Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[oscar]

Default portraits are too dim and greyed out despite the models being very good.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/2216544773

Follow these instructions (this mod makes them a little too bright) and they look perfect

For anyone who thinks the portraits are too bright, you can adjust this by going to:

(Steam)\steamapps\workshop\content\1158310\2216544773\gfx\portraits

and edit the file jomini_environment.txt , line 4:

value_scale = 1.35 # Light multiplier

Change this to something like 1.15, I found this to be a good value, looks much nicer.

 

[mondblut]

I'm impressed by the number of shapes of tits that the female characters are hiding under all those dresses. Surely, someone spent a hell lot of time rendering them.

Faces, on the other hand...

 

[Tigranes]

So I started a game in 867 as Alfred of Wessex and formed England as Alfred the Great as intended.

Few first crusades didn't go well because of the AI ancient technique of going one after another and dying out of attrition in the middle of mesopotamia. Third crusade was the charm though and the crusaders were so successful, I almost didn't make it in time. I besieged the capital of the caliph and got immediately pushed to first contributor, on top of capturing the whole harem of the abbassid.
I then returned to Lunden as a victorious crusader after leaving one of my daughters as Queen of Jerusalem. There, I asked every wife of the caliph to join my court in exchange of their freedom before seducing every single one of them, effectively turning his harem into mine.

I.. Have I beaten the game ? What is even there to be done after that ?

Dont worry, you can recrusade the crusade after your granddaughters convert to Islam

 

[jungl]

I do like how this crusader kings game 3 is more gamey. AI does a better job to keep you from constantly having things go your way.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I don't see the problem. You need to be versed in law and diplomacy to make your forced vassalization appear legitimate and be accepted by your peers.

You have your court to do that for you. Most rulers relied on their support structure to figure it out for them. No King was an island. Such a basic feature shouldn't be gated. Especially that it doesn't make much sense.

That's true, but your support structure is still really important. Your council contributes a large amount to your stat/skill points and skilled councilors are better at their jobs and get more positive events in general. It's just that particular instance is your king is so charismatic and diplomatic that he can make a casus belli of "You should be my bitch. That's a good thing, and here's why:" and make it appear legitimate. You aren't pressing a claim, and you aren't even fabricating a claim, you're just making a convincing enough argument that someone should be your underling that you make it look like a convincing war. Which I could see making sense as a leader-only perk, since your councilmen can fabricate claims to give you a supposed legitimate reason to take a title, but force vassalization would imply more direct work from your character since you don't even have a (Fake) legitimate reason for war, you're just bullshitting and making the nobility and your peers/the pope buy it.

I'm impressed by the number of shapes of tits that the female characters are hiding under all those dresses. Surely, someone spent a hell lot of time rendering them.

I appreciate it. My only regret is not playing a viking so I can go out raiding to capture milk trucks.

 

[Catacombs]

I.. Have I beaten the game ? What is even there to be done after that ?

Nothing. You've done it all. Now you can return it and move on to the next thing.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Well at least the incest simulator part seems to be back on track but....

Come on, man. Come on! First Jerusalem and now this? Who am I going to border next? The Umayyads?

Potatoland should accept Christianity from Constantinople not Franks and be real Slav country Comrade.

I played some more with Spartenos of Naples, ended up with Rapey lunatic who tastefuly liberated every mudslime womyn from their honor and every mudslime men from their balls, was even belowed by Emperor and Patrriach for a while till... He started to tastefuly know his own daughters and grand daughters what Mad Ladd he was, died from head injury suffered when browling with his own soldiers while sieging castle in Africa, RIP sweet prince Sergios.

Nice things Hooks and life styles chosen Overseer for my lad, the vassals were too afraid of him to rebel, but of course when the madman died his seven years old inbred son grand son was in bit of trouble...



Game is somehow more fun to play than CK2 (which is superior as strategy game) but of course still bare bones and not worth paying more than 20$ in 2030. Things I really missed from CK2 : the way to give your child education you want same for your grand child (and choose their names too), the ability to free your family and high value courtiers from prison by proposing either to pay ransom or bust them out using intrigue, and of of course all those additions making Roman governors and Emperors playing differently than Frankish feudal lords, Slav tribe Dukes, or Nomad horses, but again game is bare bones you should not play it as anyone than Frank noble now.

Fun in popamole way worth plundering.

 

[Commissar Draco]

I'm impressed by the number of shapes of tits that the female characters are hiding under all those dresses. Surely, someone spent a hell lot of time rendering them.

Faces, on the other hand...

What faces Comrade?

 

[Preben]

This game shows that Johan is the main problem with Paradox games. He didn't touch CK3 and it turned out to be decent. As opposed to his brainchild Imperator.

I like the stress system. A soft penalty for out-of-character actions. Much better limitation than the stupid mana system.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Few first crusades didn't go well because of the AI ancient technique of going one after another and dying out of attrition in the middle of mesopotamia. Third crusade was the charm though and the crusaders were so successful, I almost didn't make it in time. I besieged the capital of the caliph and got immediately pushed to first contributor, on top of capturing the whole harem of the abbassid.

In my 1066 start all crusades for Jerusalem were successful but in my 867 start, the pope started calling crusades before 900, which of course failed.

 

[Alienman]

I like the stress too, I wish it was more severe though. Doing something against your nature should invoke a real crisis.

 

[MajorMace]

Few first crusades didn't go well because of the AI ancient technique of going one after another and dying out of attrition in the middle of mesopotamia. Third crusade was the charm though and the crusaders were so successful, I almost didn't make it in time. I besieged the capital of the caliph and got immediately pushed to first contributor, on top of capturing the whole harem of the abbassid.

In my 1066 start all crusades for Jerusalem were successful but in my 867 start, the pope started calling crusades before 900, which of course failed.

Indeed, I remember wondering why it started so early. It still felt like the main reason for the failure was AI erratic behaviour. We didn't just lose, we got just no-matched entirely.
Talking about early birds, I had a bubonic plague in the Xth century (or is it actually fine historically ?)

 

[Alienman]

The catholic church were failing in my game, it was just me (Denmark) and the papal states left, so my king groomed his heir to be the best plotter in the world just to save the church. So when his time had come, he started to kidnap all the greatest christian (non-catholic) leaders of the world, and through some strict talking to he made them all convert. The whole world was instantly set on fire, peasants were rioting, religious wars were being fought, but Catholicism went from 7k strong to 90k over a period of 50 years or so. Was pretty fun to follow.

 

[Preben]

I had the hilarious event in which my two vassals/courtiers started quarreling while in military camp. All attempts at reasoning failed and a brawl ensued. Because I played a strong and aggressive character, I naturally joined in and beat the crap out of them both.

Such tiny stories are what makes CK series so fun to play. And why EU4 is so shit with its abstracting everything into +/-10% modifiers.

 

[oscar]

Things I really missed from CK2 : the way to give your child education you want same for your grand child

Fun in popamole way worth plundering.

There's a small button by their character model for setting education focus. Just the game auto-picks one suited to their traits (though you get one free override of that when you manually pick). Useful for when you have random courtiers offspring you don't care about but you'll want to pay attention for your own progeny (stewardship and martial seem the best, stewardship for high demense realms and martial because with lifestyle perks you can make truly powerful commanders now though battles seem more dangerous than CK2 for participant knights and commanders).

 

[Zero Credibility]

I'm not sure if someone has already posted this, but here's a fun new bug / feature (can be hard to tell these apart with Paradox games). There's a scheme in the game to make someone a suspected bastard. The problem? The game does so by actually changing the real father of the character, retroactively. One moment your heir or your ruler can be a biological child of of one man, the other - poof, now he is a biological child of another. And do I even have to say that the game makes no attempt for this to make sense? Yeah, your child with a chaste soulmate queen is now a child of a random ugly lowborn mayor, some peasant that was in your dungeons 20 years ago, or just a randomly created character that only joined your court last month. Makes sense.

At least actual bastards are immune to this bullshit, can't make me a bastard if I'm already a bastard. One more point in favor of good old bastardy succession, already looking pretty damn attractive now that primo is locked behind year 1200.

 

[Theodora]

Surprised you guys have managed to play it so much already.

They would rather slap a modern name on a religion,than spend 5 minutes on wikipedia to see what was its original name.

Are you talking about the Poganstvo thing? Didn't they already rename it to Slovianska Pravda?

I really hope they'll revamp the whole UI. It's awful. Absolutely terrible. I don't understand how they went from CK2's UI to this shit

CK2's UI wasn't good, though. Too much of this criticism is based on "change bad" rather than actually losing something positive.

Every character plays the same in any CK/Pdox game if you play them that way.

None of these games ever had truly robust and strong constraints to force you to play a certain way for that nation/character. I wish that Pdox leaned harder into that for CK/Rome and put significant constraints, but Pdox very consciously makes all of games sandboxy blobbers and we all know this. It's never been different and probably never will be.

Kinda think at the end of the day that grand strategy games are just RPGs, which ask you to RP in them.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2217865748

First step to bring back good ol CK2 UI

Glad they actually some mods ironman compatible again. That was one of the weirdest and stupidest parts of Imperator, every single mod broke that.

Though lol, this guy's other mod is a great example of how memes have replaced history for so many people playing Paradox game.

 

[Alienman]

One minor thing I miss from CK2 is duels. I loved that aspect. Having a mad duelist making enemies all over the world to duel them to the death. Surprised I didn't find the "activity" under the warfare talent. Oh well, guess it will make a return in a dlc or maybe mod.

 

[vonAchdorf]

They also don't show you your kill list, even though the texts in the UI suggest that they keep track of it ("... will be killed by you").

 

[Sranchammer]

Best CK game since CK2.

Paradox, you magnificent bastards, you did it again!

 

[fantadomat]

Slovianska Pravda

Which means Slavic justice,lol how very original. Tho it doesn't matter since it is generic religion like any other one on the map. It is obvious that religions was not even a thing that they cared about.

 

[Preben]

Slovianska Pravda

Which means Slavic justice,lol how very original. Tho it doesn't matter since it is generic religion like any other one on the map. It is obvious that religions was not even a thing that they cared about.

"Pravda" means "truth" in most Slavic languages. At least in the northern ones, which makes sense since southern Slavs converted to the desert shamanism already by that time.

Religion is actually a massive improvement over CK2.

 

[Theodora]

Religion is actually a massive improvement over CK2.

In some ways, very much so; though because of those improvements, individual religions can feel a bit empty and generic. While I like that they've ended the focus on heresy/orthodoxy, I hope things like the college of cardinals, antipopes, and the pentarchy can all come back in some way, hopefully with further additions.

It's not bad, but it needs expansion, and they need to be careful to expand it in a way that enables minor and user-created religions become dominant in a believable way, ending up with institutions similar to those of the Catholic church for example.

On this, if they add China, I'm really curious how they'll handle like, the case in East Asia where following mulitple ""religions"" (at least as far as mechanics go) is a thing. Perhaps this could be expressed in a dual system that relate to different philosophical tendencies in the West or in India?

They did such a good job of Holy Fury that I'm trying to remain optimistic about the nature of any future DLC.

 

[Harthwain]

Which means Slavic justice,lol how very original. Tho it doesn't matter since it is generic religion like any other one on the map. It is obvious that religions was not even a thing that they cared about.

Religions do matter though. Somebody who view you as a hostile (because of how his faith sees your faith) is going to have way worse opinion of you than someone of your faith. It's better to demand them to convert, because you will gain net positive opinion, even with penalty for asking them to convert (-10), which says something. Also, some religions outright forbid forced conversion, so you need to get clever to get right of that particular stain on your map and there are religion-related uprisings.

 

[Zariusz]

This event looks like something from Loverslab mods