Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[Fedora Master]

All PDX games after CK2 are meme games that only exist so people can make the first Nubian Empress of the Satanic Roman Empire.

 

[Larianshill]

So tl;dr, is the adventurer thing actually good?

If you're a mercenary, it's pretty good, but gets boring after a while. If you're not a mercenary, it gets boring fast.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

It was then that a massive fuck-off army of 8k screaming moors showed up to engage Gonçalo's forces of 1.8k MaA during a siege. Gonçalo army of pikemen, heavy cavalry and armored footmen proceeded to engage in what was one of the biggest curb-stomps on the Crusader... or should have been. Rather, Gonçalo and his "Hands of God" proceeded to narrowly beat the vastly larger heathen force, while the rest of Christendom just stood and watched. A second subsequent attack finally had the rest of the Crusade help, and Gonçalo managed to win the Crusade by actually sieging down land.

Yeah, combat changes made that possible. From the Roads to Power release patchnotes:

Advantage now affects battles by a factor of 10 (up from 2), this makes having the right commanders/fighting in the right terrain much more important, allowing smaller armies to beat larger ones more consistently.

So now, for example, an advange of 30 in combat (defending across a strait) means 300% more damage alone, without accounting commanders and other sources of advantage. Wining 1:10 may now be feasible.

Yes.
I think Advantage is a neat system, because it helps beat More Number = More Good. It plays better with things like MaA, the character system, etc.
Before, my big CKIII stat was always Stewardship, because I wanted to get more gold, but now Martial is way more solid and a good martial beatstick for a ruler or premier knight can turn defeats into victories. It really rewards getting good knights and speccing your characters, whereas before the war-winning meta was to just have fuckloads of gold and drown the opposition in mercs.

The problem is that the way Advantage is working right now is just nuts. They need to nerf that stuff, but that's just balance and tuning. Either decrease the given advantage values or decrease how much advantage affect battle.

CKII had a similar problem with retinues, but Retinues weren't inherently better than levies, they were just a permanent army. Retinues were better than levies because you could make a tighter troop concentration and use combined with culture to get the right tactics in order to decimate the opposition.

Would be cool if you could spec into the reverse and, say, drown the opposition in a tide of dumb peasant canonfodder.
Sometimes I wonder if they shouldn't just throw levies as a concept into the trash and just turn "Peasant Levy" into types of El Cheapo MaAs, with low price/maintenance. Something you spend peanuts to buy and maintain, then throw en masse into the opposition.

Maybe tie to Popular Opinion and County Control of the Stationed County somehow?

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Patch coming next week, probably

 

[Average Manatee]

o now, for example, an advange of 30 in combat (defending across a strait) means 300% more damage alone, without accounting commanders and other sources of advantage. Wining 1:10 may now be feasible.

Ehh, yuck. I don't like when combat is dominated by a small simplistic "how gud at fighting" stat. I much preferred when you had a commander with like heavy infantry and mountain traits and they dominated when you combine those circumstances

 

[darkpatriot]

o now, for example, an advange of 30 in combat (defending across a strait) means 300% more damage alone, without accounting commanders and other sources of advantage. Wining 1:10 may now be feasible.

Ehh, yuck. I don't like when combat is dominated by a small simplistic "how gud at fighting" stat. I much preferred when you had a commander with like heavy infantry and mountain traits and they dominated when you combine those circumstances

Not really. Terrain, perks, quality (men-at-arms counters), commander traits, and other situational modifiers are hugely important still. Without those you only really get a 30 advantage if you have an almost max quality commander against a scrub.

 

[Average Manatee]

Not really. Terrain, perks, quality (men-at-arms counters), commander traits, and other situational modifiers are hugely important still. Without those you only really get a 30 advantage if you have an almost max quality commander against a scrub.

You get +10 advantage just form picking chivalry focus and getting 3 perks in (And its on the line that gives you knights which was already arguably one of the strongest options for small and/or earlygame realms). +100% bonus damage in combat just from that is ridiculously stupid. We're back to CK2 where martial rulers are the only way to play.

 

[Axioms]

Almost like a high level of abstraction leads to heavily incentivized minmaxing and terrible outcomes.

 

[Dvd22]

I also think advantage is wayyy overtuned atm, a lot of the balance details for this DLC seems off, like the gold rewards for landless characters. They have multiplied advantage to damage ratio by 5 and called it a day. Maybe the strategy is to make landless martial characters more influential and fun to play, more "epic" and later when the novelty wears off (and they have sold enough) nerf the values to more sensible numbers, as usual with Paradox these days.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

So I've gotten bored of my old game and decided to restart and add some mods, but not many mods are updated right now.

So I went with a Mazdraist Daylamite Intrigue Freebooter Adventurer I made, Iranian Intermezzo 800s start:
- If parts of the world map were neighborhoods in a city, the Iranian Intermezzo areas would be like those super shady and dodgy parts of the city everyone avoids, because they're crawling with robbers, thieves, etc, and everyone is either robbing someone or being robbed. So much fucking travel danger! The Unrest phase of the Intermezzo really fucks up travel safety, and there will be low control low popular opinion holdings fucking everywhere. You have to max the fuck out of Travel Safety if you want to go anywhere without getting hit with constant Travel Danger issues. If you can take a boat, it's worth it, just pay Experienced Captains. I was lucky, I started in Gilan and could take boats across the Caspian Sea until I started maxxing my Travel Safety. This isn't safe ol' Europe, mind Travel Safety or the Travel System will fuck you up. Camp Perimeter is a must-have.
- This is especially important if you're playing a Criminal Character, because you need to constantly move that camp about.

- Playing Criminal is definitively different from playing a normal character.
- One thing I notice is that you often get options between avoiding gallowsbait or increasing it. Gallowsbait definitively makes most characters hate your guts, but there are ways to offset that. Seems like the "avoid gallowsbait increase" options are for Adventurers who commit the occasional crime of opportunity but don't want to tank the massive rep bonuses or exile you get from being part of the Gallowsbait Gallery, while going full Gallowsbait is for specialized criminals who don't give a fuck and want the bonuses from the gallowsbait levels.
- Criminal/Freebooter play is definitively Intrigue oriented, but there are also checks for Prowess, Diplo, Martial and others. There's even learning contracts for criminals. But Intrigue is King, just like Martial is King for Swords-for-Hire.
- Watch your patrons and stick to them, DON'T run criminals contracts which fuck them over and decrease your relationship, only the ones which help them. Having patrons who like you is useful, as it allows you a safe heaven from expulsion. You will get kicked from territory all the time, so not cultivating a good network of patrons might deny you camping rights to entire duchies or even kingdoms. Generally, don't fuck with with top lieges own who entire duchies or above. Fragmented territory is your friend.
- If you can, take a dip into Stewardship and get Golden Obligations (and something else too, because you're going to invest in it for a while until you can go back to your previous lifestyle focuses). Being able to turn hooks into gold is great. Sure, you can use the Request Interaction to do this, but you can also use it for other things, and I'm not sure you want to use the Request Interaction all the time - it really eats your Prestige. Golden Obligations payments are free. This is especially important once the Intrigue Tree starts giving you ways of getting more Secrets and more Hooks.

- Someone banned you from a county/duchy/realm? Fuck 'em. Run hostile schemes on them. Kidnap and ransom them back. Murder them. Torture them for secrets. Seduce their children (ok not really hostile lol, but it adds to Hall of Patrons if you specced right into the Seducer intrigue focus properly). Dip into all the criminal contracts which can hurt them.
- Because my plan is to eventually turn my camp into a large incestuous harem ("Only those pure of mind, body and blood can free Persia!" - my character, probably), my character is bringing in and marrying/concubining/seducing women fairly frequently and making lots of babies. On 15 or so far. Even gave him a congenital trait to help with this.
- Between banning and having to go after contracts, Criminal Characters definitively move quite a bit.
- I like how some criminal contracts give you the opportunity to make more money than the number contract success indicates. You can really get humoungous quantities of money that way, from cut-pursing random nobles, taking extra treasure from nobles, etc.
- I haven't gotten the opportunity to use Seduce to get patrons, but Muslim world has very few female rulers so that's probably why. You might be able to get a lot of milleage out of this.
- A really annoying thing is that there isn't a "List of Bannings" anywhere, you have to put who banned you from where on memory, or find it by trying to travel to the territory.
- If you're travelling and there's little danger or hurry, use "Search for Secrets" to try and find some useful secrets. At the least, you can use this to make nobles pay the horny tax.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Behold... THE GRAND HEIST!

I did fuck up, through. This absolute gigachad had one breach so I just kept using the stress option to loot everything until it was empty... which promptly exploded his heart and killed him. Should have looked into the stress tab first. Rookie mistake.
Bro literally self-nuked by using the forbidden stealing technique... but he got ALL THE GOLD!
Helluva way for the biggest Gallowsbait of all Eranshah to go. He died doing what he loved... taking other people's gold.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

So tl;dr, is the adventurer thing actually good? I remember that sort of thing was actually possible back in CK2, you could start as a single county holder in a large empire, work your way up the ranks, become a spymaster or something, and eventually betray your liege and become the sovereign yourself.

What did they add in CK3? Also, how does it interplay with the dynastic mechanics? AKA, can you first work on building your dynasty, and then elevate your entire your family into power? It would be cool, as that's how it worked for the Borgias or the Julio-Claudians.

From my games: Yep, it's pretty good. It's definitively radically different from starting as a count or the like.

On the dynasty side: I would say that the difference between starting from Adventurer to starting from Count, is that Adventurer has a weaker start in the Dynasty, Eugenics and Marriage Games, in exchange for an easier time building up money and military power to climb up.

(bear in mind, so far I've done Mercenaries and Freebooters, I have no idea how other types of Adventurer do, nor how Administrative Landless works)

Adventurers:
- Weak on the matter of Dynasty Renown, your little Renow is pretty much dependent on how many people your family has, or somehow placing your relatives on thrones.
- Weak on the marriage game, getting good marriages with landed nobles is harder. I haven't tried this yet, but I think the way to go is to use seduction focus on single young nobles of the opposite sex. You can demand marriages with requests but so far I've been able to get anything good - and I also think that shit is bugged, because when you use this, you take the prestige hit BEFORE selecting someone, so if you can't find someone you want or are allowed to marry, you tank a prestige hit even if you didn't marry anyone.
- Your diplo range is way smaller than landed rulers', so your diplo game is going to be weaker as a matter of course. Especially because you need to be moving around to get more contracts.
- Camp Followers seem to have an immense fertility hit, so you will likely have issues making anyone not of your dynasty make eugenically fit babies. It's also just sad seeing your old followers die without children. If you want to engage in eugenic breeding and dynasty expansion, you have to pretty much get loads of lovers and preferably take the Seduction tree.
(it's also very annoying you can no longer GIVE/OFFER concubines to people like in CKII)
- You can make more money than your average count or even duke. They actually had to nerf with the hotfix, but I think you can still get a lot of money, and even more if you do crime.
- VERY strong militarily, especially Mercenary Adventurers. It's not that hard to build up like over a thousand soldiers in retinue, with good retinues too. Stuff like Horse Archers/Light Cav or Armored Cav/Armored Infantry/Pikemen combo, with the right combination of culture, character traits and camp buildings, can straight out demolish larger numbers of levies and other garbo MaAs. A good Adventurer Merc camp with properly kitted out MaA and Commanders, can probably demolish everyone except maybe the big boys (ERE, Abbasids, HRE, 800s Ummayads, etc), Conquerors with enough steam, and OP shit like Mongols. Its actually silly how MaA is cheap and good.
- Adventurers can pretty much drain the AI of money and power. It can actually get silly that these guys are paying me that much. And then there are criminals who can fuck landed rulers hard.
- Unlike landed characters, it's pretty hard to get game-overed, as long as you have heirs you should be good. Your biggest threat is probably ending up parked somewhere you were exiled and being unable to leave for some reason, getting your character jailed.
- You can literally run from plagues.


My main quibble with Adventurer right now is that unless you need to get landed NAO, its simply not worth it for an Adventurer to settle for anything less than a King, or maybe a Duke in some land with good provinces. You would think that Adventurer -> Count would be a linear climb, but you would be wrong. Once you start getting some serious MaA, you can start helping factions and getting involved in wars, and make serious money. If you're Catholic, you can get loads of land from a Crusade.