Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[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.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well if the incentive is player strength then you basically need a super strong min-maxed demense with the right terrain types and all to buff a MAA army more than an adventuring band does. Now granted an adventuring band needs a lot of money to develop their buildings, it's probably like 5000 gold either way, but the adventurers do it in a permanent unrevokable zero maintenance way. And when you go from adventurer to ruler you instantly lose all those buildings, your MAA cost upkeep, and your new demense will cost 5000 gold and probably 30 years of time building things before you're back to parity with where you were before.

I feel like if you're gonna be an adventurer at all you might as well just stay there permanently and try to install your dynasty on thrones while protecting them once they are on there. I guess that's a kind of interesting gameplay but when you're so overpowered and nothing can hurt you it feels kind of like godmode. Pissing off rulers has next to no drawback. You might get expelled if they hate you a huge amount, but not even supporting Bulgaria against the Byzantines caused this to happen to me while my camp was in Constantinople. Your army is always loyal, always free, replenishing either from basically free provisions or through free recruitment at settlements (once you get to max devotion you get 80% replenishment).

Funny enough it feels like the shapeshifter campaign from Warhammer 3, where his cults existed ontop of settlements, his faction was functionally immortal, and basically the entire game was just fucking with factions to help or hinder the AIs as you please.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Pissing off rulers has next to no drawback

Dunno man, you mooch provisions off them one too many times and suddenly they're plotting to kill you.

On another note, I been playing this and Bannerlord, and I gotta say, I can't figure what this game's core gameplay is- Bannerlord is nowhere close to this game in terms of things you do out of combat but that combat is at the core of it, and it is fun. And this game has what, clicking through events as the main part of it?

 

[Fedora Master]

And this game has what, clicking through events as the main part of it?

Painting the map and making meme rulers.

 

[Mikeal]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/my-patch-1-5-review.1509797/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/this-game-is-fundamentally-broken.1661745/

 

[Fedora Master]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/my-patch-1-5-review.1509797/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/this-game-is-fundamentally-broken.1661745/

Good old PDX Echo Chamber