The Knights Opener Guide

[MasterYi]

1: Set up your standard Estate Privileges, but also give the Enforced Interfaith Dialogue privilege (+2 Tolerance for Heretics and Heathens), and the Guaranteed Orthodox Autonomy (No Religious Unity contribution from Orthodox provinces).

You need to give both privileges, one reduces the recruitment time on your only province, the other makes it cheaper to stab up (100 Admin instead of 200).

2: Make sure to Sell Titles AFTER you have granted all 3 Mana Privileges to your Estates, as this gives you more money for some reason.

Queue up a bunch of infantry until you run out of manpower, THEN Summon the Diet and hope to get a 50% Lv1 Military Advisor (if you don’t get that Nobility Agenda, you can choose to restart), cancel your queued up infantry to get your manpower and money refunded.

Only after this step should grant the Noble Levies privilege (Gives manpower based on Nobility influence), as giving this beforehand will increase your Manpower Cap, meaning you have to wait longer until you recover your manpower to 50% to fulfil the Agenda.

3: Hire an advisor in all 3 categories, you can even improve the half-priced Lv1 advisor to Lv2, it’s ok to be in a deficit loosing maybe 3-4 ducats a month since you can Raid Coasts every 10yrs.

Delete your Fort, the only time it would be useful is when your enemies defeated you navally and have landed and stackwiped you on on your only province, in which case it’s already Game Over.

Delete your Cavalry unit, it’s too expensive.

Build up to your land force limit, and time it so you build up to 10k troops just before you are ready to declare war on Byzantium.

Build 1 Galley and 1 Cog to be at your force limit your mission, you don’t need more ships to gain naval superiority, since your mission gives +25% Galley Combat Ability, and you have another +20% in your National Ideas (although you will probably be able to form Jerusalem before you reach that NI).

The 1 extra Cog is very important since you start off with 4 Cogs, but you need 10k troops to siege down Constantinople (9k for the Lv3 Fort + an extra 1k due to attrition). Having 5 Cogs will allow you to transport your entire army to Constantinople in just 2 trips instead of 3. The Ottomans will give neither Byzantium or you Military Access.

4: Send both Merchants to collect in Genoa and Venice, and set the Trading Policy to Improve Relations, so you can improve relations faster with the Pope and Venice.

Set your attitude as “Threatened” towards Byzantium, Genoa, and the Ottomans. This should make Venice more inclined to ally you.

You don’t make much from trade at the start being an OPM anyways, and this measure is only temporary. Once you have secured both Alliances, you can rearrange your merchants.

Ideally the Pope and Venice should not be rivals, if they are, you can restart. You want the Pope for more Yearly Papal Influence, and Venice to deal with the Ottomans and Mamluks.

4: It should be relatively fast to get an alliance with Venice especially if you have an Improve Relations or Diplomatic Reputation advisor. Ask to join their Trade League for a relations boost, you can always leave whenever you want with no penalty, since Trade Leagues gives a -1 Diplo Relations debuff.

You can Buy Indulgence to gain +100 relations with the Pope.

You can also Scornfully Insult one of Venice’s or the Pope’s Rivals for +25 relations.

Remember to do these actions after you have already Improved Relations for a while, since the higher the relations, the slower it takes to improve.

5: First War - Byzantium: It’s ok if they allied some landlocked nations like Wallachia, Serbia, Bosnia, or Herzegovina, as the Ottomans will not give them military access.

However, if you do want to separate peace their allies for money or vassalisation, consider allying Epirus and asking Military Access from Venice/Hungary/Moldova.

Promise Epirus land but don’t give any ofc, make sure you reach the Byzantine provinces first, then let Epirus tank the siege in Morea while you have 1k leading the siege.

If you chose not to ally Epirus, ask for Military Access and Fleet Basing rights in Venice, move your entire army to Negroponte, then cross over to Athens.

After Athens and the Morea are sieged down. Wait until Byzantium starts disbanding his 14k army in the Thrace area, once he is down to 5k, start transporting your troops over. At this time the Ottomans should declare on Byzantium which is great since you can get military access to Byzantium’s allies, and let the Ottomans tank the siege of Constantinople.

Make sure to have chosen Athens (the most developed province you have a claim on) as the War Goal, this will give you a warscore discount, and enable you to fully annex Byzantium and Athens in 1 War.

6: Epirus - The ideal situation would be rivalling Epirus after the war so you could do an easy Humiliate/Show Strength war. If you have allied them, you have to wait 5yrs, if not then you can immediately attack them.

Sometimes Genoa allies Epirus which is a bit of a pain since you don’t have enough transports or troops to land in the Genoan heartland, but sieging down Lesbos and Chios, the Crimean provinces, Corsica (6 provinces in total), as well as blockading by Genoa, should make them accept a White Peace.

Worst case scenario, the Ottomans attack them before you can, but no big deal, you can always fulfil your Humiliate Rival Age Objective by attacking some other small-medium nations once they become valid rivals.

7: Second War - The Ottomans: After accumulating favours with the Pope and Venice, you are ready to declare war on the Ottomans, just make sure they don’t have a mil tech advantage, if they do, wait a few more years to allow your allies to tech up.

You can easily win the war even if Venice is your only ally, remember to build enough ships to naval barrage lv2 forts (200 cannons), always barrage whatever coastal forts you siege (Selanik, Gelibolu, Sugla etc).

You should have been preparing a Spy Network in the Ottomans before the war, and had the Trading Policy set to +25% Spy Network Construction. Also consider hiring a Spymaster advisor.

Between the Spy Network and the Naval Barrage, you should be able to siege down Selanik before the Ottomans can siege down Constantinople, your Knights Ideas also makes the Garrison have 2500 instead of the regular 2000. Although I made the mistake of not letting the Constantinople Core finish before the war so I couldn’t use the +33% Defensiveness Edict.

I was fortunate that the Ottomans helped Aq Qoyunlu attack Trebizond and Georgia, they wasted a lot of time and lost a lot of men sieging down the Lv3 mountains fort in Trebizond without naval superiority. The Ottomans ended up White Peacing out of that war and Aq Qoyunulu ended up losing provinces.

After sieging down Sugla and its surrounding provinces, you’re able to get a 100% Peace Deal. Aim for CoTs, forts, and the straight crossing.

If you feel like you need extra help, consider releasing Morea and Bulgaria as Vassals, Bulgaria will also have valuable cores for reconquest.

8: After the Ottoman war, clear up some Balkan minors.

9: Mamluk War: This will be the last time you’ll be using Venice since you need Corfu from them to progress down your mission tree for Permaclaims on Balkans and Anatolia. You don’t even need to wait for 10 favours, just promise them land and betray them.

You can attack Cyprus while fighting the Mamluks, since they cannot honour their Guarantee when already in a war with you. Same with Albania who’s guaranteed by Venice, if you’re able to get a claim.

Take your Permaclaims and try to avoid taking land that will be your Cores upon forming Jerusalem. Since you can just reconquer them later for less AE.

10: At this point you should be able to ally Austria/Hungary/Poland/Lithuania/Aragon, who can help you in your 2nd Ottoman War and against Venice.

11: The Knight’s starting ruler is a terrible 1/1/3, but at least he is 73yrs old so should die soon, especially if you make him a General and have him drill the army. When selecting an heir, you can always save scum to see which candidate has better stats. The best stats I’ve ever seen were 13 in total, not sure if it can be even higher.

The Knights start off with 40% Crownland, allowing you to take all 3 Mana Privileges AND Sell Titles, once you Seize Land you will be back to 5%, not that it matters since as an OPM, your Capital’s Autonomy cannot rise above 0%. Conquests will also gain Crownland.

The Knights also start off with 10% Professionalism, Slackening Recruits and the Noble Levies privilege will keep Manpower at healthy levels, make sure to burn all professionalism before recruiting Mercenaries.

12: Ideas: The standard Admin - Diplomatic - Influence trio. Religious Ideas is not needed since Jerusalem as a Crusader State permanently gets the Deus Veult CB. You can also get Missionary Strength from your Government Reforms.

I had a 6 Admin Ruler so I went Admin first, however if your Ruler is weak in Admin but strong in Diplo, consider going for Diplomatic Ideas first.

If you want the Knights of the Caribbean achievement, you can go Exploration Ideas 2nd or 3rd, but since Portugal colonises faster than you, you can also let them colonise for you, then attack them for their Caribbean provinces.

Or do the trick of being in an Eternal War, by selecting an in-progress Portuguese colony as the War Goal, and every time the population almost reaches 1000, Seize Colony, and send your own Colonist to the province so it can have your own Culture (and Religion). Keep rinse and repeating until all of the Caribbean is yours. You will never get a Call for Peace since the War Goal will not be occupied after you’ve seized the first colony.

13: Pass the Rhodians and the Greeks decision, it costs 1 Stability and 100 diplo, but it’s worth it for the Permanent modifiers, you will be AFK for the first 2-3yrs of the game anyways waiting for your ships and infantry to build, so that’s plenty of time to regain those monarch points.

14: Your Occitan Culture is pretty useless since you’re not going to be conquering the French Region. Consider Culture Shifting to the Levantine Culture Group after forming Jerusalem to gain a more powerful Cultural Union.

[D-Black Catto]

yawn. 3 idea groups you say? by the time you unlock the 3rd one, you will be in 16th century, and the guide will no longer be relevant because of butterfly effect.

also any guide that advocates save scumming is a bad guide.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

I concur with D-Black, the basis of a good strategy is too be flexible enough to overcome any RNG issue.

[fingerneun]

I stopped reading at "Delete your Cavalry unit"

[Lord Kraken]

Personally, I appreciate Master Yi's effort. His "Guide" is, I suspect, simply an outline of what worked for him, probably together with a few tweaks based on his experience. It's always up to the player to be flexible when using any "Guide"; something I'm sure, Master Yi, with his 2,000+ EU4 hours, understands. There are some interesting ideas in there and, if I ever get around to trying the The Knights again, I'll most likely adopt/adapt many of them.

My 2 cents.

[Preacher]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von D-Black Catto:

yawn. 3 idea groups you say? by the time you unlock the 3rd one, you will be in 16th century, and the guide will no longer be relevant because of butterfly effect.

also any guide that advocates save scumming is a bad guide.

i see no save scumming. restarting the game isn't save scumming

[Octopuses]

This is good but I also have something that works 100% as The Knights opener:

1. Start fabricating claim on Athens.

2. Get your troops in transport next to Constantinople.

3. Offer Byzantium Condottieri (troops next to Constantinople).

4. Place those troops in Constantinople.

5. Wait until Ottomans declare war on Byzantium and they are just about to get their troops into Constantinople.

6. Declare war on Athens (this will make it that your condottieri are not blacklisted and will start sieging Constantinople instantly. Ottomans are about to move there so they will help you kill any troops as well as siege Constantinople. Call in Venice with promise land to deal with any allies they might have and to end the war sooner.

7. Try to start sieging as many provinces as you can so Venice doesn't get them. Take everything you can in the peace deal and give nothing to Venice. They will stay allied to you since they start with 60 trust.

8. At this point you can ally bigger nations and the game will be very easy.

BONUS: raiding gives you ton of money so you don't have to do weird things like sell titles or even take loans.

[Xaphnir]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Preacher:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von D-Black Catto:

yawn. 3 idea groups you say? by the time you unlock the 3rd one, you will be in 16th century, and the guide will no longer be relevant because of butterfly effect.

also any guide that advocates save scumming is a bad guide.

i see no save scumming. restarting the game isn't save scumming

That is absolutely save scumming

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

If it's not save scumming it's not reliable for something called "guide". Steps mentioned by Octopuses seems more reliable at first glance.
I don't know the settings of The Knights but I think my first strategy would be conquering as much islands as possible and maintain naval supremacy at all times. The main issue being Venice playing that gig.

[MasterYi]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von D-Black Catto:

yawn. 3 idea groups you say? by the time you unlock the 3rd one, you will be in 16th century, and the guide will no longer be relevant because of butterfly effect.

also any guide that advocates save scumming is a bad guide.

Yawn, maybe you can read better?

I did not say 3 Idea Groups are necessary for the strategy, it’s just the recommended ideas you can take after the early game.

Save scumming for better rulers is an option, it is more optimal but it isn’t absolutely necessary, you can do as you wish.

There are no other save scumming elements apart from choosing your rulers.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von fingerneun:

I stopped reading at "Delete your Cavalry unit"

Care to explain why deleting your cavalry unit at the start is bad?

You are stuck on your island for at least 2-3yrs, the cavalry is expensive, you can’t even use it, it’s not going to make a difference in your first war, and the minor quality difference is not worth the money compared to just hiring an extra 1k infantry.

[fingerneun]

Raiding is the selling point of playing The Knights. Is it even in the Guide? Raiding means you are rich, but with a ticking clock.
Deleting a cavalry and building an Infantry instead is costing you manpower and building time in your only province. Where you need to build your ships.
A cavalry is more fighting power per transport.

[QTV]

delete cav, buy mercs!

[MasterYi]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von fingerneun:

Raiding is the selling point of playing The Knights. Is it even in the Guide? Raiding means you are rich, but with a ticking clock.
Deleting a cavalry and building an Infantry instead is costing you manpower and building time in your only province. Where you need to build your ships.
A cavalry is more fighting power per transport.

Raiding is pretty obvious… It’s about as common sense as saying you should get a CB before declaring war.

You are going to be capped on manpower anyways as you wait in the early game. The extra 50 days it takes to recruit an infantry unit to replace the deleted cavalry unit is not going to cost you anything.

Anyways I’m not interested in continuing to reply to ignorant online strangers who suck at the game 🤷‍♂️ Hope you got your daily dose of human interaction that you’re severely lacking.

[Freedom✠Puppy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Preacher:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von D-Black Catto:

yawn. 3 idea groups you say? by the time you unlock the 3rd one, you will be in 16th century, and the guide will no longer be relevant because of butterfly effect.

also any guide that advocates save scumming is a bad guide.

i see no save scumming. restarting the game isn't save scumming

And how do you plan on restarting the game in MP, exactly?

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Freedom✠Puppy:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Preacher:

i see no save scumming. restarting the game isn't save scumming

And how do you plan on restarting the game in MP, exactly?

Who plays the Knights in MP?

[cayenne_spicy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Totally Innocent Chatbot:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Freedom✠Puppy:

And how do you plan on restarting the game in MP, exactly?

Who plays the Knights in MP?

Masochists.