Kingdoms MP

[Swoosh So]

Anyone tried kingdoms MP yet?, if so please give your impressions here.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Mixed Reactions I seen. Haven't played it yet myself, wait till it's cheaper.

[Lavos]

Played a single game so I can’t say much about balance and gameplay, but one thing is already confusing. For each of four campaigns you get different shortcut and if you’re in lobby and are in Americas ‘mod’ and you want to join someone who hosted ‘crusades’ you must get out of the game and lunch crusades.
This could be very confusing for new players and annoying for everyone else.

[Jochi Khan]

Different shortcuts all for one game???? What a dumb idea.

[Judge]

yep its tru i have just installed it and you get 4 new icons on your desktop.

1. Crusade
2. Teutonic
3. Britannia
4. Americas

and also 5. mtw2

[TosaInu]

yep its tru i have just installed it and you get 4 new icons on your desktop.

1. Crusade
2. Teutonic
3. Britannia
4. Americas

and also 5. mtw2

Hello Judge,

There are some ways to clean your desktop a bit if you want that. You could of course, move them all to the startmenu and thus delete them all from your desk. You could also simply make a M2TW folder on your desktop and move all shortcuts there.

I guess we'll also see some exe/shortcut managers soon. That would be a program that scans a folder for exe/shortcuts and puts them all in a list. The user just has to start the manager and make a choice. The manager launches the right exe and terminates itself. A launcher so to say (would require as many clicks as an ingame choice, only 1 extra, and keeps the desktop tidy).

[TosaInu]

Different shortcuts all for one game???? What a dumb idea.

Hello Jochi,

That may seem odd at first, but there are some benefits too. One of them is the selective installer, that's neat in case you don't have a big HD and only want to try one campaign.

The structure of M2TW is also a spacesaver for total conversions. With MTW you had to make a dedicated copy of everything, now you have only one install and plug in mods. Several games use such a structure. The game is several GB, so this really saves space.

Hopefully the next move is two really different exes: a SP and MP one. Another step is an ingame exe/mod selector in whichever exe/shortcut you start, so you can quickly swap from mod/game/mod to mode/game/mode. Soldiers of FortuneII does that, UT has the ingame mod/mutator selector. That should save time and desktop space.

[Lavos]

Hello Jochi,

That may seem odd at first, but there are some benefits too. One of them is the selective installer, that's neat in case you don't have a big HD and only want to try one campaign.

The structure of M2TW is also a spacesaver for total conversions. With MTW you had to make a dedicated copy of everything, now you have only one install and plug in mods. Several games use such a structure. The game is several GB, so this really saves space.

Hopefully the next move is two really different exes: a SP and MP one. Another step is an ingame exe/mod selector in whichever exe/shortcut you start, so you can quickly swap from mod/game/mod to mode/game/mode. Soldiers of FortuneII does that, UT has the ingame mod/mutator selector. That should save time and desktop space.

Sorry, the problem is not that you have a lot of shortcuts on screen, but that you need to exit mp lobby every single time you want to join some other game. Then, there is also a new bug with login now, you must type g.spy username, email and password each time you want to get into lobby. This logging out and in could be serious problem since there already aren’t much people playing m2tw online and further separating players could only discourage people from playing it.

Anyway, I played a little more and I can't say I'm impressed. They didn’t fix lag, but that was expected from this game engine. For me the problem is that it all looks a lot like couple of mod’s, not a proper expansion. Crusades, for instance, have two ‘real’ new factions (Antioch, Jeruzalem), both with new units, rest is recycled (same stats, graphic) from original m2tw with couple of new units for some factions. It’s exactly the same thing for Teutonic campaign where Teutons and Latvia are new, and rest are clones. British campaign is as 'interesting' as the one in Vikings invasion was. For me the best made is the American one, but five factions with horses and rest in pajamas could be a problem. Again, those are only first impressions, I hope someone will sum it up for good, since I really don’t have time and patience with lag and logins to try it myself. That way I can know if its worth checking it in couple of weeks.

[cas9480]

Anyone tried kingdoms MP yet?, if so please give your impressions here.

In reply, I've been playing the Lands to Conquer hotseat mod for some time, and we find it a lot of fun despite automatic resolution of battles. It's like the old board game diplomacy, which I played many moons ago as a student.

The guys who produced the LTC mod are to be congratulated, because in my opinion it's a great piece of work.

The new Kingdoms expansion hotseat is very similar to the mod, so I assume they collaborated?

[Lusted]

The new hotseat mode only appears in Kingdoms.

As for the hotseat included in LTC, that is done by changing some settings in the preference file to activate the hotseat mode that is in M2TW, but hidden. I have not made the mode myself, it is CA's work.

[cas9480]

Lusted

Well, LTC is still a good piece of work that I've enjoyed immensely.

Not to belabour a point to CA though, on page 4 of the Kingdoms manual it says "hotseat mode is available in the Grand Campaign and the new Kingdoms campaigns".

But as you've confirmed, it apparently isn't. Any idea why?

[Sun of Chersonesos]

Ok, so the 4 icons thing is annoying, but for the first kingdoms patch I'm not going to wish for the icons to be gone, but that there's a quicker way to exchange the game your currently on in order to join your mates game without other idiots spamming and crashing it first.

[Jochi Khan]

Sorry, the problem is not that you have a lot of shortcuts on screen, but that you need to exit mp lobby every single time you want to join some other game. Then, there is also a new bug with login now, you must type g.spy username, email and password each time you want to get into lobby. This logging out and in could be serious problem since there already aren’t much people playing m2tw online and further separating players could only discourage people from playing it.

What a mess. This is putting me off buying 'Kingdoms'

[t1master]

so are there now separate lobbies for each campaign in mp? or is it still a common lobby for the camps and the main game?

[AggonyDuck]

There are essentially five incompatible games that share the same lobby.

[t1master]

and the lag is the same as the origina m2?

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

What a mess. This is putting me off buying 'Kingdoms'

when you can buy it for 10-15 dollars, that when I will buy it. I argee with it being a mess, and I didn't even play it.

[Wolf_Kyolic]

I argee with it being a mess, and I didn't even play it.

lol

[Swoosh So]

Well the SP game is fantastic! and the battles feel right even v the ai, so im looking forward to trying it mp, i dont care about the exe files or any of that the crusades campaign alone is worth £20 Single player and offers alot of different faction types to use in Multi. Most likely online players will play the most balanced era anyway.