Knights of Honor 2: Sovereign

[Gusington]

Congrats - I am jealous :/

[W8taminute]

Very impressive Ian.  Nice job!

[Ian C]

Thank you. However, my celebrations were short-lived.

Don't be a dumbass like me, and attempt to delete autosaved games. It also deletes your entire campaign save and cannot be recovered.

I started a new campaign on normal difficulty with no buffs as Byzantium. Honestly, too many provinces to contend with in my early career so I settled for a 1 province Duchy of Athens.
Venice declared war so I signed non-aggression pacts with its friends and succeeded in allying Bulgaria. I built a fairly good army just in time to crush a rebellion led by a Spy and they signed peace.
Couldn't keep the army at full strength after war though, as the drain on food was significant.

It's going to be a long, long game and I'm looking forward to the challenge. At some point I might try a giant like Byzantium again but not until I know I can repeat my earlier success on a normal difficulty.

[devoncop]

Wow. Amazing job Ian.

I haven't even looked at trying to get all the goods....more playing it as a kind of sandbox with no victory conditions. If I manage somehow to conquer all of the British Isles I will call it a day for this campaign but it's more likely a Gus style rebellion will collapse things from within as with all the extra territories a lot won't have governors.

Good luck with Athens.... You like a challenge  :)

[Gusington]

'Gus like rebellion'  :-[

[devoncop]

'Gus like rebellion'  :-[

:DD :DD :DD

[Ian C]

I started a new campaign on normal difficulty with no buffs as Byzantium. Honestly, too many provinces to contend with in my early career so I settled for a 1 province Duchy of Athens.
Venice declared war so I signed non-aggression pacts with its friends and succeeded in allying Bulgaria. I built a fairly good army just in time to crush a rebellion led by a Spy and they signed peace.
Couldn't keep the army at full strength after war though, as the drain on food was significant.

It's going to be a long, long game and I'm looking forward to the challenge. At some point I might try a giant like Byzantium again but not until I know I can repeat my earlier success on a normal difficulty.

Well, choosing a one-province nation with a peaceful strategy was a mistake on normal difficulty. Nicea eventually laid siege and I was destroyed. It's an interesting learning experience.

[Grim.Reaper]

Another big update today.......

General

• Improved the way the Papacy assigns cardinals, fixing an issue where no cardinals were left in late-game scenarios. Papal states should now aim to have at least two cardinals in its court and consider lower-level clerics, when no others are available.
• There is now a guaranteed period (of around 10 minutes) at the start of each new king's rule, during which he may not get married automatically.
• Added a relationship penalty when breaking royal ties with a kingdom (through audience).
• "Claim caliphate" is now unavailable for vassalized kingdoms.
• "Spy murder", "Hunting Incident" and "Kill the King" plots now get cancelled when the action's target gets imprisoned.
• The "Inspire rebellion" spy plot is now disabled for AI kingdoms at the beginning of a new game (time depending on to the difficulty level).
• New Journey opportunities no longer arise for scholars when they are already on a journey.
• Achievements are now disabled when playing the game with modded files.
• Multiplayer is now possible between players having different mods, as long as they're text-only (no defs/maps modded).

Tactical battles

• Tweaked the AI behavior of army leaders, making them less aggressive when winning decisively.
• Army leader squads retreat chance is now equal on all difficulty levels. Likeliness of retreat is increased when they are low on health.
• Fleeing squads now find a safer spot to retreat.
• Siege equipment now usually spawns at the back lines of an army (only spawning in front during assault battles).

Balance

• Reduced cost of "Village Militia" upgrades "Training Grounds" and "Town Watch", as well as "Rituals" upgrade in "Shrines".
• "Training Grounds" now produces Levies in town
• "Town Watch" now increases Siege Defense in town
• "Hostage Towers" now produces Levies in town and Gold per castle. Removed increased prison capacity effect.

UX / MISC

• Added additional indication for defeated players in multilayer menu.
• Crusader armies now give full world view visibility (fog of war vision and path arrows) to the kingdom which owns the crusade leader. Path arrows remain hidden for all other kingdoms.
• Health bars in tactical battles now take into account the maximum manpower of squads, not the manpower they have upon starting a battle.
• Added information about how much a merchant is gaining from their trade in the trade expedition preparation tooltip.
• Added separate tutorial messages (and hotspots, while holding down ALT) for province loyalty and local stability.
• Added visual differences to town icon states in province overview UI, for when a province is occupied/under siege.
• CTRL + clicking a kingdom in the scoreboard (top-right corner) opens audience with them, same as clicking on their coat of arms.
• Passive books and piety bonuses from clerics in court are now shown in their character tooltips.
• Diplomacy responses tweaked, so AI kingdoms state reasons for accepting and denying peace offers/demands more often.
• Credits may now be not only paused, but also resumed, when clicking on them.

Audio

• Added a sound effect when someone writes in lobby chat.
• Dragging/swapping units in armies' UI now plays the proper hire sound for the corresponding troop.
• Added voice lines for when an army leader dies in tactical battle and that doesn't end the battle.
• Fixed an issue, preventing characters greeting you, when being clicked while political view is active.
• Fixes wrong voice lines playing when manually cancelling a knight's action in multiplayer.
• Changing the game's text language no longer auto changes the audio language (if there is no corresponding one).
• Fixed an issue causing the voice line for enemies fleeing (in tactical battles) when player squads were fleeing.
• Fixed a wrong voice line being played when ransoming a prisoner, as well as inviting an exiled prisoner to your royal court.
• Foreign characters no longer greet you when you select them (for example, through messages).
• Fixed a missing voice line when your king's squad dies in the tactical battle and the battle keeps going.


Fixes

General

• Additional fixes were made to invalid resolutions being set, which led to odd behavior/crashes.

• Updated end game screens to properly support wide-screen resolution.
• Multiple text fixes and improvements.
• Fixed Edinburgh's province name.
• Fixed a bug where, special characters (Pope/Patriarch) were no longer aging after becoming "Important relatives".
• Improved mini map behavior when dragging near the corners.
• Fixed a bug where players could start with a random kingdom that is larger than the goal for Peasant Rush.
• Fixed an unresolved text in the province resources tooltips (during disorder).
• Fixed pope actions not leading to any relationship changes.
• New scholar journeys can no longer be activated via the new opportunity message, while the scholar is already on a journey. A general fix to other similar actions was done as well.
• Fixed Emperor of the World AI sometimes voting instantly.
• Fixes to loyalist rebellions declaring independence to properly restore a destroyed kingdom they are loyal to.
• Fixed the Negotiate Peace Diplomat action something stopping without a reason.
• Fixed a visual issue with the religion window, leading to the pope's portrait and status being displayed while the papacy is destroyed.
• Fixed an issue with knight statuses not updating properly after successfully performing the "Puppet Switch Sides" plot.
• Fixed issues with certain campaign rules not staying the same, when you create a new campaign from an existing save file.
• The "Gain province loyalty" action may no longer be performed by two clerics at once.
• Fixed the "Vassalize" spy plot to properly transfer the vassals of the targeted kingdom to the spy's kingdom.
• Fixed visual glitches with tutorial highlights in certain non-standard resolutions.
• The "Toggle score panel" hotkey now also works in single player.
• Fixed the Rotate left/right control options being mirrored incorrectly in preferences.
• Fixed text instances where key binding references were broken, if corresponding key bindings were left empty.
• Fixed an issue, causing a province feature (Cattle or Horses) sometimes to be shown in the province of Epirus (the town of Arta), when they were not available.
• Fixed an issue with the Change Religion action in the Religion and Culture window, showing progress from previous campaigns.
• Fixed a bug with crusade-formed kingdoms being able to become vassals to other kingdoms, that are already vassals.
• Fixed unite quests not working for kingdoms that were defeated at the start of a campaign (which includes provinces which can be restored by rebels/crusaders).
• Fixed the crusade ended message not appearing if the crusade's target is defeated by a rebellion.
• Fixed a bug where the "Dead character" status tooltip keeps refreshing after being shown.

Armies and Battles

• Fixed a case with AI army standing still when they could be helping with a siege or helping against rebels.

• The AI in world view should now properly consider its squads' health, when determining if its armies are weak or not.

• Fixes to army AI in world view, causing them to return to their town quickly after exiting it (caused by incorrectly calculating threats in the province).

• Tweaks to how troops choose enemies to fight in tactical battles. Cavalry units should now correctly target archers that are running away.

• Bonuses to unit attributes are now shown when hiring them in army/garrison. Also fixed issues related to that, such as not visualizing ranged defense correctly.

• Bonuses to squad defense from siege defense are now only added in simulated siege/assault.

• Fixed the friendly fire reduction effect from certain skills/traditions to work properly.
• Fixed battle estimation not being recalculated properly when the battle type changes.
• Fixed province occupation events incorrectly being called by the many different settlements in a province - fixes multiple nobility drops on realm occupation.
• Fixed heal cost for garrison squads that were hired from mercenaries.
• Fixed wrong heal cost being shown in garrison tooltip (wasn't including level cost increase).
• Fixed battle nameplates sometimes showing numbers/circular frames in multiplayer, after a pillage battle is over and pillage is already in progress.
• Fixed a rare bug leading to cavalry squads standing in front of a gate and not attacking it.
• Fixes to faulty rotations of ships during battles in worldview.
• When a reinforcing army backs out of a fight and a second army is standing by, it will now enter the battle as new reinforcing army.
• Improvements to the rotation of archers in tactical battles when they are about to shoot and change target.
• When an army leader dies in tactical battle, he is now guaranteed to also die in worldview as well (previously, there was a chance for him to be imprisoned afterwards, disregarding the outcome of the battle).
• When mercenaries finish a battle in water and have to heal, they should now properly travel to the nearest shore to do so.
• Fixed cases in which crusader armies were accidentally entering another realm, while on their way to their target, and then getting side-tracked by attacking other targets. This could cause the crusader army to stray away from the crusade target indefinitely.
• Fixed the attack bonus for leading a jihad not taking affect. Affected armies should now be properly buffed by it.
• Fixed issues with the game not pausing during tactical battle tutorials in certain cases.
• Fixed refresh issues with the army morale tooltip.
• Fixes to armies accidentally going outside the map boundaries in world view.
• Improvements to squad movement in tactical battles, fixing issues with squads speeding up briefly when ordered to move to a location near their current one, while they're already moving. Now, they should retain their speed (increasing it only when ordered to run/charge or when changing direction more drastically).
• Fixed an issue with town gates in tactical battles being restored to full health if they were previously destroyed via the "Open the gates" spy plot and then hit by a catapult during battle.
• Fixed issues with inability to reveal the destination of a squad that's been ordered to move via the CTRL + LMB drag command (when revealing squad commands by holding a button).
• Fixed rare issues with black spots appearing on the terrain on tactical battles.
• Fixed a bug where the fortification upgrade icon did not clear out when you tab to a province with an ongoing battle.
• Fixed an issue with squad levels (stars) sometimes not showing up in squad icons.

Multiplayer

• Fixed a bug where the "Co-op" turns to "Free for all", when victory conditions are met and one of the players leaves the campaign.
• Fixed visual issues with player/team indications in multiplayer lobbies, causing non-valid team members to be shown after changing team rules.
• Fixed UI issues when a player disconnects and host migration happens, resulting in broken screen visuals for a few seconds (mainly odd artefacts and transparency issues).
• Fixed response from host to client for Burn Food Reserves spy action (clients weren't getting proper update of the food amount in the sieged castle/town).
• Potential fix for client/host mismatch whether an army is inside or outside of a town.
• Fixed an issue with clients in multiplayer campaigns not receiving resource-related patriarch bonuses.

[devoncop]

Well, choosing a one-province nation with a peaceful strategy was a mistake on normal difficulty. Nicea eventually laid siege and I was destroyed. It's an interesting learning experience.

Commiserations !

Unlike in the Paradox games I think conquering the world as a one province minor will be pretty much impossible (thankfully !)

I just got persuaded to attack England again by supporting Norway's attack and thinking I could pick up Munster and complete the Scottish occupation of Ireland and maybe pick up Warwick as well the Scottish Marshals marched south. This time however the English armies were no longer on the continent and I was in some trouble as rebellions in Ulster and Dublin kept the two Scottish armies in Ireland and Wales busy and the two armies matching south were forced to retreat to Newcastle and both were captured. Just as it looked like England would take Newcastle back as the garrison reduced, Norway managed to force England into a peace and the war was over......phew. Lesson learned as I had to pay 4000 gold to get my Marshall's back. :hide:

My diplomat is now working on a formal attack plan so that in round 3 hopefully both Noway and a very strong Castile can join in simultaneously.....

[Gusington]

I could have told you all about trying out as a one-province nation. RIP Bosnia and Ragusa.

I haven't seen an update pop up yet...looks like it appeared just a few minutes ago. Ah it just popped up. Grim is faster than Steam!!

Still deciding whether it's worth salvaging Moldavia or if I should just forget about it and move on to a new campaign. Did not get a chance to play last night.

[devoncop]

I could have told you all about trying out as a one-province nation. RIP Bosnia and Ragusa.

I haven't seen an update pop up yet...looks like it appeared just a few minutes ago. Ah it just popped up. Grim is faster than Steam!!

Still deciding whether it's worth salvaging Moldavia or if I should just forget about it and move on to a new campaign. Did not get a chance to play last night.

New Campaign Gus !!

You know you want to :) I have learnt so much during this Scottish run and can see I have made a ton of mistakes with my development and usage of Knights so although I am having an absuolut blast and will carry it through until my likely demise I am already looking forward to a new run :-)

The patch is great (the mis-spelling of Edinburgh had been annoying me  :) )

[Ian C]

Commiserations !

Unlike in the Paradox games I think conquering the world as a one province minor will be pretty much impossible (thankfully !)

I just got persuaded to attack England again by supporting Norway's attack and thinking I could pick up Munster and complete the Scottish occupation of Ireland and maybe pick up Warwick as well the Scottish Marshals marched south. This time however the English armies were no longer on the continent and I was in some trouble as rebellions in Ulster and Dublin kept the two Scottish armies in Ireland and Wales busy and the two armies matching south were forced to retreat to Newcastle and both were captured. Just as it looked like England would take Newcastle back as the garrison reduced, Norway managed to force England into a peace and the war was over......phew. Lesson learned as I had to pay 4000 gold to get my Marshall's back. :hide:

My diplomat is now working on a formal attack plan so that in round 3 hopefully both Noway and a very strong Castile can join in simultaneously.....

Did you know that refusing to attack nations doesn't result in any penalty hit with the asking nation? I refuse all the time.

I've not used the 'Formal Attack Plan' action yet. I'm guessing it gives buffs ?

I could have told you all about trying out as a one-province nation. RIP Bosnia and Ragusa.

I learned my lesson. This opening * might * be successful if I were to rush-invade some surrounding cities early on to expand quickly. I might try it.

[devoncop]

Hi Ian

I did realise there would have been no penalty in refusing Norway but in the first Scotland/Norway v England war the English armies were almost all fighting the Norwegians in mainland Europe (Norway has expanded west as far as the Low countries). As a result I took Ulster, Gwynned  and Newcastle from them before they sued for peace.

Sadly in the second Scotland/Norway v England war the English armies rather unsportingly decided to concentrate on the Scots :pullhair:. The only good thing was that as a rsult the Norwegians made gains v England forcing them to accept a peace from Norway before they had time to take back Newcastle whose garrison just held on long enough
.

[Gusington]

I haven't visited the British Isles in any of my campaigns yet to see the misspelling of Edinburgh hahaha.

A brand new campaign sounds logical but seeing Moldavia to the very bitter end may be good for laffs and perhaps I will learn something. Probably not but I can dream.

One thing I am growing not to like is the lack of time recording - since it's real time there is no mention of what year the campaign is in. Or seasons for that matter. I always loved that about the TW series.

[W8taminute]

^I've noticed that too about no date display in game.  Would be nice to have for flavor purposes but I suppose they left date keeping out of the game due to it's sandbox nature.