One of the biggest competitors to Total War games, Knights of Honor, is back with a new game that will inspire every strategy and history fan out there. Even though these complex strategies will have you manage the whole kingdom, from diplomacy, and economy to war, they aren’t as complicated as they can seem once you get familiarized with some of their basic mechanisms. In this article, we’ll do just that and prepare you for this latest strategy game that will test all of your gaming abilities – from careful planning to minute-to-minute decision-making.
Knights
One of the first things you should know when playing Knights of Honor 2 Sovereign is how the Knights system works. During your campaign, you will have nine slots for Knights (including your monarch) in your Royal Court and you will need to choose them wisely as each one has different benefits for your kingdom. Knights can have one of the following specializations:
- Marshall – You will need Marshalls to lead armies, increase troop morale and keep order in the provinces they govern.
- Merchant – Hire Merchants to sign trade agreements with other kingdoms. They also bring imported goods and high income to their provinces.
- Diplomat – Diplomats improve your relations with other kingdoms and create defensive pacts and invasion plans with them. Additionally, the provinces they govern get bonus food and commerce production.
- Scholar – Faith and knowledge are improved with Scholars. They also help you settle rebellions in a peaceful way and convert religions of different provinces.
- Spy – Spies infiltrate enemy or neutral kingdom’s provinces that are under the shadow of war and give you valuable info on their armies, goods, and production. The provinces they govern have more gold and levies bonuses.
As you probably noticed there are nine slots and only five types of specializations which means you can have one of each. However, the trick is who to focus on with the remaining slots, and grab the perfect timing for switching some of your Knights.
Related: Total War: Warhammer 3 Factions
Province management
Each Knight can govern a province and we advise you to put them to that task as soon as possible since production rates in provinces without governors are literally ten times smaller. Once you have more than nine provinces in your kingdom put governors in the most important ones. In the early phases of the game focus on building institutions that will increase your population, food production, and gold to secure steady growth of the kingdom. Focus on creating a production for goods that you have in your province. If your province has a lot of wheat, focus on increasing that production and invest in bonuses for wheat production.
Barracks should be built in areas you believe are in danger, so if you have a province that is neatly tucked in between your other provinces, you don’t need to focus on developing army infrastructure there.
Army
Your ability to produce large armies depends on the population in certain cities you want to recruit from. The more people you have the more soldiers you can recruit. You should build armies slowly over time to reduce the strain on your population, instead of massing up units when you see that war is inevitable. In case you really need a quick army, mercenaries are a great option even though they are on the expensive side of things.
As you can strategize with provinces producing various types of goods, you can do that with the military as well. Take some key location provinces and develop military infrastructure there. Different buildings and their upgrades allow for the creation of new and stronger units which you can always send out to aid some weaker provinces, instead of building the same barracks everywhere.
If you’re looking to earn some money from the war effort, the best pay-to-risk ratio is definitely in looting villages in enemy provinces. Even though it can take a while, it’s not putting you before a huge battle and the payout is awesome. So if you like to resort to violence, be tactical about it.
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