My impressions of KoH

[Elvain]

The only thing I am dissapointed in are the graphics, they are something I would have expected from something that was released 5 or more years ago. They are pretty crappy by todays standards and are the only thing I think that takes anything from the game quality. do you mind that KoH isn't 3D?
or what do you find so bad on KoH graphics?

PS: welcome on the boards :cheers:

[sivlar]

I don't mind that it's not 3D. Just most of the graphics seem very dated. The battles and animations I find just horrible, especially when compared to current games in it's genre. They seem to have had good artists, just don't know if it was time constraints or budget that caused them to use such a dated engine. I would also like to be able to run it in a higher resolution but 1024x768 seems to be the max. (Most everything I run in 1600x1200 or higher, so I am used to having much more on the screen and not having to scroll around so much)

As I said before though, the graphics are my only beef with the game. I was looking for a very good kingdom management and diplomacy game, and this game fits the bill for sure.

Even though it is not 3D and beautiful, the graphics are servicable and get the job done.

[chavenduka]

I have to agree with sivlar on this one. I too like the overall KoH atmosphere, but the battles are a real come-down from RTW. Or even MTW, which predates KoH by years. Both in terms of AI (what they have taken to calling AS recently), such as when the computer leaves its secure defensive position to attack you, and in terms of interface/manipulation, such as the lack of a skirmish posture that allows your missile units to fall back when pressed by melee units. Graphics I can live with, but I really wish I had RTW's tactical engine attached to KoH's strategic.

No disrespect intended to those who feel otherwise, of course. But it is hard to understand how someone could pick KoH's battles over RTW's. Just my two cents.

[theoverlord3]

i feel the same, when i first played this game i did`nt like it, but after a while of playing the game it gets much better. :scratch: :go:

but the battles stay the same. hopefully the next knights of honor will have a battle engine at least to MTW standard, other wise i probley wont being buying the next one, unless its only £10 or so, as there are better games to get. :eek:

the best graphical part of the game is the castles, they look very detailed, its just a shame they dont evelove to something bigger, well you can see the wall upgrades but i would be nice to see the city expand.


btw
if you like rome, give the RTR mod ago, its one of the best mods for rome total war. and if you want the game to be much harder add the roma mod onto, its very hard you get little income, and cav no longer rule the feild.

[chavenduka]

overlord, oh yes I am all about RTR... picked up KoH while waiting for 6.0 to come out. The TW games could learn from KoH for diplomacy and economy, though.

[dminoz]

I have no problem at all with the graphics or the battle system of KoH. Re graphics, I still play Imperialism, which is pretty much antique by gaming standards, and I find the graphics in Imp just fine as well. Re the battle system, I tried the demo for RTW and also Imperial Glory and found the battle system in RTW unweildy and just ok in Imperial Glory. I can't see the point of being able to zoom in everywhere. KoH is just fine, in my book.

[Lord Boreal]

Its the gameplay that counts. The Graphics are fine, RTW was carried to success by its graphics but it's repitive gameplay and simplistic nature kind of **** it in my opinion. Also; Silvar, you can't have 30,000 troops on screen in RTW. Its impossible since you can only have a maximum of a few thousand in a single army. Unless you are playing a custom battle with maximum armies and every slot taken. In which case you must have a monster of a computer, I mean like 'wow I didn't they could do that yet' monsterousness. :D

[sivlar]

Monster computer hehe yes...A decked out alienware box that ran me close to $6000. I do a lot of 3D design so I kind of need it :) It can run just about anything smooth as hell.

I still think the battle system in RTW is far superior to KoH. The RTR mod as mentioned by someone before really helps fix much of the bugs and AI in it.

The kingdom management and depth in RTW is pretty lame compared to this game though. KoH has to be one of the best kingdom management type strategy games I have ever played. It is very addictive to say the least. Other than the battles there are 3 things I really would have liked to see in this game that RTW had...

1. A Family Tree, with the ability to use all male family members as generals. I found if your king dies in KoH, and you did not already have the princes as marshalls you end up loosing them. They just vanish for some reason and you never hear from them again. Even if you had royal weddings with them to other countries.

2. Date, it is kind of annoying you have no idea how much time has passed or what year it is in game.

3. Zoom, being stuck in the same view is sometimes frustrating. I would love to be able to zoom in and out in both battles and the campaign map.

I don't mind the lame battle sequences and have got used to them to a degree, if I need my fix I can do a custom mass battle in RTW. After playing KoH though the RTW campaign seems too simplistic other that it lacking the features I mentioned above..

[chavenduka]

I agree that gameplay is more important than graphics. How can you argue that the gameplay in KoH is superior? One of the most important aspects of gameplay is how much of a challenge the AI provides. There does not seem like much point to playing a game that is a foregone conclusion. I've stopped playing KoH because there is no sense of satisfaction from winning.

[Lord Boreal]

Opinions...to each his own chavenduka.

[rayofash]

I think any game is superior to any of the Total War games, especially games like KoH, and Lords of the Realm 2. TW gameplay is bland, and most of all boring, I fell asleep at the keyboard playing it once.

The graphics certainly dont impress me either(R:TW), the only thing I liked about R: TW was the kingdom management, the battles to me, were an obstacle to avoid. KoH has style, which I appreciate, you dont see style in games anymore.

I enjoy the battles in KoH, the remind me alot of LotR 2's battles, which I fealt were epic (In their own special way ^^.), KoH takes the battles from LotR2, and adds depth to them, which makes them even more-so involved.

I dont think we should be comparing KoH with R: TW, they are 2 very diffrent games. Rome: Total War is a tactical simulator, Knights of Honor is a kingdom simulator. We should be comparing KoH with games like Crusader Kings, EU, Imperialism, Ghengis Kahn, and and Lords of the Realm. Games of its own genre.

[Anguille2]

I think any game is superior to any of the Total War games, especially games like KoH, and Lords of the Realm 2. TW gameplay is bland, and most of all boring, I fell asleep at the keyboard playing it once.

The graphics certainly dont impress me either(R:TW), the only thing I liked about R: TW was the kingdom management, the battles to me, were an obstacle to avoid. KoH has style, which I appreciate, you dont see style in games anymore.


You should try Spartan by Slitherine...kingdom managment is great.

[vanedor]

Well, kingdom management in KOH is pretty simple. You build the buldings you need for the unit you can get in that particular province and the ressources available. There arent that many options, at least, far less than in RTW. The control over your taxes is not even as good as in R-TW where you can decide of the tax rate in each particular provinces, only for your entire kingdom.

Another problem I have is with the speed of the game. By time it is horribly slow. There is nothing to do and you can just stare at your screen, waiting for something to happen , when at other time, your provinces get invaded from three places at once and it gets very difficult to deal with everything.

I think trade is much better done in R-TW. It doesnt give an overwhelming amount of gold as it does in KoH. You can build roads, improve them, improve markets, and you enemy can actually stop your trading. And you don't need to "waste" several men in your very limited royal court just to trade with a neighbouring state and you don't have only to trade with big nations and it's really based geography on geography. In KoH, if France manages to have a trade agreement with Moscovia, they can trade as easily as if Moscovia was Germany.

R-TW true weakness, for me, is that it got no real diplomacy. Nations leaders have no personality. Allies will betray you as soon as the ai determines it has advantage to do so. It seems nearly impossible to make peace or protectorate nearly defeated enemy nations. There is no such thing as nation reputation.

[Elvain]

sorry, but when there is nothing happening, it's the right time for diplomacy...(you can't expect that the game will lead you all the time and you will only follow Ai actions. You are to make strategy) In times when enemy armies are invading from 3 sides and rebel armies emerge while your allies ask you to attack another nations... well you are the king and you have to decide instantly(you can pause the game and manage many things in paused time)

roads: no medieval kingdom cared about building roads, it would be irealistic.
Trade: if some nation doesn't like you they can break trade agreements with you. Also why should you trade with kingdoms with which you have no profit? why do you complain of high trade income? why you use merchants (and waste place at your court) when you don't need them? why don't you replace them by marshals or clerics or spies?

[Baghera]

@ Vanedor
Good points.

Building road networks was more a Roman thing, but if the resources were there perhaps medieval empires might have started building.
Taxes from what I understand in the Roman era were far more organized. In medieval times it was a hit and miss affair. The Doomsday book (11th century English census) was considered a revolutionary concept and wasn't repeated in western Europe until umm.. 18th Century?whereas the very word "census" is latin and taken from Roman ideas og empire management. Tax rates for each province might have been a good feature, or maybe just too much micromanagement, personally I don't think it really matters either way.
Game speed - modify with +/- but I understand where you are comming from. There are periods of war and periods of building recovery that can perhaps jar your sense of timescale.
Trading does seem a little styalized in KoH. To me it would make more sense that trade with closer countries be easier than those further away or countries accessible through ports. Trade agreements in KoH can not be broken by enemy troops sitting on caravan routes which would have been cool, but they can be broken through diplomacy which is very cool.
Limiting the size of Royal Court can be frustrating when you want to do so much at the same time. Personally I like the KoH court size for play balance with challenge. I also like the R:TW idea of the expanding "court" as time goes on so that you can manage more provinces more easily. I also like the R:TW idea of pretty much forcing you to use incompetant morons every now and again in positions of power (they are family after all). The KoH knights are all very capable or trainable to be so (which is good given the limited number that you can use). I would have liked to see court members being permanently assigned from your court to govern each province in the empire bringing their personal bonuses to bear on their new province, and leaving a spot in your court to be filled with a new recruit (more like CK).

[vanedor]

roads: no medieval kingdom cared about building roads, it would be irealistic.

During the dark age there was very little road, mostly old roman roads... but during late middle age, there was much improvement. Louis XI, king of France, re-established postal services for the service of the king, the university and other services. In 1483, in France, there was 234 "relais" where riders could stop, change mounts and continues.

And that's for europe. Muslim road system was pretty evolved, back then. There was an administration taking care of them.

Also why should you trade with kingdoms with which you have no profit? why do you complain of high trade income? why you use merchants (and waste place at your court) when you don't need them? why don't you replace them by marshals or clerics or spies?

I don't think you understood my point.

Why should you not trade with Switzerland, if you are France? In KoH, it's a waste, unless they have the good you really need, since you can only have a very limited number of "merchants". You would rather trade with far away and rich byzantium. Koh can let you have trade agreement with the entire europe, but in fact you can only trade with a handful of kingdom, due to the limitation of having a merchant assigned to a particular trade... a limitation I find particularly stupid and irrealistic.

In medieval-time, to trade was often considered as 'dirty' and was left to the italians and jews, who brought goods from anywhere they could get them. The trade could be done by hundreds of men, not a handful only able to bring 'one' good or money.

[McGillicuddy]

Okay here are a few my thoughts and opinions concerning KoH.

Initial play through was a blast. As a “seat of the pants” player, I was expecting a tough learning curve from what I was reading but instead it turned out to be much less with a very understandable interface. There’s always room for improvement (i.e. exile marshal button and other delete buttons should have a warning when clicked) but that’s for another thread.

Sometime around day five of playing, the honeymoon ended. I didn’t need to finish a game because I knew what the outcome would be. The AI was just to darn easy so I plugged in the “hard mod” (I forget who did that one but thanks it helped). It put some spank in the game but that AI still prefers to just plunder while you’re fighting off in some far away land and vulnerable on the home front (so what – rob me – I’ll be back). The enemy will fake going for the town but always end up plundering (and I don’t like that we even know where they’re going – surprise me). Everything became predictable which meant that someone must have gotten tired in the algorithm kitchen when the game was being made.

After day seven it occurred to me that I was never made a vassal in this game nor had I ever lost a town under my control and the only time I was being challenged was in the beginning of the game when I chose to play a one-providence kingdom (Normandy is a good pick because more times then not Germany or France are after you and it’s hard to do much early on). Anyway, I would employ the “rope-a-dope” strategy of sitting in my castle (or rather guard tower) and watch the plundering of my kingdom. Meanwhile, I would grow my treasury by trading to places my knights had no right getting to let alone rendezvousing with country wenches in one of those pillaged rural areas I had lost control of. By the time the AI comes after my town, I am fortified and have swordsmen to beat them back. After that it gets predictable again.

Lately, I spend my time starting new games on a continual basis (perhaps hoping something will change later into it). I still say it was worth the money but there should be a patch or expansion for this game. IMO, it really is a good attempt (as it stands now) that seems to be unfinished.

[conquestare legionare]

Why does everybody keep push rtw in the edge ?? . RTW is a great game and i loved it everyone seems to look down on it like it was disspointment when it isnt!. It wasent only the battles which where good. The empire managment and the strategy.It might not be an rts were everything is alive but still its good . The music was heaven to the ear. I see no reason to be disspointed.

[Mircoslavux]

Hi to all, :hello:
maybe not so interesting question but:
where can I buy KOH as cheapest as possible? :scratch:
Thanks for infos.
nice weekend

[Elvain]

In Czech rep it is again in shope :hello: and it costs 1499czk

it is also available for 1299 in online shops I found them on Czech KoH web (http://knights-of-honor.wz.cz/index.php?id=home) made by Luckin/Thor
but you probably seek it in Switzerland, do you?