Patch Overview
This is our second major patch since Knights of Honor II: Sovereign’s exciting release, so strap in! We focused here mostly on responding to player feedback and providing a few new, fun ways to play the game.
First up, we’ve been able to greatly improve the zoom functionality, both in World View as well as Battle View. Players with good enough hardware can enable “Extra Zoom” in the options menu and get further zoom-out levels throughout the game! We also added a seamless transition from World View to the Political View when you hit the zoom-out threshold, making it easier than ever to move around the map. This was a highly requested feature that took a bit of technical work and optimization, but should really enhance everyone’s experience.
Many in the community were also requesting the ability to add waypoints when managing their armies in World View, and we’re here to deliver. You can now hold SHIFT and RMB click to set army waypoints to better help them navigate to their destination, maybe to avoid pesky rivers or neutral territories, or even just control how they move from point A to point B.
The next major change is a new way of playing KoH2:S – Shattered World! Configurable in the “Kingdom Size” rule when setting up a campaign, Shattered World changes the starting size of all kingdoms in the world, configurable by the player, giving each kingdom an even playing field at the beginning. Things like trade centers, vassalages, and more are all removed to create the most balanced, fresh world setup possible, and giving players all new challenges when starting out. This is also available for multiplayer games as well, of course! The concept was highly recommended by the community, and we feel it is a fun, new way to experience KoH2:S’s game experience.
Combine all of this with a bunch of bug fixes, AI improvements, balance tweaks, network stability improvements, and so much more, we feel 1.3.0 has turned out to be a solid patch that we truly hope you enjoy. We’re already hard at work on the next major patch, so stay tuned for future improvements!
Thanks again to all of you for supporting us, and we hope you have a fantastic time with the patch.
General
• Added the possibility to set waypoints for armies in World view by RMB clicking while holding SHIFT.
• Teammates can now see each other’s towns’ buildings and stationed armies.
• Major improvements in multiplayer libraries, preventing some hosting issues, disconnects and crashes.
Camera controls
• Further zoom out in World view.
• Further zoom out in Battle view (Tactical battles).
• “Extra zoom” option added in the game’s settings to protect the players with low-end hardware from performance issues due to the additional zoom out.
• Transition between Political view and World view through scrolling.
• Camera smoothing on edge/keyboard scrolling.
• Camera smoothing on zoom in/out.
Campaign settings
• Kingdom standings: Players can now choose from one of five starting limitation modes for players’ kingdoms – without trade centers (this limitation was obligatory by now), with or without autocephalies and caliphates (this option was present already), without being/having vassals, without all the above (“Balanced” start) and “Historical” with all of the above being possible for players’ kingdoms.
• Shattered world: Players can now choose starting kingdom sizes to apply not only to players’ but to all kingdoms instead, resulting in a very fragmented and balanced starting world. Autocephalous church, caliphate standing, trade centers and vassalage are removed for all kingdoms (regardless the “Kingdom standings” option). Shattered world can be activated from the “Kingdom size” campaign rule.
Battles
Improvements
• Disorganized penalty can now also trigger when troops shoot, making stacking ranged units an inefficient strategy.
• Squads positioning logic improved, so that chasing enemies is now more efficient.
• AI: areas where archers are currently shooting are considered more dangerous; archers that are currently fighting in melee or have run out of salvos are treated as melee squads for the purposes of their enemy calculating threat.
• AI: Noblemen cavalry is much more reluctant to attack a squad where the enemy side threat would be greater than the marshals’ side threat.
• AI: improved logic and timing when choosing retreat positions.
• AI: maintain formation logic improved to prevent troops entering dangerous positions in the middle of a fight.
• AI: nobles weren't retreating when their side was winning overwhelmingly – now this is possible.
• AI: It was possible for the battle AI retreat command to work even at 0 priority (if without a reason if there were no other preferred options). Now this is disabled.
• AI: defending own ranged squads is now more probable.
• AI: choosing not to attack, but to move towards a capture point is now less likely.
• Additional morale factors are now shown in tooltips.
Balance
• Noblemen cavalry gets 25% defense boost against ranged attacks, but -4 to attack (-12.5%).
• Disorganized penalty to attack increased from 50% to 60%.
• Base friendly fire of ranged units increased from 50% to 80%.
• Light and Heavy desert and standard spearmen defense (melee and ranged) slightly reduced, in most cases melee defense reduced by 10 and ranged – accordingly.
Fixes
• Bugfixes related to the AI choosing to retreat.
• Fixed an issue, causing damage on retreat to be dealt only by the main enemy army, not the supporting one, nor the garrison.
• Overkilling during retreat now fixed – attacking units will always pick a retreating unit that's still alive.
• Siege equipment’s morale/resilience/manpower stats/bonuses hidden from tooltips, as these do not affect siege equipment.
• Morale tooltip fixes.
• Fix interaction blockers for battleview.
• Fixed retreat button being available if you have no armies in the battle.
• Fixed a bug in garrison manpower calculations leading to doubled manpower being displayed in the province overview window during sieges.
Modding
Improvements
• UI now supports adding extra slots in royal court.
• UI now supports adding more building slots in towns (the buildings are initially resized to fit, then the container becomes scrollable if buildings slots are still too many).
• Disabled resizing of mod upload tool window.
• Removed warnings if you're currently running mods that are compatible with a save's mods.
• If there are mods with the same workshop_id inside both local mods and workshop mods, the one from workshop mods are now hidden.
• Jpg, jpeg and gif files for mod preview in ModUploadTool are now properly working.
• Added a warning message at game load, if there are broken system files (for example .def files).
• Added an option to upload a mod with "Unlisted" visibility.
• Added a new system variable “population_growth_from_surplus_food”, so that modders can now tweak population growth rate as a function of food supply.
Fixes
• Miscellaneous modding errors fixes.
• Fixed ModUploadTool bugs, happening when trying to change the current preview image.
• Fixed parsing bugs related to different directory separators being used in different places.
• Fixed settings window being broken after a mod de/activation.
• Fixed a crash when trying to change the mod preview image.
• Fixed the mod and image paths not displaying fully when too long.
• Fixed the "Publish" button not being reenabled sometimes.
• Fixed a bug, where the Settings window transitions to the Gameplay tab after enabling or disabling a mod.
UX / MISC
• Audio improvements and fixes: new sound effects on changing campaign rules and countdown when starting a campaign; on mercenary selection and hire; new siege process sound effects; new SFX and ambience on victory & defeat screens and others.
• Extended “exile knight” action tooltip to show the knights’ wages decreases.
• Add visual indication for the timeout of the chosen emperor in the EoW screen.
• Edited realm feature presets concerning provinces with 3 monasteries, so that the guaranteed realms for the given preset are always picked. Previously, there was a chance for them to not be picked, due to randomness and weights.
• Changed prison logic so that any prisoners which are part of the special royal court (own rebels) will be removed from it after escaping from the dungeon.
• Religious requirements added in unit tooltips.
Other fixes
General
• Changed books income logic so Base book bonus will now remain, after getting book income greater than zero.
• Fixed population majority resetting itself to starting values, when loading a game in which it had reached 100%.
• Fixed a case where trade centers could start too close to each other.
• Fixed an issue caused by saves within under a second after loading, causing bugs like having resurrected characters and two kings at once.
• Fixed crusade province capture outcomes that sometimes ended up giving the province back to its owner.
• Fixed dead marshals still leading armies.
• Fix for kingdoms that are vassals of themselves.
• Prevented Disorder Rule from activating when the population majority kingdom is destroyed.
• Fixed a visual bug with kingdom offers icon duplication when you have a Marshal selected and save/load the game.
• Fixed a bug where knights were not properly selected after quicksaving/quick-loading the game.
• Fixed an issue where the clients were seeing a kicked player as still in lobby. Fixed an issue where there was still a network connection being wrongly maintained if a player was kicked from an already started campaign. Fixed an issue where the player’s name coloration was wrong for kicked players (which too was leading to players appearing as in lobby).
• Fixed a bug, where selecting a kingdom through coat of arms in the Kingdom Selection phase results in internal game errors.
• Fixed: players weren’t receiving bonus gold from the Iron Fist skill for defeating rebels if those rebels were currently plundering a settlement and players were defending it. Defeating a rebel/rebellion will now also provide gold, calculated for the participating knight with highest “gold from rebels” bonuses, regardless of his role (leader/supporter).
• Fixed a bug, where the “Let fate decide” option from the “Prince is now grown up” message did not add any random skill to a Prince.
• Fixed a bug causing messages for newborn prince to not be recreated on game load.
• Fixed a bug preventing proper Papal states restoration when using the "Restore Papacy action" in a multiplayer game.
• Fixed a bug causing pope action outcome messages to be sent to all players, even if the pope is not in their court.
• Fixed a bug, due to which the selected class for princes was automatically changed to Marshal on the client in a multiplayer game.
• Creating a new SP campaign from save now properly disables the "Minor Victory" setting (there was a visual bug).
• Fixed a visual bug, where the manpower in the "Kingdom overview" window will only show the manpower from the garrison during sieges.
• Fixed a visual bug, where some buildings appear offscreen when selected from the buildings tab.
Misc.
• Adjusted goods legend text (for already produced in province) to be less misleading.
• Minor text improvements:
o Morale factor texts reworded to be valid from third-party + other inconsistencies fixed.
o Reworded a misleading defense bonus stat from jihad.
o Army penalties due to disembarking in world view are now noted as "disembarked" in unit tooltips, instead of "disorganized", to not confuse them with the effect with the same name in tactical battles.
o Tweaked the prisoner escaped message, to fit better when the escapee was a rebel in your court.
o Minor text fixes to loading screen tips.
o Others…
• Fixed errors when changing Settings while in an active campaign.
• Fixed errors on victory screen.
• Fix some procedures being incorrectly called twice on a game load.
• Fixed a visual issue with Marshal status icons during pillages.
• Fixed issues with pyramids flickering with certain antialiasing methods (all except TAA).
• Fixed Nile clipping with the world’s edge, down south.
• Fixed a bug with the clickable links to Royal Library for Japanese and Chinese languages.
• Fixed a rare bug where dead king's portrait was shown in the "Great Powers and Rankings" window.
• Fixed a bug where messages for new opportunities and prince growth related events were not recreated on game load.
• Fixed an issue, where the "Back to Court" status icon remains displayed on the king or prince's portrait at the end of the action.
• Fixed a graphical artefact causing a rare transparent cube to be visible in the east part of Venice, in the ocean.
• Fixed disappearing battle nameplates on siege interruption.
