Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[TemplarGR]

Yes, and we'll all be bitching about it with our purchased copies.

Wait, you want to tell me you people pay for games?

 

[Straight elf]

Yes, and we'll all be bitching about it with our purchased copies.

Wait, you want to tell me you people pay for games?

Yea, even potato people do for the most part. We are in our 30s now and - unless you live in a third world country and/or suck at life really bad - paying 30-60 euros for a game is just not something you need to think twice about.

 

[TemplarGR]

Yea, even potato people do for the most part. We are in our 30s now and - unless you live in a third world country and/or suck at life really bad - paying 30-60 euros for a game is just not something you need to think twice about.

Well, i said that quote as a joke, but seriously, if you think that "paying 30-60 euro" for something non-essential like a video game is something that people don't need to think about twice in most countries, then you are just a spoiled brat of the rich West. Yes, it is not a huge sum, but that money can buy food for a family for many days in most places. Wealthy Westerners like you, that is north americans and western/northen europeans, think that your debt-based overinflated soon-to-be-destroyed economy is normal, and you waste 60 euros like it is nothing, and think you are so awesome and that everyone who does not have this capacity made bad life choices or lives in a third world country...

I have news for you. Soon the western economy will crash. Very soon. Because both americans and europeans have been printing money like paper was getting extinct*, for decades. Then we will see if you are this smug then. And you know, when the economy crashes, the wealthy people are the ones who commit sepuku, not the poor. You will see.

*obviously the vast majority of money these days is not printed but it was a figure of speech

 

[Citizen]

blah blah

Location:Greece

Software is a product that requires work, if I like some product and want the developers to continue doing more quality product why the hell wouldn't I pay them for it?

 

[Fedora Master]

Because CK3 won't be a good product?

 

[Straight elf]

Yea, even potato people do for the most part. We are in our 30s now and - unless you live in a third world country and/or suck at life really bad - paying 30-60 euros for a game is just not something you need to think twice about.

Well, i said that quote as a joke, but seriously, if you think that "paying 30-60 euro" for something non-essential like a video game is something that people don't need to think about twice in most countries, then you are just a spoiled brat of the rich West. Yes, it is not a huge sum, but that money can buy food for a family for many days in most places. Wealthy Westerners like you, that is north americans and western/northen europeans, think that your debt-based overinflated soon-to-be-destroyed economy is normal, and you waste 60 euros like it is nothing, and think you are so awesome and that everyone who does not have this capacity made bad life choices or lives in a third world country...

I have news for you. Soon the western economy will crash. Very soon. Because both americans and europeans have been printing money like paper was getting extinct*, for decades. Then we will see if you are this smug then. And you know, when the economy crashes, the wealthy people are the ones who commit sepuku, not the poor. You will see.

*obviously the vast majority of money these days is not printed but it was a figure of speech

You know what? You are right. My comment came through as arrogant and stupid, even though I simply meant to say many gamers are at the stage in their lives when they can easily afford buying games just because its typically a more convenient way to pursue our hobby. So rather then spending an hour finding a working crack and then fiddling around with updates and shit, I rather just pay 50 euros and spend the hour with family or friends. Or gaming. Of course if someone struggles to buy food, they should just buy food and remove unnecessary stuff like games from the inventory.

 

[Life of the Party]

Spoiler

Welcome, comrades, to another dev diary! Today, we’ll be taking a look at the structure of an event in CK3, how they’re assembled in script, and how they differ from CK2.

Anatomy of an Event

The core of a standard character event is almost certainly quite familiar to you already: we have a title, a description, typically a portrait, and one or more options along the bottom.

In script, however, we’ve changed a few things around, looking to improve functionality, readability, and general script hygiene over time. Here’s a comparison of the start of an event in CK2 vs. CK3:

The first change you’ll notice is that we’ve swapped the event type and the event ID: an event is now created by a namespace (still defined at the top of each file) and unique ID, and the type defined inside the event, rather than the inverse. This means that you can now still read event IDs after folding the events themselves!

Next, is that we’ve changed how triggered text works. In CK2, this was a really useful tool for ensuring that flavour was localised appropriately to the player’s situation, and let us make events very broadly applicable whilst still feeling unique. It could, however, get a bit cumbersome, since we had no method for triggered text to be easily mutually exclusive, occasionally leading to situations like this:

Not the worst in the world, but pretty chonky for what we actually want it to do.

In CK3, we can cut this down by using a first_valid block inside triggered text blocks (as in the first image shown), picking the first entry from a list which meets a set of criteria. This means that, instead of having to make sure triggered text blocks are always mutually exclusive according to a trigger (and one which tends to increase in complexity along with the number of triggered texts), we can just order our preferred text logically according to fairly simple triggers.

For instance, if I have a triggered text block where the copy is different for a French character, an Ashari character, and a character who’s over eighty years old, with a fallback for anyone who doesn’t fit into those categories, I’d script something like the following:

This will then automatically proceed down the list. A French character would see one thing, a non-French Ashari would see another thing, a non-French non-Ashari who’s over eighty would see a third thing, and everyone else would see a fourth. This makes it incredibly easy to add new context-sensitive copy to both event descriptions and titles.

A further minor point, but as triggered text is now also kept within the body of a superior block, it’s far easier to sort on the fly: no matter how much triggered text you have, it’s just one click to collapse the body in your file editor of choice, not a dozen or more. When minimising clicks, every little bit helps!

Event Themes & Backgrounds

A couple of notable absences in the CK3 format are the picture & border blocks.

Well, that’s with good reason! These have mostly been subsumed into the new event theming system, which you can see in the very first CK3 script example above.

Themes are what decide on the event icon displayed in the top-left, helping to group together broadly-thematic sets of events, and to let the player know what they can expect an event to relate to. They also give us a default appropriate image background (which, itself, sets the lighting used on the character portraits), which will change according to your situation, and different sets of ambient SFX.

Backgrounds and theme icons can be overridden as necessary via a manual line of script if we feel like we’ve got a more appropriate one to show, too, so although the system is set-up to reduce the amount of work that goes in to adding extra flavour to each event, we still have total control over what flavour we actually include should we want it.

Needless to say, event themes are fully scriptable: you can mod in whatever icon, default background, character model lighting, & ambient SFX you like, as well as create and adjust themes with ease.

Portraits & Animations

The good stuff! Portraits in the new system are, very surprisingly, somewhat more dynamic than in CK2, and any given event can have between 0 and 5 total portraits present. Of these, two are fully animated (positioned to the left and the right, respectively), and three are headshots lined up evenly along the bottom of the event. These can be used in any combination you like to get just the right look for an event.

The left and right portraits can use any of a fairly wide array of animations created for release. Headshots are not animated, instead allowing you to visualise ancillary characters mentioned in the event’s description.

On Actions for All!

All events come from somewhere, and, in CK2 (especially earlier in the title’s life cycle), this was often done through the Mean Time To Happen system, which let us define roughly how long an event would take to fire in (typically) months. Unfortunately, when balancing extremely large numbers of events against each other, the flexibility of this system becomes more of a disadvantage than anything else, making it difficult to govern how frequently an event should spawn without particularly stringent triggers. It also caused a lot of weird statistical anomalies due to working off of pure probabilities, and absolutely tanked performance.

Over CK2’s long life, we started to move more towards triggering events via on_actions, small hooks in code attached to features or regular pulses that activate events (and, if necessary, effects) whenever that hook is called. These take a bit more work to balance, but give us much more control over how and when events are called, as well as making tweaking such significantly easier, and are super fast performance-wise.

For CK3, we use entirely on_actions to fire events. There’s quite an array hooked up from code, allowing us to trigger events either when a specific action occurs in the world (e.g., when a character is born) or on a regular pulse (e.g., every five years). These can be set to go off every time that on_action fires, or placed in a weighted list of potential events that might fire (in which case, weight multipliers still apply and support the usual factors and such).

One major improvement over CK2’s on_actions (other than a more thorough, rationalised system of use, which I think is very exciting but I also appreciate that other people lead much more interesting lives than me and may have stricter standards) is the addition of scripted on_actions! These allow us (and, of course, you!) to create and hook up on_actions entirely in script that behave as regular on_actions, instead of always having to rely on the hard-coded on_actions. Scripted on_actions then behave exactly as coded on_actions, acting as a complex of weighted & unweighted events/effects, just called from somewhere in the accessible-script rather than the inaccessible-code.

For instance, say I’ve made a new set of events about reconciliation after a civil war, neighbours learning to live side by side with each other after fighting for opposite lieges, that type of thing, and I want to hook it up to happen whenever a civil war ends. All I have to do to set up that flow is add something like this to the relevant war end effects:

And then create a file including this in the appropriate directory:

Anywhere that you can script an effect, you can script a reference to a new (or existing scripted) on_action.

The Immediate Block & You

A major new addition to CK scripting, which we use with extreme regularity in the immediate block, is the scripted list!

These allow us to sort through various groups, pick out relevant characters matching a set of criteria, and then sort within the list of relevant characters only with ease.

For instance, let’s say I want to grab every ornery old man from amongst my vassals and courtiers, I’d write something vaguely thus:

And then, I want to pick out the two angriest and orneriest from amongst them so that I can have them get into an argument in an event or what have you:

Sorted! I can then refer to these two characters in my localisation, apply effects to them, make them portrait characters, etc., as needed. You may note our cool new alternative_limit functionality: these are limits which are checked if the limit immediately above them fails.

That said, we’re all about minimising unnecessary maintenance and nipping potential bugs before they exist, and this script should still be setting off alarm bells, what with calling two separate lists that use the same conditions, which are, themselves, part of a separate scripted trigger.

There are a few ways we could solve this, but let’s go for showing off some new functionality, with the ordered_in_list effect:

Ordered_in_list takes a list, and, using a system called script_maths (which we’ll hopefully have time to talk about another time), assigns numerical values to items in that list. It then applies any effects in its block as normal to, by default, the highest valued item in the list (though, as here, we can tell it to apply its effects to any number of items in the list). Here, we were sorting a relatively small amount of list items by a fairly limited set of factors, but this sorting functionality can be as complex and as extensive as you require.

In other immediate block-related news, we’ve also made it easier to save scopes (formerly event targets, which you can see a bit of in the above example), and variables, and customarily use this block to define musical stings for maximum drama. Standard immediate block functionality (being executed before the event is displayed) is unchanged, and visible effects executed in the Immediate will be shown under a “Has Happened” header in all event option tooltips.

Options: Giving the AI Personality & Stressing Out Players

Finally, options. Options behave similarly to CK2, with a minimum of one per visible event and each option requiring a text label, but otherwise allowing you to enter any and various effects you fancy.

The two main additions to this area that you’ll notice are a drastically expanded use of ai_chance, and, fairly commonly, stress_impact.

AI chance, as in CK2, governs the approximate chance that an NPC character will pick that option. In CK3, we’re making much more extensive use of this block, and of our exposed ai_value_modifiers (building a personality for each character based off how much/little of each value they have, in turn derived mostly from their traits) to ensure that characters act in accordance with their personality as much as possible by weighing almost all event options up or down based on appropriate ai_value_modifiers. The block still takes other triggers as well, so we can have the AI prefer an option more or less based on traits, if they’re at war, if the option relates to a rival, etc.

Stress_impact, meanwhilst, is how we organise the new stress mechanic, which you may remember from some diaries ago! Don’t stress (*ahem*) if you don’t: stress is, in a nutshell, a measure of negative effects that your character gains when performing actions that run contrary to their personality (e.g., a compassionate character does not enjoy torturing people).

We check for that here, by filling out the stress_impact block with any personality traits relevant to picking a particular option, and using the scripted stress_impact values. Due to sorcerous automagic, we can combine any number of stresses gained and lost in the stress_impact block, and it’ll be calculated on an event option into one number.

You can also add stress as an ordinary effect, outside of the stress_impact block, in which case it will not combine. If desired, you can even add multiple stress impact blocks, which will only combine the individual stress modifiers, or you can omit the block entirely. Whatever floats your scripting-boat.

And, with that, we come to the end of another dev diary. I’ll be around for a couple of hours to answer any questions you might have, and we look forward to seeing you ne-

A-aren’t you going to cover Triggers?

Ha, you fell for my cunning plot-twist. Hands up anyone who noticed the stealthy trigger spoiler in an earlier screenshot, you win exactly one internet point!

For everyone else, let’s have that screenshot again:

Now, a quick recap: scripted triggers in CK2 were a way of grouping a long list of requirements together under a single reference, and then referring to that reference when needing to check things.

For instance, say I have two places in an event where I need to check 20+ conditions: the event will be perfectly functional if I script all those conditions out twice, but what if someone in the future updates one set of triggers but not the other? Instant source of bugs. Now, what if I have to check those triggers more than twice, or across multiple events, or, for maximum-sadism, across multiple events in different files?

As you can imagine, that rapidly devolves into chaos. However, we don’t want to use less complex triggers, partially because that makes the title worse and less fun for everyone (is it really CK without ludicrous amounts of specificity?), and partially because that’s only reducing the scale of the problem, not fixing it.

Instead, we’d create a scripted trigger, which is the list of triggers written out once in a file that can be referenced by other files. Then, in any spot needing to check those triggers, we call the scripted trigger, which checks its contents. Any time the triggers need updating or fixing, simply fix the scripted trigger once, and, typically, all subsequent places that check the scripted trigger have been fixed by proxy also. Instant maintenance savings, immediate huge reductions in bug potential!

However, in CK2, these scripted triggers had to be stored inside a specific folder in /common, separate from the events (and other script) that they referenced. This may not sound like a huge deal, but it adds a bit of extra leg-work to creating and maintaining scripted triggers, and only really gives you a huge list of scripted triggers, some of which may be used only a few times in a couple of places.

In CK3, we’re improving on this by adding inline scripted triggers, meaning scripted triggers that can be written directly into the file that uses them, provided they are only used in that file. For more utilitarian scripted triggers that need to be used across multiple files, the old folder system still works. This lets us split up major and minor scripted triggers, and use scripted triggers (and, for that matter, scripted effects) significantly more thoroughly throughout the title, making it markedly easier for us (and you!) to create script that doesn’t compromise on complexity or detail whilst still being easy to maintain.

And with that, we come to the actual end of the dev diary. We look forward to seeing you next week!

 

[IDtenT]

I'm impressed that they're taking the time to improve the scripting language. Gives it a bit more than just a new iteration of CKII.

 

[thesecret1]

I simply meant to say many gamers are at the stage in their lives when they can easily afford buying games just because its typically a more convenient way to pursue our hobby. So rather then spending an hour finding a working crack and then fiddling around with updates and shit, I rather just pay 50 euros and spend the hour with family or friends.

The depressing thing about it all is that Steam and other such platforms are usually such massive pieces of software shit that it's actually more convenient to just pirate it. Download it just as fast, no need to bother with any billing shit or typing in your credit card, no annoying Steam client needing updates or generally performing like shit (seriously, why is it so fucked?), you often just extract from archive and play. I started buying games I like after getting a job, and it's been overall an incredibly disappointing experience for me. I am paying to get a worse damn service, what the hell? They don't even have a cool installer music like cracking groups have...

 

[Van-d-all]

I simply meant to say many gamers are at the stage in their lives when they can easily afford buying games just because its typically a more convenient way to pursue our hobby. So rather then spending an hour finding a working crack and then fiddling around with updates and shit, I rather just pay 50 euros and spend the hour with family or friends.

The depressing thing about it all is that Steam and other such platforms are usually such massive pieces of software shit that it's actually more convenient to just pirate it. Download it just as fast, no need to bother with any billing shit or typing in your credit card, no annoying Steam client needing updates or generally performing like shit (seriously, why is it so fucked?), you often just extract from archive and play. I started buying games I like after getting a job, and it's been overall an incredibly disappointing experience for me. I am paying to get a worse damn service, what the hell? They don't even have a cool installer music like cracking groups have...

I pirated the living shit out of every game for years. The cracked versions are obviously easier to install, but nowadays it's all about the shitslew of updates. Most groups don't even crack them, and even if they do you need to find and download them all, since they release them incrementally. Should you care to play them after release, that is. Mechwarrior 5 / CODEX is a good example, but after all I'm glad I tried it out pirated instead of paying for that steaming pile of shit, especially to that faggot Swiney. Other than that, I honestly feel like paying for games that deserve it.

 

[Kem0sabe]

The depressing thing about it all is that Steam and other such platforms are usually such massive pieces of software shit that it's actually more convenient to just pirate it. Download it just as fast, no need to bother with any billing shit or typing in your credit card, no annoying Steam client needing updates or generally performing like shit (seriously, why is it so fucked?), you often just extract from archive and play. I started buying games I like after getting a job, and it's been overall an incredibly disappointing experience for me. I am paying to get a worse damn service, what the hell? They don't even have a cool installer music like cracking groups have...

That's a poor excuse. Steam is easy to install, manage your games and update. You pirate games because you either want to try before you buy or you are a cheap fuck who wants to play for free games that took years and often millions to develop.

What gets me is the people who pirate games and then complain about them.

 

[thesecret1]

That's a poor excuse.

It's not an excuse, it's a complaint. I don't feel the need to excuse myself to random internet people, believe it or not (I do like to complain about things to them though. Funny how that works). Gabe Newell once said that piracy is a service problem, referring to the fact that piracy is successful not just because it's free, but because it's easy – easier than going to buy a physical copy. Well, if he wanted to change that, then he fucking failed because every time I buy something on Steam, I feel like someone is deliberately trying to piss me off. Why is the client so damn slow? Why does it need updating so often? Why am I spammed with fucking pop up ads every time I open it? Billing is also annoying as fuck and makes me feel like someone's fishing for my personal data, but I guess it's because of law shit so okay, but why is a multibillion dollar company offering a worse service than some shady guy on the web? A good store should make you feel welcome, make you WANT to buy things and return there in the future for more shopping, not make you slowly fume as you watch the shitty client update for the billionth time that week, nor make wanna punch Gabe Newell in his fat rolls as you stare at a black screen, waiting for his software to do what it's actually supposed to do

 

[Kem0sabe]

That's a poor excuse.

It's not an excuse, it's a complaint. I don't feel the need to excuse myself to random internet people, believe it or not (I do like to complain about things to them though. Funny how that works). Gabe Newell once said that piracy is a service problem, referring to the fact that piracy is successful not just because it's free, but because it's easy – easier than going to buy a physical copy. Well, if he wanted to change that, then he fucking failed because every time I buy something on Steam, I feel like someone is deliberately trying to piss me off. Why is the client so damn slow? Why does it need updating so often? Why am I spammed with fucking pop up ads every time I open it? Billing is also annoying as fuck and makes me feel like someone's fishing for my personal data, but I guess it's because of law shit so okay, but why is a multibillion dollar company offering a worse service than some shady guy on the web? A good store should make you feel welcome, make you WANT to buy things and return there in the future for more shopping, not make you slowly fume as you watch the shitty client update for the billionth time that week, nor make wanna punch Gabe Newell in his fat rolls as you stare at a black screen, waiting for his software to do what it's actually supposed to do

Worse service? Dunno which demon infested version of steam you are using..

Steam: Click command and conquer remastered, click add to cart, click buy for me, click pay, its done... transferring.

Pirated version: Search usual places to see if its available, check comments for bad release, bad crack or viruses, check if torrent, if not, check if google drive available, check if download limit on drive is reach or you need to copy to account to be able to download, if no google drive then check multi upload hosts, copy paste links to Jdownloader, wait to download, extract, mount image, install, copy over crack, play.

As with most products, things other people make and you want, cost money to get, thats how society works, the vast majority of people dont go around robbing stores to get their shit because theres a line for the checkout.

 

[Fedora Master]

I haven't had to mount an iso of a game in ages.

And Steam IS a huge piece of shit software that Valve has no interest in ever fixing.

 

[janjetina]

Either way, i expect tons of butthurt, similar to Imperator, when this goes out.

Yes, and we'll all be bitching about it with our purchased copies.

Purchased on Piratebay, in 2023 or so after all DLCs are there

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I myself pre-ordered the fancy edition. Most likely I'll pirate the rest of the DLC when they start coming, but I trust the base game to be decent for what it is.

Spoiler

And Paradox deserves a little support since they're the only relevant developer within their niche.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I myself pre-ordered the fancy edition. Most likely I'll pirate the rest of the DLC when they start coming, but I trust the base game to be decent for what it is.

Spoiler

And Paradox deserves a little support since they're the only relevant developer within their niche.

I thought if you play a legal game with pirated DLCs, steam has a way of detecting it and you get your account banned, locked or whatever.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I myself pre-ordered the fancy edition. Most likely I'll pirate the rest of the DLC when they start coming, but I trust the base game to be decent for what it is.

Spoiler

And Paradox deserves a little support since they're the only relevant developer within their niche.

I thought if you play a legal game with pirated DLCs, steam has a way of detecting it and you get your account banned, locked or whatever.

Dunno, plenty of people do it with no issue.

Maybe if you log into your Paradox account in the game.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I myself pre-ordered the fancy edition. Most likely I'll pirate the rest of the DLC when they start coming, but I trust the base game to be decent for what it is.

Spoiler

And Paradox deserves a little support since they're the only relevant developer within their niche.

I thought if you play a legal game with pirated DLCs, steam has a way of detecting it and you get your account banned, locked or whatever.

I have many legit games with all dlcs pirated and this never happens. Learn how to edit creamapi.

 

[AwesomeButton]

creamapi.

A new world just opened before me.

 

[Infinitron]

CK3 segment from the Paradox Insider stream:

 

[Heroic Liberator]

UI and graphics look great.

 

[Doktor Best]

Because CK3 won't be a good product?

Then why play it? Time investment in a game is much more precious than 60 bucks.

 

[Commissar Draco]

blah blah

Location:Greece

Software is a product that requires work, if I like some product and want the developers to continue doing more quality product why the hell wouldn't I pay them for it?

Sure Comrade but what this has to do with CK 3?

 

[Life of the Party]

Spoiler

Dev Diary #31 - A Stressful Situation

Hello everyone! I come to you today with the long-awaited Dev Diary on how Stress works in Crusader Kings III! While the system is relatively straightforward, it does have some rather far-reaching ramifications for how characters choose to behave, so let us dive right in!

Stress

Stress is a representation of a character’s mental well-being. As characters accumulate Stress, they will increase up their Stress Level, with each level causing increasing penalties to their health and fertility values. The penalties at Stress Level 1 are fairly minor, but the penalties at Stress Level 3 can lead your character to an early grave!

[A screenshot showing the player character with nearly-maxed out Stress]

The primary way that characters gain Stress is when the demands of the realm force them to take actions which go against their nature. For example, a Compassionate character will gain Stress for executing prisoners in the dungeon, even if those prisoners were traitorous rebels or, ahem… inconveniently positioned in the line of succession.

[A screenshot showing a Compassionate character gaining 42 Stress for executing a prisoner]

There are other sources of Stress too, though. Being locked up in the dungeon of another character will gradually increase Stress over time, as the isolation and neglect take their toll on your psyche. Other causes include overwork or the death of a loved one. Regardless of the source, once a character accumulates enough Stress to pass a certain threshold and gain a Stress Level, they will suffer from a Mental Break.

Mental Breaks

Mental Breaks are a special kind of event which occurs when Stress overwhelms a character and compels them to do something — anything — to gain relief. Exactly what type of Mental Break a character has depends heavily on their personality traits, and each one gives the character several options for dealing with the situation they have found themselves in.

[A screenshot showing the player character suffering from overwhelming guilt and shame as part of a Mental Break]

Not all Mental Breaks are equal, and the severity of the Mental Break will depend on your Stress Level when the event occurs. A Level 1 Mental Break may cause a Wrathful character to yell at one of their vassals in front of the whole court, insulting them and wounding their pride… but a Tier 3 Mental Break may instead drive that same character to murder their chosen heir in a fit of rage!

In addition to differing by Stress Level, some Mental Breaks are influenced by the situation you find yourself in. As an example, characters who are locked up in a dungeon cell will suffering from completely different Mental Breaks (often of greater severity), some of which can radically change their personality.

[A screenshot showing the player character swearing vengeance on their enemies from prison]

Regardless of what kind of Mental Break they suffer from, all Mental Breaks give the afflicted character the opportunity to lose a large amount of Stress. Many of these options will also grant the afflicted character a Coping Mechanism trait, which will help them relieve stress in the future and thus reduce the likelihood of having additional Mental Breaks.

Coping Mechanisms

Coping Mechanisms are traits that represent the long-term methods characters have developed to deal with the Stress of their life. Most of them impose some form of minor penalty on a character’s skills, but in exchange they will enhance the potency of all forms of stress loss.

[A screenshot showing a selection of 4 Coping Mechanism traits: Rakish, Drunkard, Flagellant, and Comfort Eater]

In addition to the passive effects of each trait, each one also enables a unique Decision characters can take to indulge in their vice and relieve a portion of their accumulated stress.

[A screenshot showing the Decision to visit a brothel and lose stress]

Regardless of the form it takes, all Coping Mechanisms are useful in one form or another. Having the ability to make Stressful decisions at-will is often more useful than a few extra points of Diplomacy or Stewardship, and each Coping Mechanism a character acquires makes it progressively easier for them to manage their Stress. It is expected that most rulers will acquire 1 or 2 Coping Mechanisms during their lifetime, though in some rare circumstances a character may end up with more.

Strategic Considerations

As developers, our goal with the Stress system is not to prohibit or punish players for taking certain actions, but rather to make them think twice about otherwise no-brainer decisions. Is it really worth it to execute that foreign claimant when doing so will give you 42 Stress? Maybe, but maybe not! That is a decision you will need to make when the time comes.

In this way, Stress also gives us another tool we can use to balance the various personality traits against each other. Some traits like Ambitious and Compassionate may have higher numerical bonuses, but they cause you to acquire Stress more frequently or in larger amounts. Others like Sadistic may make your vassals loathe you, but your character won’t be bothered by pesky concerns like morality when they have to do what needs to be done. Who knows... they might even enjoy it!

[A screenshot showing showing the Skill and Stress differences between the Lazy and Diligent Personality Traits]

Regardless of what personality traits your character has, the optimal strategy with Stress is often not to avoid acquiring Stress at all costs, but rather to strategically acquire certain Coping Mechanisms and leverage them intelligently to keep your character’s Stress at ideal levels. Managing your character’s Stress well will ensure you are always able to take advantage of any opportunities that come your way, while behaving recklessly may leave you Stressed to the point of insanity during a crucial moment of your reign…

[A screenshot showing a stressed ruler having their very own Nero moment]

Anyway, that is all I have for you this week. I hope this has given you some insight into how the Stress system works in Crusader Kings III, and that this has inspired everyone to think of new and creative ways to leverage the system to its full potential! Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments, as I will be sticking around for a few hours to explain and elaborate on the Stress system.