DatHandSomeDevilTho

In my current play through I play as Norway and had an ongoing war with Poland and Miessen. As the war started I sent my spy master to Poland to provide more info as they are the stronger faction. Besides troop movements and sabotage activities, I would occasionally get reports about the Polish political scene. Some reports included indications of war exhaustion as Poland had numerous wars on going and that corruption was a massive issue. My point being that you can send a spy to the country against that faction asking you to join the war to get some information over time. I suspect that you will be asked to join the war numerous times anyway, so you can sit back and let the spy reports come in first. Also note that by sending the spymaster to the target country you will have instant access to troop movements, so you can see how many armies are in the field, their composition and skill level. A high quantity of peasants in an army tells me that finances and levy quotas are bad there, plus if you see a few marshals with skill levels below 5, it indicates that the previous commanders were killed or imprisoned in combat meaning that the target country is not doing too well in the war. At that point, if I know that my court mostly agrees with the decision to enter the war and that the political blow back is at minimum then I would enter it. The opposite being the case of course. I reckon for now the game was designed so that you can infer information from the tea leaves scattered about. Personally I would love a squire type system where your spymaster can hire agents to infiltrate numerous countries so you can get more information. ^^

37 hours in and counting. I am absolutely addicted to the game, here's hoping for more content and expansion of its concepts!! 🙂

Can sending a spy to Sweden provide such information?

I was thinking about how the game can be expanded to increase its depth and flavor and I thought about a hierarchical system that expands with the player's faction as he/she's kingdom becomes more complex. So for instance in the current game you have the monarch and his attending knights that make up the court, sometimes you can elect members of the monarch's family to the court. In the idea of expansion, each of the knights in the court can further manage a sub class of knights (or Squires?) that help them manage things closer to the ground. So for instance with the Marshal who can have a seat in the court, he can then have captains that can also manage units in the field but do not have seats in the court. Each captain will of course require a stipend of gold that the kingdom can provide and can also be trained using skill books and what not. Apply the above to the other types of knights; Merchant Knights managing Merchant agents, Knightly Priests who manage clerics, Spy Master knights whom manage spies in the field and so on. The ability to maintain the hierarchy will of course depend on the player's faction and economy. It is not a must have that the player expands the hierarchy but I believe that the option to expand it should be available to the player if they can afford to do so. This way, the player can take advantage of more trade opportunities, diplomatic missions, armies in the field, etc when the situation calls for it. Now you always have to consider that other factions will try to assassinate, frame or bribe these squires you manage as well as your head knights so their existence isn't a guarantee. Tacking on the above ideas is my argument for the ageing mechanic to be introduced to all members of the court hierarchy. It breaks my immersion that the merchants I hired since the start of my current play through are still here even after 3 generational shifts of the Monarch's family. It really does not make sense. I also will argue for the halving of book prices for the ageing mechanic and quite possibly a tweak to the book learning process. Say you definitely need books to unlock a skill. Then the knight or their squire will learn over time gaining XP towards the next level of the skill mastery, additional book consumption can speed up the learning but if nothing the subject will continually learn the skill over time and even gain XP boosts when they succeed in their activities. This ensures that the monarch, knights and squires are always improving their skills over time as opposed to it being a static affair until the next book consumption. Now I understand that they are many OG players of the first game whom are happy with how the sequel has turned out but dare I say that the game should also EVOLVE new features to grow from its original base. One of the things I liked about Stellaris was how the developers have changed the way the game played over time. I personally never liked the first 3 iterations of the game play loop and only recently started to get back into it again. I also like how they expanded the game with additional DLCs to increase its depth and replay-ability. I believe KoH2 can evolve into a much better game with tweaks to its formula and I believe the addition of Squires to the Knights whom in turn serve the Monarch is a good logical step towards that. I also think the game will REALLY benefit from an ageing knight and squire system in addition to the book costs and learning system tweaks. There is so much potential with this game and I hate to see it remain shackled to the original game out of tradition. So yeah, any and all thoughts welcome regarding the above!! :D