Knights of Honor II: Sovereign News

Hello friends and welcome to DevDiary 34 for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! Our next update is coming live tomorrow, so we are excited to share with you the new features and changes we’ve prepared.

Two of the aspects we’d like to build upon most are Diplomacy and Religion, as they are essential for the game and we have plenty of ideas of what we can add or improve there. Since this is a major endeavor, we’ve decided to split it into several updates and for this one we started with Catholicism – the most widespread religion in the game.

View the full article here

[h2]Patch Overview[/h2]

This is our second major patch since Knights of Honor II: Sovereign’s exciting release, so strap in! We focused here mostly on responding to player feedback and providing a few new, fun ways to play the game.

First up, we’ve been able to greatly improve the zoom functionality, both in World View as well as Battle View. Players with good enough hardware can enable “Extra Zoom” in the options menu and get further zoom-out levels throughout the game! We also added a seamless transition from World View to the Political View when you hit the zoom-out threshold, making it easier than ever to move around the map. This was a highly requested feature that took a bit of technical work and optimization, but should really enhance everyone’s experience.

Many in the community were also requesting the ability to add waypoints when managing their armies in World View, and we’re here to deliver. You can now hold SHIFT and RMB click to set army waypoints to better help them navigate to their destination, maybe to avoid pesky rivers or neutral territories, or even just control how they move from point A to point B.

The next major change is a new way of playing KoH2:S – Shattered World! Configurable in the “Kingdom Size” rule when setting up a campaign, Shattered World changes the starting size of all kingdoms in the world, configurable by the player, giving each kingdom an even playing field at the beginning. Things like trade centers, vassalages, and more are all removed to create the most balanced, fresh world setup possible, and giving players all new challenges when starting out. This is also available for multiplayer games as well, of course! The concept was highly recommended by the community, and we feel it is a fun, new way to experience KoH2:S’s game experience.

Combine all of this with a bunch of bug fixes, AI improvements, balance tweaks, network stability improvements, and so much more, we feel 1.3.0 has turned out to be a solid patch that we truly hope you enjoy. We’re already hard at work on the next major patch, so stay tuned for future improvements!

Thanks again to all of you for supporting us, and we hope you have a fantastic time with the patch.

[h2]General[/h2]

• Added the possibility to set waypoints for armies in World view by RMB clicking while holding SHIFT.
• Teammates can now see each other’s towns’ buildings and stationed armies.
• Major improvements in multiplayer libraries, preventing some hosting issues, disconnects and crashes.

[h2]Camera controls[/h2]

• Further zoom out in World view.
• Further zoom out in Battle view (Tactical battles).
• “Extra zoom” option added in the game’s settings to protect the players with low-end hardware from performance issues due to the additional zoom out.
• Transition between Political view and World view through scrolling.
• Camera smoothing on edge/keyboard scrolling.
• Camera smoothing on zoom in/out.

[h2]Campaign settings[/h2]

• Kingdom standings: Players can now choose from one of five starting limitation modes for players’ kingdoms – without trade centers (this limitation was obligatory by now), with or without autocephalies and caliphates (this option was present already), without being/having vassals, without all the above (“Balanced” start) and “Historical” with all of the above being possible for players’ kingdoms.

• Shattered world: Players can now choose starting kingdom sizes to apply not only to players’ but to all kingdoms instead, resulting in a very fragmented and balanced starting world. Autocephalous church, caliphate standing, trade centers and vassalage are removed for all kingdoms (regardless the “Kingdom standings” option). Shattered world can be activated from the “Kingdom size” campaign rule.

[h2]Battles[/h2]

[h3]Improvements[/h3]

• Disorganized penalty can now also trigger when troops shoot, making stacking ranged units an inefficient strategy.
• Squads positioning logic improved, so that chasing enemies is now more efficient.
• AI: areas where archers are currently shooting are considered more dangerous; archers that are currently fighting in melee or have run out of salvos are treated as melee squads for the purposes of their enemy calculating threat.
• AI: Noblemen cavalry is much more reluctant to attack a squad where the enemy side threat would be greater than the marshals’ side threat.
• AI: improved logic and timing when choosing retreat positions.
• AI: maintain formation logic improved to prevent troops entering dangerous positions in the middle of a fight.
• AI: nobles weren't retreating when their side was winning overwhelmingly – now this is possible.
• AI: It was possible for the battle AI retreat command to work even at 0 priority (if without a reason if there were no other preferred options). Now this is disabled.
• AI: defending own ranged squads is now more probable.
• AI: choosing not to attack, but to move towards a capture point is now less likely.
• Additional morale factors are now shown in tooltips.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Noblemen cavalry gets 25% defense boost against ranged attacks, but -4 to attack (-12.5%).
• Disorganized penalty to attack increased from 50% to 60%.
• Base friendly fire of ranged units increased from 50% to 80%.
• Light and Heavy desert and standard spearmen defense (melee and ranged) slightly reduced, in most cases melee defense reduced by 10 and ranged – accordingly.
Fixes
• Bugfixes related to the AI choosing to retreat.
• Fixed an issue, causing damage on retreat to be dealt only by the main enemy army, not the supporting one, nor the garrison.
• Overkilling during retreat now fixed – attacking units will always pick a retreating unit that's still alive.
• Siege equipment’s morale/resilience/manpower stats/bonuses hidden from tooltips, as these do not affect siege equipment.
• Morale tooltip fixes.
• Fix interaction blockers for battleview.
• Fixed retreat button being available if you have no armies in the battle.
• Fixed a bug in garrison manpower calculations leading to doubled manpower being displayed in the province overview window during sieges.

[h2]Modding[/h2]

[h3]Improvements[/h3]

• UI now supports adding extra slots in royal court.
• UI now supports adding more building slots in towns (the buildings are initially resized to fit, then the container becomes scrollable if buildings slots are still too many).
• Disabled resizing of mod upload tool window.
• Removed warnings if you're currently running mods that are compatible with a save's mods.
• If there are mods with the same workshop_id inside both local mods and workshop mods, the one from workshop mods are now hidden.
• Jpg, jpeg and gif files for mod preview in ModUploadTool are now properly working.
• Added a warning message at game load, if there are broken system files (for example .def files).
• Added an option to upload a mod with "Unlisted" visibility.
• Added a new system variable “population_growth_from_surplus_food”, so that modders can now tweak population growth rate as a function of food supply.

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Miscellaneous modding errors fixes.
• Fixed ModUploadTool bugs, happening when trying to change the current preview image.
• Fixed parsing bugs related to different directory separators being used in different places.
• Fixed settings window being broken after a mod de/activation.
• Fixed a crash when trying to change the mod preview image.
• Fixed the mod and image paths not displaying fully when too long.
• Fixed the "Publish" button not being reenabled sometimes.
• Fixed a bug, where the Settings window transitions to the Gameplay tab after enabling or disabling a mod.

[h3]UX / MISC[/h3]

• Audio improvements and fixes: new sound effects on changing campaign rules and countdown when starting a campaign; on mercenary selection and hire; new siege process sound effects; new SFX and ambience on victory & defeat screens and others.
• Extended “exile knight” action tooltip to show the knights’ wages decreases.
• Add visual indication for the timeout of the chosen emperor in the EoW screen.
• Edited realm feature presets concerning provinces with 3 monasteries, so that the guaranteed realms for the given preset are always picked. Previously, there was a chance for them to not be picked, due to randomness and weights.
• Changed prison logic so that any prisoners which are part of the special royal court (own rebels) will be removed from it after escaping from the dungeon.
• Religious requirements added in unit tooltips.

[h2]Other fixes[/h2]

[h3]General[/h3]

• Changed books income logic so Base book bonus will now remain, after getting book income greater than zero.
• Fixed population majority resetting itself to starting values, when loading a game in which it had reached 100%.
• Fixed a case where trade centers could start too close to each other.
• Fixed an issue caused by saves within under a second after loading, causing bugs like having resurrected characters and two kings at once.
• Fixed crusade province capture outcomes that sometimes ended up giving the province back to its owner.
• Fixed dead marshals still leading armies.
• Fix for kingdoms that are vassals of themselves.
• Prevented Disorder Rule from activating when the population majority kingdom is destroyed.
• Fixed a visual bug with kingdom offers icon duplication when you have a Marshal selected and save/load the game.
• Fixed a bug where knights were not properly selected after quicksaving/quick-loading the game.
• Fixed an issue where the clients were seeing a kicked player as still in lobby. Fixed an issue where there was still a network connection being wrongly maintained if a player was kicked from an already started campaign. Fixed an issue where the player’s name coloration was wrong for kicked players (which too was leading to players appearing as in lobby).
• Fixed a bug, where selecting a kingdom through coat of arms in the Kingdom Selection phase results in internal game errors.
• Fixed: players weren’t receiving bonus gold from the Iron Fist skill for defeating rebels if those rebels were currently plundering a settlement and players were defending it. Defeating a rebel/rebellion will now also provide gold, calculated for the participating knight with highest “gold from rebels” bonuses, regardless of his role (leader/supporter).
• Fixed a bug, where the “Let fate decide” option from the “Prince is now grown up” message did not add any random skill to a Prince.
• Fixed a bug causing messages for newborn prince to not be recreated on game load.
• Fixed a bug preventing proper Papal states restoration when using the "Restore Papacy action" in a multiplayer game.
• Fixed a bug causing pope action outcome messages to be sent to all players, even if the pope is not in their court.
• Fixed a bug, due to which the selected class for princes was automatically changed to Marshal on the client in a multiplayer game.
• Creating a new SP campaign from save now properly disables the "Minor Victory" setting (there was a visual bug).
• Fixed a visual bug, where the manpower in the "Kingdom overview" window will only show the manpower from the garrison during sieges.
• Fixed a visual bug, where some buildings appear offscreen when selected from the buildings tab.
Misc.
• Adjusted goods legend text (for already produced in province) to be less misleading.
• Minor text improvements:

o Morale factor texts reworded to be valid from third-party + other inconsistencies fixed.
o Reworded a misleading defense bonus stat from jihad.
o Army penalties due to disembarking in world view are now noted as "disembarked" in unit tooltips, instead of "disorganized", to not confuse them with the effect with the same name in tactical battles.
o Tweaked the prisoner escaped message, to fit better when the escapee was a rebel in your court.
o Minor text fixes to loading screen tips.
o Others…

• Fixed errors when changing Settings while in an active campaign.
• Fixed errors on victory screen.
• Fix some procedures being incorrectly called twice on a game load.
• Fixed a visual issue with Marshal status icons during pillages.
• Fixed issues with pyramids flickering with certain antialiasing methods (all except TAA).
• Fixed Nile clipping with the world’s edge, down south.
• Fixed a bug with the clickable links to Royal Library for Japanese and Chinese languages.
• Fixed a rare bug where dead king's portrait was shown in the "Great Powers and Rankings" window.
• Fixed a bug where messages for new opportunities and prince growth related events were not recreated on game load.
• Fixed an issue, where the "Back to Court" status icon remains displayed on the king or prince's portrait at the end of the action.
• Fixed a graphical artefact causing a rare transparent cube to be visible in the east part of Venice, in the ocean.
• Fixed disappearing battle nameplates on siege interruption.




 

Hello friends and welcome to the third post-release DevDiary for “Knights of Honor II: Sovereign”! We know that it’s been some time since our last update and you’re probably hungry for news about what’s to come. So, let’s dive right in and discuss what you can expect in the latest upcoming patch.

To read the full Dev Diary click Here

• Fundamental changes are introduced to how mods work. Mods can now be defined without copying the entire contents of the game’s moddable folders, allowing users to define only the changes that they wish to make.
• Changing visual assets like icons and illustrations is now also possible.
• Added Steam Workshop support to the game.
• Multiple mods can now be activated simultaneously.

A full guide on how to create mods, where to store them and how to upload to Steam Workshop is now included in the game’s installation folder, the latest version of these resources can be found here.
Please note that mods are now located in a different folder, which means that any existing mods must be moved to this new location. We strongly advice reworking pre-existing mods in the new modding system.

[h2]General[/h2]

• Characters and towns can now be renamed. To do so, press F2 while you have a character or town selected (the keybind can be changed in the game’s settings). This can also be done while hovering on a character’s portrait/name in the UI.
• Mercenaries and rebels on your side can now also be set as reinforcements for an ongoing battle and will reliably do so.
• AI no longer sends weak armies against much stronger rebel forces.
• Pacts no longer end when their members declare war against each other. Instead, only supporters that got hostile are removed from the pact.

[h2]UX / MISC[/h2]

• Added a handful of diplomacy reaction commentaries for relation changes, related to changing your kingdom's religion. Information about which relations were changed due to changing your kingdom’s religion has also been added to the action’s success message.
• The “Construct new buildings” reminder message now resets also when you expand one of your towns by unlocking a building slot. The message has been reworded to reflect this change. Also, the cooldown of the reminder message is increased.
• Religious tension is now shown with an icon alongside a province's piety income, in the Province Overview window.
• Occupied provinces are now highlighted in the province overview window with a striped background across the entire row.
• Updated the manpower column in the Province Overview window to show the total number of town defenders.
• Updated the Province Overview window to show a siege icon for when a town is besieged.
• When claiming autocephaly/subordinating to the Ecumenical Patriarch, relationship changes with Constantinople’s owner now work no matter what the owning kingdom’s religion is.
• Knight hire tooltips now show how much would wages get increased for the specific class, upon hiring a new knight.
• Marshal skills now indicate in their tooltips that they unlock the ability to lead an army (“Gather Army” action) for any class.
• Various improvements to the visual behavior of the army reinforcement slot icons in world view battle selection and tactical battles.
• Dead army leaders in tactical battles are now also shown as such in the top UI bar.
• Upgrades in progress are now shown with circular progress bars in the buildings window.
• Hovering on a foreign kingdom’s defensive pact now properly displays full information about each participating kingdom.
• Adjusted the army reinforcement slot tooltip text to include the real remaining time for an army to arrive in world view while also showing the estimated arrival time in tactical battles.
• The fame containers for great powers in the Great Powers and Rankings window/Emperor of the World vote are no longer colored when these kingdoms are led by players. Hovering on these elements now also shows a player-led kingdom’s vote weight as two separate values (split into “for” and “against”).
• Added additional information in the crusade tooltip that shows if the crusader is your enemy, based on your kingdom’s stance with the papacy/the crusader's kingdom/the pope's kingdom.
• Changed the coat of arms of Armenia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to be different than those of Zakarid Armenia and Poland (respectively).
• Class level indications are no longer shown in female characters’ tooltips.
• The battle estimation tooltip is no longer shown during regular plunder process (when no defending armies are involved or after they are defeated).

[h2]Audio[/h2]

• Added new SFXs, ambient and a short melody to the Emperor of the World voting process.
• Added basic interaction sounds to certain clicks in the campaign setup window (e.g., choosing rules).
• Reduced the cooldowns for war and jihad-related music tracks, so that they are played more often.

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

General
• Fixed an issue leading to it being possible for two farms of the same type to be spawned in a single province.
• Fixed goods with names including more than one word (e.g. Trained Horses) sometimes giving their bonuses more than once.
• Fixed a bug causing buildings in progress to remain after destroying their prerequisite.
• Fixed commerce resource rounding, so that what you see in the resources bar is the correct value. Previously it was possible to not be able to send a merchant to trade, even though you see that you have enough commerce available.
• Fixed a bug causing the current food value to be displayed incorrectly when selecting foreign towns in infiltrated kingdoms.
• Fixed the “Help our prisoners escape” action message showing no knight names upon success, even though there were escapees.
• Fixed prisoners invited to court via the royal dungeon not having any skills.
• Mercenaries are now immediately dismissed when they are finished with their tasks, instead of staying idle for some time (which caused kingdoms to keep paying for their upkeep).
• Fixed mercenaries being sometimes spawned between a river and a castle, leading to issues with reaching and hiring them.
• Fixed a bug causing the "Rhetoric" tradition effects to not show in the governing Tooltip.
• Fixed the AI votes during emperor of the world not showing up when "proceed to next voter" is clicked and the game was paused. Also fixed a rare case in which you could pause/unpause the world view while an Emperor of the World voting is under way.
• Fixed an issue causing town population to be lower than expected, after loading a save game.
• Fixes to inconsistent hover behavior on checkboxes in preferences.
• Fixed a visual bug causing a message to refresh needlessly when you click on its icon.
• Fixed kingdom tooltips to display the correct information for Loyalist and Abandoned armies.
• Fixed a bug with the "War Score" tooltip, where score values were incorrect if the player was not a part of the war.
• Further fixes to quality settings not being properly applied when switching between title screen/world view/tactical battles (including fixes to v-sync being set incorrectly in some cases).

[h2]Royal Family[/h2]

• Fixed spy kings inheriting puppets from destroyed kingdoms which belonged to the old king.
• Fixed a visual bug where the "Available for marriage" status icon in the Kingdom selection window remains visible on an empty family slot.
• Fixed royal families that are generated (e.g., at the start of the game) to sometimes have an heir that's not the eldest son.
• Fixed a bug related to king and prince ability stars not reflecting the bonuses gained by the abilities of their spouses.
• Fixed a bug causing rebelling important relatives to remain in their slots in the Royal Family window after their death.
• Skills of princes outside the royal court should now properly level up to rank 3 when the king takes the Learning skill, and your kingdom has it as a tradition.

[h2]Diplomacy[/h2]

• Fixes to relationship not changing properly when changing your religion to the same one that’s followed by your liege.
• The “Open Audience” diplomat action is no longer available while the diplomat is being recalled from his “Improve relations” mission.
• Fixed visual bug causing the Audience window to be refreshed when you click on a king's portrait.
• Fixed offensive pacts being revealed incorrectly when a king dies.
• Fixed relationship decreases not working when you execute a foreign knight in your dungeon.
• Fixed invasion plans not being shown in political view (stances). Also fixed invasion plans not being shown in the kingdom selection window.
• Fixed sovereign kingdoms being incorrectly displayed as vassals, in the defensive pact icon (top-left corner of the screen).

[h2]Religion[/h2]

• Fixed patriarchs not aging in rare cases, specifically after claiming autocephaly.
• Fixed Claim Autocephaly action to respect discount/penalty from Clergy opinions.
• Players may no longer excommunicate themselves via the Ask for Excommunication diplomacy offer.
• Fixed Writing skill not giving its books bonus for Shrines when governed by a Shaman. Now it gives its bonus for all religious settlement types if the governed province's religion is the same as the kingdom's one.
• Governing a Christian province now properly gives +1 books in all monasteries (was not working previously).
• Fixed a bug allowing the AI to send a crusade while papacy is destroyed.
• Clergy opinion no longer increases when you donate gold to the papacy as a non-Catholic kingdom.
• Fixed a bug where the Crusade tooltip did not display the current status of the crusade’s leading army (primarily during battles).

[h2]Achievements[/h2]

• All kinds of vassalization now count towards the "Join the Dark Side" achievement (previously only tributes via diplomacy worked).
• Fixed a bug where "idle diplomat" messages are counted towards "The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship" achievement.
• Fixed a bug where the "On the third day at dawn, look east" achievement was triggered wrongly when a player's army joins in a battle with a crusader army led by a marshal of the same player.

[h2]Armies and Battles[/h2]

• Fixed an error that occurred when moving units from a town’s garrison to a knight without units, who has the Medicine skill.
• Fixed reinforcing armies in battles not taking any damage when retreating.
• Fixed the resilience bonus effect being applied twice.
• Fixed the tooltip for army reinforcements displaying wrong information as to which the supporting army is.
• Fixed fleeing armies being shown as valid reinforcements for a battle.
• Catapults no longer get bonuses from morale (since they have no morale to begin with).
• Fixes to how values are displayed in the breakdowns of ranged defense in unit tooltips.
• Fixed an issue causing allied AI armies to not be properly set as reinforcements in worldview battles. They should now start traveling towards the battle as expected (but can also interrupt their path and go somewhere else, if they decide another thing is more important).
• Fixes to game freezes during tactical battle loading screens.
• Fixes to army pathfinding in worldview when ordered to go to/follow another army that happens to be passing through a river.

[h2]Multiplayer[/h2]

• Network optimizations, fixing a rare bug causing the "Multiplayer" button in the title screen to remain grayed-out (due to game server errors).
• Fixes to province visibility not updating properly when its ownership changes via diplomacy. Further related fixes were done in multiplayer when you have an army inside a town and the ownership of that town changes via diplomacy. This resulted in the army still being inside for the client (but not for the host).
• Fixed battle estimation not being calculated properly in multiplayer, for clients. Specifically, when a siege switches to assault/break siege, or when a plunder was interrupted.
• Fixed issues with certain texts not resolving properly in continued multiplayer games.
• Fixed an issue with the “Choose Ecumenical Patriarch” window showing up in a broken state, when you create a singleplayer campaign from a multiplayer save in which you have a deceased patriarch (and you haven’t chosen a new one yet).

[h2]Audio[/h2]

• A knight voice line is now properly being played when one of your prisoners manages to escape from a foreign dungeon via the "Organize escape" action.
• Fixed the narrator voice line for one of your diplomats improving relations being played wrongly when relations are already maxed out.
• Fixed mercenaries playing the wrong sound upon being hired.
• War Declaration sound effect should now properly play when you’re declared war via the Provoke War spy plot.
• Fixed missing fortifications upgrade/repair finished sound effect.

The Scribes Praise You, Sire! New Accolades Trailer for Grand Strategy Game Knights of Honor II: Sovereign

Sofia, Bulgaria/Vienna, Austria, January 25, 2023: Your Excellency, we have great news to share: The people have shown their appreciation for your leadership, as evidenced by the accolades and praise they have bestowed upon you!

The release of Knights of Honor II: Sovereign in December 2022 has been met with widespread acclaim from both critics and players. We invite you to view the new accolades trailer to see the positive feedback for yourself. Moreover, as a special treat, we have arranged for you to have an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the game's soundtrack.

The Accolades Trailer on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bGPOqDI_ME4
The Making of Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/33H_FTPKGTA

If you want to deep-dive into every aspect of the game, check out our Dev-Streams on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWovMvU-f8q23lae6CKS4Co9MbKd1ZJ2G

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is out now on PC at an SRP of € 44.99 / $ 44.99 / £ 37.99.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/736820/Knights_of_Honor_II_Sovereign/

We are also excited to announce that Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is ready to be played on GeForce Now — giving gamers instant access to GeForce PC performance, on nearly any device.

Enjoy & have fun!