Knighthood: The view from the top 10,000

Back when I wrote my last Knighthood How-to, I had a different vantage point, less information, and a different game. A different game, you ask? Yep, that’s the joy of playing a game while it’s still in beta. The rules keep changing, and you have to adapt.

The first big rule to change after I started playing was that the 10 point vassals, otherwise known as your friends who were invited but never installed the game, started disappearing. Back before I started playing, the rule had been that a 10 pointer, a squire or handmaiden, disappeared from your court after a week, and the powers that be decided that that was a good thing to return to. I have to agree. It’s the only way that new people can get a toe-hold in the game. Take for example, my pal Dave. Sadly we have many of the same friends. He has a hard time finding friends to invite because I already invited them all, including him. Now that 10 point vassals disappear after a week, Dave has a shot at getting some of our friends for his court. He can potentially work them into a tidy little kingdom.

The second rule change has been the trapper. Oh my goodness, I’m afraid of the trapper. Anyone with a size five barracks can build one, and if you attack them with an insufficient force, your weakest vassal has the chance of being caught by whatever vassals they have in the trapper. I religiously check to make sure that the person I’m attacking doesn’t have one. You can do that in a number of ways. My method is to count up how many vassals it would take them to be in my attack bracket. Let’s say I have a barracks size of 2, which I do, and an attack bracket of 100. That means that my top two vassals have powers that add up to 100, say a 60 pointer and a 40 pointer. Every time I attack, I can potentially attack at that strength. So before I attack, I look at the top vassals of my opponent. If he or she has five 20 vassals as his or her top five, I know that he or she has a size five barracks, and may potentially have a trapper. The good news is that they are unlikely to be able to snag my 40 pointer with one of their 20s, but still, it’s good to know that it’s there. Another method is to read their history. If they have trapped someone before, surprise surprise, they have a trapper. I’m sure there are other ways to figure it out, but I haven’t found them yet.

I’m not sure whether I think the trapper is good or not. It is certainly causing some chaos in the upper ranks, which are stagnant at best, but as far as I can tell, the results seem to be that the rich are getting richer and the fairly rich are getting poorer. I think that’s probably bad for the game in the long run. Eventually there will be an overlord in Knighthood, I suppose, and my capitalist little heart (well, more socialist really) considers that bad for business. Competition is the name of this game, and anything else results in stagnation.

Stagnation is the reason I rather dislike the alliances as well. The result of their presence seems to be that the upper levels tiptoe around one another instead of just playing the game. I’m not as impressed with people who climb the ranks on the strength of their alliances as I am with those who do it on hard work and cleverness.

Another aspect I don’t like is the mercenary trade. It seems like everyone on the discussion boards expects money in exchange for their service. It also seems as though every time someone loses a vassal, they scramble over to the discussion board to solicit help. “Oh me, oh my, someone has stolen my bestest friend, and I must have him back. What big, powerful mercenary will swear fealty to me for 10 minutes so that I might retrieve my lost vassal. I will pay you x gold coins.” Bah. To me it seems like paying your big brother to beat some up for you, and I’m not going to participate. When I lose a vassal, I guarantee I’ll use up my attempts to get him or her back, but I’ll be damned if I’ll bring in outside help. If I can’t do it on my own, I don’t think I deserve to have my vassal back. I feel the same way about pledging to a lord who will lend out other powerful vassals to aid in attacks I make. It’s not cheating because there’s no rule against it, but it’s not exactly playing with the hand you’ve worked hard to build, so I’m not going to do it. There are those who argue that there were mercenaries in medieval times, and to that I’d have to respond that they weren’t respected either. They were used, but they weren’t respected.

Another new option that is available is the peace mode. For those who start playing without reading the instructions and build big barracks, this is a life saver. They can disband their armies and focus on building up defenses before rejoining the game with an actual chance to play instead of just watching while the stronger players in their bracket snap up all their vassals.

The last new items are buildings I’ve picked up recently. They may not be new to the game, but they are new to me. I’ve had a church for a while. I don’t use it much, being a heathen, but it certainly has potential. If I can afford to leave a strong vassal in there for 24 hours, he or she will have double strength for a single attack. It’s good for an extra punch to get a new vassal, but I haven’t really needed to use it yet because I can typically get vassals without leaving my best guys sitting around doing nothing but praying for 24 hours. I’d rather have them building up my walls.

Another new-to-me building is the tower, in which I can stow someone who is likely to be a target, thereby making them harder to steal. It doesn’t work on rescue attempts, though, which is all I really need it for right now, so it’s sort of lousy.

By far my favorite new building is the outpost, which is amazing. I can put a couple of vassals in there, and they slowly raise my alert status. If alert status is at100%, defense strength is double normal. This means that I can pull back big vassals to use for building and upgrading instead of using them only for defense. Beware, though, the defense strength increase doesn’t count for raiding. Go ahead and spend that money if you can’t protect it without the increased alert status. Also, alert status starts back at 0% if you attack anyone, so don’t retaliate.

I have a blockhouse, which allows me to add a little extra protection to vassals I think might be targets, but, like the tower, it’s not doing much for me right now. We’ll see how it turns out. I don’t have a guardhouse or a trapper, which are the only two available buildings left, because I don’t have size five barracks. Some day I will, but right now, I like my size.

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