King Arthur: The Druids Expansion Review - Dragoneering

The Total War series has had very little competition over the years. The last contender was the awful Imperial Glory, which despite having some interesting ideas of the campaign game, failed miserably with real time battles. Enter Neocore and King Arthur: The Role Playing War Game. King Arthur was more than just a Total War clone, it had a mythological Arthurian setting with some unique concepts thrown in. A good attempt by a relatively unknown Hungarian company.



While I was not enamoured of their latest attempt of doing a medieval strategy game in the shape of The King’s Crusade(which kept crashing for me), King Arthur always had that something extra which made it a much more memorable experience in my book. Magic, sorcery, magical creatures, tyrannical kings, monsters, a mythical swords and magical artifacts made King Arthur its own game.

In King Arthur, you played through the story of the noble King Arthur. Actually, whether he was noble or tyrannical was all up to you, more on that later. You recruited knights, soldiers and took quests available on the campaign map to progress through the story.

Turn based and real time strategy clash together.

As your units and knights gained experience, you increased their stats by investing skill points into their attributes or for knights, to learn magical spells or some other passive skill that gives a bonus on the armies they lead. This is the gist of King Arthur and it was quite different compared to Total War games.

What’s Unique About King Arthur

King Arthur played up the conflict between Christianity and the old faith in its campaign. As King Arthur, you get to align yourself to either the Christian side or help the old faith. Your decisions to help a knight, or fight a Christian king or what you did in a quest had bearing on which path you will move towards. Each of these have their own little abilities and magic spells. On top of this, there was also a morality system and your decisions could affect whether you were a righteous king or a ruthless king. All these just meant different abilities and magic and variety in terms of content you get with each play through.

In King Arthur, you are only allowed to recruit or replenish troops during the winter(each turn is a single season) and your revenue from your regions and farms(in the form of food) is tallied during the winter. In winter you can’t move your army, so you’ll have to plan well ahead if you want to replenish their numbers or recruit new units(you can only recruit soldier from towns or strongholds). This gives King Arthur a much slower pace on a relatively smaller campaign map. Relative to Total War games that is.

The morality chart gave you unique things if you went one way or the other.

Once two armies met, you are dropped into a real time battle. If you attack an army outside of a town/location of interest, you’ll be given a choice of where you want to fight the battle. In battle, your goal is to destroy the enemy army or capture a set number of victory locations. When the morale of one side reaches zero the other side gains victory. Morale is also affected by how many victory locations you hold. Which can lead to situations where you lost a battle that you were winning simply because the enemy had more victory locations than you and your armies morale dropped to zero.

These victory locations were a very cool addition to the game as they impart some sort of bonus to your army. Some give your army their stamina back(villages), some give you the ability to use a particular magic spell(these are very valuable victory locations, go for these at all costs), and some even give you more loot once you’ve won the battle(you’ll want to hold on to these until the battle is won to cash out). The emphasis on victory locations also meant that battles in King Arthur didn't have any attacker/defender situations as both sides rush to try to grab victory locations.

Choose your battleground. 

King Arthur also had a Knights of the round table screen. It’s basically a management screen for your knights(they lead your armies). You gain knights by completing quests or conquering strongholds. You could view their loyalty, their abilities and you could even make them a liege of a region, enhancing their loyalty towards you. Knights with low loyalties may abandon your army. 

The Druids

The Druids is a sandbox expansion to King Arthur(requires the base game). What this means is that you wont get a personal tale/story of your King(this is similar to The Saxons expansion). The campaign in The Druids just puts you on the map of Britannia and you can set what your victory conditions will be before starting the campaign(from conquering every province or 10 province to a host of other victory conditions). You’d still get quests on the map, but obviously they don’t lead to any storyline conclusion. Expect lots of trader quests that give you the chance to purchase rare items or artifacts from characters that appear on the map(for a limited number of turns).

The big new feature for The Druid is a new, more in depth diplomacy screen. This time, you can court the ladies of Britannia and enter into marriage with her(or them). These fine ladies give your empire a bonus(only the one you marry will of course), for instance, Lady Caitrin, the daughter of King Gruffud will give all your knights 1 skill point and you will gain 50000 gold and food. Hooking up with these fine ladies is obviously very beneficial but they do come with some negative traits.



There’s also a new factions/guilds screen in which you can take specific actions against the sidhe(a mystical ancient faction of magical creatures), the bishop, the guild of outlaws, and marauders. Each of these faction give you special diplomatic actions. The guild of outlaws allow you to send spies to your enemies regions, or the marauders would offer you to terrorise any region you wish for coin.

Despite more diplomatic options, the diplomacy system is still very simplistic. It lacks a diplomacy AI in the sense that it is based on a reputation system. You give someone gold(or do something good for them), your reputation increases. The higher the reputation, the less you need to pay them to accept your diplomatic offer.

Which means, they will always accept your offers. The only question is how much gold do you need to offer. This in my opinion makes the diplomacy less believable. It doesn’t feel like you are negotiating with a faction or a character. But I admit, even if it feels a little mechanical, it works quite well. The other Kings will grow to fear you(the fear meter increases) if you expand your army or your border quickly.



If you own The Saxons expansion for King Arthur, you’ll know exactly what to expect with The Druids. A new sandbox campaign with some new units, spells and abilities. The new diplomacy options are a welcomed addition even if diplomacy is a bit too mechanical for my taste, it gives players a bit more variety in terms of strategy. If you liked King Arthur and the previous expansion for it, you will definitely enjoy The Druids.



Pros:

• Added depth to diplomacy. More variety in terms of utilising diplomacy to further advance your objectives.
  
• Tactical AI is quite competent, often defending ranged units with melee units.
  
• When you capture a strategic point on the map and use the Storm of Avalon spell and a thunderstorm happens disabling archers, very satisfying! Magic spells on the battlefield are awesome!
  
• The victory points on the map give battles an interesting strategic twist. Players would have to decide if the bonuses are worth the effort going for them.
  
• The campaign game has a lot of subtleties that you might not be aware of. It doesn’t tell you about these things clearly. For example how food plays into region happiness and a bad winter and lack of food could cause an uprising in one of your regions.

Cons:

• The strategic AI does some funky stuff at times. Like attacking your army that clearly outnumbers it on rare occasions.
  
• Camera controls takes some getting used to.
  
• Tactical battles tend to degenerate into melee blobs.
  
• Powerful archers than can rip a unit in seconds. There is an option to use weaker archers in the option menu but it is not on by default.
  
• No indicator of which kingdoms you have military access with other than to open the diplomacy screen.
  
• Desperately needs a map overlay to view political shifts of regions without resorting to viewing the diplomacy screen every time. Basic information about which regions you are at war at or who own a region should be viewable on the map(tooltip pop ups don’t count).
  
• Lacks a good story. Obviously a sandbox campaign is never going to have a storyline like the one in King Arthur. Quests are still in this campaign, but it’s just not as compelling as the ones in King Arthur.

Verdict: More of the same with added variety and with freaking dragons!