
Piety is used for increasing your kingdom power and converting provinces to your religion.

It is earned by taxes, trading and kingdom power. Money is needed to recruits units, build buildings, etc. There are three kinds of resources which can be spent on a variety of upgrades. However, the player is free to do whatever they wish. The main goal of the game is to become emperor of Europe. Compared to other strategy games, building structures in KOH takes a rather long time. Thus, not all buildings can be built in a city and the player must carefully consider what to build for a particular city. A city only has limited room for buildings.

Other buildings are needed to recruit certain units (such as a swordsmith for sword-wielding units or a fletcher for bow-wielding units) or to defend the city such as walls and towers. 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. These rural areas can't be altered and are placed randomly across the map before each game. Each province is governed by a city and contains several "Rural Areas" which can be towns, farms, monasteries and coast towns. The map is divided into parcels of land called provinces. Knights of Honor is played on a large map of Europe spanning from Ireland to Caucasus and from Scandinavia to the northern coast of Africa.
