Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Not that CK was ever very strategic, but this trend of RPGfying the game is really off-putting, considering how utterly lame those encounters become after the tenth time you see them.

Guess I'll never see a crusade being called because the demographic and economic systems made it possible, instead of a timer getting flagged.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Not that CK was ever very strategic, but this trend of RPGfying the game is really off-putting, considering how utterly lame those encounters become after the tenth time you see them.

Being an RPG-esque game is what makes Crusader Kings special compared to the other Grand Strategy Games. Medieval Politics were about personal relations between powerful people, it's a game that should be about people.

(this is why Imperator failed btw, it should have been more like Crusader Kings, about playing people not just nations, because the era of Imperator is the age of the powerful men of Rome butting heads and conflicting until one man rose as Emperor)

I think the problem is that CKIII has really neglected the Strategic side of the game. The AI is notably horribad. The Combat System needs serious changes, Levies are still pure undiluted garbo. Building up isn't as good as it in CKII. AI kingdoms still have garbage desmenes and can barely keep themselves from not imploding, etc

 

[Fedora Master]

Being an RPG-esque game is what makes Crusader Kings special compared to the other Grand Strategy Games. Medieval Politics were about personal relations between powerful people, it's a game that should be about people.

But people don't go through life picking traits in a skill tree. It never made sense, it's dumbing-down and lazy.

 

[thesecret1]

The RPG aspects are supposed to be supported by the gameplay on the strategy layer of the game. Instead, CK3 spams you with RETARDED events written by reddit.

 

[Fedora Master]

The RPG aspects are supposed to be supported by the gameplay on the strategy layer of the game. Instead, CK3 spams you with RETARDED events written by reddit.

None of which take the characters disposition into account. See the "Murderer at court" event chain - Sometimes the game just decides that your patient erudite heir becomes a psychopath for no reason because of "drama".

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The RPG aspects are supposed to be supported by the gameplay on the strategy layer of the game. Instead, CK3 spams you with RETARDED events written by reddit.

None of which take the characters disposition into account. See the "Murderer at court" event chain - Sometimes the game just decides that your patient erudite heir becomes a psychopath for no reason because of "drama".

I dunno bro, you probably told your heir to STOP POSTING one time too many.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I've always imagined me playing a game like this and making high level strategy decisions but I can't be bothered to deal with the learning curve of a 4x or grand strategy game.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Being an RPG-esque game is what makes Crusader Kings special compared to the other Grand Strategy Games. Medieval Politics were about personal relations between powerful people, it's a game that should be about people.

But people don't go through life picking traits in a skill tree. It never made sense, it's dumbing-down and lazy.

You don't?! I thought everyone else was doing it, too.

How do you think it should go instead?

The RPG aspects are supposed to be supported by the gameplay on the strategy layer of the game. Instead, CK3 spams you with RETARDED events written by reddit.

Yeah, the event spam gets annoying. CKII had events but their logic was better, the game didn't trigger events to turn chaste women into seduceable whores or something. A lot of event-caused alterations feel very artificial.

I've always imagined me playing a game like this and making high level strategy decisions but I can't be bothered to deal with the learning curve of a 4x or grand strategy game.

But that's part of the fun.
Also just learn faster.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Downloaded Roads to Power through Alternative Distributors a few hours ago and took it for a spin. Played around ~10 years as a Portuguese Adventurer starting around Santiago, essentially a one-man Reconquista. Well I didn't do much Reconquista-ying so far, mostly keeping the peace, escorting artifacts, training knights, intimidating people for powerful magnates and generally getting martial-esque shit done. So far I've avoided Criminal Contracts or more Diplo/Stewardship shit, since me and my crew are more Martial-focused, through I aim to add some more Diplomats and Intriguers.
Some thoughts:
- Gotta say, this is definitively different from average CKIII early count fare.
- On Provisions and Coins: I feel its lame that you and your dudes can just sit around and... eat fuck all and get paid nothing? I mean, we're like five dudes, but one would think that Provisions and such would be consumed over time. So far I've had little to fear from Provisions, but I've been mostly travelling around northern Iberia doing jobs. I think it would make more sense if Provisions were consumed passively, even without travelling. Let's see how it goes later, since I'm thinking checking out Southern Frace when I saw that a local duke converted to Catharism - sounds like the kind of shit that can get me contracts to fight them heretics.
- Similarly, feels like there would be more "dude where money" events and such. Even a very minute quantity of gold drain per Camp Follower would make more sense.
- The new scheme interface is pretty cool, lots of potential there. You will see it pretty often as you go around fulfilling contracts and shit.
- One thing I find weird going on inns: Why are most characters there so old? I swear, its always 30-50 yrs old people, if not even more. I've seen a 70 years old ancient woman, what are you even doing there you old biddy? Also its always some ugly-ass women, I swear I once saw this bish with a bigger chin than gigachad lmao, the Hapbsburgs couldn't inbreed a bigger chin even if they had spent five centuries engaging in Ptolemaian-tier incest hahahahahahahahah.
- Seems like when it comes to Schemes, speed vs success is key. Essentially, you want to make as much as money, so either aim for maximum success/excessive success or phase time so you can max advantages. Essentially, take your time to gain as much success as possible or just go around finishing contracts quickly but possibly sloppily. Not sure which is best here.
- What's up with the gold costs scale? Like, it's a bit weird that with some easy adventuring, I can rack up money that a Count would take years and years to obtain, and then spend similar amounts on gear, recruiting people, expanding camp, etc. How are these people even paying me? I probably make more money than then them per year (say, average task seems to give 50-60 gold, that's like a year worth of 5 gold income). Like, shouldn't Adventurer Costs scale below that of Counts, at least earlier on at the start? I mean, maybe it's just me but recruiting a few sellswords shouldn't have the price of a small mercenary company contract.

 

[thesecret1]

Yeah, the event spam gets annoying. CKII had events but their logic was better, the game didn't trigger events to turn chaste women into seduceable whores or something. A lot of event-caused alterations feel very artificial.

it's not just that (though this, too, is a massive issue), it's also the writing itself. CK2, while by no means perfect, at least tried to make sense (most of the time, anyway) – a typical event was, for example, you going on a hunt with someone, and encountering a boar or a bear that could hurt you. Reasonable. In CK3, you get a rival stealing your cat and threatening to shoot it out of a catapult. Or like a million events all dealing with middleschool-tier dirty jokes. It's so shit and makes the whole game feel like all the characters are just modern urbanites LARPing as medieval nobility.

 

[Habichtswalder]

Played Roads to Power as a landless adventurer for roughly 50-60 in game years now. Started as a young man in the HRE and mostly did diplomatic stuff.
I then sailed away from central europe when the Black Death appeared and spent multiple years as a sailor avoiding the plague before moving to Iberia once the Black Death was gone. Towards the end of my dudes life he went to Africa and ultimately saw Egypt and the Holy Land. He then died in his sixties while delivering an artefact to Darfur...and there was an outbreak pox in Darfur just when he arrived. Heir and second son also died from the same pox.

I now continue as his third son (a dwarf) who is a religious fanatic. However, it feels like I've seen most missions for landless adventurers, because the events repeat a lot. Probably it's time to settle down as a lord or maybe I'll become a pirate.

Overall a lot of fun so far but the small amount of events and flavour text is just lazy and I'm not so sure about the replay value of landless life because my camp is mostly maxed out and no new mission types appear.

 

[Axioms]

Not that CK was ever very strategic, but this trend of RPGfying the game is really off-putting, considering how utterly lame those encounters become after the tenth time you see them.

Guess I'll never see a crusade being called because the demographic and economic systems made it possible, instead of a timer getting flagged.

They aren't rpg-ifying it. They are just enshittifying it. If the RPG gameplay was *good* people would be happy. Also something like 55% of people who say they like any given expansion also mention they like it for the potential. When will all this potential ever be realized?

 

[Axioms]

Not that CK was ever very strategic, but this trend of RPGfying the game is really off-putting, considering how utterly lame those encounters become after the tenth time you see them.

Being an RPG-esque game is what makes Crusader Kings special compared to the other Grand Strategy Games. Medieval Politics were about personal relations between powerful people, it's a game that should be about people.

(this is why Imperator failed btw, it should have been more like Crusader Kings, about playing people not just nations, because the era of Imperator is the age of the powerful men of Rome butting heads and conflicting until one man rose as Emperor)

I think the problem is that CKIII has really neglected the Strategic side of the game. The AI is notably horribad. The Combat System needs serious changes, Levies are still pure undiluted garbo. Building up isn't as good as it in CKII. AI kingdoms still have garbage desmenes and can barely keep themselves from not imploding, etc

But the character stuff is bad! Characters don't actually have meaningful relationships... Just imagine the actual driving character arc of any ASOIAF character. Or WoT, or like, The Pillars of the Earth if you want to be purely historical. None of that is possible in CK3.

Also I want to clarify this since so many people seem incapable of getting it. When I make the above statement, I'm implicitly saying that they *could* enable those character arcs. Mechanically. People always respond like "yeah but we could never really portray that stuff". Wrong. You could. There's plenty of gameplay from decades old games that provides the framework. Anything from Kudos 2 to Academagia to Tokimeki Memorial. That old gameplay hasn't completely gotten there, because the level of detail you had access to in the late 90s to late 2000s was too low due to memory issue and processing speed. But we can build upon those systems *now*. You won't have custom dialogue or splash art because you aren't doing "events" or w/e but consistently spending your time resource associating with particular people, practicing particular activities and so on. I even saw some posts from Leana Hafer sort of asking for that stuff. Like, people were asking for that 10 years ago. CK3 devs just don't want to. That's why they'll never reach the "potential" people are always talking about.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Hotfix released today, Adventurers got pretty nerfed

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/update-1-13-0-3-changelog.1705646/

Hello everybody! We’re releasing a small hotfix today to address some of the issues reported to us by the community since the release of Roads to Power and the 1.13.0 “Basileus” Update on Tuesday. Most notably, Adventurers have received a few balance adjustments to their military strength and income.

If you encounter any issues after today’s update, please check our Known Issues list and submit a bug report if your issue isn’t already listed there. We hope this hotfix improves your enjoyment of new content!

---

PC Update 1.13.0.3 Changelog​

Balance​

• Fixed an issue that would frequently cause adventurers using the Refill Men-at-Arms interaction to be told they were going to be charged significantly more gold or provisions than they were; this has meant removing scaling provision costs based on maximum army size, so the overall cost of refilling with provisions has been boosted by about 25% to compensate
• Rebalanced buffs to Adventurer MaA from officers and Buildings; they should now be much more consistent between unit types (moved additive bonuses to be multiplicative by-and-large) and on average lower. Adventurers will still be very powerful (esp. early on) but should not crush enemy armies into a fine powder with just a handful of upgrades.
• General contract gold rewards decreased by about ~30%
• Travel contract gold rewards decreased by about ~25%
• Crime contract gold rewards decreased by about ~16%
• The “Settle Boundary Dispute” contract had its gold rewards significantly decreased (~50%), due to it being so much easier than most other contracts
• Provision contract rewards decreased by approximately 1 tier:
  • 500 -> 250
  • 750 -> 500
  • 1250 -> 1000
  • 2000 -> 1500
• "Free Provisions" in the Visit Settlement decision has been nerfed
  • Halved the amount you would gain from trying to charm the salesmen
  • Halved the amount you would gain from trying to steal provisions
• The refund for aborting your Rite of Passage now matches the initial cost. Changing your mind should not conjure up gold and prestige from thin air.
• Nerfed the "Reinstated the Theodosian Borders" modifier gained from the decision to re-establish said borders. The Renown gain has been removed. It was, frankly, quite insane to give everyone in your dynasty a 10% boost. You'll gain a flat amount of Renown by taking the decision instead.
• Significantly reduced the amount of AI's willing to leave their realms behind to become adventurers, as it became almost impossible to manage a realm under some scenarios because your vassals kept packing their stuff up and leaving

Bugfixes​

• Fixed an issue where loading an old save into 1.13 would cause armies to number in the billions
• Fixed an instance where the player’s Adventurer camp could get ‘cleaned up’ because their heir wasn’t cool enough, this should no longer happen and the player should be able to continue on their merry way!
• Fixed an issue where Bookmark adventurers wouldn’t inherit from landed rulers properly (they would break free from realms rather than stay subjects as intended)
• Fixed an issue where your vassals would gain Strong Blackmail Hooks on you without you having a say in it
• Fixed some Administrative-specific events firing for non-Administrative rulers
• Fixed the issue with the lingering Eunuch story cycle, even after the Eunuch left court.
• Made sure you couldn't inherit any titles with the Gallivanter trait.
• Adventurers who win Crusades should now adopt a more logical government (more often Feudal instead of Clan)
• Fixed the 'Not Content to Serve' achievement not triggering when playing as Alexios (if you’ve already started a game as him before the update you need to restart unfortunately)
• Fixed a crash that occurs when loading old saves with mismatching provinces.
• Fixed guests showing up as blank agent spaces in the Agent selection window for Hostile Schemes.
• The estate/domicile window will now close rather than crash when the estate ceases to exist due to the character dying.
• Fixed the issue where you would occasionally try to settle down peacefully as the Champion of a Culture, and fail to receive any land.
• Ensured that you aren't petitioning your liege repeatedly in an infinite loop.
• You can no longer recruit a hooded figure infinitely from the tavern.
• You can no longer create Custom Rulers as Landless Administrative Vassals, as that would cause the game to crash.
• Fixed the issue where you could be asked if you wanted land in an Administrative realm, but not receive anything besides a Duchy title (and not transferring Counties), leaving you as a non-ruler
• Ensured that there is only one estate per Noble Family. This should also fix the issue where Estates could reset on inheritance.
• Fixed a crash when trying to calculate the number of free building slots in holdings.
• Fixed a crash in vassal contracts that could occur when loading an older save
• Fixed an OOS that could occur when Hotjoining
• Fixed the LotD soundtrack not showing in the Music Player

Interface​

• The decision menu will now close itself when taking certain decisions; Visit Settlement, Gather Provisions, etc. This should make the flow smoother.
• The Relationship Reason icons will now be visible for other characters again in the relationships tab, so you can see the reason why two characters are friends, rivals, etc.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

People are complaining that ALL Governors get most of the CBs, resulting in Governors constantly going on wars against nearby foreign rulers, even borders that were supposed to be peaceful. And apparently, the average governor has more men than the average european kingdom, so they do quite a bit of warring.

 

[Fedora Master]

Paradox did it again boys

 

[Gostak]

Do yourself a favor and play Star Dynasties instead already (except you who already do/did).
Superior game is superior.

Then make me some outstanding modding additions for it, mmkay?

I shall attempt likewise.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Do yourself a favor and play Star Dynasties instead already (except you who already do/did).
Superior game is superior.

Then make me some outstanding modding additions for it, mmkay?

I shall attempt likewise.

Does Star Dynasties have char gen and single combat?

 

[Gostak]

With its one single DLC which is of course absolutely recommended it does have char gen (family gen), yup.
What do you consider as single combat?
It has got fighter tournaments and fleet battles and it can/could have events depicting battles like e.g. the CK2 GoT mods has.
Tried the demo? You should be able to gauge if you may enjoy it or not.
Again, if you did CK2 or 3 I bet you would SD as well.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

What do you consider as single combat?

Eschewing technological frippery and beating your opponent with a big stick.

 

[jungl]

Tried out the road to power dlc. GODAMN the jank and balance issues. Being a criminal is op heist mission I was able to get 600 gold. Overall I say its really dumb dlc. The adventure rpg gameplay is mostly trash relying on rng mechanics. Completely moronic too how traveling hobos can get small elite armies that can take on 5x their number.

 

[Axioms]

Do yourself a favor and play Star Dynasties instead already (except you who already do/did).
Superior game is superior.

Then make me some outstanding modding additions for it, mmkay?

I shall attempt likewise.

Star Dynasties is okay but it's even easier to cheese than CK3. My best win was turn 3 but the dev rebalanced asking for vassalization before I could set up a 2 turn win. Sad times.

 

[Axioms]

Tried out the road to power dlc. GODAMN the jank and balance issues. Being a criminal is op heist mission I was able to get 600 gold. Overall I say its really dumb dlc. The adventure rpg gameplay is mostly trash relying on rng mechanics. Completely moronic too how traveling hobos can get small elite armies that can take on 5x their number.

It was always gonna be like this. Sadly the casual trash likes it so Paradox sails on.

 

[MrTerrible]

Rather than utilizing events, I wish the developers developed mechanics that allowed for emergent game-play which lets us emulate our favorite historical figures. William the Bastard's conquest of England and independence while being in a vassalage under the king of France (as the duke of Normandy) would've been a good excuse to implement multiple levels of ownership for a province/county. Furthermore, I am still sour that Paradox didn't see fit to implement an actual negotiation system into the game. I was following a mod for the game called Sue for Peace which allowed people to negotiate marriage in exchange for gold/land/treaties, land transfer, and more—which would have enabled more compelling stories and unique situations to develop. It is extremely disappointing that instead of expanding on diplomacy, Paradox saw it fit to instead simplify it into "marriage = alliance."

Also, being unable to call your vassals to war seems stupid to me. I know it's all about balance but larger realms should be difficult to conquer, and players should be incentivized to wait for a rebellion or conflict before conquering an empire with tons of vassals. I know that I'm being negative about the game, but I fail to see the 'depth and complexity' that reviewers gush about in the Steam reviews section of this game. You can't even suss out and stop seduction schemes against your own wife or keep your children from teleporting away from court!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Also, being unable to call your vassals to war seems stupid to me. I know it's all about balance but larger realms should be difficult to conquer, and players should be incentivized to wait for a rebellion or conflict before conquering an empire with tons of vassals

Hold up, don't you get their levies to war with(their use being not much) and don't they get pulled when you call your allies to war?