Is this game really easy?

[donkle kog]

I watched a play through and they basically didn't think much out and just steamrolled through Europe, barely ever losing. I don't want to get the game if there isn't much challenge or balance.

[🌹DesmondOk🌷]

Trust me, this isn't too much easy if you play long enought and trying to conquer whole europe...

[Greybriar]

It's been awhile since I played Knights of Honor and perhaps I didn't play the same version you did Generic David, but I thought the game was somewhat challenging depending on the random starting variables.

[Varainger]

Originally posted by Generic David:

.. I remember there was som quite popular mod for improved difficulty, but I'm fairly sure it's not updated to steam version...

The opposite more likely.
Steam variant is still on 1.04, while most mods got updated to 1.05.

[FrancisNile]

this game is VERY easy, trust me... It's a shame

[GADA]

Well if yo get everything to hard and use 0 cheats its hard esp if you start with a small nation or a super large onece and if you start with an enemy in the beginning yes its hard but its randomly if you ask me lest say you start with jerusalim or what was that jew state so if you start with that and lets say you are at war with abassaids then gg you are dead no matter you have defence structures from the beginning the most powerfull unit you will have will be those peasant axe men which are like the regular peasants so you cant advance and cant defend much and you will have to relie on diplomacy like royal marrage or vassal or something like that i really like the game but if you want more diplomacy and hard ♥♥♥♥ buy and play EU3 and start with undeveloped state like aztec or maya or something like that :D and another thing for knights of honor if you want to make it really hard you should try to play every battle not aouro resolve it that way you will take more dmg i played it for so long that i only playout defence battles assault or open field i skip and aoutoresolve cuz you olmost dont get casualties and is one of the people sed went throu all of europe and didnt get losses

[Nechlord]

Its very easy without cheats and would be a cakewalk with them. You can pretty much get loads of cash by buying 3-4 merchants then get 3 marshals, 1 upgraded province with decent troops and steamroll everyone using autoresolve. The only actual difficulty comes from either a) constant revolt due to different religions or b) realm fracture due to king death. Ontop of that spy's can eliminate the need for conquest all together if your lucky.

[futbolluva]

The early game can sometimes be difficult. But no this game is actually really easy for anyone that even kind of knows what they are doing

[yezhanquan]

Basically, you need to follow the rules of medieval warfare:
1) Don't assault towns unless you know what you're doing. Starve the province by plundering everything except the port (in case you need to retreat), then siege.
2) Keep Kingdom Power high. This lowers rebellion risk and helps in holding onto newly conquered provinces.
3) Look at the Town Improvements: Has the Inn and Hostel been built? If you are really desperate, destroy the Tax Collector /Quarry and rebuild after things have calmed down.

The game only becomes difficult if:
a) you start the scenario at war with a power much more powerful than you. While the kingdom you choose may "have" to start the scenario at war, it makes a hell of a difference having Germany as an enemy (as Wessex) as compared to East Anglia.
b) You declare war willy-nilly without considering Kingdom Power and you occupy provinces of different religions.
c) Your court becomes infested with foreign spies; worse if your spy is a foreign spy. It becomes complicated when your king can't get any sons despite being married.

[Tsvetomir]

Want hard?
Go to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Knights of Honor\defs\Misc
Open "econst.in2" with notepad
Go to the middle where the tax rate is "; tax rates (per 100 population)"
Divide everything by 10x-20x. :D

I tried the invasion hard economical mod, and I was always wondering, why with 4 castles and 3 marshals I was at -30 gold, always, well guess what, the tax rates were:
; tax rates (per 100 population)
Tax0 = 0
Tax1 = 5
Tax2 = 0
Tax3 = 0
Tax4 = 10

While nobody wanted to trade with me (except the always graceful Papacy)

I reinstalled the ultimate hd mod again, because there are more buildings, but I still wanted this hard aspect of the game so I lowered the tax rate of the ultimate hd mod to this:
; tax rates (per 100 population)
Tax0 = 0
Tax1 = 10
Tax2 = 5
Tax3 = 15
Tax4 = 20

Forgot what the original values were, but tax4 was 1000?

Will try it in the morning.
There was also this aspect of the hard invasion economical mod that whenever you conquer a province, your neighbors get angry, cant find the variables for this, may search more later.

[Menssie]

You should check this file:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Knights of Honor\defs\difficulty
It contain more difficulty settings.

[Tsvetomir]

Originally posted by Menssie:

You should check this file:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Knights of Honor\defs\difficulty
It contain more difficulty settings.

Thank you,I just found it before coming back here, and on hard other people might be interest to these changes (taken from the invasion hard economy mod):
;========= HARD =================
[hard]
; strategical AI tweaks
military_tick = 3000
min_invade_army_squads = 8
min_recall_army_squads = 7
min_defend_army_squads = 6
max_invade_armies = 50
invade_levels = 1, 5, 5, 20, 20, 40
great_nation_defence_bonus = 20

; economical AI tweaks
economy_tick = 30000
ai_income_modifier = 300
player_income_modifier = 100

; diplomacy AI tweaks
player_threat_min_realms = 1
player_threat_max_realms = 5
player_threat_max_militarism = 30
player_threat_max_pacifism = 30

; marshal AI tweaks
min_squads_for_siege_equipment = 5
army_low_food_treshold = 30
conquer_last_realm = 90
reinforce_radius = 800

; marshal decision weights
reinforce_weight_losing = 1600
reinforce_weight_balanced = 1000
reinforce_weight_winning = 600
reinforce_losing_threshold = -85
reinforce_bonus_castle = 200
reinforce_losing_point = -50
reinforce_winning_point = 50
reinforce_winning_threshold = 85
join_plunder_weight = 100
join_plunder_weight_hungry = 200
plunder_weight = 30
plunder_weight_hungry = 150
camp_weight = 100
fortify_weight = 100
fight_enemy_weight = 100
fight_rebel_weight = 100
avoid_enemy_weight = 50
recruit_weight = 100
recruit_weight_deployed = 1000
recruit_weight_per_slot = 20
buy_food_weight = 200
enter_realm_weight = 10
enter_realm_weight_recruit = 100
enter_realm_weight_no_rec = 500
attack_castle_weight = 1000
empty_castle_weight = 2000
;=========

The thing that I was searching for mostly was:
player_threat_min_realms = 1
Where the player is a threat even if he has 1 province, meaning that other countries will want to take you from the beginning and will take notice if you start expanding like it should be.

Another interesting file that I found:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Knights of Honor\defs\Misc
personalities.in2

I might lower the pacifism and diplomacy a bit:
Current values taken from the ultimate hd mod/ might be original
[evil]
name = ai;evil
Pacifism = 25
Diplomacy = 50
Expansionism = 75
Espionage = 75
Humanism = 25
Honor = 25
Greed = 75
Arrogance = 75

TongueWeakMax = 50
TongueNeutralMin = 40
TongueNeutralMax = 110
TongueStrongMin = 100
[/evil]

[good]
name = ai;good
Pacifism = 75
Diplomacy = 75
Expansionism = 50
Espionage = 50
Humanism = 75
Honor = 75
Greed = 25
Arrogance = 25

TongueWeakMax = 125
TongueNeutralMin = 100
TongueNeutralMax = 175
TongueStrongMin = 150
[/good]

In the econst file I also lowered the base trade and merchant trade from 10 to 7 because it was easy to pile up cash from traders, maybe from the personalities file I might decrease the willingness to trade, but what value is that?

[GrafLaudan]

The original game is easy. Play the mod and play on hard so you will never say the game is too easy. In my mods is the diffculty mode easy for beginners ( its easy but not easy ;) ) and for the good players the difficulty mode hard. The difficulty mode heroic is not balanced. I play the game now for 14 years and know how the AI play his role. All my mods have the same difficulty mode.
Enyoy the original or mod game and wait for Knights of Honor 2.
All my plays on the difficulty mode hard i give up, because its too hard for me. But i try every time to start a new game to win on hard.
Here is a youtube playlist from Germany on hard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBgCX-Gh-z0&list=PLLL8Tm-oX21JEDvdkRXimIbTOuc-k2MHK
or on Facebook some picture:
https://www.facebook.com/GrafLaudan/posts/351897262129880

[Tsvetomir]

It just occured to me why the game is easy, for an example in Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings, if a huge country like the Golden Horde or the Ottoman Empire attacks and you have one province, you are dead, because you have around 10k soldiers and they have around 200k, while here they can have a maximum of 8? marshals, but most use spies and send you maximum three marshal with armies when you take care of them using two marshals with the fortified camp skill.

Of course it is hard when multiple neighbors go to war with you and you have to defend against 10 marshals at the same time but it is very easy to abuse the "free prisoner" so everyone starts to like you and you start signing white peace with everyone.

But if there is a limit on how many armies/marshals you can hold, then it might be more like EU/CK, for an example if you have 1 province, you are allowed to have only 1 marshal and you need to have another 2 provinces to hire another marshal, = two provinces per marshal.

Maybe a mod can be made somehow or a quick fix is to go to the econst file in defs/misc, and specify that if you have 1 marshal cost is 0, if you have 2 marshal it will cost 100, if there are three marshals ...
UpkeepMarshal1 = 0
UpkeepMarshal2 = 100
UpkeepMarshal3 = 250
UpkeepMarshal4 = 400
UpkeepMarshal5 = 600
UpkeepMarshal6 = 900
UpkeepMarshal7 = 1200
UpkeepMarshal8 = 1500
UpkeepMarshal9 = 2000

Not sure if these prices are fine, it will best to start a new game and check how much income different countries have based on their size.

So it will be normal for Sweden to have 5 marshals but for Denmark to have 2 as an example.

[LastDefender]

@Tsilliev, interesting stuff. Gonna check out those settings.
Have you find the right combination in the last months though?

[songsofdawn]

The game can be ridiculously hard and very, VERY slow-paced if you don't know what you're doing. However, once you know how the little intricacies of the game work, it's really no problem at all to beat the game if you get past the potentially difficult early stage, which means of course getting your first province to a level that allows you to successfully defend it against enemies that might want to capture it.

If you build all of the fortifications (and food-storage boosting buildings perhaps) to a city and then fill the six-slot garrison with archers, there is literally no way that the AI enemy/enemies can capture it by military force, ever. Not even if all the marshals of the entire map attacked you ruthlessly for the rest of the game. I really mean it, it is possible to defend a city against anything the game manages to throw at you with this technique, if you know how. The AI simply doesn't have enough strategic skills to cope with that. You can repeat this with every city you own, and thus enemy invasions basically become a non-issue. There are other problems, of course, but basically conquests launched against your kingdom are totally irrelevant if you know what you're doing. Once you become powerful enough, if any kingdom decides to attack you, just capture one or two of their provinces and they will agree to become your vassals - attacks stop immediately and the problem is solved, and you also get their vassal fees.

I think that literally all of the negative sides of this game have to do with the lack of difficulty, especially in the later stages of a standard campaign. Once you get your conquest going, it starts repeating itself very quickly; money stops being a problem, you'll probably have all the kingdom advantages, no one can resist you... It's still a lot of fun, but there aren't really any surprises waiting around the corner.

I still adore the game to bits, it's actually one of my all-time favourite strategy games and I still play it regularly today - almost 15 years after the game's initial release! It has a wonderful sense of scope and immersion, and there are a lot of little things that make the game feel really alive. It's not perfect, but which game is?