THQN Brad

Hello friends, and welcome once again to 12th 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 8th 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 29th, @ 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! View full article

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!

Hello friends, and welcome to the 11th DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign!” In the 6th 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 1st, @ 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? View full article

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 3rd, @ 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. View full article

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.

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 🙂

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.

Moving thread to GD forums

Moving thread to GD forums

Moving thread to GD forums

Moving thread to appropriate forum

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.

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.

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 6th, @ 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! View full article

Hello friends, and welcome to our 8th 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 9th, @ 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! View full article

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 11th, @ 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! View full article

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! View full article