Knights And Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom (2013) Mac OS

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Introduction

Knights & Merchants offers story of Anglo-Saxons around 1200 A.D who will fight their enemies right from the start of campaign. There are 20 missions in total, starting with the easiest, teaching you how to build town and army, combat focused skirmishes without building management, evolving into intriguing strategy where you will use your accumulated knowledge against incoming enemy attacks. Oct 23, 2016 Knights and Merchants - The Shattered Kingdom + The Peasants Rebellion Download by Joymania TopWare Interactive Platform: Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Mac OS Sierra 10.12, Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11, Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

In 1998 the first game in the series, titled Knights and Merchants - The Shattered Kingdom was released. This section is mainly for providing information about this very special game. From here you will find things like screenshots, reviews, version history, fact sheets and a look at the rich development history of the game.

General Information

System Requirements

Features

• Rich graphics and animations
• A realistic combat system
• Different types of soldiers each with their own weaknesses
• Vast sound effects, all subjects answering in their own distinctive voice
• 18 tracks of high quality music
• Over 35 hours of gameplay
• A very complex economy system
• Terrain created using the Gouraud-Shading Routine giving it a 3D look
• A statistics menu giving one an overview of the town
• Video cutscenes
• 20 missions
• 10 multiplayer scenarios
• Two tutorials to teach you how to build up and fight
• Many different buildings and citizens
• Supports resolutions of 800x600 and 1024x768

Story

Thy kingdom is in grave danger. Following many battles, a formerly blossoming kingdom hath been divided into many small principalities and fiefdoms. A captain of the palace guard, thou hast faithfully served thy king for many years. But, alas, pain and sorrow have much aged thy brave sovereign. For rebellious forces under the dastardly leadership of the rogue prince have gathered to bring about his downfall.

The king's troops have been pushed back into one last royal province, and the rulers of the other provinces waged terrible, destructive wars against one another. The raging conflict hath laid waste large swathes of the kingdom's once bountiful provinces. The whole land fell into a state of chaos and now the former royal capital itself is under siege by the armies of the rebel lords. Thou belongest to the last remaining group of loyal king's men, and thou hast been commanded to go to the king's councellor in view of the imminent attack.

'Ah, the new herald of our king honours my humble abode with his presence. Pray be seated, good sir. Methinks in my writing desk lieth a bottle of excellent brandy which hath been saved for quite such an occasion as this. The war hath lasted many years now, and 'twould seem that the rebels continue to be blessed with success. Sadly, the first-born son of our king is the leader of these scoundrels.

Indeed, might thou ask, how so could this affair last so long? Verily, 'tis a long and sorry tale..
King Karolus reigned undisputed for many a year, and was in troth loved as much by the people as by his own vassals. So just were his laws and wise his rule that his loyal subjects knew not hunger nor worry. Mayhap in the beginning some were unhappy, and, indeed, some baron or other perforce rebelled, wishing to gain the crown for himself. But King Karolus stopped these few afore they could grow strong, and these serpents learned in troth that Karolus was not one to be taken lightly, but was rather of iron will and courage.

He answered his enemies with fire and sword, until nary a one was left who would dispute his right to reign. Verily, the land was blessed with peace so that trade and crafts blossomed as never afore.

When a new successor to the throne was born, all seemed well indeed. Howsoever, bad omens brought darkness and foreboding at the hour of Prince Lothar's birth, forcing his majesty to speedily obtain a soothsaying for the young prince. No less a personage than the renowned learned scholar and teacher, Johann von Moorbach, consulted the stars concerning the destiny of the future king.

This wise scholar prophesied a future full of promise for the child. Nary a one would be his equal; he would be a tower of strength in battle and would win many victories. His name alone would fill the hearts of his enemies with terror.

Prince Lothar had as his teachers the best scholars in the kingdom, and in troth was a willing pupil. In matters of war he had especial talents, whether 'twas bare fisticuffs, the sword or as leader on the training battleground. His tactical wiles were first put to the test against the uncivilised barbarians in the far north. These savages oft-times challenged the borders of our kingdom with impunity.

But now it came to pass that a rift slowly grew 'twixt father and son. No one at that time could have foretold that the dark clouds of impending doom were perforce gathering over the kingdom. Prince Lothar was a dutiful son, the pride of his parents and an honourable knight without fear or blemish. Hardly had the young prince escaped the shackles of boyhood, when his father commanded him to govern a small province. I also spoke on his behalf in this matter, albeit unassuming and in all humility. The king, in his wisdom, wished perchance to give his son practical experience in using what he had learned from his books and teachers. 'Twas no surprise when the prince indeed mastered this task with customary ease.

Knights And Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom (2013) Mac Os Iso

In two years, the young prince regent took this sleepy place and made out of it a flourishing town and the most important of trading centres. Abundant harvests and intensive exploitation of raw materials brought riches to his seat of rule, and the result was that he was indeed able to support and succour a large force of militia, which maintained law and order.

The prince also commanded that a palace be built wherein he entertained numerous young knights. The finest victuals were served on plates of gold, the best of the wines of the South flowed freely and his noble followers were amused by clowns, players, and dancers.

Complete harmony and peace reigned over his land, and the bellicose youth began to tire of his less than active life. His followers, although feted by hunts, jousts, and military practice, became restless as well, their fiery characters craving more excitement. More and more were the knights of the prince becoming involved in disputes with the mercenaries of the neighbouring provinces. On one such occasion a man was killed and a mill put to the torch. Many witnesses stated that the knights were in troth at fault in this dastardly deed, and Baron Gottfried, being the regent of the miller and the dead mercenary, perforce brought charges before the king against these wicked knights.

With sorrow in his heart, but without hesitation, King Karolus passed judgment on the scoundrels: death by hanging! A horsed emissary was dispatched to bring the ruling, with the king's seal, to the prince. Verily, the emissary was never to see the capital again, and my investigations into the matter showed that this man supposedly never reached Prince Lothar's province. Thou knowest that such emissaries are under the personal protection of the king himself, and the king was deeply angered by this foul deed perpetrated on his loyal subject.

He thereupon bade thy predecessor, Hilpert von Rodgau, a fine king's herald and true, to carry a second decree of judgment to the prince. The king gave Hilpert a half troop of his own finest bodyguard to ensure that justice would prevail in this matter.

Prince Lothar treated the king's herald with much discourtesy, and Hilpert waited many days for an audience. This so sorely tried the patience of the good Hilpert von Rodgau that he, flanked by the king's bodyguards, forced his way into the prince's presence. Enraged by this violation of order in his household, he ignored the commands of his king and father, refusing to hang the rogue knights.

The calm and prudence of the old herald has now become legend and, in troth, Hilpert used all his wiles to convince the prince of his folly. The prince did not only turn a deaf ear to the herald's pleadings, but increased the gravity of the matter by even insulting that worthy old man, whereupon the king's retinue departed for the capital to carry to the king the sorry tidings of his son's scorn for the royal oath of duty and faith the crown.

Upon hearing the news, our king likened indeed to a man struck down. Many hours did he consult with the herald and my own humble personage, 'til at last, sore at heart, he judged that his son should be removed from his post of governor of that province. Yet again was an emissary dispatched to the prince, only to return a few days later with the answer; Prince Lothar refused to give up his privileges and would never leave his new home! Verily, now was the king beside himself with rage, and dispatched an army against his rebel son, to force the prince through military might to adhere to his oath of allegiance.

The prince had meanwhile gathered around him a large army of his own, which indeed taught the king's forces a lesson in military tactics. The king's general, defeated by a provincial army, returned to the capital. With countenance reddened with anger and trembling voice, the king declared his son an outcast and forthwith an enemy of the realm.

With the first blow of the sword in that province, civil war had spread its dark wings over our land, and many barons joined the rebel prince, hoping to gain rich rewards and new lands.

Verily, the following years were full of woe for those who remained true to the king. The prophecies of the scholar and teacher, Johann von Moorbach, had indeed proven to be true, but 'twas Prince Lothar's own countrymen who fell into a state of terror and panic at the mere mention of his name. Those whom the Grim Reaper did not harvest through the cruelties of war or the plundering of the mercenaries were laid low by the plague or starvation.

Good herald, thou hast now afore thee an eminently difficult task. Here is the last remaining place of refuge, no further retreat can be countenanced, and no mercy can we expect from our enemies.

But be not too impetuous in thy haste to meet the enemy, oh honourable herald! Afore thou goest headlong into battle, I would doth suggest to thee that a ride through this land which still remains to us would mayhap be of great benefit to thee. Of a surety, 'twould interest thee much to learn more about the trading practices and ways of our ordinary people.'

Review

Knights and Merchants is a real time strategy game taking you back into the middle ages.
When you launch the game, you will get stunned by the amazing graphics and music this game has to offer. There's a single player campaign available and two tutorials, as usual starting with the tutorials is a good idea. In the first tutorial, simply called 'Town Tutorial', you'll build up your town with constant help of messages telling you pretty much exactly what to do. Some things about the economic side are not taught, but the developer might have intended that the player itself would decide how to build up her/his town. The second tutorial is called 'Battle Tutorial'. Unsurprisingly, it teaches you the weakness and strength of each soldier type.

The main part of the game is the campaign, which consists of 20 missions.
This game might be difficult at the start, but once you get the hang of it, it might turn out to be quite easy. The missions in the game are all really different and in most of them you build up a town and then train yourself an army and crush your enemies. However, there are some missions where you only have soldiers, and these missions are usually referred to as either Battle- or Tactical missions. The point in these types of missions, is to learn how you can defeat an enemy army of greater size.

When going trough the missions you'll gain knowledge about building new buildings, which in turn will allow you to produce new items and soldiers. Your enemies are usually a step before you technologically, but if using the correct tactics, this shouldn't cause you a headache.

The economical side of this game is planned quite well, with a lot of different resources to stack. I personally, have never played an RTS game with an economy system that is as complex economy as the one this game has to offer. If you want to produce bread, you'll need to build a farm to get corn, then a mill to make it into flour, and finally a bakery to make bread of the flour.

Producing soldiers is also more complex in this game than in your average RTS. You will need to produce piece of equipment the soldier is supposed to use separately. The strongest units, the knights, need a sword, an iron armament, a long shield, a horse and a recruit. Producing all of these wares will take quite some time, so training massive armies in this game isn't so easy.

Producing soldiers is also more complex in this game than in your average RTS. You will need to produce piece of equipment the soldier is supposed to use separately. The strongest units, the knights, need a sword, an iron armament, a long shield, a horse and a recruit. Producing all of these wares will take quite some time, so training massive armies in this game isn't so easy.

A large part of the game are the serfs. They are people who take wares from one building to another. This is also another example of the unique elements this game has to offer. It is not everyday you see a RTS game with a type of occupation that takes wares from a building to another.

Every unit in this game also needs to eat. When selecting an unit, a green condition bar can be seen. If the condition starts running low, it's a sign that this unit is hungry and will soon go get something to eat. The different food types in the game are wine, bread and sausages. All of these need to be produced by your town. Soldiers also need also food, and feeding them is a job the serfs must do. It would be kind of stupid if your soldiers would go to your base and eat, wouldn't it? Soldiers that are hungry are weaker at fighting than normal soldiers. This can be used to your advantage, strike when your enemy soldiers have just reached the point when they get hungry!

The battle system is the thing that many people see as a quite major flaw. Personally I don't have anything against it, but there are some problems. Like when you move your soldiers a longer distance, they won't stay in formation. Also soldiers are somewhat hard to control, as each soldier belongs to a troop, and you can only choose one troop at a time. If your soldier moves near an enemy unit it attacks without you commanding it to do so, and you can't stop it from attacking once it has started. One last thing is that if your soldiers get hungry whilst in the enemy base, your serfs will have a long way walking to the soldiers. Some units also have a charge command that makes the units charge at the enemy. There are some problems with it, as your soldiers charge in the direction that they are currently facing so sometimes they charge in the wrong direction.

However there are also things that work good. For example, the weaknesses and strengths of units are really well balanced. If a pikeman troop is attacking, knights should not by any means be used, as the attack bonus pikemen have against knights is deadly. Archers are almost a necessary backup for your army, as they are really strong against almost any unit. The weak point of archers are that they die of only a few hits.

The sound and music effects in this game are high quality. When you click on a unit, it will greet you, and if you task a soldier somewhere they'll respond. This game also has a CD-Player that normally has about 20 different tracks of quite nice music. Even though it's called CD-Player you can't really play CDs with it as you must have the game CD in the drive.

The AI is not really that intelligent and exploiting this to do different kinds of ambushes is quite easy. If you have a single archer shoot on your enemy soldiers, the computer orders a troop to attack you. If you then take the archer to safety behind your army and the enemy soldiers are killed, they'll start sending their whole army on you. Defending is always easier than attacking so you'll most likely win if their army isn't about five times bigger than yours. The computer also has their storehouse packed with food and other items so that they won't run out of food, which gives them a certain type of advantage.

Overall, I recommend you to give this game a go. Doomed avenger mac os. Of course I really like this game so you can't really decide based on this, but whatever you do, it is not a bad idea to give the demo version of the game a shot.

Summary

More Information

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Wikipedia Article

Purchase

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The Shattered Kingdom - Main

Below you will find an in-depth story regarding things that were going on behind the scenes during and some months after the development of The Shattered Kingdom.

Special thanks to StarGazer and The Knight for providing additional development information.

Development on the game was started in early 1997, very soon after Joymania Entertainment had been formed. It's believed that the game had no real title at this point, just an internal name that was used at Joymania. During the early days, Joymania Entertainment had no contract with any publisher, which meant that all funding for the development had to be taken from the developers own pockets. This naturally meant that great sacrifices had to be made in the personal lives of Peter Ohlmann and Adam Sprys to have enough money to go on despite not receiving a regular pay when working on the game.

Peter Ohlmann and Adam Sprys were both formerly working at Blue Byte Software, and they both took great influence from the previous title they had worked on over there, The Settlers II. In particular, many of the file formats they used for their coming game were based on the file formats used in The Settlers II. In some ways, the graphical style, particularly that of the interface, of the game under development was also influenced by that of The Settlers II.

When the game started getting closer to completion, Joymania Entertainment felt confident enough to start showing the game in order to find a publisher. After talks with some different publishers, TopWare Interactive offered the best deal. So a contract was made, TopWare Interactive was set to publish a game titled 'Knights and Merchants' during fall 1998 and they would provide the necessary funding for the game development. The contract included the normal fact that the publisher would own the intellectual property rights to the title. Now that this was set Joymania Entertainment could continue focusing on the development of their game, and now they no longer had to be living sparingly.

About one and a half years after development had been started on the game a big day for the development team arrived, namely the release of the first public demo version. The decision had been made to let the public get a first taste on the game mechanics on June 2, 1998. When this day finally arrived, an announcement was made and the first version of the game demo was released in English only. This version was called 0.73 which indicated that the demo was still quite far from what the final product would end up being. Some feedback was received regarding features in the demo version and this also gave Joymania Entertainment the opportunity to find out what people liked/disliked about the game and then, if possible, tried to make minor alterations to the game so that more people would like it. Making major changes was no longer possible at this stage of development.

Hardly a week had passed and a new demo version was released (on June 11, 1998), this time both in German and English. Curiously the German version of the game demo carried a version number of 0.91 and the English demo the version number of 0.92. Despite the different version numbers, the differences in the game itself between these versions were so minor that they are almost unnoticeable. These versions had received changes to fix some of the flaws that people noticed in the game. Things like scrolling when mouse met the edge and moving soldiers by using only the mouse made the game a lot easier to play.

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Negotiations were under way with other publishers to secure international releases of the game. TopWare Interactive themselves could only release the game in German speaking companies, though they had some sister companies which allowed releases in e.g. Poland and Spain, but many huge markets were still not covered by these, in particular the United Kingdom and the United States. After negotiations, TopWare Interactive made a deal with Interactive Magic to get the game published in English in these countries.

In early August the German version of the game went gold, and somewhat later the game made its debut in Germany. Quite some changes had been implemented from the previous demo version, including a brighter game palette which made the game more pleasing to one's eyes and a new schoolhouse system which allowed one to queue up to five units making it easier to train e.g. more serfs for your kingdom. The initial release of the game carried the version number 1.20. Initial reaction to the game was very positive and the game got a score of 9 out of ten from numerous different reviews. This could also be seen from the number of sales. In Germany alone the game sold over 100 000 copies which of course means it was a very successful game. But the game still had not seen its release in most major markets in the world.

About simultaneously with the debut of the retail version in Germany, a new version of the demo version was released in English on August 14th. It carried the same version number as the first retail release. Only three days later, a slight update was released to this demo version bumping the version number up to 1.21. And again, three days later the same demo version was re-released by Interactive Magic with some minor textual changes and new references added indicating the fact that Interactive Magic was the English publisher of the title.

While a lot of work on the English translation had been done by TopWare Interactive themselves, the translation was far from complete. The people over at Interactive Magic were not entirely pleased with the quality of the translation either, and some parts were re-translated. However, a lot the translation work previously done by TopWare Interactive was still used in the retail release, which resulted in a little mess with both American and British spelling being combined in the final version of the game. This also caused some mixing with some messages using ordinary Modern English (those translated by the people at TopWare Interactive) and others using Early Modern English (those translated by Interactive Magic).

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During this time the game was also being translated into numerous different languages to make it more attractive to people who did not speak English or German. This was easily possible thanks to the game storing it's text in a simple format. Other languages the game was being translated to included Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Hungarian, Dutch and Polish.

On September 6th, a patch was released for the German retail version bumping up the game version to 1.30 and fixing some critical bugs. And on September 18th, the game was finally released in the United Kingdom by Interactive Magic. Interactive Magic had taken some liberties in the localization, including doing some changes to the cover art (adding a gate entrance through which the original town artwork is visible). The reception was not nearly as uniform as in Germany. Some people thought the game was far too slow paced and that there was too little micromanagement in the game. On the other hand, some people saw it as a very different type of RTS game, which made it sell decently in the United Kingdom as well.

The game saw its release in the United States on October 1st. The publisher for the game in the USA was Interactive Magic's sister company located over there carrying the same name. Like in the United Kingdom, the game was received with mixed opinions with people liking or disliking largely the same things as the people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean did. Popular gaming magazines and websites were once again criticizing the fact that you have too little control over what your citizens were doing.

Around this time, the game was also released in the Netherlands by Denda Multimedia. The Dutch people seemed to have a similar reaction to the game as the German people, and it received uniform acclaim from reviewers and gamers alike. Soon thereafter, on October 15th, the game was released in Poland by the Polish sister company of TopWare Interactive once again with a very positive reception.

During mid October the game was also released in the Czech Republic by JRC Interactive. A new version of the game had been compiled for this release, namely version 1.31. And following during the last weeks of October, the game was released in Spain by a sister company of TopWare Interactive. A French localization was also finally released on October 30th by Ubi Soft Entertainment with the game title itself also being translated as 'Chevaliers et Camelots : Un Royaume en péril'. Curiously a patch to update previous releases to version 1.31 was never released.

Knights And Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom (2013) Mac Os X

On November 4th, the first release of version 1.32 was made, namely a patch for the English version. A day later this patch was also released for the Polish version. Now a Hungarian and a Russian version of the game was also released. The Hungarian version, released as 'Knights and Merchants: Az elveszett királyság' by TRAVELBOX-Hungária, was only at version 1.31 for some reason. The Russian version of the game released on November 19th by Snowball Interactive Entertainment had gone a bit further with the localization and had changed the game title to 'Война и Мир' (War and Peace) and they also had done some graphical changes to the game graphics to add a new logo to the game. Curiously the Russian version was only at version 1.30. Also on November 24th, the 1.32 patch was finally released for the German version of the game.

Now Christmas started getting closer and the game was finally released in December in Finland! Cry - cryptids plea mac os. =) Of course that wasn't the real major event in December, now was it? Of course not ;) On December 21st, an expansion pack for Knights and Merchants was announced. The expansion was being called 'Mission CD' and it's release date was set to March 1999. What the Mission CD was and what happened to it can be read from The Peasants Rebellion development history section.

The development on The Shattered Kingdom didn't end here, even though it may seem like it. During February 1999 there were talks of an additional patch getting released for the game. What exactly this patch was supposed to fix is something that is not known to me as no further details were ever mentioned of it.

The Italian localization of the game had to wait until March 1999 to see its release. Localized as 'Cavalieri e Mercanti' the game was released by Ubi Soft Entertainment.

Years later, in September 19, 2001 a port of the game was completed for Mac OS by e.p.i.c. Interactive. On October 12, 2001 a patch was released for this port fixing some problems and offering a few improvements. Just a year later, another patch was made available which made the port run natively on Mac OS X (PowerPC). e.p.i.c. Interactive had no intentions of stopping yet, and on February 21, 2003 a port of the game was completed for the MorphOS.

A Linux port of the game was also developed years later by Linux Game Publishing. The preview demo was released on February 26, 2007 and the full game was eventually released on March 13, 2007. A patch was released for the demo version on December 2, 2008 and two patches were released for the full version on January 6, 2009 and February 9, 2009 respectively.

Curiously all the porting didn't end here, as RuneSoft (formerly known as e.p.i.c. Interactive) decided to port the game to modern Mac OS X machines running under Intel architecture. This port was eventually released on February 13, 2013.

Knights And Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom - Wikipedia

With all the porting still being done on the game, it seems likely that we might see some more ports in the future as well. Who could have guessed in 1998 that even 15 years later, the game would still get ported onto more modern platforms?