Gameplay

On top of promoted leaders there are also family members. Seeing as the player is the head of a dynasty, there can be serious gameplay consequences if his last heir dies in combat. Family management also takes on the form of arranging weddings to secure alliances. Daughters and sons alike must be married off, though the player will only have control of the fate of the nuclear family. Distant relatives simply cease to matter.

All this makes for a busy and challenging game experience. It’s all too easy to lose oneself in a single task and quickly become overwhelmed by a rising tide of new ones from another direction. Especially dangerous are the fickle relationships between states and the rebellious nature of conquered provinces. This in fact makes the solution to difficulty obvious – don’t be aggressive. Taking your time really pays off, though it is a shame to watch the general you groomed into a battlefield terror die of old age.

Of course, this brings us to combat itself, which is the real actual weak point of the game. Not only is it physically unattractive, the units seem to kind of … collide and stumble into each other, with no sense of ebb and flow in individual combats. Battle mechanics are rather obtuse, which doesn’t really help make the experience at all more satisfying. Fortunately, the battles can be handled automatically with no penalty to the experience your general can gain.

As time progresses and provinces are conquered, the game becomes a fly-swatting contest as the player rushes through trying to make sure all his cities are building properly, that rebel armies have a friendly converging on them and that enemy nations, if any, have no troops in your lands. Even with strong garrisons in castles, provinces are still vulnerable to razing and raiding tactics, villages are put to the torch by enemies. Eventually it all comes down to managing your limited supply of leaders and the armies they lead.

That’s the other major failing of Knights of Honor – the learning curve is exponential. Though a large kingdom should be harder to manage than a small one, in KoH the problems ramp up at a frenzied pace after capturing just a few territories. For every province added, that’s more hostility stirred up in your neighbors, more rebels to beat down and a new city and border to manage. As the player’s neighbors inevitably declare war, the urge to expand becomes almost unquenchable as their armies are defeated and cities vulnerable, but this only makes the problem worse. The unnatural step of holding back and waiting, consolidating territory to cut down on rebellion risk, is what is needed.

Of course, new provinces can also contain the special resources necessary for a kingdom advantage, which may be worth the extra risk. The ability to buy Kingdom Power with collected piety from churches built in new cities improves the stability of the realm, and new cities can also mean new centers of learning which produce books to train your leaders. It’s a fine balancing act between growing too big, and the need to grow larger.


Overall, it’s a challenging experience that bludgeons the player into thinking out his expansion with bouts of rebellions and punishing wars against all neighbors – but sometimes even all the caution in the world just can’t make up for a psychotic AI. This can take a while to figure out and the resulting chaos can overwhelm newer player. The enforced slower pace can also be aggravating as the build-up of cities and high-level armies is completed long before a province is fully pacified.