Post by OmerZahidKara in Kinghold Update: Shared Health and Battle Sheep comments

Kinghold Update: Shared Health and Battle Sheep » Comments

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Hey man, I’ve been following your game. In the new update, I think merging the king and the castle health made the game a bit easier.

Before, there was an interesting risk: while your army was chasing a single enemy builder, enemies could attack your castle from another side, and you had to step in with the king to defend it. That could actually get the king killed, so it created tension.

I liked the sheep mechanic. I also tried the new strong units at first, but they felt too expensive to sustain. In my second run, I went back to what I already knew: spamming lots of cheap archers. But then I couldn’t protect the farms properly, and the economy started to fall apart in the mid game.

In the end, I managed to win by spamming barracks + farms, using the upgrade that makes farms produce villagers, and then mixing archers with the 3-gold sword units. I also tried some sheep, and that worked better.

Personally, I think it was better when the king’s health and the castle’s health were separate. The idea of “the king never loses health, so I made them share one health bar” doesn’t fully make sense to me. Maybe instead, you could give the enemy AI some chance to target the king, so the king stays more active and risky to use.

Right now, from what I saw, it feels like this happened:

Castle health needs to be reasonably high because it is a castle → the king becomes very tanky → assassinating or threatening the king almost never happens → mushrooms can increase the castle/king health a lot → the king starts to lose its gameplay purpose and becomes much less meaningful as a unit.

At least that’s how it felt to me.

Also, I don’t know if this fits your future plans, but one thing can get really frustrating: since soldiers usually go to the nearest threat, sometimes a huge enemy wave appears from the opposite side and destroys all your farms, while your massive army is busy chasing two small enemies somewhere else.

Going full ranger doesn’t feel like a healthy solution either, because it is hard to keep the damage/cost ratio balanced.

One idea I had was about the guard/banner cards. Maybe they could mark priority defense areas for your army. So instead of soldiers getting dragged into weird places while chasing the nearest enemy, they could prioritize enemies that enter a banner area. That would give the player some control without needing direct unit control.

I don’t know if that fits your overall game design, but at first I actually thought the guard banners worked like that and I was like “wow, that’s a really good idea.” Later, when I realized they were just normal guards, I didn’t really use them.

Also, I think one of the strongest things right now is the upgrade that makes farms produce units. Because you build farms, you get money, and you also get soldiers. That makes it extremely valuable.

One more idea came to my mind: producing only one of the expensive strong units doesn’t feel very effective, even if they are powerful. Since the king being active and taking risks seems important for the game flow, maybe fighting with the king could charge some kind of special summon/joker system for those strong units.

So instead of only buying them with economy, some cards could be connected to the king’s actions. Doing useful things with the king could make it easier to summon those powerful units. This might create a nice loop: play actively with the king → earn reward → unlock stronger options.

Anyway, good luck with the game. I’m enjoying following its progress :)

barkitectGames24 days ago(+1)

Heya, thank you for giving that another go and sharing what your thoughts. Will definitely keep the health change as experimental for now and keep collecting feedback on it, certainly changes things up but I hear what you mean. It sounds like you’ve really managed to optimise the strategies as well!

In earlier versions you did have much more direct control over the units, but at the time I thought it ended up feeling more like a ‘bad RTS’ that what I was aiming for. The Ranger and Guard cards are supposed to give a little bit of control back without the player having to give too much of their attention to directing units (otherwise I worry there’d be too much to think about), but if you’re still feeling frustrated then I can try leaning into this a lot more, like with your banner idea, or something similar to a guard post but that covers a much larger area, like half the map.

I agree the Homegrown perk is very strong too, though as I add more perks to the game your chance of finding it in a chest will become less and less, so perhaps it can remain as a lucky find rather than something you'll almost certainly get at some point? I do like your idea about the king's actions charging something too! I'd want to be very carful about adding any more systems to the game so it doesn't become overly complicated, but may well have a play around with that 😊.

Thanks again for your interest and sharing comments, really useful to hear.

OmerZahidKara24 days ago

Yeah, I agree that controlling units like in a classic RTS could create that “bad RTS” feeling in this game.

But with the current structure, the castle in the center still needs some help from mobile units, not only fixed guards or spawned units. Sometimes the army just can’t get there in time, like I mentioned before. Even if they arrive before the castle falls, if all your farms are gone, the rest of the run basically becomes impossible anyway.

So instead of selecting and controlling units like an RTS, maybe units spawned from a banner/guard post could become loyal to that post, almost like a small patrol group attached to it. That might solve the problem without turning the game into direct unit management.

You could maybe even add a simple play/stop button on the guard post. When it is on “play”, the units behave freely, like this system doesn’t exist. When it is on “stop”, they return to the area around that post and defend it.

I think this would feel less like a tiring RTS mechanic, and more like adding value to the current idle defense + hero control style.

And yeah, I did try a few combinations and playstyles that made sense to me. I’ve actually had some ideas for making original games in this kind of genre too, because I think it’s difficult to design well, but also really fun when it works. Your game feels really nice too.

Good luck with the game, man :)

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