delighted with the fighting and the farmers with the land and cows, other tribes mischiefed us a lot but no one ever framed that mischief as a response to line-crossing on our part. So I guess part of my objection would be that the game (same caveat) is really just asking me to LARP an Orlanthi since it isn't assiduously holding me to the Orlanthi code.

That is true with most of the stuff you mention. For example, I was hostile to dragons -- but every time a dragonnewt came to visit, my ring gushed about how great they were and what wisdom they could share with me. I gather I would've alienated the ancestors by humoring the dragons, but nothing about the encounter seemed to support the idea that it was wildly taboo to entertain them. Maybe the ring consists of narcissists, but it still felt strange not to have this basic choice reflected there somehow.

The same thing is kinda true with the blessings. On the one hand, I can't help but love the sheer excess of gods, and lore about gods, and rituals required of gods, and blessings the gods can provide, and random situational uses of those blessings and so on. It's really amazing from a world-building standpoint. And it does (to some extent) achieve mimesis with the lack of rigor that ancient people had in their rituals: they did these rituals and thought they got things from them, but which rituals and what they got was often vague and subject to interpretation. But I didn't find it very immersive here because the game's framework with respect to the rituals turns out to be one of the most game-like parts of the game: it's done by checking boxes in a menu screen, by making generic sacrifices, by building and upgrading structures, etc. And the blessings are (generally speaking) specifically tied to game statistics like cattle or battle power (I have some recollection of one even describing it as a 20% power boost). So while the uncertainty of the blessings could provide an immersive quality, it turns out that the invocation of the blessings (like some other things in the game) winds up feeling not like a narrative saga but instead very much like, not so much Civilizations, but perhaps Colonization.

Ultimately, if the only way to win were to understand the Orlanthi metavariable, or if understanding the Orlanthi metavariable opened cooler and more engaging options, or if that were true of simply understanding the rules of various game systems, I think the whole thing might hang together better. My analogy to Street Fighter was mostly that you can't have all these super elaborate special moves that are a pain to pull off if button mashing wins the game -- otherwise there's not much incentive to learn the special moves or contort your carpals. Same here. Lore and art are great garnishments but I think you need some steak with the sizzle.

You're probably right that it's just a matter of taste. The game does seems to provide a good framework (filled with great lore) for LARPing a not very historical and kind of goofy sort of quasi-Celtic / Viking tribe. The number of avenues it gives to explore, and the way most of them are conveyed, is staggering. But I'm left reacting to it the same way I reacted to Ultima IV: the idea of having some code for the player to try to live up to is really neat, but it turns out that having to let monsters all flee from fights and having to spam giving blood and coins to beggars is actually not very much fun. In the same way, structuring combat (for example) so as to never allow you to strike a decisive blow, structuring exploration so that you can always go anywhere but there's really nowhere to go, structuring building upgrades such that you can buy them all in the first couple years of the game but it doesn't really matter anyway, structuring tribal leadership as more a matter of yielding and compromising than imposing your will.... it's just not very much of a fun game for me.

Still, I'm sure I'll try it again in a year or two.

 

[laclongquan]

The hidden goal is having an acceptable MALE chieftain to be king candidate in 20th year. Which mean you need to have your 1st chieftain old, experienced enough to help with heroquesting to grow your 2nd (target) chieftain in ability.

The way to have different gameplay is to line up goals before you even start the game: Biggest land tribe? Biggest tribe in number, period? Richest tribe (in goods)? bestest King? Last goal may conflict with the other two depend on how you go. And the rich game is really different. You need to get the largest number of craftsman possible with a corresponding number of thanes to defend. certain god for your chieftain. time spend to open trade...
Generally, I find that the three games can have quite different progress. Biggest tribe is actually very different and go against the grain of storyfags if they pay attention to lores (NEVER ever split).

Swine/pig is emergency food reserve. Once you slaughter it, it's gone. There's no way to replenish it effectively. It's better to slaughter the cattle because you can regain it in many ways.

 

[Neanderthal]

I've always found KoDP goes well with the Sayings of the High One, make war an be forward, but not so forward that all your neighbours gather an burn you in your home. Or you can use example o Orlanthi legends that are there to read, an reminds you that they might be fractious an troublesome but Orlanthi are one and should act as such against outsiders. I likew that game gis me no hints on what exactly to do, modern game design is insultingly handholdy, just gis hints when you're doing shi9t too much or too little. End o day theres one score that decides how you're doing, cows, got enough an any problem goes away.

My own strategy is a balanced clan that seeks peace an trade as soon as possible wi every one it can, try an get rid of enemies sharpish an have good relations wi everybody, start off wi huge amount o land an maybe grab ducks or a neighbours lands early on an then use riches to makie peace an restore yoursen in their good books. I raid a random neighbouring, non allied tribe every two or three year to keep huscarls up to snuff, and cattle raid every year. Nobody minds this raiding so long as you don't pick on anyone or seek deaths, raiding (specially cattle) is after all honourable and natural in Orlanthi culture.

 

[Wizfall]

I love KoDP gameplay.
All the game's mechanics are well explained in the manual that is a must read (i was also a bit loss at the beginning but quickly decided to RTFM).
Some minor things are not exactly written black on white but it's part of the game to find the best strategies and what works (the gameplay would be boring otherwise).
Moreover the mechanics are well balanced enough that almost every parameters are useful which is great.

I never considered advices of my ring leaders to be important, it seemed obvious very quickly for me it was mostly there for fluff.

I agree that what you have to do and how to do it is not very clear, never bothered me though.
My only complaints would be the quests (success too random even with all the odds for you, at least in the higher difficult mode)

 

[MRY]

I did read the manual, although perhaps my retention was just low. On normal, I've never failed a hero quest, but maybe that's a difficulty setting thing, dumb luck, or a matter of picking the right person to do it. (I remember failing them a lot when I played it years ago on a PC.)