When the game starts, there are several important things to do right away. Other such guides exist, but they gloss over many important things and give bad advice for when playing on Very Hard or against other humans.

• Pick a Skill for your King
  
  • Bargain is great - 50% off all knights!
    (extra useful if you have many provinces to govern)
    
  • Learning is the best first Tradition to get, so getting the skill for your king is the easiest way to unlock it
    
  • If those aren't an option, see Starting King Classes section below for detailed suggestions
  
  
• Hire Some Knights
  
  • Two merchants (only one if you have less than 20 )
    
  • One cleric at a minimum for extra books
    
  • Wait on marshal, diplomat, and spy until you need them
  
  
• Govern Your Provinces
  • King: town with the most settlements
    
  • Merchants: remaining towns with most settlements
    
  • Clerics: town with the most monasteries
    
  • Ungoverned cities have HUGE penalties, so don't forget this step
    
  • Spy and Marshal bonuses are not as useful early
    
  
  
• Sign Trade Agreements and Non-Aggression Pacts with Neighbors
  • Every new trade agreement boosts your merchant opinion (more gold)
    
  • Signing non-aggression pacts improves relations (more gold) and reduces risk of early wars
    
  
  
• Get Merchants Trading!
  • Pick trade partner that gives you the most gold
    
  • Focus on large coastal nations for the Navigation skill bonus (see Navigate to Victory section below)
    
  
  
• Marry Your King
  • If your king is unmarried, find a friendly neighbor and ask for a Princess
    
  • The earlier you get started, the more princes you are likely to get
    
  • Bonus: If you have princes, try to marry them off to large nations with Old Kings so you have a greater chance at inheriting land
    
  
  
• Fill Town Garrisons with Peasants
  • Armies are expensive, so start out by getting peasants
    
  • Population will decrease in towns with low stability, so hire them early while you can
    
  • Stop hiring when food income is 0, otherwise your Army Opinion will drop
    

Not all kings are created equal. They all provide huge governing bonuses, but some classes are simply outclassed in the early game.

• Learning - a popular, high-level strategy is to always get the Learning tradition first. Thus, if you can get it on your king it's much cheaper than on another knight, allowing you to get the tradition faster. As a skill combined with the tradition, it's versatile and powerful early/mid game.
  
  • If your king has Learning skill, princes automatically learn skills at level 3
    (If you have more than one prince, this is incredibly useful)
    
  • It reduces the cost of all future skills and traditions by 10%!
    
  • Military units will level up faster, so your armies are stronger
    
  • Gives +2 clergy opinion, meaning more books
    
  • Boosts culture (and minor boost to books with tradition)
• Writing - useful for any governing knight since books are so useful early game.
  
• Trading - sometimes you just need +3 food/commerce to expand trade or keep your food income positive
  
• Leadership - gives +100 influence (on a king) plus the ability to revolt in case your king gets imprisoned somewhere

Merchants are good for one thing... Gold!
A merchant king generates a lot of gold, which is critical for early development. Gold remains a useful resource throughout the game, so his talents are never wasted.

• Trading - extra resources
  
• Navigation - trading with a large, coastal kingdom (England, Byzantium, Almoravids, etc.) will give LOTS of extra gold
  
• Courtesy - turns your merchant into a mini-diplomat, boosting relations with your trade partner

NOTE: A king's trade will end when he dies, lowering your merchant opinion and meaning you have to start over from Small-scale trade.
Consider making your heir a merchant and leaving him in the Royal Court for a seamless transition.


Warfare is essential, and a Marshal king is stronger in battles than a regular knight. They get extra manpower and level up much faster, which often makes the difference in winning or losing a fight.
Although marshals are not useful if you are at peace, in high-level games you need to expand quickly so a marshal is almost always necessary.
However, war is dangerous! Beware that losing your king in battle can devastate your kingdom.

• Infantry/Archery Tactics - stronger swordsmen/spearmen or bowmen
  
• Logistics - armies move faster and use less food
  
• Medicine - costs less to heal troops

Diplomacy is very important, yet diplomat kings are a bit underrated.
A diplomat king can max out relations with several kingdoms over his lifetime, allowing you to choose optimal partners for trade agreements, build alliances, and reduce the number of potential enemies.
It is very helpful to have good relations with direct neighbors to help you with rebels, and with a high-level diplomat this becomes much easier.

• Courtesy - quickly improve relations with another kingdom
  
• Rhetoric - extra books plus better improve opinions
  
• Negotiation - kingdom influence

The best thing about a Cleric king is the extra books. This is very important early game, especially if they govern a town with several villages or religious settlements.
However, this class doesn't synergize well with being a king. A king can't become cardinal, patriarch, or pope, so you will often want a separate cleric anyways. Also, some of their most useful actions risk getting them killed, such as converting provinces and scholar's journey.

• Writing - gives the most books
  
• Learning - gives books and unlocks the tradition
  
• Rhetoric / Laws - some additional books and cultural power

Spies are, without question, the worst class for starting kings.
Their actions are expensive, success rates are low, and the risk of getting caught or killed is high.
For an early game spy king, the skills below are focused on reducing the odds of getting caught, and making spy actions cheaper and more effective.

• Plotting - cheaper plotting and let's you try to escape jail when caught
  
• Bribery - higher chance to bribe successfully
  
• Concealment / Strategy - lower odds of getting caught
  
• Bargain - lower costs to bribe enemy knights

This is the simplest strategy to make more money early game.

Merchants are of course used for earning Gold, and they have one skill that scales extremely well: Navigation



At level 3, that's 5 gold per coastal settlement that your trading partner has!

Suppose you are playing Early period and have a Merchant king. For 200 books, you get Navigation and trade with Byzantium for +90 Gold!

Here are the countries with the most coastal settlements in each time period:


The plan is simple. Become trade partners with nations high on the list, learn Navigation, and make lots of extra money.

If you are a small 1 or 2 province nation, why would mighty Byzantium want to trade with me? That's easy, join them in war!

Because large nations have so many neighbors, they are often at war when the game starts. At the very beginning, they will always accept you as an ally if you offer to join their war. This will increase your relations with them and they will then accept you as a trading partner.

Here you can see I started as one province completely on the other side of the map.



When the game starts, Byzantium is at peace, but Almoravids is at war with Zirids so I offered to join, they accepted, then we signed a trade agreement. Easy! All that's left is to send a merchant, and get Navigation when it's available. (If you have a Merchant king it's easier to get level 3)

Ricky Bobby famously said: "If you ain't first, you're last"

Always remember this, because it perfectly describes how sieging towns works in KoH2. When two armies attack a town and win, whoever attacked first gains control of the city.

Suppose you can send in a Marshal with no troops to siege a town. Your ally joins with a 7000 manpower army. When the town is taken, it's yours since you got there first!

This behavior is very exploitable for a few reasons:

• Friendly AI armies will help you siege cities even if they won't get the town
  
• While at war, you can see where your ally's army is headed and send your army first
  
• Allied marshals that are close will change their path to assist you

Invasion Plans are a very powerful tool for attacking someone. Why fight 1-on-1 when you can bring a group of other countries with you?

Being the leader of the war is incredibly useful, since you will never be stuck sieging a town only to have the leader of the war sign for peace. In addition, if you are winning a war, you can often ask for Land or Gold successfully when signing for peace.

Sometimes, another nation will demand you attack someone. This is the perfect opportunity - accepting won't cause the relationship drop like when you Declare War via the diplomacy menu.
When this happens, quickly see if you can create an invasion plan against the target and invite as many of their neighbors as possible. Once you accept the demand, you'll automatically start the war with allies.

You know what crusades are. The Pope will occasionally call for one against the occupiers of Jerusalem or a far-off Muslim/Pagan nation. One thing makes them truly unique though:
Crusades are the only feature in the game where it's possible to get a 6000+ strength army for FREE.

This feature can be exploited in your favor, and it's easier than you think.

• You can ask the Pope to excommunicate other Catholic nations
  
• You can ask the Pope to start a crusade against an enemy (if they are Pagan, Muslim, or excommunicated)
  
• The Pope will ask a friendly Catholic nation to lead the crusade

With a little bit of luck, it's easy to abuse the above mechanics to instigate a crusade against a Catholic neighbor. The earlier you do this, the more success you'll have since crusader army strength is pretty much fixed. For maximum effect, send your own army to follow the crusader, and oftentimes they will rampage through an enemy country, netting you several towns practically for free.

If your marshal is leading the crusade and the conquered town is close to you, there's a high probability you will simply get the town. The best strategy is to make sure your marshal begins sieging the town first, since the crusader will simply join in and practically ensure victory.

- Having a cardinal makes it easier to ask for excommunication
- If someone is a neighbor of Papal States, have a spy ruin relations between them
- If you manage to get your cleric to become Pope, this becomes laughably easy since you can direct your own marshal to begin a crusade against the target of your choice!

You may have noticed that the Orthodox religion isn't particularly exciting, since it has fewer unique aspects than all other religions, including Paganism.


The main caveat is the Patriarch. Patriarchs are basically a cleric king. Skills learned are automatically level 3, and when he dies you automatically get a new one. (So there's no risk of your cleric dying while trying to convert a province)

There are two ways to get a Patriarch (unless you start as independent Orthodox like Armenia):

1. Train a cleric and try to claim independence (expensive and difficult)
   
2. Conquer Constantinople and get the Ecumenical Patriarch

Constantinople is by far the most OP province on the map, even with "Balanced" settings, so it is usually banned in competitive multiplayer games.

• Grants automatic access to the Ecumenical Patriarch
  
• Often spawns with a large number of settlements
  
• Only province with both Varangian Guards and Roman Infantry in every period

A great strategy is therefore to conquer it as fast as possible. Once you do, you'll get the Ecumenical Patriarch for yourself, and every time he dies you get to choose a new buff.
Note: If you aren't Orthodox, he won't join your court so this is much less useful

As discussed above, invasion plans are a powerful way of carrying out an attack. So gather some participants once you have some troops, launch an attack and take the city.

In my game, most of the countries don't even dislike Latin Empire, but they joined my invasion plan anyways!


Then I declared war, and everyone ganged up eliminated them, giving my a shiny new Patriarch!


Note: This is harder to achieve in the Early starting period (1110 AD) since it's controlled by Byzantium, which is a huge nation. However, in Middle and Late, the controlling nation (Latin Empire or Byzantium) is much smaller.

Here are my preferred settings based on many multiplayer games. There is no right answer, but some options are more fun than others...


Minor Victory:

• Peasants Rush (10 or 15 provinces) - acquire more territory before your opponent does!
  
• First Blood - the best PVP mode when you want to fight each other directly
  
• Destroy Kingdom - good for co-op play when you want to work together instead of fighting against other players

Why not pick the other modes? (None, Greedy Kings, War for Goods)
- None is default so it's pretty common, but people will just leave a lot since there's no clear goal
- Greedy Kings and War for Goods encourage passive play, making it somewhat pointless for multi-player unless you just don't want to fight at all
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Espionage is a very unique game feature - if everyone is okay with it then great. However, it can also feel broken and infuriating to play against. Here are the main reasons I prefer limiting it:

• A single 5-star spy can utterly cripple another player. An early, powerful spy can kill knights, instigate revolts, etc.
  
• Hunting accident is way too easy, allowing you to kill someone's king (often multiple times). This can wreak havoc, especially if they have no heir.
  
• Ruin relations is uncounterable if you perform the action from the other country.
  If you infiltrate a player's neighbor and ruin their relations through them, Witch Hunt will never catch them. Nothing is more annoying than having something harming you and being powerless to stop it.

See what actions are allowed in each espionage setting in "Plot Severity" section here:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/271747-knights-of-honor-ii-sovereign/faqs/80296/introduction-to-spies-and-espionage

Religion is a fun aspect of KoH2, allowing you to choose from different flavors of Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox), Islam (Sunni, Shia) as well as those heretical Pagans!

Unfortunately, Catholicism is the strongest by far. In short, being Catholic synergizes well with other aspects of the game and offers advantages that other religions simply don't have

Catholicism is the strongest religion, and is relatively simple. It comes with built-in economic advantages, it has crusades, and offers potentially huge book generation with cardinals. If you are lucky enough you will even get the pope in your court, which offers some big advantages.

• When the pope asks you for gold, the request will go away if you spend your gold and no longer have enough to accept
• If you do give the pope money for crusade, you will get a huge relations boost with the pope
• To get a cardinal, you must have at least a level 5 cleric (and good relations with the pope helps)