Update Overview This is our third major update since the release of Knights of Honor II: Sovereign. This time, we focused on quality-of-life improvements and adding more options to the Knights of the Royal Council, specifically Clerics and Diplomats. We chose to focus on the Catholic Church in this update, but we will continue to work on other religions as well for future updates. We also added a much-requested Search feature for the Royal Library, the game’s built-in Wiki system. We hope this will help both newcomers and advanced players to learn about the more advanced mechanics of the game and quickly find the information they need. The help module already had hyperlinks and convenient ways for players to jump to important topics from tooltips and interface elements, but it is now much easier to also find information directly on topics one is interested in. [h3]General[/h3] • Added search feature to the “Royal Library” (the in-game Wiki). • Added visualization of armies stationed in towns, on both the world view and the political map. • Added merchant’s opportunity "Entice mercenaries", which allows a merchant to convince mercenaries to move from the kingdom the merchant is currently trading with or the neighboring kingdoms to the home kingdom of the merchant. • Considerably increased availability of special units in provinces and kingdoms. Kingdoms that are formed from a province now have the province special units as their kingdom special units as well. • Improved logic for AI kingdoms regarding kingdom expansion, aiming to increase the initial stability of kingdoms, which is especially important for scenarios like Shattered World and Destroy Kingdom. [h3]Diplomacy[/h3] [b]Gameplay[/b] • Added a new action for kings – “Form vassal”. This allows the king to separate one of their kingdom’s provinces to become a separate vassal. This can only be done to disloyal provinces. • Added “Bolster Influence” action to the Diplomat, an ongoing action that increases a Kingdom’s diplomatic influence. • Claiming independence, but then accepting the refusal of your sovereign, can now lead to crown authority and nobility opinion loss. • Truce is no longer signed with supporters in war unless they signed a separate peace, or their side won the war and accepted the enemy’s surrender or destroyed the enemy leader. • Freeing an occupied town now increases the relationship with a kingdom (in addition to supporting it in battle or fighting/defeating its rebel armies/rebellion). • Truce time is now indicated in kingdom selection by a circular progress bar around the stance icon. • Influence in a foreign kingdom is now indicated in kingdom selection and diplomacy/offer windows. • A pact dissolving due to a knight being exiled now results in a message explaining the event. [h3]Religion[/h3] • Added "Ask for absolution" action for Popes, enabling players to remove excommunication status of other kingdoms. • Added "Arrange Peace Talks" action for Popes, allowing players to force an enemy to offer white peace to them or their teammates/vassals, if that enemy is catholic. The action cannot be used against other players. • Directly donating gold to the Papacy through diplomacy now has significantly reduced effect on relations. • Exiling your last Cleric as a Catholic kingdom now reduces your relations with the Papacy. • Clerics now try to keep their armies during a religion change of a kingdom. • Clergy opinion now changes upon destroying the papacy and rises or drops, depending on the religion of the kingdom that destroys it. • Defeating a crusade now leads to clergy opinion change, depending on the religion and the target of the crusade, and army opinion increases as well (regardless the religion). • Catholic clerics cannot become cardinals in the very beginning of the game and before reaching level 5. Time between elections of new cardinals is also increased. • Suppressed narrator voice for own kingdom excommunicated, when the player is excommunicated due to a pope action failing. [h3]Espionage[/h3] • Added a “Ruin Pact” puppet (Diplomat) plot. Through it, spies are able to end invasion plans and defensive pacts, created by the kingdom the spy has infiltrated. • Governor back independence cost increased by 1000 gold and success chance reduced by 5%. • Hunting accidents appear less often and pose a higher risk of the spy being revealed. [h3]Misc.[/h3] • Added a setting to turn on/off transition between World view and Political view through scrolling. • Added a setting to turn on/off the province highlight effect in world view on mouse over. • Trade centers now require more initial time to start spawning on Shattered World mode, to prevent too significant early advantage. • Death messages now warn you with additional text in case the deceased character is a prince that was an heir to the crown. • Added checks to make the modding system more robust and prevent mods from breaking the game. • Clicking on the kingdom's banners from the multiplayer players' table will now center the camera on that kingdom. • Character level indications added in mercenary-related windows and in royal dungeon. [h3]Fixes[/h3] • Various text improvements. • Fixed a rare issue, causing knights to be stuck outside the map’s boundaries. • Fixed the tooltip for multiplayer campaign time limitation, to correctly mention the number of generations required for the game to end. • Fixed a bug where changing a minor victory rule was resetting the lobby team mode. • Fixed promoting belief status remaining after religion change. • Fix spies getting imprisoned in non-existing kingdoms when “Hand over the Crown” or “Arrange Annexation” actions succeed, but the spy is revealed. • Claim caliphate is now properly cancelled if a claiming kingdom becomes a vassal. • Fixed a rare issue in Shattered world mode which prevented nearby provinces to be combined into a kingdom. • In the multiplayer lobby, when a player’s kingdom is selected by clicking the icon in the players list, the selected province is now properly reset. • Disabled "Default settings" button for Languages switch while in game. • Fixed a visual bug, where the relations bar was present in the tooltip of destroyed kingdoms. • Added missing information regarding Bolster Culture’s action effect, in the culture resource breakdown. • Fixed issues with an incorrect Orthodox religion icon being shown in certain areas of the UI, when you are playing as the Ecumenical Patriarchy. • Fixed an issue with tree wind waving visualization.