Just play them. You will get messages explaining the game and what you have to do, but it's not that complicated. EDIT: You probably can't see the messages, 'cause they are at the bottom of the screen, but you have to put the game in windowed mode and move the window up. Now you can see the bottom (probably). Or you can go to the options menu, and select full screen.
Warning: The following post is LONG! My last post was Thursday, so: yes, but with reason. Let's explain this by text, then: First of all, you need to build a school. Click the little axe-symbol in the menu at the left (under the map). This is the building menu. Now click this symbol: (The book) You have selected a school. You can now order to place it somewhere on the map. The grid shows you where it'll be put, a little red cross means that you can't put it there, and you always need at least one space between different buildings for roads to be built on. Now you need to order the roads to be built. Go to the building menu and click on the little road symbol. The door of the school must be connected to the existing road (the door will underneath the sign on the building site). Your laborers will start digging and your serfs will start carrying stone to the laborers which will construct a road. Every grid of road will cost you one stone. When the laborers are finished constructing the road, they will start building the school (if any resources have been carried to the building site). A school will cost 6 (timber) and 5 (stone). When the school is done, the serfs will carry (gold) to the school, and you can start training serfs, laborers, recruits and people that gather resources (all for one gold per unit). You should start to train a few serfs and laborers. This is what the school will look like: After finishing the school, a new symbol will appear in the building menu: (the inn). This is a very important building, because this is where your people will eat. People have a condition bar, and if it runs out they will refuel it with food. They have to eat every once in a while. An inn will cost 6 timber and 5 stone. You should make a road from here (and every other building) too. This is what the inn will look like: When the inn is finished, you can build a quarry: From here, the stone mason (train this and every other gathering unit in the school, one gold) will start mining stone. The stone mason will have to be built near a dark grey mountain (not the yellow, blue or light grey ones!). There should be one near the store house (the house you begin with). A quarry will cost 3 timber and 2 stone. It will look like this: Now that you have a quarry, you should start gathering timber. This requires two buildings instead of one. First, there is the woodcutter's: This is the home of the woodcutter, and it will start planting and felling trees from here. The building will cost you 3 timber and 2 stone. The woodcutter will deliver you trunks. The building looks like this: The trunks need to get sawed down to 2 timber a piece. To do this, you must build a sawmill: This building requires one carpenter, and the costs to build it are 4 timber and 3 stone. This is what it'll look like: You'll probably be able to figure out the rest, and if not, you're always free to ask me. Also, a useful site: knightsandmerchants.net. You should browse around the site, it contains lots and lots of tips, background stories, walkthroughs for the campaigns, links and information about the games, resources, buildings, units and development. It's also the home of a large community and the Knights and Merchants Remake. It has other mods and programs which make it easier to mod the game, and it has a forum (about half the size of this forum). I'm sure they'd love to see new players joining the game. I hope to have helped you. EDIT: P pauses the game and F6, F7 and F8 speed it up. You're gonna need it. Believe me.
Knights and Merchants was awesome. The campaign required actual strategy and tactics as opposed to some strategy games and even building your village is a challenge in itself 'cos the maps are always different. I actually cleared most of the last batch of levels by simply going in with my starting troops and tactically owning the vastly superior enemy armies, or taking down their food production and waiting for them to die. Unfortunately I got tired of the game at the very last mission, but I might still finish that someday. I'll have to check out that remake. What does the market do? I don't think it'll work very well for multiplayer though since the excruciatingly slow gameplay (you could play for 45 minutes up to an hour before getting your first soldier) means games will probably last many hours... That said, if you had the time, a multiplayer game of KaM would be awesome.
Sweet! You know the game! Anyway, the market is a building in which you can trade goods for other goods. Example: You can order 1 sausage for gold. Depending variables like how much work it requires to get that gold, it will set a certain price (pre-programmed) you have to pay for that one sausage. I think with gold and sausages, that'd be one gold for one sausage. Your slaves will carry the gold to the building and they will come out with a sausage. You can also do this with other resources, of course. I always like to build many quarries, and trade stone for resources which I don't have a large production for. Also, I think the multiplayer experience is pretty good. It does need some tweaking, but the city building of the game itself is very fun too, and playing with allies (especially when they're friends) is always fun. And there is a devote community, so you can really make friends in the multiplayer, especially if you've joined the forums too (the website also contains very useful tips and interesting background stories. It's made by the same people who make the remake, so you can always give them ideas you'd like to see). I agree the gameplay is a bit slow, but on the other hand, it's very much fun to just turn on some music, sit back in a comfortable chair and play the game. As you go further in the match, the gameplay speed will increase. EDIT: Forgot to add, matches mostly last for around 1:30.
