Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[ERYFKRAD]

The one I recommend the most is getting the Adventurer one - why? Because AI Adventurers are Performance Cancer and will fuck your performance up.

Eh, I got a good rig anyway. Rest of your list is p. good though, thanks.

 

[Axioms]

One Proud Bavarian, Leana Hafer, and even Bret Deveraux are doing a set of linked threads today whining about the decision to restore Roman Hellenism. First "it provides no roleplay", second it doesn't "represent how restoration of old faiths worked", and then just various whining. Well their complaints make no sense. The entire religion system of CK3 is ahistorical, arbitrary, and illogical. As always they complain about the symptoms while being blind to the disease.

 

[Minecrawler]

Well, "+99999 mongols and plagues in exchange for ancient hellenism everywhere immediately" is arbitrary even by very low standards.

A strong contender for the most lazy and uninspired decision in the game title.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I think the idea was to make it an optional hardmode for a silly and gamey thing, but from what I hear its broken as all fuck and results in one zillion non-stop revolts and never-ending plagues.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

On the matter of camps - Forward Scouts, Worth it or Not?
I'm trying "No Forward Scouts" lately, doing mostly fine so far, but I pretty much fled the Iranian Intermezzo and try to use safe routes as much as possible.
I have an impression that Forward Scouts are only worth it in High Danger inland areas. Otherwise, you can get the same effect by hiring a Caravan Master capable of providing strong travel safety and occasionally eating the costs of arranging further safety on travel. Planning safe routes is also vital. Sea Travel seems to be mostly safer than land travel in certain parts of the world. It also means you can focus faster on the really important camp upgrades.

Talking about Caravan Master: Fuck aptitude. Unless you really need to get somewhere fast to an event, you're better off selecting your caravan masters by travel safety. Especially because many dangers can delay your travel or kill your courtiers.

Tangent: It's funny that for an Iranian Adventurer, the best thing to do is fuck off from the Intermezzo and go somewhere else until you're ready back to return as a conqueror. Mazdrayans are Bihdin so you're far better off going to India where you and everyone else see each other as Astray, than staying in Iran where almost everyone is Muslim and fucking hates your guts.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/a-word-on-1-13-2.1709811/

Hello everyone!

We wanted to drop in with a small update to keep you guys in the loop.

First things first. The overall response we've gotten to the release of Roads to Power and the following patches have been great. You guys have been diligent in reporting bugs and bringing up various issues, and I'm very thankful for all of the discussions. It helps us immensely!

We released patch 1.13.1 a week ago, resolving a huge amount of issues and balancing. Since then, we've also released two smaller hotfixes, fixing crashes, performance issues, and more. We are currently in full swing working towards 1.13.2. While we don't have a specific date nailed down yet, we hope to have it out sometime next week if everything goes according to plan.

In 1.13.2, we'll be addressing more of the issues you have been bringing up. So let's go over some of the changes you can look forward to.

Adventurers
While we did nerf the military capabilities of adventurers a bit in 1.13.1, it clearly wasn't enough. More changes will be coming in 1.13.2. Targeting adventurer’s military, as well as general AI balancing. They will generally be a bit less drastic than previous changes, but no less important. Some of the changes worth highlighting include:

• Increased provision cost for refilling MaAs
• Camp buildings provide a lot of increased MaA Regiment Limit and Regiment Size, and we'll reduce these sources accordingly
• Reduced knight limit from Roaring Campfire and the base knight limit for being an Adventurer
• AI's now give less gold when Adventurers use the 'Make a Request' interaction
• AI's are now less willing to give adventurers gold using the 'Make a Request' interaction if they themselves are poor

A number of bug fixing and balance tweaks have gone into a number of individual contracts as well.

Administrative
Some of the most important things we wanted to address here is in regards to the overall experience and balancing. One of the more significant changes is the addition of a couple of new laws. You guys have been asking for ways to prevent governors from declaring wars, and 1.13.2 will give you the option to do so. Along with a law to prevent governors from using the Boundary Dispute scheme.

Additional changes include:

• Governors will spend a higher portion of their income on Men-at-Arms. Which should make them less inclined to disband their Title MaAs.
• In an effort to make sure that titles are created at a rate we want them to within an administrative realm, admin government will have reduced title creation cost
• Administrative vassals who are not a part of your de-jure can now be granted independence

We are also making some additional changes to tune down the rate of factions. Mainly claimant factions, since those are still more frequent that we want them to. For example:
The AI will no longer force others to join their faction if they them self was forced to join
The influence option in the "Force to Join Faction" interaction can no longer be used on characters who actually like their liege

A full changelog will be made available when 1.13.2 releases.

 

[Deflowerer]

I recommend the Obfuscate mod. Could be better, but stuff like this should be integrated into the base game from get go.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I recommend the Obfuscate mod. Could be better, but stuff like this should be integrated into the base game from get go.

Obfuscate really seems interesting to me, I need to remember to include it in my modlist for my next games.

I remember Stellaris had a similar issue with too much information show to the player until they fixed that. I hope CKIII does it in the future as well, it IS really ridiculous that the player knows so much even as a Count in Whatever, Cornwall who's probably poorer than the peasant who milks his cows

 

[Minecrawler]

New DLC on the horizon. You can be a tourist or reduce stress through the wonderful world of hiking.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/wandering-nobles-available-november-4.1711073/

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

New DLC on the horizon. You can be a tourist or reduce stress through the wonderful world of hiking.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/wandering-nobles-available-november-4.1711073/

Eh, this seems weak compared to Roads to Power, which was probably their best release so far.

- Inspector: Landed characters can survey and improve their realm, Landless characters can seek environmental specialization.
- Wayfarer: Travel to reduce stress and pursue fame for your exploits.
- Voyager: Improve linguistic skills and live the life of a tourist and sightseer.

Inspector sounds the most interesting of all these. Honestly, decreasing stress isn't as hard as it used to be since Activities became a thing. Hell, if you're an Intriguer, you will struggle to get MORE stress lol.

Feels a bit weird, as in every lifestyle is correlated to a stat (except maybe Martial being Martial + Prowess, but you can get that in other ways too - like Intrigue tree. Then again, you could say Health is Learning's 2nd stat).

Feels like each of these could be a new fourth branch for the existing lifestyles, Inspector for Stewardship, Voyager for Learning and Wayfarer for Diplo. Add something for Martial* and you're golden.

*I dunno, something about travelling around, fighting in Tournaments, training under the best masters, searching for challengers and perhaps engaging in some good ol' loot & plunder?

 

[Fedora Master]

Crusader Kings III: Dog-walkers and Cat-breeders DLC

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Cat-breeders DLC

We're already heavy on the human eugenics anyway.

 

[Minecrawler]

Feels like each of these could be a new fourth branch for the existing lifestyles, Inspector for Stewardship, Voyager for Learning and Wayfarer for Diplo. Add something for Martial* and you're golden.

Yep, expanding the existing trees was the natural way.
Instead they tried to make three new trees out of walking around and quickly ran out of ideas.

"-Shall we make just one intent and call it a day? No? Ok, two it is then."

 

[thesecret1]

Leaked design doc for the next DLC:

Spoiler

 

[darkpatriot]

After having played several games starting as landless the big problem with the way they have implemented it is that it is far too easy to be a landless adventurer. A typical 1 county starting count is a much more difficult start than landless.

It is good to see them nerfing landless, but they are still nowhere near the level of nerfing they need. It is just way too easy to get both money and troops as landless. A landless adventurer will have a higher annual income than almost any count (with the exception of one who is in a good position to raid constantly), most dukes, and even many kings.

And for troops they are able to built up a massive retinue that costs them basically nothing to maintain. When I actually took over a kingdom in one game, I had to reduce the size of my retinue (which was over 10k) by 75% to be able to afford them as a king, and that was with the discount to MAA maintenance cost I got due to the conqueror trait. Once my next generation lost that trait, I had to downsize my military further.

They need to be massively nerfed. Contracts should give less than 10% of the gold they currently do, and there needs to be a meaningful gold maintenance cost to landless MAA. You should only be able to maintain a large army as a landless adventurer if you are actively working as a mercenary and bringing in regular mercenary contracts (those don't need to have their gold reward nerfed that much).

This is especially pronounced since I always start in 867 and technology has little effect on landless. Not a single camp improvement is locked behind technology. They are all available in year 867 if you have the gold for it. Which you will since your income is pretty massive as a landless adventurer. So while landed characters are struggling to even have 2 or 3 MAA regiments of size 5 with small incomes due to only having low tier buildings, a landless character is making bank while being able to build up an army of 6 - 8 MAA regiments of size 15+ (not sure how much the nerf reduced this, but even if you can only get half as many troops as before, you can still be as powerful as the most powerful early game empire).

Maybe landless gameplay is a bit better balanced in later eras when landed characters have more income and larger armies, but that just makes the decision to not lock camp improvements behind tech upgrades even stranger since that seems to be an obvious fix for that problem.


I was really hoping that starting off landless would allow for an even more challenging start, as I always like starting off as the little guy and working my way up, but I am going to go back to starting as a count with one or two counties from now on. Whether you want to be a king or emperor or not within 1 generation as landless is a choice, not a challenge.

 

[Average Manatee]

Roughly how big did things like mercenary bands get historically?

I get the feeling that the actual number isn't that far off, the problem is

1.MaA are way too strong and levies a joke. Realistically a 5k MaA stack should find 10k levies a hard battle but it's a cakewalk. The devs seem to think levies were like unarmored farmers with pitchforks from medieval total war, but they were in fact trained, physically fit, and decently armed troops. The equivalent of a modern draftee.
2. Replenishment is too easy. Finding and training solid elite troops should be very slow and costly. Owning a horse and a full suit of armor was something for nobility for a reason. Taking a thousand casualties should be an almost fatal wound that takes years to recover from. You do not have a whole kingdom to recruit from nor the prestige to attract people from far away
3. Not related to army but education is too good. A perk of being a high ranking noble is much more access to learning. This should be represented in higher rank characters getting better stats on average. I think the easiest way to do this would be a modifier to lifestyle XP. A landless character isn't hobnobbing with elites, experimenting with war weapons, or visiting monasteries in the way a king who is interested in those things can

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

After having played several games starting as landless the big problem with the way they have implemented it is that it is far too easy to be a landless adventurer. A typical 1 county starting count is a much more difficult start than landless.

I feel the same.
Adventurers are very feast and famine, but once you're sufficiently built up, you can start making absurd amounts of money. Once you have a Master of Spoils, a Man-Haggler and Mortician's Tools, war is a money printer. They say War is a Racket, and you're the Cappi di Tutti Capi. And most purposes can get those. Once you have 500-1000 MaA, you can start helping factions and joining wars and wars are an excuse to print prestige, piety and gold.

I was really hoping that starting off landless would allow for an even more challenging start, as I always like starting off as the little guy and working my way up, but I am going to go back to starting as a count with one or two counties from now on. Whether you want to be a king or emperor or not within 1 generation as landless is a choice, not a challenge.

Yeah, Landless should place you lower than a Count or even a Baron, but realistic it's simply not worth it to land yourself as anything less than a Duke. Whereas you become King in an Adventurer War or a little later on, it's more of a matter of character age and prestige.

I only feel down early on, when I have to put myself into debt to get my camp properly started.

It would also require them to finally do a better scaling on expenses. It's ridiculous that I am hiring a single guy in a tavern and spending enough gold to pay for a building.

Landing into a Count should be reasonable, not the worst choice ever.

Not a single camp improvement is locked behind technology. They are all available in year 867 if you have the gold for it. Which you will since your income is pretty massive as a landless adventurer.

This is actually a pretty cool idea, althrough perhaps it might be better done with upgrades on primary and secondary buildings. So you might get weakened versions of things which adventurers can get now. One disadvantage of said idea, through, is that its unlikely that as adventurer, you can do anything to influence your culture's tech... which could actually be something interesting to get adventurers to do, btw (imagine adventuring to bring knowledge to your own culture).

The main disadvantage of being an Adventurer right now, is that your Renown income is gigagarbage unless you start to breed insane amounts of children, stack artifacts and make lots of marriages with nobles.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Weird, I had a post typed up but its gone.

My opinions on latest patch and a few mods I've been using as well:

1. Adventurers definitively got hit hard with the nerf stick. RIP casual fuckhuge 5k man armies. Getting more MaA is far more limited now. I focused more on getting good cultural MaAs as well, filled by army with War Elephants and that good heavy infantry from India. Now you need to collect more bonuses for your MaA, as well as actually using mercs when you go for a big conquest.
2. Adventurers are still gold-making machines.
3. With the changes to MaA, Supply Tent >>> Baggage Train now (at least for Freebooters). Man-Haggler is nice, but not that nice.
4. Supplies are more important now.
5. Church robbery is no longer as OP, unless you have a super-intriguer character. Supply robberies are still good, tho.

6. You can still casually respawn MaA by sitting in a castle holding and getting men from the garrison from time to time
7. I think it makes more sense to settle in a county or duchy now. You can still do Adventurer invasions to Kingdoms, and I did Adventurer Invade a Kingdom, but its likely something you will only be able to do with an old character (unless you can rake on a lot of prestige very fast).
8. Something I realized this game: Travelling is THE way to get more lifestyle XP. Just find somewhere not super-dangerous (say, not Iranian Intermezzo) and that is full of Kingdoms and Courts, and at some point do big tours after contracts. Getting a few supplemental perks from lifestyles out of your focus is great - stuff like Golden Obligations is so fucking good.
9. Its just me or once you finish your main lifestyle, Learning is the way? Because then you can get health bonus and stay alive for longer. I got a 90 years old character right now, stacked so many health bonuses that he is still alive and in fine health, even with Infirm, Drunkard and Melancholic. By the way, when you're adventuring, get all the +health items you can, they're gonna be useful later on.
10. Hint: Deck out your heir in good items as well. This way, your next character already starts with more prestige and piety.

11. Pdox really needs to tweak the Iranian Intermezzo, it lasts like five minutes (the real Intermezzo lasted until the 11th century). I've been using Longer Iranian Struggle and its ideal because there are rules to make it slower and such. I've been using x5 slower plus catalyst decrease, I tried x5 slower and it still finished before the 11th century.
12. Talking about the Intermezzo, they really need to do something about all the interlopers, it's just insane right now, and probably one of the reasons the Concession ending is triggering so fast. Some decades in and most of Iran will be Oghuz counts. I've also seen insane Khazar blobs snaking into Iran multiple times, and even invasions from India my current game - some Conqueror carve out a good chunk of Persia and surround me, until he died and I started beating on his heirs - then his territory broke into a zillion Khorasanian counts (possibly because I had taken the only land connecting it to the rest of Iran and Exclave rules did the rest?). The Seljuks haven't even popped yet.
13. Pdox finally addressed Adventurer performance cancer by allowing us to set max number of AI Adventurers in game rules. I set it to 100 and I have noticed minimum performance issues. Your milleage may vary with your system.

My currently updated mod list:
- Social Relations Expanded/SRE
- Unfinished Business
- Rescue & Vengeance
- Dynamic Regency
- Patrum Scuta
- Patrum Scuta Expanded
- CK1 Music (don't think this actually works anymore lol)
- Immersive Concubinage: A Mechanical Overhaul
- Knights of Honor soundtrack (don't think this actually works anymore lol)
- More Character Names
- Community Flavor Pack
- Family Romance
- VIET Events - A Flavor and Immersion Event Mod
- RICE
- Nye's Aggressive AI
- Longer Iranian Struggle
- obfusCKate

Some comments about them:
- Immersive Concunbinage is pretty neat, for one it makes Concunbines great again: Concunbine kids do not inherit by default now, they're now more of a "just-in case" reserve, as well as being more of a way to get more children and prestige.
- Community Flavor Pack and RICE have finally been updated. AFAIK EPE hasn't.
- SRE and connected mods are great, btw. I recommend them. Really make social connections more important.
- RICE has a lot of cool stuff I haven't even explored properly yet, but will in the future.
- Longer Iranian Struggle is practically obligatory until Pdox does something about making the Intermezzo last far longer.
- Nye's Aggressive AI does seem to be helping the AI get better desmenes and armies. The AI in general seems to be fielding better armies since last patch, too.
- If you use Family Romance, it has game rules and I recommend setting those to "Rare", otherwise your relatives will come into you all the time, it gets silly.
- On obsfusCKate: It's a fascinating mod, kind of a gem in the rough right now I feel. You're no longer an omniscient ruler and a lot of information is now obscured from you. To get that info, you need to know characters better. The world is a lot scarier now, because you never know who's sitting on a giant can of soldiers and/or money, as well as other relevant data. I do wish there were more ways to get info on characters, like sending your characters as "guests" to infiltrate foreign courts or using the Spymaster to do that somehow, or a Court Position like "Master of Whispers". Its actually cool that if you don't know a character, you can't even see how they look like, but it does get strange sometimes - like when you go recruit characters in a inn, and you can't see them - MOTHERFUCKER I am looking at you right now, how are you invisible?

 

[Harthwain]

Weird, I had a post typed up but its gone.

You can use "Drafts" -> "Save Draft" option (fourth icon from the right).

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Iranian Intermezzo hint: Do not, under any circumstances, allow for any vassals from a different religion or culture. The Unrest phase makes it more likely for different cultures to become Minority Stance Vassals - even if they are from your same culture group or accepted by yours - so even if you are Iranian, an Iranian of a different Iranian culture/same religion will still become a Minority vassal (I was getting Persian Minority vassals as a Daylamite). This is important because the Unrest phase of the Intermezzo will severely tank Tax and Levy Income from Minority Vassals, so they won't give you jack.

This almost fucked my game because I used the Grant to Local Culture Of Your Religion Button to get new local noble vassals, trying to decrease peasant factions that way.

No, Same Culture, Same Religion, until the Intermezzo ends.

Also, make sure you don't let any stinky feudal vassals become a thing. Feudal vassals won't give you jack compared to Clan Vassals.

 

[Fedora Master]

so even if you are Iranian, an Iranian of a different Iranian culture/same religion will still become a Minority

Sounds like the Middle East today

 

[Minecrawler]

Tried new Inspections as the most "meaty" part of the tourist dlc. Travel to location, get your green modifier, travel back.
Don't know what else I expected.
There are two new event pictures in total, maybe? Everything else is reused.

At least they added a dedicated artifact slot for books and some travel events.

 

[Average Manatee]

Tried this adventurer thing. It's so stupid.

Maybe I'm the only one autistic about this, but I want to see an actual economy. Not in the sense of Victoria 3, but in the sense of event rewards and quests that involve actual money generated by actual rulers paying for actual services. Instead its almost all characters generated on the fly who get free money and give you free money for doing RNG activities. And the devs still refuse to make taxation a relevant means of income. The byzantine empire only makes 15g/month in my game, yet I'm supposed to believe that a random non-name asshole can afford 75g for me to kill some other random no name asshole? I'm pretty sure even the "joining a rulers wars for money" thing is conjuring money out of thin air at some point because there's no way these dukes can afford to pay me 100g when their monthly income is literally 2.5.

MAA are still just stupidly OP, you don't have to pay maintenance as an adventurer, and they can reinforce instantly. For a game that is fundamentally based on military power it astonishes me that they haven't fixed levies being completely worthless. It was stretching the plausibility before when a count could maintain a crack army capable of toppling kingdoms, but hey, I'm sure it happened at some point in history to some extraordinarily capable count in charge of a wealthy area with a weak king. But now you can do that as a group of like 8 dudes out camping in the wilderness who just happen to have 4000 troops which by my calculations could fight 72,000 levies. The Byzantine Emperor currently has 4000.

So Adventuring lays bare the stupidity of the CK3 system. What is the fundamental point of being a high rank and ruler of vast realms? It's not money, you don't get that. It's not levies, those are useless. It's... nothing.

Also special mention to how stupid the prestige/piety system is. I can't invade a realm with a kingdom or empire CB unless I gain enough magical prestige to increase my fame level. Never mind that I've had an army that could stackwipe any empire on the map for decades, I can only take a single county or duchy. At this point I feel like we can start rightfully calling the fame/devotion levels "mana" like in EU4, because the mechanics are completely ridiculous artificial roadblocks to normal things you should be able to do. What's funny is that I had next to no piety until unlocking a lifestyle bonus that gave +0.4 piety for every follower who loved me, which quickly skyrocketed me to max devotion. There's probably some way to gain massive amounts of prestige as an adventurer, I need 25,000 prestige apparently to make an empire-level invasion, but I can't find it. And I got an event that unavoidably decreased my fame level because of stupid bullshit. Fuck grinding these retarded quests and fuck this whole retarded system.

 

[darkpatriot]

I think they made a mistake in trying to make adventuring an alternate way to play the game. They should have focused on it solely being a transitory way to keep playing after losing your land (or as an extra difficult start) with the goal being very firmly to try to find a way to gain some land back with very limited resources.

Making it so you can create an entity as strong and rich as an empire, just much more easily and without having to deal with any of the obstacles that are normally in the game, wasn't a great idea.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

It still sort of incentivizes you to go back to being landed tbh. Not like the contracts are varied enough to keep things engaging or what have you.