Knights of Honor II: Sovereign, a "beer and pretzels" Crusader Kings?

[jztemple2]

I had posted about this game over on the Video Games Randomness thread, but since I'm going to pick it up I thought I'd just start a new thread now. First, I'll copy over what I posted on the random thread:

So I recently got a notification that a game I've had on my Steam wishlist, and to which I hadn't been paying any attention, will be releasing tomorrow. It is...

...which appears to be a cross between Crusader Kings and an RTS. Apparently it is a follow-on to the first game...

...which was released in 2005 and is very highly rated on Steam.

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign includes all the depth players desire while being the gate-way game to the grand strategy genre, presenting the world as a living, breathing miniature, alive and ripe for the taking. Choose your royal court carefully and determine the destiny of your people, be it riches, conquest, intrigue, trade, or defeat! Raise armies to defend your lands or take war to the enemy - even jump into battle directly in action-packed RTS combat. The path is open: become the true Sovereign of your people.

The necessary gameplay teaser:


And finally a three part "Let's Play" that gives a good look at how the game is played.




It looks rather interesting and as I'm feeling rather burned out on CK3 this might be a nice alternative. I'm assuming that it is NOT going into Early Access, since that hasn't been mentioned (perish the thought). I'll keep an eye on it. Again, if other folks are interested, I'll start a separate thread.

[jztemple2]

And some clarification... the game is a Full Release, not Early Access. It will be available on Steam and on GoG. There are already three reviews I could find (in English):

• From PC Invasion: Knights of Honor II: Sovereign review — The return of Total Kings: Crusader War
• From What If Gaming: Knights of Honor II: Sovereign Review – An Exceptional Grand RTS
• From Finger Guns: Knights of Honor 2: Sovereign Review (PC) – A Knight To Remember

And at the end of the last review, this is something I found encouraging:

There are quite a few things to praise, however, such as the performance of the game – I had no issues with stuttering, or crashes at all in the 50+ hours I played the game for review (except for some small slowdown if on max speed when autosaving) on my 5 year old system. I didn’t run into any noticeable bugs over the course of the game, either. In addition, the game just generally feels nicely polished and well put together, and although more systems would be nice to be added in hopeful future for additional replayability, it doesn’t feel like there is any outright content missing either. Each type of Knight feels useful, and I had fun deploying each of them to try and make the most of their abilities. In an age of early access games, and even fully released games missing many features and being full of bugs, it feels very good to have a game that just feels feature complete and a joy to play.

[jztemple2]

So I picked up the game today, 12% off on Steam, GoG and Epic.

I decided on my first playthrough to go with a smaller kingdom (there are 101 on the map) and picked Brittany, which is also the name of our mail carrier. Brittany (the kingdom, not the mail carrier) is composed of only one province so it is easier to manage.


There is a lot of help in the game, a number of tutorial pop-ups on the first playthrough (which can be re-enabled if desired), an in-game library and lots of mouse-over boxes.


The game is a kingdom simulator more or less, although the devs have been emphasizing that while authenticy is important, fun and playability are key in the game. So while efforts are made to use authentic map and city names, rulers and religions, you aren't going to see the kind of detailed nuances that exist in CK3. For instance, there aren't boatloads of rules covering succession. Basically eldest son succeeds, unless you select otherwise.

Speaking of rulers, here's mine.


And here's the royal family. As your dynasty progresses, you'll unlock special attributes that get passed down generation to generation.


An important concept to grasp is that the game does not play out in years. Time runs continuously (if not paused) but there are no years, no seasons and no special events tied to certain dates. This nicely eliminates conflicts about how far an army moves in a month, or when winter comes to your part of the world.

This is the province display. Each province has a main city and a number of farms, mines, abbeys and other locations that contribute resources. Those site and the city itself can be upgraded to provide more resources.


I haven't gotten into any combat yet which is good because my only land neighbor is France who is much better than I am and would kick my ass. Therefore I am trying to maintain good relations with them.

Post any questions or comments, or at least let me know that someone is reading this thread

[Freyland]

I am. Very interested in the game, as I enjoyed the first. Just trying to determine if I want to give up my dreams of eventually playing a space game instead of medieval or fantasy.

[jztemple2]

So, according to Steam I've got 11.6 hours on the game, and the campaign clock in-game reads seven and a half hours. This is my first campaign and I'm guessing the different was sitting in menus, pausing that sort of thing. With this much gameplay under my belt I'm ready to give some impressions...

...I like it. Oh, you want more?

As folks have stated, KoH2S is sort of a cross between CK3-lite, Total War and whatever RTS you fondly remember. There is a lot of details to the game, lots of things that modify other things, and lots going on under the hood with AI decisions that can be as inscrutable as why some ruler won't let his princess marry my prince. Yet to me it is all a lot of fun. One of the things the devs posted about the game, and in reference no doubt to another game they didn't mention (no doubt CK3), they felt like you shouldn't need ten hours of time just to understand how to play the game. And this is true, in a couple of hours I felt like I knew how to play the game. What I didn't know, and even now after eleven hours, is how to play the game well.

I started out as Brittany, with only one province, Rennes. I was expecting to not expand due to being isolated by a powerful France, but due to a royal marriage I inherited a province on the north coast of Spain. After a couple more hour in the game I inherited two more provinces, Paris and Rouen. Then I got caught up in a long war with England and as part of trying to get Leon to enter the war on my side I gave them that province in Spain. That war ended with a white peace but later on I was in another war and to end it I had to give away Rouen. So I still have Rennes and Paris and after yet another war I'm still holding on to them.

But let's look at what is currently going on. Here is my Kingdom of Brittany, as seen in the kingdom display mode.


Here's the province display mode, showing my provinces Paris and Rennes


Here is the province of Paris, showing the town of Paris top center and the six smaller green rings highlight the settlements that provide the province and the kingdom with various goods.


And here's Rennes, province and town, and notice that this province has eight settlements. Different provinces have different numbers of settlements and as far as I can tell, you can neither create nor permanent destroy a settlement. You can burn down an enemy settlement which will take time to rebuild.


This is the royal family, showing the ruler Duke Oton. Oton is the brother of the last king and therefore keeps his title of Duke. The Duchess is his wife. The four portraits below the Duchess are the children and there are never more than four. The child on the left has the full crown showing he is the successor. And two of the four have spouses, shown below their portrait. To the right are the family traditions, these are passed from ruler to ruler.


Along the top of the screen are nine portraits. The ruler is in the center, surrounded by eight knights. Knights can be of several categories: merchants, diplomats, spies, clerics and marshals. All have certain abilities specific to their role and one of the central challenges of the game is to rule a kingdom with only those nine folks. There will be times you wish you had one more marshal, but you'd have to give up one of the other knights so you can have that slot. This is the kind of way that KoH2S keeps the game from getting too complicated.


There is a whole lot more to the game, but what I'll do is wait for some specific questions or comments to point me towards what folks want to know more about. However, I will keep posting as I continue playing to highlight some more interesting aspects as they occur. This hopefully will help to keep future posts from being so overwhelming.

[dbt1949]

I've like to start off as Ireland, unite it and go to Scotland and work my way down.
I got new one and after a long download I'm ready to go.
What differences are there between this one and the first?

[jztemple2]

That didn't take long, did it?

I'm trying to prepare my plans to invade and conquer Lorraine, my next door neighbor who invaded me a while ago and I wish to get rid of permanently. Lorraine consists of only a single province so should be easier to defeat, but to do that I have to capture their town of Nancy. It is possible to capture a town without siege engines, but it takes forever, so let's see what I can do about that.

Here's a look at the building I have in Renne. At the bottom left center you'll see that six of the eight building boxes have something in them. The big dialog screen in the center shows all possible buildings, with the ones I've built in full color.


The Siege Workshops are an upgrade to the Barracks. It will allow me to construct siege equipment. However, it costs a lot more gold than I have right now.


So maybe there's a better way. The ruler of Lorraine has four unmarried daughters. I propose that my prince marry one of his princesses. However, the king wants something in return, a Non-Aggression Pact.


That's fine with me as wars are costly and unpredictable. With no sons I'm figuring that my kingdom will inherit Lorraine when the current king dies since my prince will be the only male (I'm not sure about this, but we'll see).

Meanwhile, not everyone is happy with the marriage. The Burgundians don't want me to get Lorraine. But they have attacked me in the past, so who cares?


Finally, let's look at the current relations map. My kingdom of Brittany is in purple. Kingdoms in green are more friendly towards me. The ones in beige are more or less neutral, like Lorraine who was pretty hostile to me till the marriage. And the ones in red are pretty hostile, with Flanders being my biggest challenge. I have to find out who doesn't like Flanders and get them to like me more.

[jztemple2]

I've like to start off as Ireland, unite it and go to Scotland and work my way down.
I got new one and after a long download I'm ready to go.
What differences are there between this one and the first?

I never played the first one but I've seen posts that say there isn't too much different in the basic gameplay. Remember when you are selecting your starting kingdom that there are three start dates which alter the available kingdoms and their sizes.

[jztemple2]

Turns out marrying my prince to one of the kingdom of Lorraine princesses didn't pay off, as seen below. The old ruler died and because Lorraine is only one province, I wasn't entitled to get some land through my son who was married to his daughter. However, that's good to know. In the future I should try to always marry off my kids to kingdoms with lots of provinces. As I said above, you are always learning new things in this game.

[jztemple2]

These are the kinds of messages you get occasionally. While Non-Aggression Pacts are always nice with countries you don't intend on attacking anyway, Swabia isn't much of a threat as it is only a one province kingdom and a vassal as well. I'll just refuse the offer.