Okay, endless rant time. This is a side-by-side review of Medieval II: Total War and Knights Of Honor.
So. In case anyone is not familiar with the premise of these games, each allows you to pick one of many factions in medieval Europe (all real factions with historically accurate yadayadayada*) and then dumps you onto a map of Europe and lets you conquer as you will.
Speaking of the map, this is one of Medieval's weaknesses: Scandinavia is truncated at Denmark. The game does begin right at the end of the Viking age...
While we're talking about maps, Medieval has another weakness, which is that in a weird design choice they chose to make Europe unexplored. So of course you know the basic shape, but you don't know where cities are and stuff. Makes conquering a pain in the ass, as your armies will blunder about till they find something to crush.
Knights of Honor has an extremely elegant map system. You can see all of Europe from the start (they kindly assume that the people of England are aware of France's existence), but you can only see what's happening in a province if you control it or have an army in it. You can view a larger fullscreen map of Europe and apply many filters to it (whereas Medieval lets you do nothing of the sort, making it extremely painful to find a city where you can, say, recruit a spy).
Perhaps I should explain. In both games Europe is divided into provinces with control of each province resting in the hands of whoever controls the settlement in that province. At the settlement you can recruit and garrison troops and build stuff to improve the place. In Medieval II there is a distinction between castles and cities; cities provide more money, castles are easier to defend. I think there's some other differences, but they don't really matter.
Both games track the happiness of people in your kingdom. Knights of Honor has a simple system; the happiness of people in a province is affected by various buildings in the city, plus general stuff about your kingdom, like being at war (negative), being a powerful kingdom (positive), and royal weddings (+10, wtf?). This seems pretty reasonable until you realize that the people are sad about having been at war for a hundred years but it's canceled out because they're happy the prince got hitched. This happiness is essentially their chance of rebelling. When they rebel, a rebel army appears in the province and proceeds to sack various places in the province until you kill him. If you leave him for too long (about an hour or two) he may try to take over the settlement. If he succeeds, he'll make the province an independent kingdom.
In M2 the system is far more confusing. The worst thing is squalor; your settlements don't expand on their own, you have to build absurdly expensive new walls so they can get bigger. If you don't, happiness goes down absurdly fast. Trust me, this will happen. Happiness is, however, not affected by anything your kingdom is doing. People will support your endless wars just as long as they get that Huge Stone Wall they wanted. Oddly enough a settlement's happiness isn't affected when you conquer it. When you capture a settlement you have the option to occupy it, sack it, or kill everyone in it. If you kill everyone in it, people will still be left and you'll get +40 happiness because they're afraid of you. If you sack it, you'll get money and people won't mind. If you occupy it, though, nothing at all happens. You just instantly assume control. It should be noted that in Knights of Honor you can get money by pillaging small communities in a province, but you get nothing when you capture the settlement and there's a waiting period before you can assume control (although you can pay to speed this up).
The chief advantage of M2 in terms of city management is the option to auto-manage cities; KoH demands you micromanage everything. The auto-manage is weird, though, as they often spend money you don’t have even when you tell them to scrimp and save. Also, they don’t tell you what they’re doing; late in the game when Hungary invaded I discovered to pleasant surprise that I had about 6 massive hordes sitting around in the east because the cities there had been on auto-manage for 60 turns.
Now, the main difference between the two games: M2 is turn based, Knights of Honor is not. It runs in something approximating real-time; it takes forever for your dudes to move around, but you don’t have to press “end turn.” This difference has pros and cons. The pro is that it’s really cool. The con is that when you have a big empire, there’s too much going on to respond to everything. Another con is that this forces the game to force you to make decisions. When you have the choice to fight or flee, you don’t have the option of reviewing the sizes of the two armies, for example – you have to choose right then. Actually, M2 does the same thing, but it does tell you the sizes of the armies.
Now we get into combat. Both games do the same thing – you control your kingdom and move armies around, but when there’s a battle you have the option of commanding yourself or autoresolving. In KoH there’s a slight tactical aspect to this – if you autoresolve the battle takes place in real time, so you can then move in reinforcements and so can the enemy. If you command yourself time pauses outside. You can still call in reinforcements, but only if they’re within a short distance, so there’s a definite tactical aspect here. In M2 you cannot call in reinforcements. Both games allow multiple armies on both sides; KoH limits you to two armies while M2 lets you have as many as you want. As mentioned before, though, you can’t call for reinforcements, so you’d have to have them all standing around.
Anyhow, once combat starts the advantage is clearly with Medieval II. In KoH combat is 2D, you command large squads and they go and kill each other. There’s not much tactics to it except a sort of rocks paper scissors that actual doesn’t work in practice. You can win the game by just using men-at-arms, who are cheap and easy to build and pretty unbalanced. There’s a whole bunch of different units that really aren’t worth building. In KoH when besieging a settlement you have to bring any siege equipment you want with you, although you won’t need it if you autoresolve; in M2 you can build rams and towers while besieging, though you have to build catapults, ballistas, trebuchets, etc ahead of time (why?). Anyhoo, Medieval also has you commanding large squads in really awesome battles, everything is beautifully rendered, and combat is really cool because everyone is doing their own little awesome animations. There’s definitely some tactics to it too. I autoresolved most of my battles because this isn’t really my thing, but if you like epic RTS battles this is for you. You can pause and speed up time when giving orders or marching long distances, by the way. After battles the victor will often have captured dudes (if fighting another faction; rebels are executed and always kill everyone). The victor will then have the option of releasing, ransoming, or executing the prisoners. There’s no advantage to releasing, and ransoming never brings in much cash, so I advise executing (so you won’t have to fight them anymore), which lets you hear some really brutal executing noises. Fun tidbit: when given this choice as you hover your mouse over the options a prisoner pleads with you about each option. However, generals cannot be taken prisoner; they either die in battle, which is rare unless I’m commanding, or run away. In KoH there are no prisoners except enemy commanders, who rarely die but are often captured. They can then be ransomed, released, or executed. Execution will result in a loss of kingdom power, so I actually advise ransoming (which can bring in some real cash) or releasing.
I should mention that the battle report system in M2 is completely broken. It often tells you that you killed more troops than your enemy lost, and vice versa. I bet this has been patched, but still…pretty sloppy.
Oh, kingdom power. Let me explain. In KoH your kindom has a certain kingdom power number ascribed to it that has nothing to do with your actual power. I guess it’s your personal rep or something. Anyhow, it affects both tax income and diplomacy. You can raise it by paying large sums. Totally worth it. It drops when you do bad stuff like breaking agreements (even trade agreements, wtf?) or being dishonorable. Although I think you can execute spies safely.
All this leads me to talk about agents and generals. In KoH you have a court with nine seats. This can be occupied by male members of your (who you don’t have to pay) or hired guys. These dudes occupy roles as: generals, clerics, builders, spies, and merchants. Builders are completely useless and a waste of a seat. Clerics are also pretty useless, more on religion later. Spies combine spying and assassinating. You tell them to infiltrate another kingdom and they wait until that kingdom hires and then get hired. What they can do depends on what they get hired as. If left idle they’ll look for spies in your own kingdom. You really, really want one guarding you at all times because at the end of the game people will be trying to infiltrate you at all times and having your king assassinated is absolutely disastrous. Merchants trade with other kingdoms; you generally want your king doing this because it’s safe. Brings in money; very important early on, a drop in the bucket later. Generals go out and kick ass and do general-y things. I think you get the idea. Characters other than generals can be educated using books (which are produced by certain buildings) to be more effective. Generals get higher levels by experience gained in battle. This allows you to pick various skills, which affect their abilities. Moral is the most useful one, as fleeing is very common in KoH and if you can prevent it in your troops and inspire it in enemies (Leadership and Dread, respectively), you can win big. Some of the skills are useless. However, overall you only get 9 slots. This is plenty for a small kingdom, but incredibly limiting later, as armies can only move when commanded by a general. The idea here is probably to make sure that more powerful kingdoms can’t absolutely steamroll lesser ones; it doesn’t work.
In M2 every sort of character appears on screen, resulting in a massive clusterfuck. Royal family members are automatically generals. Armies can move without generals, in which case they’ll be led by a captain. Captains don’t have stats like generals; if they win big victories you can make them generals though. You can also hire merchants, clerics, diplomats, spies, and assassins. I played through an entire game without hiring a single merchant, but I assume they trade with people. You get trade income without them, though. Clerics will be discussed later. Spies can infiltrate armies and settlements to see what’s there. Assassins can try to kill people. I had two assassins attempting to knock off the pope every turn for at least 20 turns with no success. That sucked. Spies are useful, though. Diplomats are annoying; the only way to negotiate with another nation is to contact them with a diplomat (in KoH it’s assumed you already have diplomats or something, because you can just start negotiating whenever you want, which is a much better system).
This leads me to the diplomacy system. I’ve yet to see a game with a really good diplomacy system. However, I’d say the winner here is M2. In KoH diplomacy is reasonably function, but some weird stuff happens. For one thing, when you’re absolutely slaughtering a nation in a war they generally refuse to make peace, even just white peace. For another thing, trade agreements make going to war with a nation dishonorable…I thought that was what the nonagression pact that you also have was for. Also, for some reason you can move your troops through other nations freely; that nation will not protest or dislike you, although if you then attempt to negotiate with them they’ll almost always tell you you need to get off their land first. However, other nations will send you letters congratulating you on the ass-whooping you’re about to dish out the whatever nation you’re passing through. M2 is also fairly functional, although there are 2 obnoxious habits: 1, nations rarely inform you before declaring war or peace; several times I found peace had been declared between me and someone else when no one had asked me about it. Several times I found I was at war without being notified. Also, when negotiating if you make 2 offers that are rejected nations will usually just close up and refuse to negotiate. However, nations will at least object when you cross their land uninvited (and won’t rudely march across yours like in KoH).
I should probably also mention the royal families. Here KoH is definitely better, although weird. In M2 you cannot pick your heir, and while marriages require your consent they tell you nothing about the bride (and really nothing is important). Basically, you can leave the system alone and nothing bad will happen. You’ll wind up with a lot of family members who aren’t much use, but you can just have them govern places. Meanwhile, the traits system is pretty cool and it’s really painful losing your awesome general. However, the KoH system actually feels like a reasonable approximation of medieval dynastic politics. Children are born as babies and eventually come of age (this is weird as sometimes the child that was born second comes of age first wtf). When females come of age you probably want to marry them off to a country with a ruler older than yours: this forms a claim. Whichever ruler dies first will have to cede some land to the other nation, although such claims can be and frequently are denied, resulting in hostility. If you’re more powerful, however, nations tend to give you the land. Princes can be married off to princesses from other nations; this improves relations. You can pick which prince inherits. When your ruler dies, the heir becomes king and all his siblings disappear from the royal dynasty; however, if one of his brothers was serving on the court as a marshal or something he’ll stay there. A prince can’t have kids until he’s inherited the throne for some reason. If he dies without a male heir one of your marshals will step up, although this may cause some rebels to appear.
Now for religion. Both games feature a pope; in KoH he’s some incorporeal old guy who doesn’t do much except declare crusades every now and then. If you’re asked to go on a crusade, you can safely decline. Excommunication is unimportant and relatively rare unless you mess with the nation of Papacy. If you have a level five cleric when the pope dies he may (read: will) get elected as pope. You can then have him excommunicate other nations, in response to which he’ll refuse to do so, break his ties with you, and possibly excommunicate you for good measure. Ungrateful little shit. Whenever the pope dies if you were excommunicated you’re back in. You can also be orthodox or Islamic. Apparently a level 5 Orthodox cleric can form their own church, although I never tried this. I’m not sure how Islam works, but I believe it’s similar to Catholicism. Most nations are Catholic, though. If there’s differences in religion between a province and most of your empire it’ll cause some slight but unimportant unhappiness.
In M2 the pope is the leader of the Papal States faction and often runs around on the battlefield just like in real life (serious). He’ll excommunicate you and you won’t give a shit. I conquered Rome and it didn’t affect my relationship with any other catholic nation so I don’t think it’s an issue. I think you can get your own cleric elected pope as well but it’s really not worth the trouble. Again, Orthodox and Islam are incorporated but not a big deal. However, really badass priests can somehow send around inquisitors. This is where the game gets ridiculous: these guys can then interrogate your dudes and, if they’re lacking in piety, execute them. I had my emperor and crown prince burned at the stake for lacking faith, which is absolutely ridiculous.
Now then, technical stuff. Medieval II’s battle graphics are astounding, easily trumping KoH. However, in the main game where you’ll spend most of your time KoH’s beautiful 2D graphics outshine M2’s 3d stuff. In terms of the general aesthetic of menus and buttons and stuff I’d say KoH is easier to look at overall. Both games have exactly zero stability issues. M2, however, demands some graphical power, whereas KoH is ideal for laptop gaming or those with old computers.
Overall, I’m not certain which is the better game. Both are excellent, engaging experiences that draw you in until you realize to your horror that it’s 4:30AM. I have a slight preference for KoH but really, take your pick.
*Of course, the historical accuracy is dubious; In M2 I took control of the Holy Roman Empire and found not the weak confederation of independent states that existed in 1066 but the badass fighting machine Bismarck created in 1870. Um...thanks? The same thing is the case in KoH. Another point: While when you start a game of KoH the relationships between different nations are already established (I assume accurately), so that when you take control of Germany France won't be your best friend, in M2 every faction starts as neutral. This means Germany can be best buds with France and make war on the Spanish together.
