Knights of Honor II Patch Notes Game ver. 1.4.0, 26-June-2023 Build version 31667
Update Overview The focus of this update was to flesh out more the Diplomacy and Religion systems in various manners, including more character actions, extending the options for players, who have knights with the corresponding classes in their Royal Courts. As this is a very extensive goal, we chose to focus on Catholicism for this update, but we will continue to work on both modules and additionally enhance the rest of the religions as well. Also, we added the much needed “Search” feature for the “Royal Library”, which we hope will aid newcomers but also to be useful for advanced players that want to know every nook and cranny of the game. The help module already had hyperlinks and convenient way for players to jump into currently important topics from tooltips and interface elements, but it is now much easier to directly and independently find information on topics one is interested in.
General • Added search feature in the “Royal Library” (the in-game help module). • Added visualization of armies stationed in towns both on world view and on political map. • Added "Entice mercenaries" merchant’s opportunity, upon which mercenaries can be convinced to move from the kingdom the merchants are trading in or its neighbors to the home kingdom of the merchant. • Considerably increased availability of special units in provinces and kingdoms. Kingdoms, that are formed from a province now have the province special units as their kingdom special units as well. • Improvements in expanding kingdom logic in the beginning of the game, aiming to increase the initial stability of kingdoms, especially important in cases of larger expansions like Shattered World and Destroy Kingdom.
Diplomacy • Added a new action of kings – “Form vassal” – allowing them to separate their kingdom’s province and let it become a separate kingdom, vassal to them. This cannot be done with provinces, loyal to the kingdom they are part of. • Added “Bolster Influence” action to the Diplomat (an ongoing action that increases a Kingdom’s diplomatic influence). • Claiming independence, but then accepting the refusal of your sovereign, can now lead to crown authority and nobility opinion loss. • Truce is no longer signed with supporters in war, unless they signed a separate peace or their side won the war and accepted the enemy’s surrender or destroyed the enemy leader. • Freeing an occupied town now increases the relationship with a kingdom (in addition to supporting it in battle or fighting/defeating its rebel armies/rebellion. • Truce time is now indicated in kingdom selection (circular progress bar around the stance icon). • Influence in a foreign kingdom is now indicated in kingdom selection and diplomacy/offer windows. • Pact dissolving due to a knight being exiled now results in a message, reflecting the exiling.
Religion • Added "Ask for absolution" action for Popes, enabling players to remove excommunication status of other kingdoms. • Added "Arrange Peace Talks" action for Popes, enabling players to force an enemy to offer white peace to them or their teammates/vassals, if that enemy is catholic. The action cannot be used against other players. • Directly donating gold to the Papacy through diplomacy now has significantly reduced effect on relations. • Exiling your last Cleric as a Catholic kingdom now reduces your relations with the Papacy. • Clerics now try to keep their armies during a religion change of a kingdom. • Clergy opinion now changes upon destroying the papacy and rises or drops, depending on the religion of the kingdom that destroys it. • Defeating a crusade now leads to clergy opinion change, depending on the religion and the target of the crusade, and army opinion increases as well (regardless the religion). • Catholic clerics cannot become cardinals in the very beginning of the game and before reaching level 5. Time between elections of new cardinals is also increased. • Suppressed narrator voice for own kingdom excommunicated, when we are excommunicated due to a pope action failing.
Espionage • Added a “Ruin Pact” puppet (Diplomat) plot. Through it, spies are able to end invasion plans and defensive pacts, created by the kingdom the spy has infiltrated. • Governor back independence cost increased by 1000 gold and success chance reduced by 5%. • Hunting accident appears less often and poses higher risk of the spy being revealed.
Misc • Added a setting to turn on/off transition between World view and Political view through scrolling. • Added a setting to turn on/off the province highlight effect in world view on mouse over. • Trade centers now require more initial time to start spawning on Shattered world mode, to prevent too significant early advantage. • Death messages now warn you with additional text, in case the deceased character is a prince that was an heir to the crown. • Added some checks to prevent poorly-made mods from breaking things. • Clicking on the kingdom's banners from the multiplayer players' table will now center the camera on that kingdom. • Character level indications added in mercenary-related windows and in royal dungeon.
Fixes • Text improvements. • Fixed a visual bug with Recall action icons. • Fixed a rare issue, causing knights to be stuck outside the map’s boundaries. • Fixed the tooltip for multiplayer campaign time limitation, to correctly mention the number of generations required for the game to end. • Fixed a bug, due to which changing a minor victory rule was resetting the lobby team mode. • Fixed promoting belief status remaining after religion change. • Fix spies getting imprisoned in non-existing kingdoms when Hand over the crown or Arrange annexation actions succeed, but the spy is revealed. • Claim caliphate is now properly cancelled if a claiming kingdom becomes a vassal of someone. • Fixed a rare issue in Shattered world mode which prevented near-by provinces to be combined into a kingdom. • In the multiplayer lobby, when a player’s kingdom is selected by clicking the icon in the players list, the selected province is now properly reset. • Shielded error, happening when servers are down. • Disabled "Default settings" button for Languages switch while in game. • Fixed a visual bug, where the relations bar was present in the tooltip of destroyed kingdoms. • Added missing information regarding Bolster culture’s action effect, in the culture resource breakdown. • Fixed issues with an incorrect Orthodox religion icon being shown in certain areas of the UI, when you are playing as the Ecumenical Patriarchy. • Fixed an issue with tree wind waving visualization.
Patch Overview
This is our first 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.
General
Camera controls
Campaign settings
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.
