Knights of Honor

Knights of Honor is a real-time strategy (RTS) game developed by Bulgarian Black Sea Studios (now Crytek Black Sea). It was published by Sunflowers GmbH in Europe in 2004 and Paradox Entertainment in North America in 2005. The game takes place in Medieval Europe, spanning the early centuries of the second millennium in three historical time periods. The player can choose to play as one of over 100 playable kingdoms.

Knights of Honor is played on a large map of Europe spanning from Ireland to Armenia and from Scandinavia to the northern coast of Africa. The map is divided into parcels of land called provinces. Each province is governed by a city and contains several "Rural Areas" which can be towns, farms, monasteries and coast towns. These rural areas can't be altered and are placed randomly across the map before each game. The city, however has room for several buildings which can give bonuses to the rural areas or the city itself, such as more piety in the monasteries when a church is built or a higher income from the towns when a market is present in the city.

Special units known as "Knights" are what make the players' kingdom, besides himself. Every kingdom has a "Royal Court" which can contain up to nine knights. The player can hire the royal dynasty, consisting of the King himself and up to three heirs, to become knights. The advantage to this is that these four are completely free of charge and have no wages.

(Source: Wikipedia)