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Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
More bitching. Levies are borderline useless in actual battles, and the only use for them outside of battles is to inflate your troop number to make yourself seem a harder target to foreign and realm assholes gunning for you. MaA just crush them, even when outnumbered massively, because MaA can be improved, where levies stay the same same bottom tier crap through the whole game.

And the problem is that the AI does not know that, and will cheerfully commit suicide with his armies attacking your smaller armies, not taking into account army composition. Finally the pope had enough of me and called a crusade on my ass, and enemy stacks just melted against my light cavalry stack I left sitting in flat terrain. 12k levies vs 4k light cavalry: levies suffer 100 to 1 casualties and a complete stack wipe. Again and again this happened.
 
Vatnik Wumao
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More bitching. Levies are borderline useless in actual battles, and the only use for them outside of battles is to inflate your troop number to make yourself seem a harder target to foreign and realm assholes gunning for you. MaA just crush them, even when outnumbered massively, because MaA can be improved, where levies stay the same same bottom tier crap through the whole game.

And the problem is that the AI does not know that, and will cheerfully commit suicide with his armies attacking your smaller armies, not taking into account army composition. Finally the pope had enough of me and called a crusade on my ass, and enemy stacks just melted against my light cavalry stack I left sitting in flat terrain. 12k levies vs 4k light cavalry: levies suffer 100 to 1 casualties and a complete stack wipe. Again and again this happened.
Late game this becomes a big issue due to the fact that the AI does not upgrade his buildings.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
Also, how does ERE fare in your games? In my they've crushed the muslims, hold middle east, most of Africa, all of Balkans, most of eastern Europe, a good part of Persia, and most of Italy. They are probably going to restore the Roman Empire soon, I've never seen the AI Byzies that successful in CK2, not even close. Part of the reason is likely their primo where everyone else is stuck with gavelkind, but also orthodox seems weirdly stable when compared to poor catholics. What gives?
 
Vatnik Wumao
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Once I get Religious Right: Protected and Sanctioned War Declarations, I plan on being the best vassal ever as I use my liege like a shield to conquer stuff and not get pounced by other muslims.
TL;DR, so maybe I've missed you mentioning it, but go for title protection first and religious rights second. The latter only protects against proselytizing by your liege, but he can still revoke your titles on religious grounds.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
So, after way too much time wasted on this game, here are (some) of my gripes with it, in no particular order.

1. Genetics game is way too easy. By year 1200 all of my children were guarantied beautiful herculean geniuses. And it wasn't just my children - this combination was very common in my entire dynasty as well. It got to the point where there are 200+ geniuses running around in the world, most of them also physical gods, and 99% of them are related to me in some way. My Übermensch blood has even started to spread into other kingdoms, when I see handsome genius king of Italy I know if I go back through his ancestors I'll run into someone from my dynasty, because the AI simply does not play this part of the game.

2. Making money is way to easy. By year 1200 I have an income of 200+ per month, 200k reserve and another 100k in my piggy-bank archbishop that I can break open at any moment. Now, that happened in CK2 as well, but the problems is, I have nothing at all to spend it on here. I've build every barony in my empire, fully upgraded my demesne, I hand out cash gifts like candy. Upgrading every building in the realm is just too tedious to contemplate, and there are no massive money sinks I could invest into.

3. AI is hopeless. I hold Britannia and coastline of France and have 120k of manpower. ERE holds most of Europe and Africa, is better developed than me and has 30k. How is that even possible? And how the hell is the Basileus so damn poor, what does he spend his cash on? Oh, and the Mongols are a joke. Got a warning about an unstoppable horde, I look it up, and they have 30k. So scary. 30 years later, Khan is dead, maybe they will stop their rampage now? I look it up again, they never even got close to Europe. Wow, such carnage.

5. The AI is also way, way too damn aggressive. Before I could raise my crown authority to put a stop to this, there was never, and I mean never a time without at least a couple of inter-vassal wars happening. Hideous internal borders, nobles killing each other in a giant free-for-all, countless armies running rampant all over my realm, everyone ganging up on any poor new guy I gave land to, it was awful. I had a smaller neighbor I shared my faith with - in a span of 50 years I had joined them at least 20 times to defend them against holy wars, before finally giving them up as hopeless. The AI sees someone with less men that they can declare for on - they do it, regardless of any other circumstance. Pope is another special (head)case here. Just how many times do I have to kick his crusading ass before he picks an easier target? The first time he at least had comparable numbers, but by now it's getting embarrassing - 15k vs 150k? I feel like I'm hitting a special needs kid.

6. The whole fervor mechanics should be thrown into trash. How the fuck does it make sense for winning over the infidel to make the faith weaker, and losing land and worshipers to make it stronger? Fortunately I made my religion pacifist to avoid this nonsense. No holy wars for my idiot vassals, no uppity vassals expanding their power base, or crashing down my fervor. Well, this way at least, don't get me started on that stupid sinful bishop event. Freaking 10%?! No wonder Catholicism is dying in every bloody game.

7. The AI is also fucking insane. God help you if you have sadistic assholes in your realm that decide to pick intrigue focus, because they can decide to start randomly murdering people. Like your heirs. I lost more than a couple heirs to this, and it's always the same story. I get a warning from my 30 intrigue spymaster that someone is plotting against my heir, 95% chance of success. Well, that's just great. The heir does not have any rivals, and neither do I. Nobody has claims on his or my stuff. It's not the spymaster, he's firmly in my pocket. People next in line for the throne are content and love both me and my heir. Hell, everybody likes us because of our traits and the way I set up our religion. Finally I use console to track down the bastard doing it, and it's always some random nobody asshole vassal with no possible motive whatsoever. And because in a large realm there are always at least a couple such high intrigue assholes around, both as vassals and as guests you can't stop coming to your court, there are always more than enough people around to join their inane plots.

There's probably more, but these are the things that came to my mind first.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
That's where Guantanamo Bay Mode comes into play. They can't scheme and plot against you if they're all in prison.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
They nerfed NK mode in the last major patch to the point where, while it is doable, it isn't really useful in anything but the very short term. Now it's all about Guantanamo Bay Mode.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
Oh, just remembered another one.

8. The stupid meritocracy perk placed first on the stewardship tree. Who the hell thought giving such easy access to fabricating claim on liege's title to this AI was a good idea? Because this ends up exactly as you might think - AI sees a button, AI presses a button. Button gives him a claim he has no possible way to use because I could crush him like a bug, and he becomes my rival, pestering me with such idiocy as randomly launching diseased bodies at my castle. The fuck?! I swear, I dealt with this shit more times times than I can remember, and it always goes the same way: some nobody schemes his way to a claim to my empire -> I fabricate a claim on his title -> I revoke his title -> he rebels -> he gets crushed and throw in jail -> I revoke his ass and make him renounce his claim to avoid passing it to his kids. Repeat ad nauseam. You'd think my vassals would get the general idea after the first 10 times this happened, but no, they still keep at it.

Connected to this is the main reason for why you need to get out of tribal asap: a vassal with a claim can simply challenge you to a duel for your title, with your only options being to duel or refuse and surrender title. And this can happen regardless if your ruler is a martial god, a feeble old woman that can't lift a sword or a 1 year old kid. Oh, and did I mention you get no claim if you lose your title that way? That's right, no way to reclaim it back, apart from going scheming yourself I guess. Ugh.
 

thesecret1

Arcane
Joined
Jun 30, 2019
Messages
5,675
This shit, while sad, is unsurprising. They'll rework half (probably more) of this shit from the ground up sooner or later, just like with CK2. I know it's been ages since then, but CK2 had many glaring issues as well when it came out (anyone remember the literal rebel popamole before they added factions?). I mostly hope they'll actually give you the option to play tall, and that the modders will be able to turn it all into something good. The greatest danger right now is that Paradox will decide to content bloat instead of adding important shit
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
Tall is incredibly overpowered already, the only reason the game is playable is because the AI is completely incapable of playing tall and almost never builds buildings.
 

gogis

Scholar
Joined
Jun 9, 2018
Messages
100
I don't know how people able to enjoy game which is so easy. There is literally no challenge in any aspect of the game. At least I remember how scary gavelkind successions were in CK2. Here you breeze through the game yawning at every corner. Blobbing is easy, genetics is easy, warfare is beyond easy (who would have thought that making stacking MaA bonuses would not break the game?). I'll shelve it for a looong time. I have no hope in Paradox, honestly (and I should stop buying their games)
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
Also I suspect that Confederate Partition will be a pain in my ass for a good time.
Remember the Distinguished Admiralty from CK2, where you made unwanted heirs into admirals and sent them to patrol the seas of northern Iceland for pirates?

Well, CK3 has its own counterpart to this: Make anyone you don't want around into a knight, and send them off to suppress a few rebellions solo. The yolo solo tends to get you rid of them.

I don't know how people able to enjoy game which is so easy.
CK was never about challenge, but about larping.
 
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Oct 2, 2018
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Well, CK3 has its own counterpart to this: Make anyone you don't want around into a knight, and send them off to suppress a few rebellions solo. The yolo solo tends to get you rid of them.
That or dip two points into one of the Learning trees and get the decision to embrace celibacy which you use after getting a male heir.
 
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Oct 2, 2018
Messages
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Location
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CK3 doesnt have enough systems for tall to work. There just isn't anything to do.
Agreed. I think that an economy DLC implementing a trade system, expanding upon development mechanics and probably adding merchant republics since it would be a thematic fit should be their top priority in terms of planned content.
 

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