[DevDiary 16 - Prestige, Great Powers, Emperor of the World]

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).

Actions and events can lead both to increases or decreases of fame. The example that usually comes to mind first is battle and war outcomes – winning brings fame and losing reduces it. There are many ways to increase your fame however, like leading a crusade or putting an end to a rebellion. The ways to lose fame are broader, so the players might want to be careful with their actions – executing noble prisoners, breaking non-aggression pacts, attacking their vassals, etc. bring ill fame. The negatives of such actions, however, have a long lasting, but not permanent, effect and as time passes, the wrongdoings are forgotten, little by little.

Things that comprise prestige are control of important cities (e.g. Mecca, Constantinople, Venice, Alexandria, London), production of unique goods, important buildings, and rankings. Rankings are an interesting new addition to the series and a major factor here. They are always relative – it depends how well a kingdom is doing compared to the rest of the world – and the prestige bonus is awarded depending on the kingdom’s standing and not on absolute values. Currently there are 15 rankings in five categories (wealth, conquest, culture, society and politics) and the players can aim at topping those which best suit their strategy and playstyle.

Additionally, a kingdom also gains a percentage of the prestige earned by its vassals, as well as from kingdoms it has royal ties with, but only by marrying princesses. In the first game of the series players didn’t like marrying princesses, as that would only lead to potential claim of inheritance from the other kingdom, so to counter-balance that in KoH2:S, we added bonuses that only princesses possess, like the prestige bonus, espionage and counter-espionage bonus, and others.

As the game develops, we are iterating and balancing the events and actions that increase or decrease fame, as well as adding ways for fame to change when we introduce new features as well. The good news is that this feature is easily moddable as well and those who want to get creative can easily add or remove fame as a side-effect of a building or an action.

If a kingdom’s prestige rises above a required value, and if it is among the nine with highest prestige, it starts being considered a great power. Besides the epic golden frame of the coat of arms, great power status provides significant bonuses like higher army morale, stability, and cultural influence in neighboring kingdoms. It also allows the kingdom to vote for becoming the “Emperor of the World”.

“Emperor of the World” (EoW) is an important feature we kept from the first game, representing rare gatherings of the Great Powers’ (GPs) kings who can vote to accept the superiority of one of the top two claimants, or abstain, if they want to support none of them. In the process, voters are not all equal, as each kingdom votes with the value of its prestige.

Players can even get bolder and try to proclaim themselves as EoW whenever they see fit, as long as they are among the Great Powers and have the required prestige for that action. This is very risky, though, since if the rest of the GPs deny the claim, a war starts between all who denied it and the claimants. In order to get their support, it is not nearly enough just to fulfill the requirements or even to lead the prestige chart and be the leading great power. The rest of the great powers would only support someone if they see them worthy for the title, but likeable as well. Here things like good relations, royal marriages, large scale trading, being caliphate, etc. play a huge role.

Yes, this is a bit fictional roleplay-ish feature, which lacks historical accuracy, but it turned out to be quite fun in KoH1 and a good conclusion to a game – if you feel victorious, even though you’ve not conquered yet every single province, you have way to feel like you can win and claim victory and see whether you’re really the undisputed EoW. After all, the game is about becoming the dominant empire in the Old World and not always about “owning” it all.

In the situation where an AI kingdom wins such a vote, players can also singlehandedly refuse to accept them, but then they get in war with all of the GPs and results are usually not pretty. However, in multiplayer games such votes cannot be denied and the Emperor of the World is victorious, while the rest must admit their defeat.

We’d love to hear what kinds of things you think should bring or take prestige and fame and which ones you expect to be too restrictive for your playstyle. Would you prefer more realistic and punishing effects to make you play more carefully and respectfully to your agreements and common manners, or do you prefer more freestyle gameplay, without too many consequences?

We will talk more about Prestige, Great Powers and Emperor of the World in our DevStream on Thursday, March 18th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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 talk about the emblematic class of KoH series – Spy and Espionage; what we’ve kept from the first game, what we’ve changed, added and why.

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[DevDiary 15 - Evolution of Gameplay]

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.

Let’s start with one of the major features that we covered many months ago – the Armies (DevDiary5). When we presented it, the default number of squads a non-marshal knight could lead was 6, marshals could lead 9 and there were additional bonuses on top of that as well – for kings, crusaders, pagans (depending on traditions they follow), etc. The absolute maximum was 18 or 21 in different versions of the game, and we should have in mind that often two knights per each side participate in a battle.

However, we decided to reduce the number of squads to 5 non-marshal / 8 marshal and these numbers being the maximal ones. Why? Well, first of all, by playtesting we found out that players usually use 1-2 unit types per army and having too many squads didn’t lead to actual gameplay variety. Also, we found that 12 or more squad was trickier to handle – the UI was busy and it required a lot of micromanagement to check your troops – e.g., how many exactly are healthy, wounded, dead; to merge or abandon some squads, to refill them, to check out their experience and levels. As we want our tactical battles to also be a bit more dynamic, compared to other grand-strategy games, controlling 20 squads in a battle (or even more if you have garrison or other additional troops) felt too burdening.

Having less squads makes the choice and handling for each one more significant. Of course, we didn’t want to lose gameplay features, so instead of the “additional squads” bonus, there are now bonuses on “units per squad” and on army morale. The gameplay choices are just as interesting, but everything is neater and tidier and easier for the players to grasp and control. As of now, one squad can vary quite a lot – depending heavily on the province the army leader governs (how many “levies” it has), his skills, kingdom’s traditions and other factors, you can double or even triple your squad size.

Moving on to DevDiary7: Rebellions. We iterated a lot over the rebel features over the course of development and when we presented them, we felt that they were quite good. Since then, we’ve made several changes, though. One of the bigger changes was determining Rebellion zone, and allowing rebel armies to cross borders and affecting nearby kingdoms. It felt quite reasonable as an effect, and depending on other gameplay features, sometimes it felt fun too. However, players started complaining about rebels more over time, though, and for mostly two reasons. First, it doesn’t feel fair. You make great efforts to keep your citizens calm, you maintain high Opinions, crown authority, take care of religious and cultural assimilation and in the end – rebels are still coming, because your neighbors are chaotic. Is it realistic? Kind of, it is not unimaginable that some rebels and bandits will date cross in the other kingdom and pillage whatever they can there. “Life isn’t fair”, you might say, but in the end, this is a game and user experience and fun is what leads us (one of our pillars we talked about in DD1, if you can remember). The second reason is that this feature didn’t scale too well. Rebel spawn in neighboring kingdoms, which you cannot control, is still manageable for small or medium sized kingdoms and it creates interesting situations, but do you know what happens if you control 150 provinces and have 50 neighbors? We assure you that the rebel swarm could get very, very ugly.

We didn’t totally scrap this behavior, though. We made it more rare, exclusive to “famous rebels” and we might include it to some extent as an element for higher difficulty settings for players, that want more challenging experience.

So, saving the big one for last… let’s go back to something we talked about in DevDiary4, Invasions. Here we basically scrapped the “occupation” state, which had a connection to diplomacy, pacing of the game and the way wars are led in general. At first everything about it looked very in-depth and interesting, but (as with number of squads) the numerous stages of overtaking a province seemed confusing for some players and (as in rebels crossing borders) it didn’t scale too well, getting a bit tiresome after you do it 50 times in a single game.

The process had three stages – taking political control (in the end of a war or before it), dealing with the disorder state of the locals and then the long process of cultural conversion. Of course, we didn’t want just to dumb it down, so we tried to simplify it, without losing essence.

Without having the “occupied” state, we moved some effects to the “disorder” state. Forceful establishing of order by an army now has a political effect and it can be harder to achieve the peaceful establishment of order while the war continues, unless the local population was loyal to you in the first place. In a way, the disorder state behaves as “occupation” while wars last and like the previous disorder state after they are over. The kingdoms that owned these provinces can also demand you to return their lands as a part of a peace treaty or even at some point later in time, and thus we represented that they still have a claim of ownership and the diplomatic part is well preserved.

Of course, changes like these three are just the tip of the iceberg – surely, we change smaller stuff every day and make much more drastic changes for features we haven’t yet presented. Naturally, we are trying to make blogs and streams for the “finalized” ones and yes, this is one dirty word in the industry. Our policy is to rework something as much as it needs to be reworked, allowing the time for features to mature and grow to create the best experience we can craft. At Black Sea Games we believe that this is the right path for making really great games. However, we are getting close with KoH2:S and are very satisfied with how most of the things work as they are now.           

We will talk more about the evolution of the gameplay systems and the dynamics of developing and iterating over them in our DevStream on Thursday, February 11^th, @ 4:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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 talk about one of the main goals of the game – Prestige – how do you gain and lose it and the effects it has in the course of the game and in its end. Until then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer!

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[DevDiary 14 - Opinions]

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.

In the first game, there was an important kingdom-wide parameter, representing how satisfied the people are with their ruler. It was called “Kingdom power” and we kept it in KoH2:S, renaming it to “Crown authority”. It still plays a major role in the game, but just a few months ago we decided it felt a bit flat and we really wanted to enrich the gameplay and immersion. So to address this, we tried to add more depth in the internal affairs of a kingdom with the “Opinions” feature. Our goal was not to make it too complex or overwhelming for the players to manage, but instead let it run a bit in the background. Opinions have a significant effect, but the control over them is primarily indirect. They reward players for doing what social classes would want from a king, rather than separately taking actions to increase opinions or simply paying gold for that purpose.

 

There are 5 social classes in KoH2:S – Peasantry, Nobility, Clergy, Army and Merchants. Their opinions can vary from -10 to +10 each, and when they are positive, some benefits apply; when they are negative – so do penalties. Additionally, below or above given thresholds, the corresponding social class may take actions to support or oppose their ruler. In contrast to parameters like rebel risk and happiness, opinions are kingdom-wide, so even small changes may lead to very significant effects, especially in larger kingdoms. Explaining how they work will be easiest with some examples for each one.

Peasantry opinion is strongly related with rebellion risk and food production rate, but also affect the morale of peasant and militia squads in the army. It is relatively easy to increase, as many buildings, improving the wellbeing of the people and some basic religious buildings play a favorable role. The steps to avoid losing it are rather simple, though not so easy to do sometimes – the player must protect the common people from invasions and rebellions and when possible – not to enter wars voluntarily. After all, that’s what the simple folk fear most.

Nobility opinion affects things like crown authority increase costs, influence in neighbors, loyalty of knights, revolt risk… It is probably the hardest to increase, as there are very few things that can make the aristocrats happy, e.g. winning a war or crushing a rebellion. On the other side, there are tons of things that make them upset, like financial instability, military losses or even diplomacy decisions, depending on the influence of the kingdoms that they concern.

Army opinion plays an important role for army morale and obedience and is one that is very dangerous to keep low, unless players wants their own armies to march against them. It depends on military successes, constant supply of provisions and not leaving men behind – abandoning wounded troops or a famous marshal to rot in the enemies’ dungeon is not the greatest way to win the sympathy of the soldiers.

Merchants’ opinion naturally affects the gold income in several ways, among which corruption levels, trade income, cost for buying supplies and others. As one could guess, they are happy when more opportunities for trade are created and maintained, e.g. constructing the needed buildings and making proper trade agreements with the other kingdoms. On the other side, things like going bankrupt, bad diplomacy with trade partners and wars are really bad for business and thus they are not accepted well.

Clergy opinion we saved for last, as it is most complex to explain, since it depends on the kingdom’s religion. There are some common effects, like book production and religious influence in/by neighboring kingdoms, but also many other effects, depending on what the kingdom religion is. For an example, Catholics’ relations with the Pope depend on the clergy opinion and vice versa, same goes for the Orthodox and the Ecumenical Patriarch; pagan shamans, on the other hand, boost the army’s morale.

Events that can rise and lower the clergy’s opinion differ even more. Catholics are very concerned with good relations with the rest of the Catholic world and his holiness, the Pope. They really appreciate things like leading a crusade or defending Rome. Muslim scholars care about the relations with the caliphs and jihad involvement. For example, they can get really mad if their king decides to sign peace with the enemies of a caliphate in a holy war. Pagan shamans care a lot about military successes, as it was commonly considered that losing an important battle means the king has upset the gods and they have withdrawn their divine favor over him.

In general, Opinions improve slowly and passively, where a player may not be able to do much to increase them directly with actions. After all, it will rarely be a good strategy to declare war just to make the shamans happy with some battles, and even if you do, this can backfire and decrease the opinions of other classes. In these cases, diplomats can be helpful, as their “Improve opinions” action can speed up the process – the more experienced a diplomat is, the more effective this action is, and if they have royal blood, the classes appreciate the attention even more. Even then, the results are far from immediate, and the best strategy may be to avoid unnecessary deterioration of opinions altogether.

We are still experimenting with this feature, adding and balancing causes of opinion changes and  effects the different classes have. Feel free to share what effects and reasons for increase or decrease of opinions you think imight be interesting and immersive to be included in KoH2:S, or which do you think will be tiresome to deal with. We’d also love to hear what you think about this feature in general – do you enjoy a bit of focus on the internal policy of a kingdom in grand strategy games, or do you see it as unnecessary sidetrack? And do you like the selection of classes we’ve picked, or would you prefer them to be more, less or simply different?

We will talk more about Opinions in our DevStream on Thursday, January 7^th, @ 4:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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.

Till then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer, our brave warriors!

 

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[DevDiary 13 – Diplomacy Part 2 – Diplomat and Pacts]

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.

Doubtlessly what everyone would expect from the Diplomat class in a KoH game is mainly improving the relations with foreign kingdoms. Initially, this is what we were focused on and, indeed, maybe a tad too focused. Diplomats had to be sent to a kingdom and there they had quite a few possibilities like gaining the king’s favor, fascinating the queen, and whatnot. Though these used different mechanics and resulted in somewhat different bonuses, they felt pretty much the same, considering the final goals. That made them feel more like periodical tedious action to perform, rather than making a strategic choice.

We felt that we really needed to improve this class and in the recent months, we reworked it significantly.  A big part of this was removing all that tedious micromanagement and instead adding new actions and effects that widen the range of problems Diplomats can solve, hopefully providing different strategies for the players to explore. One of the more significant things we’ve added are Defensive pacts and Invasion plans as something exclusive to the class. Each diplomat can form and maintain only a single pact or plan, so it is a tough choice. Both of those are targeting a selected kingdom and the diplomat can search for potential “friends”, which become “potential allies”, since their obligations depend on whether and how a war with the target starts.

The Defensive pacts are visible to all kingdoms and they can be quite discouraging to a potential attacker, since they know that attacking any of the pact members means starting a war with all of them. The opposite is not true – if someone from the Defensive pact voluntarily attacks the target, the pact is broken and the members do not become allies, at least not automatically. So, it is a way to defend yourself from a formidable foe, but it is useless if you actually want to use it for offensive purposes.

That’s where Invasion plans come into play – they trigger the other way around. When the leader of the plan starts a war against the target, all participants enter the war as allies. These plans are normally kept a secret, since if the target finds out in time about them, for example by having a good spy network, there are quite a few strategies they can explore. They can form a Defensive pact in response; try to dissuade the plan’s leader from attacking; attack first to surprise the enemies and wage war only against one of the kingdoms; or even try to take out the diplomat that maintains the Invasion plan, in order to immediately interrupt it.

In the image we see that Croatia participates in an invasion plan(s), together with Germany, Austria, Bosnia and Vidin, but Germany, Austria, Bosnia and Venice are in defensive pact(s) against it. Also, royal marriage with Bosnia and trade agreement with Tarnovo are shown.

Apart from forming and maintaining pacts, diplomats may also travel directly to another kingdom in order to improve relations passively, over time. This can be a particularly important order, in times which demand more cautious strategizing. If matters have escalated to war, diplomats may also be ordered to negotiate peace, which comes in handy when dealing with stubborn kings who refuse to step off their high thrones.

Another new addition to the diplomats is their more “civil” involvement in internal affairs. They provide significant bonuses when governing a province and are a good match in that direction, even when compared to Merchants. Indeed, merchants are the ones ensuring the highest income, but diplomats are helpful in improving multiple aspects for the development of a province.

While they are not on a mission, diplomats can be very helpful in improving the opinion about the crown of different society groups. These opinions are a new feature for the KoH series, which affects almost all matters of a kingdom, thus the timely intervention of an experienced diplomat can be crucial. We will talk more about Opinions in one of the future diaries, as it is a separate topic, and a large one at that.

Another new action, maybe a bit more unexpected, is the searching for a spouse for a member of the royal family. This can be manually done by the players as well, but diplomats can be helpful in speeding up and easing the process. Royal marriages have several important roles. The marriage of a king early on helps having a big royal family and each member is useful – princes are powerful knights in court and a king, dying without a successor, can truly throw a kingdom into chaos. Both princes and kings, married to a foreign princess, can also have territorial claims, if the father of the princess, the foreign king, dies. Marrying your princesses has significant diplomatic advantages on its own. While the marriage lasts, the foreign kingdom is more benevolent towards you (compared to having a prince or king, married to their princess) and you also gain part of their prestige. Of course, regardless the gender or position of the married royalty, a marriage always considerably warms up the relations between the two kingdoms.

We’ll be glad to hear your thoughts on Diplomacy – do you enjoy spending time and effort on it, ensuring the best diplomatic affairs in grand strategy games, or is it just a final resort you reach for when the army fails you? Would you like to explore more elaborate strategies with the Diplomat class, or rather stick to the basics and focus on increasing your foreign relations?

We will talk more about the Diplomat and the pacts in our DevStream on Thursday, December 3^d, @ 4:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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.

Till then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer, our brave warriors!

*Note: the original DevStream time had an error for GMT due to a daylight savings time confusion. Will be going live at 4:00 PM GMT / 11 AM EST

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[DevDiary 12 – Diplomacy Part 1 – Wars and Alliances]

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”.

War was one of the things we wanted to improve from the first game, mainly when two or more kingdoms are involved, fighting in alliances with each other. It is true that we had alliances in the original game, and we started with the same functionality in this one, but we naturally stumbled upon familiar problems. Alliances were practically permanent, punishing you if you ever decide to attack kingdoms you once allied with. Alliances also often felt tedious, forcing you into conflicts that you would otherwise want to avoid because of actions out of your control, and usually not in a fun way.

Initially, we tried to solve the problem by limiting them to one generation, meaning that alliances were dissolved upon the death of either of the kings who signed them (inspired by some historical alliances and texts). This worked in some cases, but in others – it didn’t work at all. Sometimes alliances were disappointingly short, other times they were still too long and the problem with participation in wars against unwanted enemies remained. Even we, the developers, primarily avoided using alliances when playing the game, so we finally made a rather big change – in “KoH2:S” they exist only in the context of wars and while it lasts.

Now, before someone gets awfully disappointed, we want to assure you we have a lot of “peace time” pacts – defensive pacts, invasion plans, royal marriages, vassal-liege relations and other agreements, for which we will very soon tell you about, but right now, we will focus just on the alliances in wars (or as we call them – just “alliances”). None of these previously mentioned pacts guarantees an alliance, though they usually make it highly probable.

What helped us a lot was that historically wars were rarely 1 vs 1, and we had a ton of inspiration from actual events – from many medieval wars like the Anglo-French War (1213–1214), where France defeated the Angevin Empire, allied with the Holy Roman Empire, Flanders and Boulogne; to some older epic wars in the Balkans, like the defeat of the Arab invasion by the Bulgarian khan Tervel, that supported the weak (at that point) Byzantium and with this alliance stopped the Muslim advance in the interior of Europe during the 8^th century, about the time when the whole Iberian peninsula fell.

So, in “KoH2:S” each war has two sides (alliances), and each alliance has one leader and possibly several supporters. The supporters can participate from the beginning of the war (depending on the pacts, prior to starting the war) or join in afterwards. Surely, players that prefer to gain strong friends through diplomacy will often use the options like “Demand support in war”, as this can quickly bring a lot of power to their alliance, especially if you have some of the aforementioned stances and pacts. Leaving or disbanding an alliance as the war goes is also a possibility, but the outcome is what you’d expect – your ex-allies will not be very happy about it and overall, your reputation and authority will be hurt, so it is usually a though decision to make.

By this time, you are probably wandering how can you ever end a war, considering that you might have formidable forces against you and long wars lead to serious exhaustion of a kingdom. Indeed, you can destroy your enemies and this will lead to peace, but against bigger kingdoms, you often have to negotiate it earlier. A war can be ended with negotiations ONLY between the leaders. If they agree on the terms to sign peace, it is signed between the two alliances and practically everyone participating in the war – leaders and supporters.

During the war, supporters are able to negotiate peace with the opposing leader “solo” and if the agreement is accepted, they exit the war. Yes, their ex-allies will be really disappointed, but at least their ex-enemies will be… ex-enemies. Supporters can never negotiate peace between each other, however:  any kingdom participating in war is always in “war stance” with ALL kingdoms of the enemy alliance while they are participating in the war.

Now, we are considering adding an even more cunning diplomatic option – switching sides – but this can be (and, historically, was) extremely dramatic. It creates an awesome story indeed, but we are still unsure if it might feel too punishing for many players, when the Brutus’s dagger is in their backs.

What’s your opinion on that matter – should we go all-in “Game of thrones” style, or should we have more honorable factions with less unpredictable diplomacy and backstabbing? Do you like the concept of these alliances, limited within the war, or would you prefer to have just the long-lasting pacts between kingdoms? We’d love to hear about your playstyle in strategy games – do you like to gather a bunch of allies before even thinking of invading someone; do you prefer not to bother with that diplomacy mumbo-jumbo and straight out dominate everyone that crosses your path; or do you prefer something in between, like building a ‘safety cloud’ with no aggression pacts, but then marching into war alone?

We will talk more about Diplomacy (Wars and Alliances mainly) in our DevStream on Thursday, October 29^th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. This time the original creator and creative director of both the new and the original KoH games – Vesselin Handjiev – will participate, so don’t miss it out. 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 continue the subject of diplomacy since there is a lot more to share. Till then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer, our brave warriors!

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[A thank you to Brad Logston and THQ Nordic]

Really appreciate all the support! It's been fun getting to know everyone both here and during the streams. I've really been enjoying this community, and having the banter during the streams helps us connect with our fans and keep aligned with who we're truly making this game for: all of you!

Definitely a big gamer here, always have been and always will be, including a huge strategy games fan. Know it's a long journey to bring the best KoH game forward we can, and we're trying our very best to deliver. Making games is challenging to say the least, but hopefully you all see how much we care and are working to make this the best Knights of Honor we possibly can. 

See everyone on Thursday for the stream!

[DevDiary 11 - Merchants and Trading]

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.

Let’s start with the primary role of a merchant, which we all most likely know from every strategy game out – to bring gold into the kingdom’s coffers. This is true for the KoH series as well, but there are different ways to achieve it.

First of all, each knight can be selected as a governor of a province, and merchants have the most skills and governing effects that can boost gold income and commerce. Additionally, once a merchant is appointed as a governor of a province, trade caravans and ships start visiting nearby towns, bringing gold from trade when they return, unless ill fate (also known as “rebels”, stops them in their tracks. Being a governor does not hold back a knight from performing any other functions, it is a “secondary” role they have, so it is not a matter of whether to have them as governors or not, but rather who should govern where, as different classes gain and provide different bonuses to provinces.

Each merchant can also be sent on a “mission” to establish and maintain trade with a chosen kingdom, as long as a trade agreement with it is signed and valid. This means you’ll need good relations to expand trade, which is where diplomats could be needed as well. Prosperous trading between kingdoms and good diplomatic relations are well tied together – on one hand kingdoms are more benevolent and eager to make agreements and pacts of all kinds with their established trade partners, and on the other hand trade is more profitable and offers more opportunities when the diplomatic relations between kingdoms are warm. Many other factors also play effect – for example distance, personal qualities and skills of the merchants, and whether they have royal blood – kings and princes have advantages in almost all trade endeavors.

Trading with a kingdom is a “full time” occupation, so a merchant cannot simultaneously maintain trade with more than one kingdom, or trade while leading an army, for an example. If there are more promising offers elsewhere, merchants can always return “home” and try establishing trade in a new kingdom, but in that case any developed position and all deals with the original partner they were overseeing is lost. This can often be a significant step back, since one of the possible, costly, and time-consuming actions is to expand trade to gain more and more profits and a bigger share of the market of a kingdom.

Now, we haven’t talked a lot about resources in the game yet and we won’t get into details about them now, but another thing a merchant can do within a kingdom is to arrange the import of goods. Resources are needed for the construction and function of some buildings, for hiring troops, and other things, so arranging imports can be particularly important. Food can also be imported or exported; it is needed for upkeeping the armies, as well as for maintaining the population growth and happiness. Historically, food trade and grain trade in particular were one of the oldest and most stable over the centuries, so we felt it important to represent this our game. This can also create different strategic choices for players – they can produce their own food, rely on import (if they have the gold for it!), or focus on agriculture, stock-farming and food export as a stable source of income.

There is one significant new addition for the trading system in KoH2:S and that is “Kingdom’s Commerce” – a parameter of the kingdoms that is required for “upkeeping” the continuous trading deals, such as imports, exports and general kingdom trade. Players increase commerce mainly by constructing trading-related buildings, but also with traditions, skills, governor effects, etc. Here the challenge for players is providing the needed Commerce availability for their merchants to use, as well as putting all available Commerce into good use and thus maximizing the benefits from it.

Up to a point of the development process, this was what merchants were all about. Were they useful? Undoubtedly. Were there strategical choices for the players, like how many merchants to have, when and where to send them and what to do with them? Sure, there was. But we decided that we wanted to try and make this class even more interesting. Thus, we implemented the “Opportunities for merchants”, based on a system we so far used for spies. Thanks to it, we managed to add many additional actions that pop up from time to time for merchants on a semi-random principle. Our idea with that was to spice up the merchants and present even more choices to the players.

Each opportunity has its own story and specific effects, and we will continue to add more of these during the development of the game. Here are just few examples:

• If one of your armies is near or in a province of a kingdom you are trading with, your merchant can try to arrange a supply of provisions to that army, which can sometimes be crucial.
• Often merchants have opportunities to make some risky deals, for example reselling goods; thus, the players can invest some of their gold and hope to make good quick profit.
• Merchants can hire mercenaries in the kingdom they trade in and call them to their own lands.

They can sometimes try to convince their trade partners to stop trading with another kingdom and shun a foreign merchant, if they a have strong enough position to do so; besides hindering an opponent, this has additional advantages – reducing the competition increases the chances of getting a bigger share of the market.

As a result, the merchants can be very useful, not just by making gold. We are trying to make them both a part of the overall strategy of players and a driver of the economy of their kingdoms, as well as introduce some emerging stories and gameplay with the class. We will talk more about Merchants and Trading, as well as the opportunities that can emerge, in our DevStream on Thursday, October 1^st, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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.

We really want to hear your opinion about the merchant – do you like the wider opportunities for the class or would you prefer it to be simpler? What kind of opportunities and actions of merchants would you like to see in the game? Do you like the concept of the random trade possibilities, or would you prefer to always have the full arsenal available and rely on chance as little as possible?

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[DevDiary 10 - Traditions]

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.

First of all, in KoH2:S the player does not take the role of any of the knights, nor really the king or his dynasty – knights, kings and dynasties rise and fall, and with their death their skills are also gone, but the game continues. Introducing this new feature for the series, the traditions, we wanted to offer an additional way for players to strategically shape the strengths of their main avatar in the game – the kingdom itself – and also to create long-term progression players are motivated to make. As almost everything else players do is more or less temporary, we felt that such a permanent component of their progression is much needed in our game. Yes, we already had the knights’ skills and province development, but knights perish, dynasties fall, and thriving provinces can get overtaken or separated from the kingdom one way or another.

The second important thing we wanted to consider and represent well is that KoH2:S is not a civilization game. We want to capture a specific and rather short moment of time, the High and Late Middle Ages, and, debatably, we think that technological / development tree wouldn’t be very fitting for that goal. We’d like this feature to allow the players to boost their kingdoms in all possible aspects and how believable would it be to let you invent things like agriculture, stock farming, literacy and so on in that period, when they were all invented thousands of years before that? That’s why we crossed out this type of “inventions” and technological tree off our list.

Kingdom traditions represent the knowledge of nations, built over the ages and are less of a “invention” and more of a “focus”. Unlike provinces or knights, they cannot be forcefully taken or destroyed by enemies. Once adopted, they endure even in the harshest crise and are only lost if a player prefers to replace one of them with another. An additional advantage they have is that their effects spread kingdom-wide and can provide bonuses to all provinces and knights.

Thus, they are harder to acquire than skills. To each skill there is a corresponding tradition and, similarly, adopting them requires spending some gold and books, but this is the easier part. In order to gain a tradition, a kingdom must additionally have at least one knight that has mastered the corresponding skill (at level 3). In that regard, the kings are the quickest “gateways” to traditions, since each skill they learn is directly acquired at the maximum level. As a final requirement, there is a limitation to the number of traditions that can be acquired – in game terms, tradition “slots” become available with the progression of a kingdoms’ prestige, a statistic that represents the overall progression and stance of a kingdom and that we will probably discuss in more details in another DevDiary. A kingdom right now can adopt up to eight traditions, though we are still experimenting with that number and at what point and cost each slot will be available.

Similar to skills, traditions can provide a wide range of effects and can be improved on through a cost of gold and books – their maximum level is 3, too. Some of them can provide statistical boosts, others – access to new actions, plots, or even more specific abilities like what kind of siege equipment can be constructed within a kingdom. They also boost knights’ abilities and some of these bonuses are restricted either to classes, governors, kings, etc.

There is one very specific and powerful combination – traditions boost knights that have mastered the corresponding skill. Once again, we will illustrate this with the “Cavalry tactics”, since we gave it as a skill example in the previous diary. When this tradition is adopted, it makes the cavalry squads larger, which is a bonus, that applies to all cavalry squads in the kingdom – those led by knights, regardless of their classes and skills and even those stationed in garrisons. However, if the tradition is improved to level 2, marshals that have mastered the skill will gain an additional combat tactic from this tradition – “Chase and kill”, useful in pursuing retreating enemy troops. At level 3 of the tradition, these marshals will get another new tactic – “Shock charge”, especially valuable for those of them that lead considerable number of heavy cavalry units.

Such combinations can be done in many aspects of the game and provide significant benefits in a chosen directions. What makes this strategy even stronger is that once a tradition is adopted, it is always available for learning by knights of that kingdom, so in this way players can ensure that they will be able to make the desired “combo” and no longer rely on random affinities of knights to learn that skill. In result, by choosing their traditions, players can define the biggest strengths of their kingdoms and build a long-term strategy, regarding what skills they want always available and boosted.

To summarize it, we are trying to make that systems as something unique in KoH2:S and offer the players interesting choice and many possible strategies to explore. Skills are the path to traditions, and traditions, the path to skills; they work both as a boosting mechanic, shaping the strengths of a kingdom, and give an opportunity for interesting combinations as well.

We will talk more about Traditions in our DevStream on Thursday, September 3^rd, @ 4:00 PM GMT / 12:00 AM EST. 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.

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts on that topic and always read and look into your feedback. Does the tradition system sound interesting to you? Do you think it would be too challenging for you to choose a favorite tactic and achieve it, or maybe it is just the opposite – do you think that even more complex system and tech-tree is more suitable for such game?

Next time we will look into another class of knights. We’ve already talked about marshal and it is time to share more about the strategical benefits and gameplay possibilities of merchants.

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[System Requirements]

Game optimizations are an ongoing process, so it's difficult to tell you minimum and recommended specs at this time. What may be possible is if you send over your old machine's specs I could ask the programming team if they think the machine will work. There are a lot of options to help players with lower-end machines access the game by turning off different visual features, but the game can also be CPU intensive due to so many things happening in the world, and settings can't really impact that. We're definitely working hard to support the widest range of hardware while not compromising on gameplay.

[[THQ] Turkish Language]

Completely reasonable to request and discuss language support (and we love the excitement), but agree the multiple topics have become spammy. Let's limit our discussion to one thread, please 🙂 

[TURKISH LANGUAGE ?]

Moving to GD forums. We'll certainly be exploring a wide range of languages to support, and Turkish will be one of the ones we'll be talking about. 

[About İslamic kingdoms]

Moving thread to GD forums

[[Suggestion] Limited Marshal Slots SOLVED]

Moving thread to GD forums

[Ways to support the development?]

Moving thread to GD forums

[Albanien Culture]

Moving thread to appropriate forum

[Platforms! Who will be able to enjoy the game? Who won't?]

As of right now, the only platform we've announced is PC/Windows. While we aren't speaking too much beyond that, I can confirm that there are no plans for bring the game to mobile devices like phones at this time.

[About multiplayer]

We're definitely doing MP different than the first game. MP will be focused on the grand strategy/world map gameplay and there will be a variety of gamemodes. We haven't determined how many players will be supported yet, but there will 100% be more than 2 supported, so you'll be able to play with a number of friends. There are still a variety of performance/optimization and gameplay factors that are being evaluated to determine how many total players we'll support. 

[DevDiary 9 - The Royal Court Part 2: Skills]

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.

What we first wanted to figure out was the sweet spot for how deep and complex the progression of characters should be in our game. On one hand, the knights are an important part of the KoH series and we felt we could add a bit more content and flavor by expanding their functionality. In the first game, most classes had only ranks (stars) and only Marshals were able to learn unique skills. Though some of these skills were not as useful as others, it turned out they make the Marshals significantly more interesting than the other classes. This seemed like a good direction for us to explore in the sequel. As we now have more depth overall in the economy features and the other classes, we decided merchants, diplomats, clerics and spies all deserve skills as well.

Another risk we had to be careful with was the importance and attachment to a particular knight. As in the first game, the knights are a valuable asset to a kingdom, but not a permanent one. They get assassinated, imprisoned, bribed, die in glorious battles, or simply become venerable and pass away. Losing an experienced knight shouldn’t be overtly painful, since that would force the players not to take any risks with their knights – and we don’t want that either.

Thus, we reached the following conclusions:

• Number of skills shouldn’t be too high: a knight can learn up to 5 skills;
• Progression of skills should also be rather limited: each skill has 3 ranks;
• Progression should be fast: each knight can learn a skill immediately after being hired, and learning new skills or ranking them up should be just one click away, provided that the kingdom has the needed resources;
• Progression should be available on global, kingdom resources: knights can learn or improve a skill, by gaining experience from their deeds, but a price in “gold” and “books”, paid from the kingdom’s resources, is an option to instantly improve them as well;
• Skills should have supplementary effects: they should open new opportunities and strengthen the abilities of knights, they should feel rewarding and provide valuable benefits, but not earth-shattering effects.

So, each knight, regardless of their class, can learn skills, and the skill set is shared between the different classes. They have strong affinities, though – the skills are “primary” and “secondary” to specific classes and many of the benefits of a skill are received only by a knight from a specific class. For example, Cavalry Tactics: an additional benefit Cavalry Tactics provides to Marshals is the “Hit and run” tactic. Imagine how valuable this can be for a marshal of a steppe kingdom, having large variety of mounted units and often fighting in vast grassland terrains.

Additionally, knights have significantly higher chance to have skills, primary to their class, available to learn in the first place. When a new skill can be learned by a knight, they have a few choices that are presented. Now besides the aforementioned class-related affinities influencing the random skill options available, there will be mechanics where players can make a specific skill available to learn, but without taking advantage of those mechanics, the available skills will be random and weighted towards their class’s preferences. You’ll have to wait to learn more about how this works in a later DevDiary though, since these mechanics are part of other game elements and systems.

Once learned, there are different effects a skill can have. Some provide statistical or production bonuses, others increase chances of success when performing related actions; many unlock specific abilities, effects or even battle tactics. Usually a skill provides a combination of all these features with a variety of factors determining how useful it will be for a knight. This depends not only on their class, but on other factors as well – for example there are governor-related bonuses or even some skill effects that only apply if the knight is a King himself!

As an example, let’s take a look at the “Bargain” skill. It is primary to Merchants and increases the gold from trade to merchants. Spies and Diplomats can also learn this skill of course, but their benefit is the cost reduction of certain actions, e.g. bribery and others. But if the knight, skilled in bargaining, governs a province, there will also be an additional gold income, generated by the goods, produced in that province, and if that character is king, the price for hiring knights in the royal court will be significantly reduced.

Now for some good news for our fans that want to get creative: skills, and their balance and even which effects they will have, are completely and easily moddable – this part of the system is rather straightforward for modding and very powerful. So, if you are fond of creating your own “house rules”, you’ll be able to change a lot here and have some fun!

We will talk more about Skills in our DevStream on Thursday, August 6^th, @ 4:00 PM GMT / 12:00 PM EST. Note the time is one hour later this DevStream, we’re trying a new timeslot as some have mentioned the previous time was a little too early. 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.

Needless to say, we are still testing different possibilities and balances of skills – making changes big and small – which might and probably will continue even during the beta. So, as always, we’d love to hear your opinion on this topic and we are open-minded to suggestions! What is the preferred depth and complexity of the skill system in such a game for you? Would you prefer to focus on your kingdom and not manage knights’ progression at all? Do you think knights should gain experience from their own deeds, or do you see their progression and “education” as something, that is more of a function of the kingdom itself?

Next time we will continue this topic and shed some light on Kingdom Traditions – a different system, yet strongly related to skills, and a very important part of the game!

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[DevDiary 8 - Music]

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.

The composers of “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign” bid thee welcome! Yannick and Robin are from Audinity and, after having worked on many strategy video game titles in the past, are having a blast working on the sequel to one of their favorite childhood video games. In fact, the hours Robin spent in the medieval world of “Knights of Honor” exceed the 1000-hour mark and both still have the game installed in their Steam library to this day.

So, with all this in mind, there has been a lot of discussion and eagerness on how to approach a game that is near and dear to both!

First, after playing the development build, it was clear that a game of this scope and style would need some brainstorming on how to approach the soundtrack. Everyone sat down and brainstormed, working collaboratively from both the composer and developer side to form a concept and approach that everyone could get behind. This wasn’t just about finding the right tone, but also figuring out how to technically approach how we’d leverage music in the game. It may seem like an easy thing, but we assure you, there’s a lot of little details that make it quite complex.

As you probably know from the previous DevDiaries, KoH2:S features various cultures. One of our primary goals is to write unique music for a variety of these cultures in the game. After all, playing as a Western European faction should feel and sound different than playing as an Arabian faction. We also wanted to find a tone that would feel very much like “Knights of Honor”, too, and spent lots of time listening to the old soundtrack and discussing with some of the original KoH team members how the music was developed back then.

This led us down the route of devising different playlists for the major, unique cultures. These playlists feature authentic short tracks – which we call “snippets” – for creating the appropriate cultural mood as well as big orchestral signature tracks as musical accents. We want the players to feel the impact of their decisions to medieval Europe through the music, but we do not just want a plain ambient underscore, we also want the music to give direct feedback to certain gameplay elements.

 Just like the cultural direction of a region can change (think about the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula), the music can change as well in order to create a more adaptive music system that reflects some of these changes.

 So, if for example the Iberian Peninsula is partly Muslim and partly Christian, you might be able to hear music from both the Christian/European and the Muslim/Arabian playlists when you are in that region for a longer time.

The musical changes will be quite subtle first and depending on how significant the cultural changes, the level of musical adaptation increases. If a European/Christian region gets conquered by Pagans, you might first hear one Pagan music track here and there. If the region remains Pagan for a while, more Pagan tracks can be added. This means that over time, the amount of “Christian/European” music in the playlist can decrease, just like the actual Christian/European influence in that region. We think this could be a cool way to have the music and culture work together and reflect how your decisions are impacting the world.

In addition, we’re also experimenting with short tracks that can trigger based on certain impactful gameplay events to add musical feedback and support the mood. For example, if the Pope calls for a crusade, there may be a specific musical flourish to help build the atmosphere.

Also, we want the music to react to the political situation and stability in your realm. If your people are rioting heavily or if several other nations declare war on you, you might be able to notice a change of music towards more tension tracks that indicate “woops, something is happening!”

As most of you know, the game’s setting reflects the real world during the medieval era, where you create an alternative path forward based on your actions and decisions. You are the Sovereign, the medieval leader, and we want the music to support that mood as well. That’s why we want to feature many authentic traditional instruments in our score. In European/Christian tracks you can often hear the lute, viola da gamba, recorders and many more. We also plan to record an old zither that Yannick inherited from his grandmother! Arabian/Muslim regions will feature traditional instruments as well, like the Ney flute or Darbuka.  

To give the music a true historical vibe that fits the setting, we also plan to incorporate the famous “L’Homme Armé” (“The Armed Man”) melody, which is an actual authentic medieval tune fitting perfectly to the game’s theme.

All the music samples you’re hearing in these clips are both works-in-progress and digital versions made with our computers. We’re excited to use both orchestra and featured traditional instruments in our music, and we’re planning to record with live musicians for the game, including some authentic soloists, which should be a real treat. That said, we didn’t want to wait until our recording sessions to give our fans a taste of the music, so hope you enjoy this preview, and can keep in mind that the final tracks will sound much much better!

We will talk more on this topic in our DevStream on Thursday, July 9^th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. The Twitch stream will be hosted on the THQ Nordic channel: http://twitch.tv/thqnordic. Not only will we be grabbing responses from this post, we’ll also be showing off more music, with some new footage, during the stream, so you won’t want to miss it!

Of course, we want to produce the best soundtrack possible, both as music composers and as die-hard fans of “Knights of Honor.” We hope you’ve enjoyed this first sample of what we’ve been cooking up and would love to hear your opinions on how things are starting. Do you like the idea of music reflecting the culture of an area, or do you prefer having more direct control of the tracks that play? What are your thoughts on the first tracks? Do you have a specific track or melody from the first Knights of Honor that is really memorable to you, and why?

We can’t wait to hear your feedback and write even more great music for you to enjoy. Until then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer!

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[DevDiary 7 - Rebellions]

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. As it was historically, in KoH2:S, empires can also crumble from the inside. It is crucial for the players with ambitions to rule vast lands to know well what factors play a role in stability and how they can prevent or deal with the population’s discontent.

Stability and revolt risk are the two elements, competing with each other, that represent how content a kingdom’s people are. There are many factors, some local to a specific province, others regional, or even global, for a kingdom. On a global scale, the easy (but not cheap) steps to reduce the tension are to increase Crown authority (a very important parameter of each kingdom we will discuss later on) and decrease taxes. Some problems can be pretty difficult to tackle once created, like too high war exhaustion, built over time, or hunger and starvation amongst the people. There are some factors you cannot even really control – e.g. recent death of your king!

On a local level, there is much more you can do to prevent a crisis – mainly, providing establishments (buildings, districts), that increase the happiness and local authority, as well as assigning a governor, whose class and skills provide positive effects. Thus, even if the overall state in your kingdom is not too good, some of your provinces may remain more obedient than others. The opposite is true as well – some provinces may be more problematic and here the usual wrongdoers are religious and cultural tension, when the majority of the population in the region differs with your kingdom in those aspects. Also, rebellions that are already underway and any rebel presence in a province or its neighbors can increase revolt risk too. So, as we spoke in earlier DevDiaries, it is very important which strategies a player chooses and how much care they spend on cultural and religious conversion of the population, influence of their kingdom, and how fast they will expand.

We didn’t want to make the rebellions simply a punishing mechanic, but to provide the players with many choices, and to achieve that we needed to provide them with time to react and a clear visual representation. So, what we added is “rebellious population”. These are generally the people, unsatisfied by your rulership. How fast they grow in a province depends on the revolt risk, but even if its value is high, it will take time for them to multiply and take actions. Thus, watchful players can react and turn the tides.

As an economy effect, the rebellious population is inefficient – it does not help in new construction, refuses to pay tax, and won’t join the army. As more of your people “turn red”, chances for them to act increase and the actions they take become more dire. Initially, they can migrate to nearby provinces or reinforce ongoing rebellions. Only if the tension continues to rise unchecked can they start a rebellion of their own – you never know exactly when this will happen, but leave the masses unsatisfied for a long period and it surely will.

A wise ruler must always expect rebellions, though. Even if everything looks perfect, some special events and sometimes foreign intervention, especially from those sneaky spies, might cause a rebel problem within your seemingly stable kingdom. Single missteps might make your knights go rogue (e.g. a cleric, unable to accept the change of a kingdom’s religion) and riots in your royal dungeon might escalate. Sometimes, you might just be misfortunate. For example, crusaders may decide to go rogue while passing through your kingdom, or rebel armies that formed in a neighboring kingdom, could decide to pay you a visit. This means some preparation to react to such situations is always beneficial. Prevention is crucial, but you can never be 100% sure.

We wanted to add more gameplay and choices in the fights against rebels as well, so we are trying to make them a bit more complex and, hopefully, interesting. That’s why we created more cohesive feature set around rebellions themselves. Rebellions are a larger “structure”, that includes occupied provinces, zones of operation, and of course, the rebel armies – this time with a hierarchy. They always have one rebel leader, who controls the strongest army and is proclaimed king if the rebels claim independence and form a new kingdom. Second in command are the generals, also leading strong armies and able to take control of the rebellion if the initial leader dies. Finally, we have minor rebel armies, which do not have a leader and are initially smaller.

What rebels do at their core is still similar to Knights of Honor – they cause havoc by pillaging settlements and occupying towns, but now rebel armies can reinforce each other and act together. Once a rebellion gets a considerable strength and holds provinces for a period of time, they either form a new kingdom (or restore a destroyed one), or join a near-by kingdom they are sympathetic to.

From all that, some possible strategies emerge. Firstly, time is of the essence, since rebellions grow in strength, number of armies and new generals can emerge. A player can strike them fast or take his time to prepare well and try to outgrow the danger. Secondly, there are choices on which armies to attack, and when. Picking on the smaller armies reduces the rebellion strength and the damage it does, and is subsequently much easier to do. Fighting the leader directly may result in the immediate end of a rebellion, and thus all its armies will disperse, but usually it is hardest to do. We also plan to include other non-military ways to deal with rebels and possibly even benefit from them, if you can meet their demands and send them towards your enemies. One way is arming rebel leaders you have captured in the royal dungeon. Since they remain rebels and not strictly your armies, such actions are not considered as an act of war from your kingdom and players can use such means as a cunning and effective part of their strategy to weaken enemies or even gain new territories.

A special type of rebellion, and those you could benefit most from, are the Loyalists. Such rebellions can be formed in many ways – they can emerge without your direct control, if you have strong influence in foreign lands that have high rebel risk or if your own loyal provinces are occupied by an enemy - people that love their king and nation, and are ready to risk their life defending it. You can also turn enemy knights to your loyalist rebels in various ways, e.g. bribing a foreign marshal to fight against his unworthy ruler. Loyalists are also not such renegades as normal rebels – they do not attack the kingdom they are loyal to and its allies, nor pillage their settlements. You can even fight side by side with loyalists, though you’ll be unable to directly control their armies. Once the time for independence comes, they always join the kingdom they are loyal to or form it once again, if it has been previous eliminated; leaders and generals can join the royal court, respectively.

Another thing we wanted to reinforce is providing incentives for players to fight against rebels in the foreign lands of their friends and good neighbors. Your armies grow more experienced in the battles they undertake, you get the gold these rebels have pillaged, relations with the attacked kingdom improves, since you help them with the threat. You reduce the tension in your own neighboring provinces, since rebels nearby can cause it, even if they are not within your kingdom. Finally, you don’t want immensely strong rebellions growing near you anyway, since their armies might march towards you as well! In many cases, this is more than a worthy motivation to get involved. Though, sometimes it also may be fun to stay calm and watch the neighboring lands burn and fade, especially if you have plans to take a piece of the falling kingdom afterwards.

The bottom line is that we put a lot of focus and attention in trying to make rebels not just a tedious problem that players must deal with in one possible manner – extermination – but rather allow more strategies for how to face them and even to use them to your advantage.

We will talk more on this topic in our DevStream on Thursday, June 11^th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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.

We’d love to hear your thoughts! Do you find rebel armies an important part of the KoH series, or rather something tiresome to deal with? Do you prefer just to deal with the emerging rebels by force or prefer to make some effort in keeping your population calm – and by making them happy or instilling fear? What reactions of the disobedient population do you find interesting – maybe strikes, crimes, robberies and corruption, or something fancier? Or do you prefer less significant events to be left out of the game and focus just on the important stuff – rebellions?

Next time we will take a break from the gameplay and talk about another significant aspect of the game – Audio design and Music. Until then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer!

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[DevDiary 6 - Cultures]

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.

When we talk about cultures, there is one really important thing to keep in mind. Diversity. We live in a world with a rich variety of cultures, every one of which has its own specific histories, songs, food and even mannerisms. All this is valid for the Middle ages as well and thus it became the foundation of how cultures work in KoH2:S.

We dived deep into historical sources so that the various regions of our map reflected the cultures that thrived there during the Middle ages. We didn’t just stop with the big cultures like Arabic, or Nordic and the state of “there were Berbers in Northern Africa,” but were aiming to include unique tribes of certain regions too – the Sanhaja, Zenata, Tuareg – the “small” cultures the compose the big, widely known, cultural groups. Same goes for the European cultures – yes, there are the French, but also the Occitans, the Normans, and other cultures that are classified in the Latin group.

 

Mirroring this rich cultural landscape in KoH2:S naturally adds another layer of gameplay depth in the game. Just as in the original, it’s not enough to conquer territories to “paint the map”. Your army might physically occupy a territory, but the people may not be loyal to you yet. They could riot, they could resist. One occupied province might bleed your kingdom dry in the wrong circumstances – from your armies, to your economy. Here our cultural spread system comes into play. It’s based on how civilization’s culture evolves, diversifies and disappears throughout history. This was mostly a slow and continuous process, but sometimes it could’ve been forceful – with one culture assimilating another with stark change in the population’s lifestyle (like religious conversion). In KoH2:S, this process works like this: the culture of one province or kingdom is constantly affecting its neighbouring provinces. More provinces with the same culture all bordering one province with different culture have a greater conversion influence, meaning this province could be ripe for conquering by providing less problems when assimilating it into your kingdom.

There are some ground rules to that, of course. Cultures from the same group influence each other easier, while those from different ones have a hard time taking over one another. For example, you can play through the historical cultural tensions on the Iberian Peninsula – both before and after the Reconquista, depending on which period you choose at start. If a Catalan king decides to conquer a Castilian province, the closely related cultures will allow for smoother conquest in that aspect. Matters would be even easier if the player made an effort to expand his kingdom’s influence to those particular neighbors by taking advantage of the other tools we prepared for faster cultural conversion (more on that in a future DevDiary), but the Andalusians will have a hard time spreading their influence over the Catalans, and vice versa, even if the territories held by them are bigger, better, stronger.

Cultures play a noticeable role when it comes to visuals as well. Castles, cities, clothes – we’re trying our best to have each rooted in the respective culture of their region. There is a delicate balance when creating these elements though, one between the rich cultural diversity of the Medieval World and the amount of historical visual data available for the different cultures we’re exploring, some of which is quite limited. We often felt pulled between two choices:  choice A, to fully capture the visual nuance of all well documented cultures, leaving a number of cultures with less than ideal visualization, bordering on Narnia, and not history, or choice B, to compile known elements from cultures in a major cultural group in order to achieve combined a visual style that would be most appropriate. We choose the latter.

In KoH2:S, you can see the iconic castles of Western Europe and also the traditional wooden Stave Churches of the freshly Christianized Nordic lands. The European queens are admiring their tiaras, while the Arabic malikas are putting on their beautiful hijabs. We aimed for equal representation for each culture as much as possible, keeping in mind what the player actually sees most of the time. There is less emphasis on the so called “ambient life” (villagers, region specific animals, flying fish), although there are some unique aspects there as well, and more on what’s really important, like the armies.

We wanted each cultural group to field distinctive units when possible – both from a visual and a gameplay standpoint - to ensure the lasting feeling of “Yes, I am a Nordic king and this is my fearsome Nordic army”. The Europeans have their heavier armors, while the Steppe armies are relying on equipment that doesn’t hinder their superior swiftness. The real sight to behold, however, are the special units like the Mongol heavy lancers riding against the Novgorodian Boyars, or Camel riders walking the sands of North Africa, side by side with the Mamluk cavalry. Riding at the front of each army is the Marshal, whose model we’re pushing to be the most iconic of them all.

Another crucial piece of visual information we wanted to get just right was accurate names and nobility titles for each cultural group, so the Royal court had a genuine feel to it. For each culture we filled pools with names, sometimes numbering in the thousands, and the majority of which belonged to real medieval people. Naturally, we wanted to emphasize this even further and what better way to do that than to include starting real-life dynasties.

We went over mountains of data in order to put the rightful king, queen and their offspring on their respective thrones as best we could for each of the game periods. We even tried to find how Dobrotitsa’s wife was called, and where historical sources failed us (like in the case of Dobrotitsa), we left it to chance and those huge pools of names. We are pretty sure that the Doge of Venice won’t ever be called Tvrtko, as long as the republic keeps its original culture.

All this work is really oriented towards one goal - to immerse you in the medieval setting of KoH2 through the unique cultures of that time. We hope you enjoy it, and have a great time playing in this unique era the way you want to, in a backdrop that is immersive and engaging.

We will talk more on this topic in our DevStream on Thursday, May 7th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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.

We really want to hear your thoughts, as cultures are a defining element of the KoH2:S’s experience and we want to make them the best they can be. Jump right into the discussion and share your thoughts in this thread, or join our Facebook and Discord channels and talk there too. Would you take your time to strategically influence provinces with your kingdom’s culture before conquering them, or would you crush the resistance with brute force? Would you accept a different culture overtaking your own just to get its unique special units? Would you pick a starting kingdom based on its culture because of the special visuals and cultural perks that come with it, or do these aspects not really factor into your decisions? Your feedback is critically important, as you never know what comments may help us build the best KoH2:S Culture feature set we can!

 

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[DevDiary 5 - Marshals and Armies]

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.

Being one of the five main classes in KoH2:S, marshals play a very specific and important part in the game, and that’s to lead armies across provinces, fight enemy forces, and paint the political map with your kingdom’s colors. As conquest and expansion were arguably amongst the most important aspects of the original game, we have made sure to encapsulate what marshals were and expand on their concept further.

Each knight in the royal court may lead a number of squads depending on his class and specialization. This is a major change compared to the original game and means that you can turn merchants, spies, diplomats and even clerics into somewhat efficient commanders. The ability to lead troops is unlocked for these classes by certain skills – in specific, all military ones. So, if your trusty merchant learns Infantry tactics, this means he can now muster up a hefty army and replace the quill with a sword at any time.

However, marshals possess a major advantage to these classes, and that’s the ability to control a larger number of squads. For the time being, marshals can lead up to 9 squads, which is 3 more than what other classes may have within their retinues. Kings and crusaders also have an additional bonus on the number of squads they can control, making encounters against their forces particularly challenging.

 

An additional military advantage of marshals is the skills the class can acquire. Specifically, marshals can learn more military-related skills than the other classes. These mostly focus on aspects of warfare such as siegecraft, archery and leadership, and usually grant additional battle tactics and actions that knights of other classes wouldn’t normally gain. As marshal are natural-born leaders, they also tend to inspire their troops more, which results in higher morale and more epic battles.

It’s important to note that not every skill is necessarily locked to marshals, as other knights may also end up possessing them in one way or another. To explain this best, let’s take Archery as an example. For all classes, having the skill means ranged squads under their command gain higher attack values. However, if a marshal owns the same skill, he has the added benefit of recruiting archers with an increased squad size. We can even go further and look at spies, which instead have their own unique take on Archery, both on and off the battlefield. As an example, they might have a higher chance to “snipe” enemy marshals on the battlefield, or obtain an affinity for arranging “hunting incidents” on foreign grounds. These are just a few cool samples; skills are a compelling aspect of how classes work, and we’ll talk about skills more in a future diary.

Squads and armies can normally be recruited from any town within your kingdom. In general, the resources which are required to produce troops include food and population, which are gathered in each town - just like in the original game. Additionally, some squads may also require specific goods produced or imported within your kingdom. A typical example are horses, which are needed for producing all sorts of cavalry.

Each squad then consists of a varying number of units, depending on what fits the type of troops from both a balance and historical point of view. In general, we aim to have numbers similar to those in the original games, as we favor smaller squad sizes and more dynamic battles. As a rough orientation, most infantry squads currently consist of 30 units, while the majority of cavalry squads have 21 horsemen. Militia type squads are also the biggest, since their only combat advantage is their strength in numbers. However, players will be able to control larger numbers of squads, so expect to see significantly bigger battles compared to the original game.

Now, let’s see what it takes to maintain a marshal with a sizeable army. Like other classes in the game, marshals don’t work for free and cost gold to be hired. (The only exceptions to this rule are members of the royal family, which may enter the court for free.) After hiring a knight, players must also pay his wage, which increases progressively with each additional knight of the same type recruited within the court. In other words - having too many knights of the same class is really costly. Additionally, each army squad also has an upkeep cost, with the exact resources depending on what recruiting strategies players decide to utilize. All recruited armies take up some amount of food upkeep from the kingdom’s global food reserves. Mercenary squads prefer more gold, though.

One significant addition is that squads now also have their own level, which also increases as they participate in successful battles. Each level increases various squad statistics such as attack, defense, stamina and morale. This means that as you find the right synergy between your knights’ skills and their armies’ characteristics, you’ll want to make sure specific squads are kept alive for longer periods.  All of these factors play a deciding role in close battles, where numbers might not seem to be in your favour.

When developing an army, picking a healthy mix of varied unit types is often the best approach if you want to be equipped to handle all types of invading troops. For example, you might want to include a bunch of spearmen to defend against enemy cavalry squads charging against your archers, as you have your sturdy infantry troops maintain the frontline. On the side, you could also throw in some highly mobile horse archers for flanking and harassing purposes. Of course, focusing on one type of units may also be beneficial. For example, fast horsemen can quickly deal with weak rebel armies across your kingdom or harass and pillage enemy provinces, avoiding heavier but slower armies. The composition of armies affects not only their speed in battle, but also the traveling speed in the world map.

There’s so much more we can talk about when it comes to combat, but this should at least cover the essentials of what it takes to manage skilled commanders and fearsome armies. Be sure to tune in to our DevStream on Thursday, April 9^th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST, where we will try to answer any questions you might have about marshals and squads in Knights of Honor 2: Sovereign. As usual, expect to see us on THQ Nordic’s Twitch channel over at https://www.twitch.tv/thqnordic.

Are there any specific new units you wish to see in Knights of Honor 2? Can you name your most preferred army setup? What’s the perfect number of marshals to have in your royal court? Feel free to ask any questions in advance on our forums, or join our Facebook and Discord channels.

Next time, we will discuss culture, and how it affects different aspects of the game. Until then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer!

 

 

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[DevDiary 4 - Invasion]

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.

Let’s first sidetrack a bit and take a quick look at the territorial structure of the world in KoH2:S. As in the first game, the world is divided into roughly 300 provinces, which vary greatly in size, settlement types and count, natural resources, geographical features and more. Each province is centralized around a single town, representing the province’s seat of power. Ownership over the town equals ownership over the entire province, including all their settlements, so, regarding control, it is all or nothing. There is one interesting exception of this rule in KoH2:S – Keeps can be controlled separately from the provinces, which reduces the overall defensive capabilities of the province and provides some attrition damage against the enemies of a keeps’ occupier (including armies of the province’s owner).

In a future DevDiary, we will take a closer look at the provinces, settlements and towns from an economy perspective, but for now, let’s leave it there.

Back on overtaking an enemy town and thus – a province. Conquering a town requires good preparation and a strong army. It always starts with a siege. Sieges are long, with different ways in which the defenses can crack. One primary factor is based on the defender’s resilience. Another major factor is how strong and experienced the enemy troops and marshal are at siege warfare. You also take into account many elements of the town itself: is the town well-guarded? Are their strong walls? How long will the food supplies last? Starving and hopeless, the defending armies can be driven into a desperate attempt to break the siege or forced into surrendering. Once the defenders are lured in a break siege battle or the attackers start a full-fledged assault (costly action while the defenses stay strong), things develop quickly.

If the attackers win, the province is now occupied. They now have control, but not yet ownership. In this specific state, they cannot substantially benefit from the province, but neither can the owner – all constructions, production, trade, army training and otherwise are put on hold. The occupier controls the military facilities, though, and benefits from the fortifications. They can visit the town with an army and deploy garrison troops. These are often dark times for the population – there is no civil government, the stability drops, there is a high chance of migration, rebellions and such.

Note the stripes in the image above. The world view in KoH2:S is a beautiful miniature and we want it to stay that way, but it's easy to lose perspective over the political situation. As in the old game, we’re adding advanced political view UIs with different modes, filters, etc., which provide plenty of information to the player. However, we are also working on quick, easy, and clear ways for players to see what’s most important in the world at a glance, without needing to switch views. So, we’re adding additional layers of information in the world view itself, which players can toggle on/off with the press of a button or see while a hotkey is held – whichever they prefer. In the example above, we can see that the town of Barcelona is owned by Aragon but controlled by enemies of the player: the province of Catalonia is occupied.

Once occupied, the original owner and their allies can attempt to drive back the invaders and restore control of the province. If the population hasn’t lost its loyalty, inevitably some of the people will rise up and help in the battles for liberation, forming militia squads. Loyal rebel armies can also arise. If a kingdom friendly to the owner faction performs a successful counter-attack, the owner regains control and everything starts returning to normal. Restoration of stability does take some time, since the population is usually quite agitated at this point, to say the least.

The occupier, on the other side, has several different methods to take full control of the province and become the new owner. If all the initial owner’s territories are occupied, the occupier can forcefully annex the lands they control. This is easier if they solely control the defeated kingdom, and more complicated if there are multiple kingdoms involved in the occupation – it is a bit unpredictable how the separation of the kingdom’s territories will go if the spoils are divided among multiple parties. Even if the owner kingdom is not completely occupied, a peace treaty can lead to exchange of some lands as well.

While a war is going on, an individual province can be annexed in several different ways as well. Some of these options are more forceful than others, but all require the time and attention of a trusted Royal Court knight. These methods shouldn’t be used haphazardly, however, as they all have their cost and some may have various severe repercussions, not the least of which is being “frowned upon” by other kingdoms. There is risk, as being too ruthless could have the world start viewing you as “The mad king who must to be stopped”.

Even gaining full control and ownership of a province is not the end. Yes, at this point order is restored and with it economy, development and army training, but culture, religion and loyalty of the population are key factors for the stability of the province. If a kingdom cares too little for these factors and expands quickly and recklessly, tension within the kingdom’s borders can rise and chaos may follow. It takes time and proper measures to reduce the tension, possibly converting the local religion and culture and in the end – gain the loyalty of the population to assimilate them properly. Only then can the province be fully considered as a stable, fully functional part of the kingdom.

In the end, it takes a good strategist to build an empire. Poor decisions can cause kingdoms to crumble from the inside, so wise actions are needed when problems arise. Whether players choose to tackle problems by gaining the sympathy of their subjects or by crushing any disobedience with an iron fist, it is completely up to them to forge their people’s future.

In comparison to KoH:1, we are working hard to enable even more playstyles to bring out additional strategies when players start Invasions. However, we want to preserve the aggressive conquest playstyle too – yes, there will be different obstacles to overcome compared to expanding slowly – but it will still be a valid strategy for those who prefer it. If you want to organize a military force that makes the Old World tremble, and disregard what the other kingdoms like and find “civilized,” you certainly can!

We will talk more on this topic in our DevStream on Thursday, March 12^th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM EST. 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.

We really want to hear your thoughts, as Invasions are a defining element of the core gameplay loop and we are still iterating here. Jump right into the discussion and share your thoughts in this thread, or join our Facebook and Discord channels and talk there too. Would you rather try to make a rapid expansion, overwhelming your enemies and dealing with the population uproar later on, or slowly and steadily acquire new territories, ensuring the stability of your lands before taking new ones? Would you rely on cultural and religious influence to convert your new subjects, or show that any resistance against the crown will not be tolerated? Would you like more depth in the process of conquering territories, or do you find everything besides maintaining a strong army and crushing your enemies in battle more of a boring and tedious activity? Your feedback is critically important. You never know what comments may help us build the best KoH2:S Invasion feature set we can!

Next time we will take a deeper look on the pawns of war – Marshals and Armies. Until then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer!

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[DevDiary 3 - The Royal Court Part 1]

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!

 

With this feature we are not trying to make a realistic depiction of medieval rulership. Think more of the famed King Arthur’s Round Table – the king is the central, most important figure, and by his side stand the most capable and trustworthy knights. Dynasties and the royal family also play an important role, but we’ll tell you more about the royal family in a future DevDiary. For now, let’s focus on the knights.

 

The royal court consists of the king, who is now always a member of your court (unlike in the previous game), and up to 8 more knights, which you can recruit during the course of the game. Each knight has a class, which defines his strengths and abilities and thus they play a completely different role:

Marshals: These are the most efficient army leaders and they are good at solving matters in one way only – by force. Marshals can lead bigger armies compared to other classes and usually focus on skills that improve their troop’s capabilities in battle.

 

Merchants: Building, development, diplomacy, espionage and war – besides other things, they all require a lot of gold. Merchants are the best knights to take care of this need by exploring profitable trade opportunities with other kingdoms.

 

Diplomats: Regardless the strength of a kingdom, it needs allies to ensure its safety and to prevail against strong enemy factions. Diplomats’ function is to make important friends and help bury the hatchet of war with enemies, before all Hell breaks loose.

 

Spies: The usage of cunning spies is more of an offensive function. They can infiltrate enemy kingdoms, corrupt and build networks of puppets in their royal courts, and then create chaos. Kingdoms can shatter from within as a result of their actions.

 

Clerics: A strong clergy improves the stability of the crown and calms the people, halting the spread of heresy and foreign religious influences. Clerics are also the ones to keep and protect the ancestral knowledge and wisdom.

 

In the first game there were also Builders and Farmers, but since these turned out to be underused, we decided to skip them and instead focus on a smaller, but significant, number of classes. For example, a new feature for knights is the ability for each knight to be appointed as governor of a province, making that province become part of the Royal Lands. This increases the benefits your kingdom receives from a province and is another area where a knight’s class can play a role – different knights boost different aspects of a province, e.g. gold income and production, defensive capabilities, etc. We will share more details of the classes in upcoming DevDiaries where we have time to dig deep into their unique features.

Of course, all that aid doesn’t come for free – knight wages are certainly not trivial. Players should also be careful with their actions and keep the crown authority high. Who knows what disasters might befall a kingdom whose knights lose trust in the rulership of their king and decide to serve another…?

With the choice and usage of knights, players open up different possibilities to craft and shape the strategies of their kingdoms to fit their playstyles. Whether you like to overwhelm your enemies with a dreadful army, destabilize their kingdoms through espionage, influence them culturally and wait for their rulers to beg themselves for your wise rulership, or buy your way to victory with economic dominance over Europe – it is all up to you. We’re trying to make the number of combinations and different ways you can leverage your Royal Court quite expansive, and we’re excited to see how players try different strategies with the tools at their fingertips.

We will talk more on this topic in our DevStream on Thursday, February 6^th, @ 3:00 PM GMT / 10:00 AM EST. 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.

So, jump right into the discussion and share your thoughts in this thread, or join our Facebook and Discord channels and talk there too. Do you find royal court management interesting and challenging? What were your favorite knight strategies and combinations from the first game? Share with us what is your preferred playstyle in grand strategies and what features you find most enjoyable.

Next time we will focus more on the art of war – Marshals and armies. Until then, we bid thee farewell. Go forth and conquer!

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[interesting feature for the crusades]

Some cool ideas here, love to see the creativity. We're actually going to be iterating on many of the religion features here in the next few months of development, so keep the thoughts flowing. We can't promise any of the ideas will make it in, but you never know what types of thoughts could trigger inspiration for the design team!