Knights and Barbarians is a total conversion for Age of Empires III and both its expansions. Command armies from one of fourteen medieval powers in detailed, intense battles to defend or expand your kingdom. The timeline of Knights and Barbarians stretches from the twilight of the Roman Empire to the infancy of the Italian Renaissance. New content includes unique gameplay mechanics, units, factions, maps, music, and much more.

Post news Report RSS Friday Update: Feudalism system

Let us introduce our Feudalism system for European civs in this week's Friday Update, written by a new team member!

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A few short weeks ago, as I'm sure most of you know, we released the first ever Knights & Barbarians gameplay video. During it, you may have noticed The_Dude mentioning a new feature in the commentary, called Feudalism.Today it's our pleasure to showcase this feature, and explain the basics of how it works to you!

The Town Square and Feudalism System

The Town Square is a new building we've created (thanks to peugeot407) that takes the place of the Chapter House and the Race Track for civilizations with neither, such as the Italians and the Byzantines.

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At the Town Square, there will be three "techs" representing major cities and regions from each major civilization. By choosing one of them, you align your colony with a particular region of your civ in addition to the capital, or home city. This is what we call "Feudalism".I think of it as being the region from where your lords and peasants are actually immigrating from to the new colony being established, while the home city or capital provides you with support based on your strategic and political importance (ergo, the city phase of your new town).

Italy, for example, will have these three cities to form a relationship with:

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From left to right: Verona, Breschia, and Ravenna

Once that's completed, three techs will pop up in the Town Square menu. One of them will be available to every city in every civilization, and it will be a scaling Mercantilism-type technology, where every age a certain amount of gold may be exchanged for a greater amount of experience. The other two techs will change depending on the chosen city or region. As a sneak-peek, here are the decided technologies for the Italian city of Breschia.

~ Breschia, Lombard Stronghold
Age III - Guelphic Garrison: Motivated by fear of northern encroachment and adherence to Vatican interests, Breschia's staunch Guelph troops are willing to forgo some payment for the sake of Pope and Piazza. Lessens infantry recruitment cost.
Age IV - Colle Cidneo: Breschia's fortifications have long stood strong, well-tested, and resolute against the ambitions of Emperors and Ghibellines. Improved castles and walls.

In addition to these techs, peasants have the ability to mingle and trade when tasked on the Town Square, giving your colony a much-needed dose of culture and social life while generating XP!

These new technologies, and the ability to spark a Revolution, are our way of evening the playing field between civilizations like the Italians and the unique advantages of the Knightly Orders and Race Tracks of the crusading and muslim civs, not to mention that avenues for improved historical accuracy are a great reason for excitement and motivation here at K&B.

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Today's quote comes from the head of our balancing department, iliander.

iliander wrote: This of course stays bad against ranged units because of the slow speed. So you would want to use this formation against an incoming army of solely melee units (preferably a smaller amount than the amount of your mystery units, which will mostly be the case with expensive cavalry units such as Knights). :D

Can you guess what the new combat formation we're so excited about is?

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K&B salutes... The K&B team. They've been very welcoming and helpful while bringing the new team member (Synecdoche, the author of this Update) up to speed.
K&B refutes... The heat of midsummer, which seems to be fraying some of our nerves here at K&B. If any of you know how to do a good rain dance, we'd appreciate it.

- Quoted from Synecdoche

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Ca_Putt
Ca_Putt

Quite intersting indeed, that sounds like a good feature. I don't quite get the connection to feudalism tho^^

A Pike formation of any kind? probably Flemish. maybe scottish or swiss.

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