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Diplomacy, espionage, and religion are the basis for successful politics in a kingdom. If you want to win easily in Knights of Honor 2: Sovereign, you should be able to use these tools as efficiently as possible. Newcomers may think that there are different ways to get victory and they have to choose one of them, but it isn’t so. Your diplomat, spy, cleric, and marshals should work in a complex for victory.
Just like in real life, it’s obvious that not every issue may be resolved on the battlefield. You can try, but what will you do when several kingdoms advance on you together? What will you do when your provinces convert to enemy religions and the rebels attack your cities against the background of a general hatred of your neighbors? Do you really think that a few extra marshals will help you solve these problems? 😉
I also think not. So let’s figure out how to lead our kingdoms to world supremacy.
Diplomacy Guide: Surround Yourself with Friends
The most important aspect of ruling a kingdom is preventing your neighbors from attacking you. Ideally, only you must decide when the war starts and against whom. Diplomats in Knights of Honor 2 are a tool that allows you to achieve this.
Besides, you can always call diplomats to arms and use them as marshals. In another article, we have already figured out how to create an army.
But the main role of diplomats in the game lies in establishing relationships with other kingdoms and creating alliances. So let’s consider diplomat functions step by step.
Improve Relations
Let’s say you have a hostile kingdom next to yours and you want to establish relations with it. A diplomate can be sent to that kingdom with the corresponding mission.
After that, relationships with the target kingdom will periodically improve. However, keep in mind that you will have to pay for diplomat upkeep. After some time, the hostile kingdom and yours will magically become friends!
You will be receiving corresponding messages like the one you can see above. To ensure safety for your own kingdom, you should establish relations with all the neighbors to prevent them from attacking you. Friendly kingdoms won’t attack without a very good reason.
Friendly kingdoms are willing to accept a trade agreement and a non-aggression pact that will further improve your relations not only with that kingdom but also with its friends. But keep in mind that the royal wedding and the non-aggression pact will worsen relationships with the enemies of the target kingdom.
Improve Opinions
There are 5 social groups in Knights of Honor 2: Nobility, Army, Merchants, Clergy, and Peasantry. Each group has an opinion of the kingdom ruler that may range from -10 to +10 units. The opinions are very important because bonuses, penalties, and the stability of the kingdom depend on them.
That’s why you can use your diplomats to improve opinions of the social groups in the kingdom. You will have to pay for upkeep.
This will contribute to improving opinions.
Defensive Pact
A defensive pact means that if some kingdoms decide to attack one of the allies, all the alliance will enter the war. Something like NATO, you know 😀. If some orcs try to attack it, they will face consolidated resistance.
The best way to create a defensive pact is to sign it with the enemies of the kingdom you want to defend yours from.
It should be stressed that allies can terminate the pact after a while or even sign a separate peace with an enemy during the war.
When some kingdoms create a defensive pact against yours, you will also know it. Several defensive pacts against your kingdom can be considered a sign that you’re strong enough to resist an invasion.
Moreover, defensive pacts against you can be created even by friendly kingdoms. My experience shows that you shouldn’t be afraid of this. They won’t attack you.
Plan Invasion
An invasion plan involves a joint attack on another kingdom with allies. You can create an invasion plan, invite a few kingdoms into it, and then declare war against your enemy. Allies will immediately join the confrontation on your side.
As you can see, this also requires payment for upkeep and a significant amount of gold. Your allies will be able to sign a separate peace with the enemy or simply leave the alliance without any consequences before the declaration of war.
Negotiate Peace
Finally, you can send a diplomat to the enemy kingdom to negotiate peace. This will make the signing of peace more probable.
At the same time, you shouldn’t forget to strengthen your positions through force. After a while, the enemy himself will ask for peace.
Royal Wedding
You can arrange a royal wedding by making a marriage proposal or by accepting someone else’s. To do this, your king must have adult children: princes or princesses. The Royal Family can be monitored on the kingdom panel or in the eponymous section. When children are grown up, this will be specified in the corresponding column.
Actually, you will be receiving messages about each stage of the growth of the royal children.
After that, starting from the “juvenile” age of children, you can make a marriage proposal to another kingdom. If the proposal is accepted, you will have royal ties with that kingdom, which means a guarantee of peaceful coexistence, trade relations, and non-agression from its side.
But you should consider that relations with the enemies of the target kingdom will deteriorate.
Espionage Guide: Separate and Destroy from Within
While diplomats strengthen the domestic and foreign policies of your kingdom, spies destroy the policies of your enemies. They are an important tool that should be used to achieve your political goals. One good spy may be more powerful than all the marshals combined. Let’s see how to use spies in Knights of Honor 2.
Infiltrate Kingdom
First of all, your spy must infiltrate the enemy kingdom. Only after that will you be able to give him orders.
Ruin Relations
You can order the spy to ruin relations between the enemy kingdom and its friends. This is needed when you want to isolate a kingdom diplomatically and then attack it.
After that, the relations between the target kingdoms will periodically worsen until they become hostile toward each other. You will be receiving messages about the progress of ruining relations.
In this way, we prepare our target for an invasion by cutting its political connections to prevent its allies from entering the war on its side.
Sow Dissent
If you send a spy to sow discontent in a foreign kingdom, he will reduce people’s opinions of their ruler on a regular basis.
This will destroy the internal politics of your prey and make your task easier when war breaks out between you.
Help Prisoners Escape
Finally, if one of your NPCs or a friendly kingdom NPC has been captured, a spy can help them escape. However, in the process of escaping, he faces the risk of being revealed and may even die.
Religion Guide: The Peaceful Warrior Path
Clerics in Knights of Honor 2 are used for spreading culture, improving social loyalty to the kingdom ruler, converting provinces to the kingdom religion, and increasing stability in cities. Clerics is a powerful tool that even allows you to take foreign provinces without a war.
Bolster Culture
Each province has a certain level of loyalty to your kingdom or a neighboring one. The most convenient way to check loyalty is to turn on the “Provinces” mode on the “Loyalty” view of the map. Then you can simply click on any province and hover over an icon with peasants.
If the loyalty to your kingdom is low or a province is loyal to a foreign kingdom, you can assign the “Bolster Culture” mission to a cleric.
This will require a pretty big upkeep payment, but in exchange, the cleric will increase the loyalty of the “troubled” provinces to your kingdom. And very soon, you will receive similar messages.
If you ignore a province’s disloyalty, there is a risk of rebellion on its territory. This will entail political complications and well-founded claims on your territories on the part of the neighboring kingdoms.
Commit to Charity
Each province has a certain level of stability in addition to loyalty. If the level of stability falls too low, rebellion is unavoidable.
Clerics can be used to keep provinces stable, which can be achieved by assigning the “Commit to Charity” task to them.
After that, the stability of the “troubled” provinces will gradually increase, or at the very least stop decreasing.
Adopt Population
After capturing a city, you may notice that the “Disorder” parameter negatively affects its stability.
A cleric can be sent to fix it. This will cost a lot, but after a while the province will become peaceful.
You’ll receive a message about this.
Preach Our Religion
Religious differences impact the stability of provinces and the entire kingdom. That’s why you should send a cleric to convert provinces of your kingdom to your religion.
This option is quite expensive and doesn’t have a 100% chance of success. With any luck, provinces will be converted to the kingdom religions, and its stability will be increased.
The cleric will travel from city to city until you cancel the action or the entire kingdom converts to traditional religion.
After a while, you will find that religious differences in your kingdom are decreasing.
This will lead to increasing the stability of your kingdom and, as a consequence, its prosperity.
Claim Autocephaly
You can also use a cleric to claim autocephaly, which will grant you independence from the Ecumenical Patriarch.
But this is a very difficult task. The more independent churches there are in the world, the more difficult it will be to claim autocephaly. With any luck, you’ll receive the following message.
Special Opportunities
Each of your diplomats, clerics, and spies will, from time to time, offer you special opportunities. For example, a spy may offer to inspire an uprising in a neighboring kingdom.
A cleric may offer to travel to a foreign province with low stability and try to spread your kingdom’s religion there.
There are many opportunities in Knights of Honor 2. You should strive to use most of them to pursue successful kingdom politics.
Peaceful Capture of Cities
If your kingdom’s culture power is high, it will spread to neighboring kingdoms. And at some point, you will start receiving messages about foreign provinces’ loyalty to you.
If a province is loyal to your kingdom, you can claim it from the neighbor it belongs to.
If your relationship is good enough, the neighbor may agree to give you the province in exchange for some amount of gold or additional conditions like attacking his enemy or joining his war.
Sometimes, the required amounts of gold are really high. Besides, relations with that kingdom will decrease after similar deals. But on the other side, we are getting a province without a war, which is a big plus.
If the ruler flatly refuses to cede territory, it’s most likely that you have nothing to offer him in exchange. Try to accumulate more gold (up to 100k) and repeat your offer. You can also wait for more favorable political conditions for similar deals. For example, if the target kingdom will be fighting on a few fronts while rebel loyalists try to capture its provinces, the ruler will be more interested in your resources.
Now, that’s all. I’m planning to update this guide from time to time in the future, so if you have any questions, please ask them in the comments. Thanks for reading and good luck 😉!