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  • DevDiary 21 - Royal Dungeon

    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”.

    Surely, the most common way knights get imprisoned in KoH2:S is in battles – when Marshals, or any other knights leading armies, fail to retreat in time and lose, they are either killed on the battlefield, or more often – captured. Historically, it was very common practice for noblemen to make their status and heraldry noticeable, and the enemy soldiers knew that they are worth much more alive than dead.

    Spies, of course, can also often get imprisoned, considering the illegal and risky nature of their activity in foreign kingdoms. Sometimes, even more peaceful and “innocent” knights can end up in a Royal dungeon. If war occurs with a kingdom where a merchant or diplomat is, there is some chance the enemies will hold them as prisoners. Also, the sneaky spies can try to frame knights on missions and, if successful, they get imprisoned in the kingdom they are in.

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    Once imprisoned, knights cannot perform any of their actions and the only role they continue to contribute with is governing. They cannot be assigned or reassigned as governors, but if they already were, then their advisors, skills and “governing policy” continue to affect their province. Not all prisoners are helpless, though. Leadership skill makes “Inspire riot” available and Plotting skill – “Organize escape”. These are both risky actions, but still – a possibility for the imprisoned knights to escape on their own.

    They can also be rescued from the outside. Spies can try to help own or friendly prisoners escape and this is not an opportunity, but simply an action – when a spies arrive in kingdoms, they can immediately start plotting the escape.

    There are risk-free ways of getting back imprisoned knights. There is the diplomatic way, convincing the other kingdom to let them go, or paying a requested ransom. There is nothing that can go wrong in both cases and the kingdom’s nobility will appreciate the effort of saving one of them.


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    In case none of these options is available or affordable, imprisoned knights can simply be abandoned. This, of course, decreases the Nobility opinion, but frees the prisoners’ position in the Royal court, so that a new knight can be hired. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures.

    When kingdoms capture a knight, there are several actions available. The most merciful is releasing that knight. If he is a foreign knight, that leads to relations improvement. Your noblemen would also approve that decision. They will also approve if the released prisoner is a knight of yours who rebelled against you – in that case, he will be back in the royal court. This will hurt your crown authority, though, as mercy against betrayers might be considered by some as a sign of weakness. Lastly, releasing simple rebels is well received by the peasantry and ill-received by the nobility. We are still considering adding the possibility to invite knights, renounced by their kingdoms, to become members of your royal court and this will most likely make it into the game.

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    Executing knights leads to pretty much the opposite results. If they are foreign knights, this will surely worsen your relations and in times of peace, lead to a crown authority loss, as it is considered rather barbaric. Executing your own knights is frowned upon by the nobility, but increases crown authority. Crown authority is also increased upon executing rebels and some gold is acquired. Sometimes nobility would also approve, but the peasantry will definitely not and sometimes the clergy as well – after all, rebels are part of the local population and often popular among them.

    Finally, there is the “deal” action. Prisoners can be given some funds to lead a rebellion in another kingdom. This can end in many ways – the prisoner might really become a loyalist rebel leader, he can just go rogue and lead an independent rebellion, or even take the gold and disappear. As powerful as they can be, such shady dealings are always a bit of a gamble.

    04_RoyalDungeonShot.jpg.f900248e8fd53d25930935b31deed3ed.jpgEven if no actions are taken, various events can occur within a dungeon. Prisoners can die there, escape by themselves or even form riots or mass escapes. The last two options are more likely to happen if a royal dungeon gets filled up over a certain threshold, which can be increased by some traditions and buildings. Thus, it is generally unwise to keep too many important people in a dungeon for a long time and getting rid of at least some of them from time to time, one way or another, will reduce the likelihood of such unwanted events.

    In this section of the DevDiary, we’d usually say something like “we’d love to hear what you’d like to do with your prisoners”, but it sounds kind of wrong and we are also afraid what you might answer… But, jokes aside, tell us what you think of these features – do these actions and options sound interesting to you and if you have other ideas – feel free to share them – who knows what neat features can still make it into the game.

    We’ll talk more about Royal Dungeon in our DevStream on Thursday, September 2nd,  @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST and we’ll be thrilled if you join in our conversation. Do come right in, our wardens expect you! If you behave nicely and do not ask for the release date of the game, we might even lower the ransom price for letting you go. The Twitch stream will be hosted on the THQ Nordic channel: http://twitch.tv/thqnordic and we’ll be grabbing responses from this post as well as answering questions live during the stream.

    Next time we will return to the topic of Multiplayer as planned, talking more about starting conditions, rules and how those can shape each campaign. Until then, we bid thee farewell! Go forth and conquer!


    • Like 2
    THQN Brad



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    So, is it to be understood that the dungeon is still attached to the royal court, such that imprisoned Knights take up royal court space? This was actually a function of KOH 1 which I did not enjoy. 

    Also I fully agree with adding the functionality of inviting abandoned enemy knights into your kingdom. As I was reading this post this was my first thought, when you mentioned Knights could be abandoned.

    Edited by Ivory Knight
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    Hello there,

    I just wanted to ask at what stage of development are the tactical battles? Will we soon see gameplay from them?

    Thank you!

     

    Congrats to Ivory Knight 😄 

    Edited by Yavor
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    Just now, Yavor said:

    Hello there,

    I just wanted to ask at what stage of development are the tactical battles? Will we soon see gameplay from them?

    Thank you!

     

    P.S. Yiss! I'm first again! 😄 

    P.S. P.S your not first again 😉

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    Quote

    the only role they continue to contribute with is governing. They cannot be assigned or reassigned as governors, but if they already were, then their advisors, skills and “governing policy” continue to affect their province.

    This is wrong, I understand that you want to lock policy and buffs to the governed province (or shall we say 'it is easier to implement a lock'), but this is wrong. Yes, you should lock the province governor slot to the imprisoned knight, but his governing skills and bonuses should not longer apply. If his governance is still 100% effective in prison, there is no reason to retrieve his back. It should be a penalty to the province his is assigned to govern and lock on reassigning the governor until you retrieve him from prison or he dies.

     

    Quote

     The most merciful is releasing that knight. If he is a foreign knight, that leads to relations improvement. Your noblemen would also approve that decision. 

    Potential multiplayer exploit right there. We play together, we start capture and release knights from each other, buffing our nobility standing out of thin air over and over again for no cost. You can't have zero cost benefit to both kingdoms. If you can't think of a good way to balance the standing gain at least disable bonuses if both involved kingdoms are human players.

     

    On 8/23/2021 at 8:44 PM, THQN Brad said:

    If they are foreign knights, this will surely worsen your relations and in times of peace, lead to a crown authority loss, as it is considered rather barbaric.

    You should not lose your crown authority for executing an enemy. Especially if they are of a different faith. You should be able to "trade" a prisoner for foreign gain (+relations if released) or for domestic gain (+crown authority if executed). At least there should be no penalty on executing kings of a different religion. Don't make this into rainbows and ponies theme park, these are middle ages, no one cares about humanity much.

    Edited by William Blake
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    1 hour ago, Ivory Knight said:

    So, is it to be understood that the dungeon is still attached to the royal court, such that imprisoned Knights take up royal court space? This was actually a function of KOH 1 which I did not enjoy. 

    Also I fully agree with adding the functionality of inviting abandoned enemy knights into your kingdom. As I was reading this post this was my first thought, when you mentioned Knights could be abandoned.

    Ivory, I think imprisoned knights take a slot from the royal court of the kingdom, whose knight is in prison, and Not in the kingdom that imprisoned them. You can have 9 knights and 9 or more prisoners, I believe. So in this case I'm ok with the mechanics of the royal dungeon.

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    Yay! The prisoners will no longer occupy the space of the royal court! This is one of the features I was looking forward to.

    Edited by Menssie
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    Here is a question for dev's:
    Will this mechanics be related to capital cities/provinces?
    For example, if we conquer capital city of some nation that has prisoners, will we be able to choose their fate?

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    Thanks for the new diary. At first I was like "Dungeons are boring, what can you really invent and tell us here" but there ist some nice changes to them.

    My question is:
    Will the number of prisoners you can hold also increase automatically (not only through traditions and buildings) as your kingdom grows e.g. scaling with crown authority, number of provinces / towns,...? - adding to it: I really appreciate that prisoners don't need a space at your royal court anymore which never really made sense.

     

    And I really like the idea of inviting abandoned knights to your court. It will be fun when you turn marshalls and spies against their honorless home-kingdom *evil smirk*

     

     

    Edited by Sh0ppo from 9ers_Gaming
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    Maybe instead of having a nobility relationship category which reflects how all your royal court knights feel about you, has personalized relationships with each individual royal court knight been considered? This would give a closer and more personal feeling with your royal court Knights. You can still have nobility modifiers affect your entire royal court of knights and their feelings to you, but also individual events could create more unique relationships with your Knights on a 1 to 1 basis. A closer model to crusader Kings , however since there are only ever 9 royal Knights at a time, this would still be very accessible to the average player, and give a much deeper game play experience. 

    Curious what you other guys think of this idea?

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    It's a great to have some options when you're royel court is imprisoned. And that you're royel court is no longer occupied with prisoners. 

    Is there a plan to implying the option to recruit a prisoner? Maybe you can use a "loyalty points" for knights which will make it impossible for a loyal knight to betray their old one or if negative it's just a matter of gold.

    To see the status of the prisoners is also a nice feature. So will there be a building like a prison or will the limit improve by the size of the town?

    And is there a limit how many prisoners you can have or a max like 10 in a kingdom?

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    Hi, 

    I am still KOH 1 Player and still enjoy playing it after almost 20 years. For now what I have seen all my "Ideas or imaginations" of KOH 2 have come true except one, and that I want to ask admins if they can provide me an explanation 🙂


    Why is there still 9 slots for Knight, Prince, King, etc. when there is lot others characters, like for agriculture (food boosting)
    spy, prophet, worker. I had always hated that in KOH 1 that I can only have 4 knights prophet 1 spy, and needed to delete some of he characters to add somebody that in need in that moment cuz I have idk, prisoner from some country that I need cuz he is prince.?
     

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    Interesting dev diary !

     

    Indeed, that would be very cool to add this feature about inviting knights that have been abandonned by their kingdoms. I don't know for the western part of Europe, but in the East, the Greeks used it a lot (that's part of espionnage war in which they excelled).

    Also, I have a question... what are the conditions for a knight to betray you ? Is it only when he's a foreign spy, or is it also if the relation between him and you doesn't shine ? What do you think about adding a character opinion / loyalty modifier ? Would you find it's a good idea ?

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    On 8/31/2021 at 3:20 PM, Ivory Knight said:

    So, is it to be understood that the dungeon is still attached to the royal court, such that imprisoned Knights take up royal court space? This was actually a function of KOH 1 which I did not enjoy. 

    Surely not pleasant, but just forgetting about any high ranked court member and swapping them for a new one would be unrealistic and too easy, wouldn’t it? 

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    Aww it looks gorgeous. I hope for that releasing or killing victim would make impact on nobility/peasantry in place of influence like if you kill William Wallace, in London peasants and nobility will be happy but Scottish side of you kingdom will be  quite upset.

    Would be nice feature.

    Dependent how the rebelling person will be backed it would be nice to have different result across your regions.  Robing there giving to poor at home region, famed home hated elsewhere and vice versa.
    Thanks for reading my comment and sorry for my bad english.

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    THANK YOU DEV TEAM !! 
     

    hey guys , I’ve been following your development for about a year now and recently saved enough money to buy my first gaming lap top. looking forward to your gam is a huge reason why I decided to buy that instead of one of the new consoles . 
     

    I appreciate the team keeping us updated . 
    I play for a sports team in Vegas and am a sponsored natural bodybuilder as well. Not at all hyping myself , there’s many people doing much bigger things , but sports and gaming helped me get away from a lot of unhealthy habits and I look forward to spending potentially 100s of hours enjoying your guys hard work instead of other less healthy activities. Your reach guys demographic is bigger than you know and I’ll be telling everyone I can about your game if it’s anything close to what I’m expecting . Thank you again , without people with your expertise I don’t think I would have overcame my past . Keep up the incredible work !!!!! 

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