Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[Hace El Oso]

That's the thing, it's kept the name but Crusader Kings, for better or for worse, isn't meant to be focused exclusively on Christendom anymore.

Christians, Muslims and pagans of Europe, Asia Minor and the near east was a good balance in the same way I would not expect a game about Siam, Burma, Indochina and the Chinese frontier to include Japan or Yemen. There is no ground to argue for the inclusion of such wildly unconnected places as China in CK if you want complex, distinct mechanics rather than the same cookie cutter ‘economic’ approach for the whole planet.

 

[Norfleet]

The problem is scope creep. You start out with western Europe and Christendom. But without their neighbors, you don't have any Crusading. So you gotta add them to the game. So now they exist in the game. People want to play them. But THEY have neighbors, so now you gotta throw THOSE in....

And so it pretty much expands outwards from there until you end up with more or less the entire Old World, since at least in the timeframe given, they didn't interact at all with the New World.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Crusader Kings 3 is about as fun as CK2 was for me. Unfortunately it's still just as easy to break within two or maximum three rulers' lifespans, if you play with at least some planning. I think the only way not to break the balance of power in your region is to put yourself inside the limitations of strict roleplaying - but then you are left to hope the AI doesn't break the balance in its turn.

Here is the result of 20 years of blobbing as Rurik, who doesn't have much mileage left in him, and whose domains will split mostly between his grandson and third (eldest surviving) son. The only reason to keep playing, and that's just after 20 years of gameplay, is that I'll be inheriting with an 11-year old who will lose 10 of his grandfather's current titles. His dad, the historical knyaz Oleg, was KIA.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Crusader Kings 3 is about as fun as CK2 was for me. Unfortunately it's still just as easy to break within two or maximum three rulers' lifespans, if you play with at least some planning. I think the only way not to break the balance of power in your region is to put yourself inside the limitations of strict roleplaying - but then you are left to hope the AI doesn't break the balance in its turn.

CK2 was already about the larping / house rules, and so is CK3.

Here is the result of 20 years of blobbing as Rurik, who doesn't have much mileage left in him, and whose domains will split mostly between his grandson and third (eldest surviving) son. The only reason to keep playing, and that's just after 20 years of gameplay, is that I'll be inheriting with an 11-year old who will lose 10 of his grandfather's current titles. His dad, the historical knyaz Oleg, was KIA.

I think CK3 made it more difficult to move on from gavelkind / partition for feudal cultures - in CK2 you immediately had feudal elective which was serviceable until primogeniture.

 

[AwesomeButton]

A major part of the problem with Tribal governments is that they have an unexpectedly easy access to mercenaries. That's because Tribal governments don't have to pay upkeep in money, instead they pay in Prestige. This leads to a situation where "with one hand" you can finance your men-at-arms with Prestige, and "with the other hand" you can finance your mercenaries with gold. Cheap gold can be used to get a quick trump card in wars where you are a couple of thousand soldiers short of pairity with the enemy alliance or, if you already have pairity, to get a crushing advantage. Thus by winning the wars you buy Prestige with gold, and then it becomes self-reinforcing...

Feudal governments on the other hand, need to pay upkeep of their men-at-arms and the contracts of their mercs in the same currency. Go figure.

With about 200 gold being able to buy you around 1500 quality mercs for 3 years (which amounts to about 0.3 gold per month, wtf do they eat?) and the principle is pay and forget instead of monthly upkeep, a Tribal government can raise big numbers very easily. Due to the combat "balance" numbers are still very much the deciding factor in combat. Nerfs from terrain and counters based on unit types are not doing enough (although they are a good idea), and men-at-arms are not wiping the floor with levies enough, at least not in the early game. And if this ~200 gold was easy to accumulate if you have enough direct holdings, even in the Development-poor area of north-east Europe where I was playing, it will only be easier in areas with better development.

CK2 was already about the larping / house rules, and so is CK3.

Yeah, but first, if a game is so much lacking in challenge without house rules, this is evidence the balance is broken. Which, in connection to what I was saying previously, is not helped by the super-large world map.
And second, if this problem persists in the next game of the series, that's a major design flaw not being addressed by the game devs.

I anticipate the argument "well, you picked one of the strongest/easiest factions to play as, so what did you expect", but that's not an excuse either. If one of the most played and historically interesting factions is also one of the most broken ones, then where does the problem lie again?

I think CK3 made it more difficult to move on from gavelkind / partition for feudal cultures - in CK2 you immediately had feudal elective which was serviceable until primogeniture.

That's true, though there are still ways to circumvent the feudal breakdowns. One of the methods shown by youtubers I think is even a bug - it involves changing your realm capital to a county while this county is not part of an existing duchy title - it's still a de jure duchy capital, otherwise you wouldn't be allowed to set the realm capital there, but the key is that the duchy title has not yet been created. Then all the counties in that uncreated duchy will be sent to your Player Heir, in addition to those that were coming to him from the previous realm capital.

What I was thinking of doing is to install courtiers with hooks as vassals of my son who will swipe my titles, and then use them as moles against him, but I think the weak hooks are not inherited. Bummer.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's quite funny reading in the Dev Diaries design decisions being defended with what is more historically appropriate, and then having a unique in-game decision which slams 20+ development (or as much as needed) to Kiev in order to bring it up to 25 development, on par with Constantinople and the other most developed provinces on the map.

Also, Oleg being a son of Rurik whereas he was supposedly a brother-in-law. Oh well, the historical narrative of that region in that period is more in the fantasy genre anyway...

BTW, is there no Casus Belli that requires just winning battles to win the war, as in EUIV? Punitive operations not aimed at grabbing land were definetly a known and employed strategy. For example when you wanted to secure your flank before attacking someone else.

 

[oscar]

I tried it about half a year back, so a lot of things could have changed in the meantime, but at that time, it was a pretty decent setting with some nifty mechanics, utterly brought down by vanilla mechanics being retarded. For example, there's this big empire and there's an invading force, right? Well, said invading force gets CBs on kingdoms (as in, all holdings, down to every last baron, get seized by invader), is free to spam them as much as it wants, and gets enough event troops to roll over everything. That alone wouldn't be THAT big a problem... except they can also culture convert at the speed of light. A decade after the conquest, it's all culture converted already.

Maybe they fixed shit since then, though.

I think that's WAI. The Aversarians are in a demographic freefall from losing so much manpower from the last civil war, Godherja and then the defeat at Elysium Pass (plus massive slave uprisings and infighting amongst the Successor states). Canonically the author has stated it's a total Imperrech victory with Cenware rapidly sweeping aside what remains of the decadent and hated Aagiokratia (though the Imperrech itself doesn't outlive Cenware). The migrating tribes probably settle down and establish themselves as a warrior nobility post-Rome Western Europe style. Aversarians in regions like Ilyrossi probably get genocided/enslaved themselves by the natives as revenge for a millennia of slavery and brutality.

 

[Theodora]

Christians, Muslims and pagans of Europe, Asia Minor and the near east was a good balance in the same way I would not expect a game about Siam, Burma, Indochina and the Chinese frontier to include Japan or Yemen. There is no ground to argue for the inclusion of such wildly unconnected places as China in CK if you want complex, distinct mechanics rather than the same cookie cutter ‘economic’ approach for the whole planet.

I won't argue at all that if they're intent on including wider swathes of the planet, then they owe it to players to make more distinct systems for different regions and cultures, or more specifically, a greater granularity on systems of governance.

It's fairly plausible that by the time CK3 has been "fully DLC'd" that there will be a lot more of that. Whether they owe it to us on release is a different argument, but going off CK2 on release versus CK2 post-'Iron Century', it's fair to say regional iteration was a big part of their cumulative DLC model.

 

[Larianshill]

Waiting patiently for the Italian reveal. Hopefully this feature will finally allow Paradox to show them for the lovecraftian horrors they are.

 

[Zariusz]

Looks interesting

 

[zapotec]

I read rape culture instead of rajput culture

 

[Zariusz]

I read rape culture instead of rajput culture

Im sure that there will be a mod for that.

 

[Endemic]

Im sure that there will be a mod for that.

Spoiler

 

[deama]

So how does the game compare now to crusader kings 2? I originally wanted to play it on release, but remembered that crusader kings 2 was kinda barebones on release and I think this one was too I heard? Anyway, is it any good now? Worth playing?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Depends on your play style. Even with the hooks system, the gameplay outside of wars and map painting is still lacking. The first expansion will hopefully fix that.

 

[Average Manatee]

The core CK2 gameplay is there. I wouldn't really called it dumbed down since most of the core concepts of CK2 are there in CK3, but it's absolutely a lot easier overall. Stuff like CBs are much easier to get, wars tend to be easy to fight, military is much easier and cheaper to get massive advantages over AIs, genetic inheritance has most of the randomness taken out with basically guaranteed genetic trait inheritance if both parents share a type of trait. There's a lot less content than CK2 with all DLC but much more than release CK2.

The CK3 system of differentiating religions and cultures is the most interesting part IMO. It was always a thing in CK2 (x culture can raid, y religion gets different CBs), but CK3 uses it much more widely. It's still fairly barebones and a lot of it is just memes though (reform Christianity to be an incestuous feminist religion lololol upvote me reddit).

 

[Silva]

Any chance they adapt this into a proper Sengoku 2 ?

 

[Zariusz]

Any chance they adapt this into a proper Sengoku 2 ?

Well there is Shogunate mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2253278582&searchtext=

 

[Larianshill]

Finally managed to get King of All the Isles achievement, after around five attempts. When I finally succeeded, it was so easy, I'm not sure why it took me this long. There's no force capable of stopping a tribal viking, who invested heavily into Chivalry tree. Succession troubles are easily avoided just by disinheriting everyone but your favourite kid, and not letting your heir fight, scandinavian elective isn't even necessary. It's more of a hindrance, even. Things went so much more smoothly once I stopped playing around with democracy.

 

[Norfleet]

But I love Democracy. I love the Republic.

 

[Zariusz]

Culture hybrids, prepare for nigger-norse abominations ruling jewish byzantium.

 

[Larianshill]

They showed off swede-arabs in the dev diary, because of course they did.

 

[Deflowerer]

 

[Zariusz]

Oh God almighty, that update will give the AI knowledge of rituals to summon abominations onto lands of the Old World...
AI will be able to summon creatures from the darkest corners of our reality...
Creatures that could rival even amerimutts!

Spoiler

Of course this will be controllable with game rules

 

[Fedora Master]

It's just another modular mechanism that misses the point but is easy to implement. At this rate Ck3 will turn into medieval Stellaris were neither religion nor culture nor ethnicities actually matter because they're all just easily changed variables with no context.