Return of the K

[Stan`]

Maybe @Genava55 has some clues?

[Genava55]

4 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I assumed that we had good art for the kennel, but @Carltonus encouraged me to check it out. We have an older post on the forum that also shows the limitiations of the kennel

Indeed the kennel is badly designed. The problem is that people doesn't want to check what was a kennel in the past and prefer thinking on their own (and after they are surprised it was wrong). Preconceived ideas and an excessive amount of modern representations through cartoons and movies are making people to believe a kennel is a tiny single house for a dog. Anyone can check what was a medieval kennel and how it looked, it would be already a good start to realize that the idea of a tiny kennel is bad. So yeah, the current kennel is a lazy model with the least amount of critical thinking and realism.

[Stan`]

@Genava55 Should we use something like what's proposed there http://battlebrothersgame.com/dev-blog-67-progress-update-specialized-shops/

A building with cages or something.

Or do you have a suggestion for an interesting building that could increase briton diversity

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 hours ago, Genava55 said:

Indeed the kennel is badly designed. The problem is that people doesn't want to check what was a kennel in the past and prefer thinking on their own (and after they are surprised it was wrong). Preconceived ideas and an excessive amount of modern representations through cartoons and movies are making people to believe a kennel is a tiny single house for a dog. Anyone can check what was a medieval kennel and how it looked, it would be already a good start to realize that the idea of a tiny kennel is bad. So yeah, the current kennel is a lazy model with the least amount of critical thinking and realism.

Tell us how you really feel. Don't hold back. 

[Genava55]

On 12/03/2022 at 2:41 PM, Stan` said:

Should we use something like what's proposed there http://battlebrothersgame.com/dev-blog-67-progress-update-specialized-shops/

A building with cages or something.

That's a way to interpret dog breeding. However, were dogs kept and bred in cages in the past? Not really, at least not the hunting dogs. You won't have good behaving dogs by mistreating them. During medieval times, hunting dogs were treated a bit like horses. They had people to take care of them, they had a place where to live and stay warm, a field where to exercise etc.  The book "Livre de Chasse" by Gaston Phoebus gives plenty of descriptions and of depictions of the hunting dogs and their condition.

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

These animals, with the working greyhounds, were excellently cared for. Wealthy owners set up astonishingly high standards of kennel management, described in careful detail in Gaston de Foix’s ‘Traité de la Chasse’. The kennel where the hounds sleep, he says, should be built of wood a foot clear of the ground, with a loft for greater coolness in summer and warmth in winter, and it should also have a chimney to warm the occupants when they are cold or wet.

It should be enclosed in a sunny yard, and the door should be left open so that ‘the houndes may go withoute to play when them liketh for it is grete likyng for the houndes whan thei may goon in and out at their lust’ – as every dog lover knows. Hounds should be taken for a walk once or twice a day and allowed to run and play ‘in a fair medow in the sun’, and must be taken to a spot where they may eat grass to heal themselves if they are sick.

The kennel is to be cleaned every morning and the floor thickly strewn with straw, renewed daily. The hounds are to be given fresh water twice a day and rubbed down with straw each morning. The staple food is bran bread, with meat from the chase, and game to be killed specially for them even out of the regular hunting season. Sick hounds may be given more fancy diets, such as goat’s milk, bean broth, chopped meat, or buttered eggs.

Most of the kennel chores were performed by a dog-boy, an embryo huntsman who was expected to start learning his trade at the age of about seven and who, in addition to his other duties, had to learn the names and colours of the hounds and how to spin horsehair for their couplings. Besides this, he or some other child must be constantly in the kennel to prevent fights, even at night. In addition, it is laid down, in the uncompromising fashion of the age, that he should love his master and the hounds, and, furthermore, that he should be beaten if he fails to do as he is told.

https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/world-medieval-dogdom

And ancient war dogs were probably treated similarly.

 

On 12/03/2022 at 2:41 PM, Stan` said:

Or do you have a suggestion for an interesting building that could increase briton diversity

A large building like the stables or the barracks could work.

You add a fence around the building. You can add a few cages with wild animals inside, suggesting they were used to train them.

 

Edited March 20, 2022 by Genava55

[Stan`]

Mmmh could be a stable upgrade ?

[Genava55]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

Mmmh could be a stable upgrade ?

It could work yes.

[Alar1k]

Overall I see kennel as a potential differentiation of Britons from Gauls - Gauls lost their special building tho that was of decent design

 

 

Or put dogs in houses and add a research "hunting dogs" - like there is "fertility festival" - the idea came from playing Epirotes form delenda est mod since they can train dogs from houses - really innovative decision right there and the pictures in previous comments also seem to be going in that direction as well

[Genava55]

5 hours ago, Alar1k said:

Overall I see kennel as a potential differentiation of Britons from Gauls

I am not against the kennel, I said it in my first message in this thread. Further, people asked me my opinion about the kennel and I simply said what I think about the design.

The recruitment of the dogs can be done through a dedicated building (a kennel), through the houses or through the stables.

From an archaeological point of view, most buildings were what we call "roundhouses", with only a few different features although they still had dedicated functions/purposes. But obviously, we cannot have every building in the game depicted as roundhouses. So it is acceptable to drift from historical accuracy. However, it is important to make it credible and senseful/meaningful.

I think the Britons can be unique by being a civ focusing on skirmishing and mobility (basically guerrilla tactics). War chariots are a relatively unique feature they got access to in the second phase. I also suggested to highlight the bodypainting/tattooing tradition of the Britons but it would require new talents. If the two-handed swordsmen got removed due to their historical inaccuracy (it was really a fantasy unit), there is still an unique feature of British Iron Age that isn't depicted in the game, some warriors seem to have carried their sword on the back. This is still a simple one-handed sword but at least it is visually distinct. Finally the war dogs are indeed an interesting feature but it seems important to balance it correctly.

In my opinion, a war dog should be an unit delivering a lot of damage, moving quickly but being particularly fragile. This is the current direction in the game. I also think they would have been probably efficient against light infantry and cavalry. However the question of how they should be recruited is important because it seems to be the point debated. Personally I think the war dogs should be efficient as a defensive tool in the village phase (quick recruitment and movement) and should become more useful as an offensive tool during the town phase. One way to deal with it is to enable their recruitment from the houses directly at the first phase and enabling the research of some technologies during the town phase from the stables, to improve the war dogs and make them meaningful offensively. Such technologies could be simply converting the dogs from "hunting dogs" to "war dogs" as both were attested by historical accounts.