DevDiaries

Hello friends, and welcome to the first “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign” DevDiary!

The DevDiary is a place where we can discuss specifics about our game, share some insights about the development process, and offer perspective on what game-shaping decisions we make and why. We’ll do our best to talk about cool, interesting topics, of which we’d love to hear your suggestions! Hearing your feedback will help us make the best game we can, and also understand what our fans care about.  

It was really hard for us to keep silent for so long, since there’s so much we want to share about the game. We’ve also noticed the fan questions pouring in too, and while we can’t answer everything right now, we’re anxious to answer the ones we can! It may go without saying, but thank you for all the love and patience, we really appreciate it!

Hello friends, and welcome to the third entry of the “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign” DevDiaries! In this one we will take a look at one of the most emblematic features for the KoH series – the royal court. We love both the atmosphere it creates and the “deck-building” element it adds to the gameplay. The royal court plays a fundamental role in our game, thus it’s not much of a coincidence our teaser trailer had the concept front and center!

Hello friends, and welcome to the fourth DevDiary of the “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign” DevDiaries! Today we start talking about the military aspect of the game, covering the invasion process, which includes battles, occupations, and assimilation. Though there are different strategies that players can explore to defend and broaden their empires, wars are almost inevitable, and they are undoubtedly the most straightforward expansion method as well. However, victory is not always easy to accomplish, as you will soon see.

Hello friends, and welcome to the fifth entry of the “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign” DevDiaries! Today, we will be talking about one of the game’s most fundamental aspects - warfare. More precisely, the focus will be on marshals, their role, and the types of troops which can fall under their command.

Hello friends, and welcome to the sixth entry of the “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign” DevDiaries! Today’s topic is all about the cultures in KoH2:S and how we weaved their historical representation into the gameplay and visuals of the game.

Hello friends, and welcome to the 7th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! This time we will look into stability, revolt risk, rebellious population and rebellions – the final stage of population’s uproar.

Hello friends, and welcome to our 8^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! This time we’re having our first deep dive into the music and audio of our game, a topic we’ve heard many of you are excited about.

Hello friends, and welcome to the 9th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign!” In this Diary we shall return to a more gameplay-related topic – the characters’ skills. We already talked about the knights’ classes, but there is much more that makes each knight unique besides just his class.

Hello friends, and welcome to the 10th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! Last time we talked about character skills and in this diary we will take a look at traditions, which are very interlinked to them and can even be abstractly considered as “kingdom skills”. We will explain how these two features are connected, how traditions are gained, and how they affect the game.

Hello friends, and welcome to the 11^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign!” In the 6^th DevDiary, which feels like ages ago to us, we talked about the marshal class. Now, let’s take a look at merchants, who are, debatably, just as important as Marshalls for any kingdom which aims to become a great power in the Old world.

Hello friends, and welcome once again to 12^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! In this diary we will begin to talk about one of, if not the most important, feature in the game – diplomacy. Since this topic is huge, we will split it in several parts, starting with Wars and Alliances. The art of war is the most common way to dominance and victory, and even if you prefer to play the “Swiss neutrality” style, chances are that sooner or later, you will be attacked by more aggressive kingdoms or get involved in conflicts by other means. As we say here in Bulgaria, “Around dry things, the wet ones burn, too”.

Hello friends, and welcome to 13^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! In the previous diary we talked about diplomacy, mainly in the context of wars and alliances. Wars are indeed often desired and the main path to victory in the game, but in some cases, they’re better to be delayed or avoided altogether, and looking for allies once the wars have started might be a measure undertaken too late. So, in this DevDiary we shall continue on the that topic, but focusing on the agreements and pacts outside of wars, as well as on the role of the Diplomats.

Hello friends, and welcome to the 14^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! In most of the previous diaries, we’ve been focused either on military related stuff, or on relations and interactions between different kingdoms, as those are, naturally, the essence of our game. In this one we will digress from that main course and talk about the “opinions” of different social classes. This feature revolves around how the actions, made by the players (or AIs), affect the different classes in their kingdoms and how the opinions of those classes, in turn, affect the kingdom.

Hello friends, and welcome to 15^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! For this one we have chosen to take quite a different approach and tell you about changes in gameplay features we’ve already presented. The idea behind this is to keep you up to date in regards to the features, but more importantly, to let you in on how we iterate over the game, what kinds of reasons make us add, scrap or rework stuff, and overall give you a better look at the development process.

Hello friends, and welcome to 16^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! When we talked about traditions in DD10, we mentioned the concept of a kingdom’s prestige, and how traditions are unlocked as prestige increases. Prestige has а much greater impact in the game, though, and it even paves the road to victory, so today we will take a deeper look at how it is increased and what role it plays.

Measuring the greatness of a kingdom in KoH2:S is done by summing up two elements. The first element represents major events that took place in its history (fame). The second one represents its current greatness (prestige).

Hello friends, and welcome to 17^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! Though we initially planned to talk about Espionage and Spies in this one, we decided to change the topic, and cover some fundamental features that are high time we shed more light on. Settlements and provinces are at the base of the game’s economy, connected to the production of any resources or currency.

Hello friends and welcome to the 18th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! As you are now well infiltrated in our development process, the time has come for you to eavesdrop on classified information about one of the most emblematic features in KoH – the Spy and Espionage.

Hello friends and welcome to the 19th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! The time has finally come for us to talk about the multiplayer features in our game, and we can say that we’ve been waiting for this moment with a mounting anticipation ever since DevDiary 1. There we mentioned that “multiplayer” is one of the pillars of KoH2:S and indeed, it nearly doubled the game design and programming efforts, but we still think it is worth it.

Hello friends and welcome to the 20th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! Today we will start talking about religion, going through all key points of the feature and the common gameplay options it presents to all kingdoms. Though this is not one of the central elements of the game, it still plays a big importance and different religions offer quite a few unique elements, thus leading to unique strengths and strategies the players can explore.

Hello friends and welcome to the 21st DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! We initially planned to talk more about Multiplayer in this one, but since we are still iterating on a few settings and the lobby UI, we decided to tell you first about the Royal dungeon – how knights get imprisoned, what events can take place afterwards and actions undertaken – by the prisoners’ kingdoms and by the “dungeon keepers”.

Hello friends and welcome to the 22nd DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! We decided to return to the Religion topic, started in DevDIary 20 in which we made an overview about the common Cleric actions and religion effects. Today we will take a closer look at Christianity – the religion, followed by the most European kingdoms at the historical period and region the game takes place in.

Hello friends and welcome to the 23^rd DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! In this one we will try to conclude the religion topic and take a look at Islam and Paganism and the unique gameplay they bring to the game. There is no connection between those two, of course, neither historically, nor gameplay-wise, but we decided to fit them in in one diary, as time is quickly progressing and there are a few other topics we are eager to tell you about and hear your thoughts.

Hello friends and welcome to the 24th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! After the deep dive into the religion topic, we will now return to “Multiplayer” – a topic, started in DD19, where we already talked about game modes, victory conditions and team games. Now we will have a look into more detailed settings, that will be provided for the players to finetune their experience. Many of these work in singleplayer as well, but talking about them in multiplayer aspect provides a more thorough view.

Hello friends and welcome to the 25^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! So far, we have talked about the role of the royal family members here and there, the king’s class-related bonuses, diplomacy effects of royal marriages, etc. But we’ve never had a more detailed look into the royal family itself, so it is high time to do it.

Hello friends and welcome to the 26^th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! In “DevDiary 17 - Settlements and Province Features” we started talking about the economy-related features of provinces. If you haven’t checked it out, it is a good place to start on that topic so that you can grasp the whole concept of these related features. In this DevDiary we’ll continue with a more in-depth view on how goods are acquired and what benefits they provide to a kingdom.