In Catan Cities & Knights, can you use a Knight action before you roll the dice?

Question

In base Catan, the rules allow you to play a Knight card before you roll the dice. Obviously, there are no Development Cards in Cities and Knights, and instead there are physical knight tokens.

The rule book doesn't seem to specifically address if you can use your activated Knight token to chase away the Robber on your turn before you roll the dice.

Since the rules do not specifically say you can, and by default the dice roll is usually always required as the first action of your turn, our group agrees to play that you can only use a Knight action after you roll the dice.

Are we missing something in the rules? Does a Catan FAQ somewhere answer this?

Answer 1

Here is a link to the Completely Annotated Rules & Almanac for Catan Cities and Knights by Derek Whaley on BGG.

I don't know how official this can be, but the turn overview on page 8 makes it quite clear that you can't use a Knight action before rolling the dice:

The player who placed the last city takes the first turn. Each player, going clockwise around the table, performs the following actions, in the order listed:

• You must roll all 3 dice.
• The results of the event (symbol) die are resolved)
• Progress Cards may be drawn (depending on the result of the event die).
• All players produce the commodities indicated by the red and yellow dice.
• You may do any or all of the following in any order:
  • Trade resources and/or commodities with the bank and/or players.
  • Build roads, settlements, cities, knights, city walls, and/or city improvements.
  • Activate, promote, and/or perform actions with your knights.
  • Play any number of Progress Cards.

Note: The “Alchemist” Progress Card can only be played before the dice are rolled. It is the only Progress Card that can be used before the dice are rolled and the results resolved