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Knights of Honor II: Sovereign - medieval grand strategy with RTS battles

Quatlo

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2013
Messages
955
I'd really wish you could change the classs of your knights/advisors. Almost every steward took place in wars when it was needed and first game ended up with either few marshalls and rest merchants or just full marshalls when you got big enough, that was stupid. At least allow non-combat classes to ride out with an army if you need it. Even bishops were combat leaders in middle ages.
 

Grotesque

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Vatnik
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Messages
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https://community.knightsofhonor.co...8VxlSzbCrbwh5Gc87UYknsBzHCifg2Zh7T3m9LMKdCm6Y

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mikaelis

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Nov 28, 2008
Messages
1,448
Location
Land of Danes
Codex 2013 Codex 2014
RTS gameplay looks like Medieval 1 TW years, or King Arthur 1 RTS, but it is not necessary bad thing as long as it is clean and straight-forward.

I am adding it to my watch list.
 

Grotesque

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Hello friends and welcome to the 29th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! We were silent quite a while, but it was all for a good reason – thanks to the players that participate in the beta, we feel like we’ve made a great progress towards polishing and balancing the game the last few months.

Today we will talk about the Political View (PV) of KoH2:S, where you can quickly see the most important information on a grand scale, needed for making strategical choices – where to find the things you are looking for, who are your potential threats and allies, where to expand next, what are the problems in your kingdom and the region, etc.

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If you have played the first game in the series or other grand-strategies, this feature will probably feel familiar – we have not tried to reinvent the wheel, but rather make it as convenient as possible. To do so, we’ve spent quite a while iterating on what the most useful modes will be, what should be included on them and what indications should be toggleable by players.

We’ve also had an additional goal – we wanted the Political View to be helpful and easy to use, but we didn’t want the players to spend too much time on it, as we felt that this will worsen their overall experience, robbing them from the beauty and atmosphere of the World View. Thus, we took the hard decision to limit the movement and attack commands of armies through PV and we added a possibility to have all those PV modes apply for the minimap as well, so that, combined with the minimap zooming feature, players can check out the most important things without even entering full-screen PV.

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There are 12 different modes with custom legends to indicate what color-coding stands in each one:

  • Kingdoms – This is the most basic mode; kingdoms have unique colors, so that players can easily see their overall territories and their provinces.
  • Stances – This is probably the most important mode of all and a very convenient one to set for the minimap. It shows the stances of selected kingdoms – allies and enemies, sovereign or vassals, trade relations, royal ties, trade partners, non-aggression pacts, defensive pacts, invasion plans…
  • Relations – Also a very useful PV mode, which does not so much show the current active agreements between the kingdoms, but indicates the potential of such. As relations have a huge impact on diplomacy, through this view future friends or foes can be found and with proper actions, friendships can be strengthened and wars avoided.
  • Marriages – A simple mode, which helps players to find unmarried princes, princesses and kings, in order to try and arrange a royal marriage.
  • Stability – Low stability in provinces and rebel presence are indicated in this mode, mainly helping players to quickly oversee the internal problems of their kingdoms, but also weaknesses in foreign ones.
  • Trade zones – Trade centers and their zones are indicated here. Trade centers with larger zones can bring significant riches, so these are important to develop, protect, or, of course, conquer.
  • Religion – In this mode the religions of kingdoms and provinces are simultaneously indicated. As differences in kingdom and province religion can cause a lot of local tension, it is important to quickly see provinces in and around your kingdom with such religious differences, so that you can convert, possibly “liberate” or culturally influence them. Kingdom religions also have considerable effect on diplomacy and opinions, so players might have а different approach to kingdoms, depending on their religion.
  • Culture – Similarly to the previous mode, on this one provinces, that may turn out to be more or less problematic are indicated. As religions, cultures are also grouped into families and sub-families.
  • Loyalty – Gaining the population’s loyalty in your kingdom’s provinces is a hard, but important process. Through high influence and some cleric actions, loyalty can be gained even in neighboring provinces, which in terms can ease conquest or even enable diplomatic claims over foreign lands. In this mode players can quickly see which provinces are obedient to the king and which would rather be ruled by another one.
  • Province features – As resources are definitely among the most important reasons for conquest, this PV mode helps players to quickly find where they can get those precious settlements and resources they need for their planned buildings, upgrades and advantages. Color-coding in this and the subsequent two modes is always from the players’ perspective, marking in a different manner domestic and foreign provinces where specific features/goods/buildings are.
  • Goods – Here is shown where a specific good is produced, and where it CAN be produced, potentially. As goods can be imported by merchants, this mode can quickly help players find trade partners, which produce the goods they need.
  • Buildings – Similarly to the previous mode, here is indicated where a selected building is constructed, as well as where it can be constructed. This, for example, can be used to find out which are the enemy’s main army recruitment provinces, which in terms might be a good objective to try and siege or overtake quickly in a beginning of a war, to slow down the enemy’s “war machine”.
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Each mode can be viewed with Kingdom or Province labels. The elements, that can be visualized or hidden, are towns, battles and armies – kingdoms’ armies, rebels, crusaders and mercenaries, with or without their nameplates, containing additional information. This way players can customize “on the go” their PV indications the way that fits their playstyle the most – some may prefer more information indicated simultaneously, others may not be so fond of that and prefer to have a neater view. In both cases, hiding or showing specific elements when needed is just a button-click or hotkey-press away.

During the beta we’ve added a new feature – players can now not only configure which of the aforementioned elements is visible, but also whether they will be selectable. Some players prefer to select battles and armies from Political view and others prefer to stick only to the simpler province/kingdom selection, so we decided to leave that choice in your hands and let you configure the PV behavior for each element.

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We’ll talk more about political view in our DevStream on Tuesday, October 4th, @ 3:00 PM BST / 11:00 AM EST and we’ll be happy if you can join in our conversation. We are easy to find on the map – the Twitch stream will be hosted on the THQ Nordic channel: http://twitch.tv/thqnordic and we’ll be grabbing responses from this post and playing the game live to show how Political View works in real-time!

Until next time, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer!
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
2,023
Ehhh?
Apparently it will be out on the same day as the game about transgender dwarfs.

 

Infinitron

I post news
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Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
99,436
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


Medieval multiplayer mayhem awaits – Knights of Honor II: Sovereign launches next week.

Enter the fray and lead your realm to glory, forge alliances and stab your friends in the back. With up to 6 players, nobody is safe in a game of crowns!

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is coming to PC on December 6th.
 

mikaelis

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Nov 28, 2008
Messages
1,448
Location
Land of Danes
Codex 2013 Codex 2014
Ok, those of you who will purchase it day one, can you please explain the differences between this and TW once you went through couple of hours?
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
2,096
Location
Adelaide
I didn't even know this was coming out lol. Looks like the same game but the battles look massively improved. - Sounds like from reviews that might not be the case now I'm cautious. - yeah the capture point system sounds really bad not a fan.
Looking forward to it anyway.
 
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Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,489
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I didn't even know this was coming out lol. Looks like the same game but the battles look massively improved. - Sounds like from reviews that might not be the case now I'm cautious. - yeah the capture point system sounds really bad not a fan.
Looking forward to it anyway.
omg, you are right. It seems most youtube testers find the battles more simplistic than in Total War, which already butchered them over the years.
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
2,096
Location
Adelaide
omg, you are right. It seems most youtube testers find the battles more simplistic than in Total War, which already butchered them over the years.
I mean honestly, the battles weren't this game's strong point the game's strongest point was the campaign map, but it is frustrating to see that most reviews are just auto-resolving after they get fed up. That doesn't bode well.
The campaign map side of things looks like an improvement on the original though which I'm very happy about.
 

Malakal

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 14, 2009
Messages
10,651
Location
Poland
I didn't even know this was coming out lol. Looks like the same game but the battles look massively improved. - Sounds like from reviews that might not be the case now I'm cautious. - yeah the capture point system sounds really bad not a fan.
Looking forward to it anyway.
omg, you are right. It seems most youtube testers find the battles more simplistic than in Total War, which already butchered them over the years.

Battles were simplistic in the original game but the rest was way better than Total War, the economy, the agents and such.
 

Aemar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 18, 2018
Messages
6,277
Is there a list of differences/improvements over the first game?
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
2,096
Location
Adelaide
First impression
Campaign Map is not just a remaster of the original, they've wholesale copied some mechanics from CK2/CK3, especially with the royal families, there's now an entire perk/skill tree just for the royal families, and there's a hell of a lot more choice with how you progress with your characters.
Random events are really cool the original game did not have these, I had heretics spawn in my lands and had a mission to go cleanse them. Generally, the game feels like there's more to do and less downtime which I think the game sorely needed. Yeah overall I think the did an amazing job with the campaign map, its superior to Total War's campaign map in every possible way, its on par with Paradox and the AI manages diplomacy fairly well I had people forming pacts with me out of fear they would be attacked by larger nations. I haven't done a battle yet. Also stability no longer works like mana which I bloody love! yeah there's a button for it but it costs piety and piety is harder to get than in the original game, you have to earn stability now which I think is better. Also amazing music this game has good music.

On closer inspection, the heretic thing keeps spamming constantly, either its tied to my lands being disorderly or they've only got one flavor event that keeps looping over and over. Ah I've realized its the game telling me that foreign powers are spying on me right, this could've been explained a bit better I thought it was a religious thing because it said Witch Hunt but actually its another nation doing it. I'd say probably turn the espionage down for a first playthrough.
The diplo AI is just as spammy as the original, it won't take no for an answer.

Battles are a bit odd, I think they've done a good job with how it controls its more total war in its control scheme. I will say your first impressions will be bad because you'll likely be fighting with peasants, the games tactical aspects are about pure troop selection so having a Peasant v Peasant fight isn't going to showcase the impact of tactics well, I noticed flanking barely has an effect it seems more reduced than even in the original game.

I think the diplo ai is a little bit too aggressive, you better be building for war immediately the AI gives 2 shits if you're trying to build up your treasury first.
Diplo UI needs to be designed so that the buttons go along the bottom, its too easy to missclick, it was fine in the original game because it was only 1024x768, here its harder to precise click on things. The kingdom advantages and rankings shouldn't be full screen UIs it makes no sense, the kingdom advantages should be available when trying to select buildings. The ranks should be present on diplo screen.

Also a tip, Navigation on traders is super OP it stacks on every port that nation has, so if you pick a big nation with lots of ports you get heaps of gold from the trade route.
To stop inflation I recommend donating to the pope, I ran out of things to buy so I just kept giving to the pope, strange as I am orthodox crete lol.

Im very very against Knights specifically generals being leveled up with Mana, it makes the progression system entirely redundant you don't even have to fight battles to level them up now so I think that's a huge step backwards.
Religious mana is useless except for fending off conversions. Money is useful for building but eventually once you've built everything it becomes throw away (but that was the same in the first game as well).

The RNG with skills is annoying, I have a trader who can't learn trading? and its a tradition. So effectively he's useless.

I get why this is on Mixed ratings it just doesn't do enough past KoH1 to justify its pretty frankly laughable price. I mean that's a big ask for what is essentially a 3D remaster of the same game a game that I recall I paid like <$9.99 AUD for originally. The pricing is going to be their downfall big time. THQ keep fucking this up every game they've put out so far has been overpriced and ends up being a commercial flop anyway. That doesn't bode well for Deus Ex does it lol.

The strategy I've developed that seems to work is, build up a discrete trade network prioritize Navigation for traders you will need diplomats to increase relations, don't bother with defensive pacts cause they'll get you invaded royal marriages are better, rush for Royal Armories, build up your defenses asap, food is useful so have some food so that you can max out the amount of defending forces. This prevents you game overing from invasions and rebellions, use all your money and mana to increase authority and opinions, now go conquer the entire world.
 
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Sarissofoi

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 24, 2017
Messages
762
Played some time and so far I like it. Almost beaten game as Poland(not on first try tho - first time I got humbled early when I spend all money on econ and get invaded by some pagan cunt from Pomerania and had nothing but peasants and some militia against them - it didn't end well and lesson was learned.)
Game is very similar to the first one(at last as well as I remember it). Battles play better but its still not old Total War(although I have more fun that with nuTW battles). Other aspects were upgraded although there still is some weird design choice here and there. Upgrading your provinces are little weird for example as you have limited slots (base 4, you can unlock 4 more by cash) and you can build then buildings plus resources extraction points(if there is any). Some buildings get hefty bonuses based on local smaller sub settlements(like Church give extra bonuses to monasteries). Weird thing is that you don't upgrade single buildings but all buildings at the same time(and you need to pay for all of them at the same time).
Trade is pretty OP. And merchants have really powerful events that can bring mad dosh. And money are necessary for anything.
Clerics are necessary for both religious and cultural conversion also can be used to pacify rebels and calm provinces. Faith is used in increasing royal Authority which is pretty important.
Diplomats are useful in getting allies or help from them. Didn't use them much tho.
Spy offer plenty of options but you need right traditions and a lot of cash to use them. They work really well with rich trade countries that have dosh to spend.
Marshals are for war. Other classes also can lead armies but for that they need secondary military skills first and are limited to 5 units instead of 8 in case pure military class.
Mercenaries are really important even later as you don't need levies or population to raise and reinforce them, they cost a lot of gold tho.
Overall the game is fun and have nice comfy feeling - like its 00' again. Not very well optimized, loading are long and you better have some SSD.
 

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