BC Knight

Thanks for the new dev diary. I see that like KOH1 trading is a full time job that require sending a royal court member to a foreign kingdom, but also noticed that if a governor is assigned Does this mean that there is a passive trade income on top of the income from the merchant? My second question is would it be possible to use trade as an excuse to start a war for example to force another kingdom to allow your merchants to trade in their kingdom or after winning the war to force the losing side to transfer part of their trade income for a certain period of time? And speaking of trade and merchants do you plan to add Merchant republics to the game?

Brad, Alex, thanks for the comments about my questions, I appreciate that

I want to have a spy with Sir Yavor's portrait. Sir Ivory on the other hand looks much more honorable. You guys should update your profile pictures.

That's different. It's not necessary countries to be friends or allies. They can be rivals or enemies to each other but still to form a coalition against you or other too aggressive nation. This is EU4 feature to battle against the aggressive expansion.

Coalitions should be formed to fight with your aggressiveness and all members to join the war on the enemy side should you declare a war on one of them. Or even all to attack you at once as a punishment for your aggression. That I think is the only solution of their problem.

This screen looks similar to KOH 1 but also shows the traditions that the kingdom has. Does this mean if you click on one of other's kingdom you will see their traditions? I hope not 😄 It looks to me from this screenshot that the player gets access to more traditions with increasing their Prestige points. So the more you grow the stronger you become. Is this working the same way for the AI? And how does the AI chose their traditions? Is it based on a historical relevance or is random? Would it be possible for the player to see other kingdom's traditions by espionage?

Yavor, that would look well for a spy or an evil cardinal 😄

I would add a few things to the previous post from Field Marshal - Vassals to join their lord wars automatically / If vassal is attacked, the lord joins the war - After a war there is a truce between the participants - Breaking the truce could bring some serious penalties

I repainted the map last week. Now it's a bit more accurate (probably), at least it looks much better. Here's WiP. First I printed a map on 4 sheets of paper - the map was cut into 4 images. Then I copied that on the board and repeated the sea borders. After that it was time for drawing province borders and painting. The entire map took me about lets say 15-20h. Not sure exactly, but it was fun to do it.

Honestly, for this game, I don't mind if they are 10+ DLCs 😆

Hey guys, just to be clear, I am not in position to sell or publish this game 😂😂😂, though I appreciate the comments. I made this for personal fun and to play it with my son and at some point it became very enjoyable for me and decided to share it here. @Presley I cannot say if my game is very similar to Battle for the Balkans: The Age of Kaloyan as I haven't played it yet [unfortunately], but for sure I used it for inspiration and included some ideas. As for the kingdoms and the rules, my goal for the current map is to print content for all "coloured" countries. Which means: Bulgaria Byzantine Empire East Francia (Germany) Mamluks Denmark Wessex Italy West Francia (France) Asturias Tunis Cordoba Great Moravia Kievan Rus Khazars All "white" provinces are designed to be OPM independent nations (Each province is different nation. i.e. Ireland, Mercia, etc.) What I mean by content? Currently the player has a pack with 15 flags, 10 armies and 5 boats to hire, castles and coastal forts to build, and a set of 4 or 5 Missions. The missions are following an expansion line where upon a completion of a mission the player gets the next one. By completing all the missions the player usually uses almost all of the flags and accumulates around 15-20 Prestige points [I may rename this to Kingdom Power to sound more KOH like]. To get the rest of the points until 25 the player should find creative ways to do it as further expansion is almost impossible. One of my main goals was to not allow players to attack random nations and blob on the map just for the sake of blobbing so I added limitations: Players have only 15 flags Players could only attack neutral kingdoms (the list above) if they have a legitimate reason to do it such as Territorial Claim from the missions or Trade Dispute - They are allowed to attack their rival's trading partners. The goal is to fully occupy the trading partner of the rival and then they get the trading card for themselves. The other player should try to defend their trading partners as they lose prestige points when a province is occupied. Annexation of provinces is not allowed if is used Trade Dispute. Player is allowed to attack OPM nations Aggressive Expansion - Attacking a kingdom without having a Claim from a mission is considered as an aggressive act and it costs Prestige points. The AE penalty applies when a player attacks an OPM nation or uses Trade Dispute. There are of course many other things to mention, but I don't want to make this post very long.

Since I have a bit more time recently for my hobbies and stuff, I decided to make a medieval grand strategy board game for personal use. The goal of the game is to collect 25 points of prestige by occupying land, fighting against the other player, competing missions, sabotage, trade and random events. Another option to win could be to annex the other player, though that may not be always possible. The map of Europe is around 900 AD and has close to 80 provinces. Historical and geographical accuracy is often sacrificed in order to keep the things simple. If someone is interested I may post more details about the gameplay and the rules...

They said that traders will be able to lead armies.

Does this mean that the Spy could infiltrate in other kingdoms without being hired as a knight? This sounds really good! Would it be possible to diplomatically vassalize other kingdoms?

Yesterday I watched a YT video about, as they said, the last war between Bulgaria and Byzantium. So here's what happened: The Byzantine emperor took advantage of the succession crisis in Bulgaria and quickly captured several castles. After that, the Bulgarians recaptured some of the forts which caused the emperor to call all of his armies and invade Bulgaria. The Bulgarian tsar has chosen to build a camp on the north side of the mountain while the emperor's camp was on the southern side. The only way to move was through a narrow passage which was too risky for both sides. Both parties sent messengers and started peace negotiations. The Bulgarians needed time to gather all their army. They also called Tatar mercenaries to join their camp. The reinforcement remained unknown for the Byzantines and the Bulgarians managed to convince the emperor that they are willing to accept his terms. In order to reduce the cost of upkeep his army and the use of supplies, the emperor sent some of his forces home. The Bulgarians found about that and soon they attacked the emperor. The composition of the armies was about 10000 Bulgarian and Tatar soldiers vs. 3000 Byzantines. The emperor didn't know about the Tatar heavy cavalry until the battle has begun. After a while, the emperor retreated to a nearby fort and was besieged. Soon a peace treaty was signed which included returning land to Bulgaria and a royal marriage. While watching the video, I was thinking about KOH: I wonder how will mercenaries work in KOH 2? In KOH1 there is this cute foreign camp with soldiers waiting to be hired and I usually was crossing nearby provinces hoping to find one and take an early game advantage of stronger units. After hiring them, they behave just like normal units. I think it would be great to hire not just units, but an entire mercenary army that would attach to your army and join battles? The mercs may have their own leader and should he dies their morale would suffer. In the example the Bulgarian tsar hired the Tatars, probably paid a lot of gold, and after the war, they were most likely disbanded. How will Manpower affect army recruiting and refilling? In KOH1 there is so easy to refill the units. Just need to go to a castle and use coin to refill the regiments. This could lead to repeating and endless battles and one usually chooses to auto fight the battles. Instead, if there is an option both sides to gather their entire armies into a single epic battle, and this battle to be enough to win the war sometimes if the losses of the defeated side are devastating. Fog of war & Visibility Going back to the story, the Byzantine emperor didn’t know the entire strength of the Bulgarian army until the start of the battle. Usually, in strategy games, the player has quite big visibility over the enemy’s army once entering the province (though, I haven't played any recent TW versions and don’t know how it works there) and probably AI knows everything about your army. I wonder would it be possible to have more limited visibility which could be affected by the terrain and, why not, spies. It would be nice if you could surprise the enemy with your army strength or being surprised somehow. What would be the role of the spies? Let’s imagine that this battle is actual gameplay: I play with Bulgaria, and the Byzantines are occupying my lands, I would have better visibility and could see their forces in more details. I also have a spy in the Byzantian court and I could ask him to cause unrest in the enemy camp by sending rumors or bribing. If both armies are sitting in their camps for a while, the Byzantine army would already have limited supplies and their morale would be lowered. In this case depending on my spy influence and/or some coin used for bribing I may be successful and I will see that the enemy leader sends some of his armies back. Then I use this opportunity and attack. This could be even more complicated if the Byzantines discover the spy and set me a trap by disbanding and rejoining their forces... I play with Byzantium, I am invading enemy territories. My visibility would be limited and by default, I cannot fully see the enemy camp as they are hidden on the northern side of the mountains. But I have a spy in the Bulgarian court and thanks to him, I am aware of the enemy’s strength and I know that the Bulgarian tsar hired Tatar mercenaries. I could ask the spy to try to bribe the mercenary leader not to join the upcoming battle. It would be even more exciting if I don’t know if the spy has succeeded or not until the beginning of the battle. So the battle has started and I am watching the Tatar cavalry charging my flanks, but at the last moment, they turn and retreat the battlefield causing disorganization and moral losses in the Bulgarian army. Considering that a victory in this single battle could be almost enough to win the war if it’s devastating for Bulgaria, the resources and risks would be worth it. I hope soon there will be info about some of the topics in the upcoming dev streams. Cheers!