Throwback Thursday: Knights of Honor Review (on Steam Deck)

Knights of Honor is a grand strategy game developed by Black Sea Studios and released by Paradox Interactive in May 2005. It’s set in medieval times and as a player, you’re meant to protect and expand your territory, trade, engage in diplomacy and more. 

Most importantly, it was my favorite game when I was younger. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent building kingdoms and even conquering the entire Europe once or twice. Over the years, I lost sight of it (you know how it is, old computers, new games), but I looked it up a few weeks ago and found that it was on discount on Steam. 

I took it as a sign to jump back into it and see how it holds up in 2024. For a bit of extra fun, I played it on Steam Deck as well, just to see how it would work there. And after hours spent playing Knights of Honor, I can confidently say it’s still one of my favorite games. But is it my favorite for Steam Deck?

If you’re like me and used to love Knights of Honor, you might be interested to see whether it’s worth playing in 2024. Well, read on and find out.

Gameplay

The main point of Knights of Honor is expanding your territory and taking over Europe entirely. Although, whether or not you want to do that is up to you. The game really doesn’t force you one way or another — you might be happy with a smaller country but plenty of advantages and power, and that’s okay. 

When you create your profile in Knights of Honor, you get to pick from a list/map of European countries and different eras. Some countries are bigger or smaller depending on the era. It doesn’t really matter which one you pick in the end — but that’s what you’ll be stuck with (unless you restart). 

Make sure that you choose a country with plenty of advantages — these would be things like leather, honey, cloth, etc. This will give you items to trade in later on. It might take a few attempts for you to find a perfect place. 

Next, you can choose the difficulty. If you’re a first time player or just want to chill, I would go for the easy mode. If you pick the hardest difficulty, prepare to be attacked by stronger countries left and right, rebellions, and more. 

Once you start playing, you’ll get a knight, a royal family, and however many cities your chosen country has. 

Building a city

Building a city is one of the main aspects of Knights of Honor. As mentioned, when you start playing, you’ll get a certain number of cities based on the country you chose. Most of the cities are very simple at the beginning and don’t have many buildings, let alone any protection. 

You’ll need to build palisades or stone walls around your city and add different elements like towers in order to be able to win a siege. You’ll also need to build certain buildings (like armory, blacksmith, training grounds, etc.) in order to educate your army. Otherwise, you’re stuck with pitchfork-carrying peasants. If you want a mounted army, you’ll need to build and upgrade stables as well. 

In addition to that, you’ll need buildings that give you a higher population — like the inn, for instance. The more people you have, the more taxes you can collect and the more people you can conscript into your army. 

Finally, if your city has kingdom advantages, you’ll need to build buildings for them to develop them. Kingdom advantages are the items you can trade in (like honey, leather, paper, etc.) and they’re super helpful for getting more money and becoming more powerful overall. 

The catch is that you only have a limited number of slots per city for all of this. If your city doesn’t have any advantages, then you’re set — you’ll probably have enough room for everything. But if it does (and especially if it has multiples), you’ll have to be smart about your building. 

My recommendation is to build the basic protection and military buildings for each city first, as well as upgrade them. You should also build a few buildings that give you more people. Only then should you focus on other things. 

The way I used to do it is to choose a country that has at least two cities — one with some advantages for trading and one without. The one without would be my fully decked-out military city. The one with would still have some basic protection but would focus more on the trade stuff. 

Your royal family

You might think royals are useless in Knights of Honor, but think again — they’re actually pretty vital. Your princes and princesses can be used for marriage alliances to other kingdoms (and you might inherit some territories from that) or they can be used as merchants, clerics, spies and more. Even your king can fill out any of these roles — and it’s free. Getting knights otherwise is expensive so your royal family will likely be your best bet to fill out all the roles. 

Soon enough, you’ll be hoping the royal family gets more babies (and yes, that happens)!

Knights, Spies, Merchants, and more

Like any kingdom, yours too will need to be fully staffed. This is, of course, optional, but extremely useful. Knights can lead wars and sieges, merchants trade with other countries and bring you money, clerics increase piety and happiness in the kingdom, and spies can help you take over other kingdoms. 

The catch is that they’re expensive to hire, and even more expensive to educate (yes, you can do that). Ergo, you’ll need your royals. 

Now, the next problem is that each of these roles can turn out to be a spy for a different country. And this is extremely bad because they can take over your cities or turn your own people against you. The good news is that you can do the same. 

My suggestion would be to get some of your royals to be merchants at the beginning. They’re least likely to be spies and you need as much money as you can get in the beginning. Save spies, clerics and other for later. 

Building alliances (or not)

When you go to the map (or just click on any city other than your own), you’ll be able to see what your relationship with that country is like. Based on that, you’ll also be able to offer trade agreements, alliances, peace treaties, marriages, etc. 

As mentioned above, trade agreements are the most important at the beginning because you need money. In addition to that, I would also recommend that you play really nice with other countries at first. Build good relationships, offer alliances and agreements, offer gifts when you can, etc. 

The reason for this is that you won’t be very powerful or have a very strong military at the beginning. One of the bigger countries could easily wipe you out if they wanted to. So be nice at the beginning and then, once you have an army and good city protection, feel free to attack. 

Expanding your territory

If you want to conquer another country’s territory, you’ll need to first break alliances with them, and then declare war. You won’t be able to take over the entire country at once — rather, you’ll need to seize it city by city. 

Once you win a city siege, there will be a certain period of time when your knight is taking over. However, it doesn’t end there — the new territory will be full of rebels and won’t be happy at all. Especially if your religions don’t match. 

The best way to keep your new territory happy is to build something people-pleasing, decrease taxes and, though you can’t affect this, have a new royal baby. 

Misc

Aside from the main aspects of Knights of Honor, here are a few more things you should know: 

• Taxes. You have the option to set the taxes as high, normal, low, or remove taxes completely. Obviously, removing taxes completely will make your kingdom the happiest, but you won’t get any money. High taxes will make people unhappy, but you’ll be loaded. The best way to go about it is to aim for the middle ground, at least at first. Later on, when you have a better army (to fight the rebels) you can increase taxes (though I wouldn’t do that, personally). You can also invoke the war tax (a larger amount of money at once), but that is sure to cause rebellions. 

• Crusades. You’ll have the option to either start a crusade (if you’re powerful enough) or join one (well, send a knight). 
• Religion. There are three types of religions and you can change them if you want to (it will cost you money, though). Your people won’t like it, though.
• Kingdom Power. As you get more powerful, you get power points (the little bar at the top corner). If you make bad diplomacy moves or wage wars (where you had an alliance before), you will lose kingdom power. You can increase it by making sure your people are happy and so are your allies. 
• Mods. If you want more Knights of Honor (or just to change things up), you can get mods that allow you to play in a larger area (the US I believe). 

Does Knights of Honor Hold Up in 2024? 

Definitely yes. Knights of Honor features some game mechanics and elements that are still hard to find in strategies in 2024. It’s a complex game, full of different aspects that will keep you on your toes. Though, I suppose people who played it when they were younger (like me) or someone who likes the 90’s aesthetics would appreciate it more than someone looking for a fast-paced strategy. 

Does Knights of Honor Work on Steam Deck?

The short answer here would be yes — Knights of Honor works on Steam Deck. The long answer is that it’s not that great. It takes a bit of tinkering to get all the controls how you want them to be and to be able to use all of the game elements. 

Even so, I don’t think this is an ideal Steam Deck game. The problem is that you have to spend a lot of time waiting around for things to be built, for your troops to move along, etc. Because of this, you spend a lot of time just doing nothing. 

And I don’t know about you, but when I grab my Steam Deck and settle in, I want to be engaged and do stuff. I want to smash buttons, be entertained. 

Knights of Honor doesn’t quite provide that — unless you’re looking for a cozy, mostly idle game (especially at the beginning). For me, personally, it’s still best played on desktop, probably while also doing something else. 

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