• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Crusader Kings III |OT| Per omnia saecula saeculorum

Burger

Member
Hopefully someone in your family or extremely loyal I hope 🤔

Still it will mean way less entitled Counts in your Court
Wait, I did own it. I was trying to give a duchy to just anyone (my son). They needed to hold a lesser title before they could become a duke it seems.
 

DKehoe

Gold Member
That's interesting. It's sort of difficult to see how your realm is organised. It needs a better tree view so you can at a glance see who is in charge of what.

You can switch between viewing modes so that you can see different levels of your realm. So, for example. you can view duchies.

The county/duchy/kingdom dynamic can take a little bit of getting used to when you are new but is fairly straight forward once you get your head around it. Basically in terms of size and power the order goes kingdom > duchy > county(there's also empires and baronies on opposite sides of that but you don't need to worry too much about those right now). A kingdom is a collection of duchies and a duchy is a collection of counties.

It's about managing who you are directly responsible for. If a county isn't part of a formalised duchy then they are direct vassals of their King. Creating a duchy is sort of like being a manager and appointing someone as a team leader so they are then responsible for the people within their group rather than them all directly reporting to you. There's advantages to having more people directly reporting to you, there not being a middle man means their taxes go directly to you but as you have seen there's also disadvantages as it means more people that you have to keep happy. There's not a right or wrong answer about how to manage it as such. Although there is a vassal limit that you will want to stay under so you don't start incurring penalties.

Wait, I did own it. I was trying to give a duchy to just anyone (my son). They needed to hold a lesser title before they could become a duke it seems.

Yeh the duke should be someone that's already a count within that region.
 
Last edited:

Kadayi

Banned
Wait, I did own it. I was trying to give a duchy to just anyone (my son). They needed to hold a lesser title before they could become a duke it seems.

Yeah, it has to be someone landed with a county because they require a centre of operations.
 

Burger

Member
You can switch between viewing modes so that you can see different levels of your realm. So, for example. you can view duchies.

The county/duchy/kingdom dynamic can take a little bit of getting used to when you are new but is fairly straight forward once you get your head around it. Basically in terms of size and power the order goes kingdom > duchy > county(there's also empires and baronies on opposite sides of that but you don't need to worry too much about those right now). A kingdom is a collection of duchies and a duchy is a collection of counties.

It's about managing who you are directly responsible for. If a county isn't part of a formalised duchy then they are direct vassals of their King. Creating a duchy is sort of like being a manager and appointing someone as a team leader so they are then responsible for the people within their group rather than them all directly reporting to you. There's advantages to having more people directly reporting to you, there not being a middle man means their taxes go directly to you but as you have seen there's also disadvantages as it means more people that you have to keep happy. There's not a right or wrong answer about how to manage it as such. Although there is a vassal limit that you will want to stay under so you don't start incurring penalties.



Yeh the duke should be someone that's already a count within that region.
Thanks. Learnin 'bout games. Learnin 'bout history.
 

Sakura

Member
Yeah, you need to basically be feudal versus tribal to have set primogeniture (and it was the case in CKII) so you need to work up the crown authority under realm. Because otherwise you're lumbered with Gravelkind. It's largely why the Vikings floundered because one guy would get super-powerful, die and then his realm would shatter between his kids, and then rinse repeat if they didn't then fight amongst each other for dominance. On the flipside annoying as it is, inevitably the cream rises to the top. The key is obviously to ensure you get some great congenital traits born into your offspring so they're all double hard bastards (figuratively and literally) then: -

Bo6fxiQ.gif


It seems you now swap in-game to different characters easily enough, so you're not necessarily lumbered with that godawful first pancake of a son anymore when you'd rather play as one of the other ones (as long as they are landed). At least from what I saw on a Stream (need to test myself).

I don't know if it is different for other cultures or not, but for the Welsh at least, in order to have primogeniture law, you need to have the primogeniture innovation, which is part of the late medieval era. The late medieval era cannot be reached until at least 1200 AD, the game says.
And I'm just loading up CK2 right now, at a 867 start, and as the same nation in CK2, in order to have primogeniture, I just need Late Feudalism Administration law. In order to pass that law you just need legalism of 3.
So in CK3, as the Welsh at least, you are looking at probably close to 400 years after early start, vs however long it takes you to get to legalism 3 in CK2.
Unless I'm missing something.
 

Kadayi

Banned
I don't know if it is different for other cultures or not, but for the Welsh at least, in order to have primogeniture law, you need to have the primogeniture innovation, which is part of the late medieval era. The late medieval era cannot be reached until at least 1200 AD, the game says.
And I'm just loading up CK2 right now, at a 867 start, and as the same nation in CK2, in order to have primogeniture, I just need Late Feudalism Administration law. In order to pass that law you just need legalism of 3.
So in CK3, as the Welsh at least, you are looking at probably close to 400 years after early start, vs however long it takes you to get to legalism 3 in CK2.
Unless I'm missing something.

I'll have a look into it tonight. I'm fairly sure it shouldn't be locked back that far, it certainly wasn't in CKII.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
PqQeL90.jpg
nBJXxc0.jpg

Still on my first playthrough as the Rurikid dynasty in Ruthenia. I'm currently on my third ruler, and I think I've overcome the game's anti-expansion mechanics. I finally managed to stabilize my Succession Law by upgrading from Confederate Partition to just Partition. I don't think this was in CKII, but Confederate Partition is incredibly punishing against expansion, creating independent realms for your younger heirs, even if you never created those titles for yourself. After my first ruler died, the game created the kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia for my heir's Uncle, who was already a powerful Duke in his own right. On the death of my second ruler, a younger son became the King of White Rus. Thankfully, your primary heir still gets claims on these newly-created realms, so he was able to press his claim on White Rus. I then used the Demand Claim function on Galicia-Volhynia as Dynasty Head, to press a Casus Belli . I then destroyed both Kingdom titles so they won't pass to younger sons upon succession, which is something I don't think CKII let you do if you were Gavelkind (now known as Partition). I'm working toward creating the Empire of Russia, but with only 49 of 71 required counties, I probably won't get there until my next ruler since at this point I can only conquer one Duchy at a time.

The Dynasty system is absurdly powerful with being able to call your relatives to war if you are the Dynasty Head. This allowed me to stave off most foreign invasions and win a lot of close conquests that otherwise could have easily gone against me. This game also doesn't seem to punish you for repeatedly calling allies into wars like CK2 did. Demanding claims, even Kingdoms, from your relatives for just a little renown seems very OP to me.

I would advise against worrying about unhappy Powerful Vassals too much. If they have a high negative opinion (over 50) and they're decently okay at something, I might put them where they're suited on the Council, but otherwise, I put whoever has the best stat on each seat. Even though it's not as cheap anymore to spam Send Gift and Feasts to keep everyone happy, it's usually easy enough to use Sway on them one at a time, entrust your children as wards to them, and check their negative opinion of you to see if there's anything they want. Otherwise, just let Long Reign accumulate along with other natural bonuses to placate everyone.

The vassals you really have to look out for are the formerly independent rulers your vassalized by defeating them in war. Since they hate you from taking their title and naturally retain a decent-sized Domain, they predictably join factions and push them over the top. This is where diplomacy doesn't work anymore and you may want your Spymaster to uncover secrets that could keep them out of factions.

But don't be afraid to provoke your Vassals into revolting against you! This is one of the best ways to deal with unhappy Vassals, since after defeating and imprisoning them, you can revoke titles from them without incurring a Tyranny penalty. CK3 now lets you revoke multiple Counties at the same time as you revoke their Ducal title. This is also the best way to consolidate your Domain, since the Counts within the Duchies you control frequently go along with Factions, as they always have a -25 opinion penalty against you for owning their Duchy they want. Owning all Counties within your own Duchies and giving away the Counties outside of them to stay under your Domain limit minimizes the general unrest in your realm. This way, you won't have vassals who want your Duchies and you won't own Counties that your Dukes have a De Jure claim to.
 
Last edited:

Serianox

Member
Is anyone else having some weird issues with religion in their campaign? I'm doing a run with Portugal into Hispania and pretty much after 100 years into the game literally every other iberian catholic kingdom converted to the local variation of Islam regardless if they're doing good or bad. Same thing happens after my character would die and have my kingdoms split between my heirs pretty much anyone not controlled by me would instantly convert. It also pretty much happened to every kingdom created after a successful crusade. I think once the AI gets the local rebellion options they pretty much default to the option to convert to the local religion to avoid the popup of rebel stacks.
 

MHubert

Member
Is anyone else having some weird issues with religion in their campaign? I'm doing a run with Portugal into Hispania and pretty much after 100 years into the game literally every other iberian catholic kingdom converted to the local variation of Islam regardless if they're doing good or bad. Same thing happens after my character would die and have my kingdoms split between my heirs pretty much anyone not controlled by me would instantly convert. It also pretty much happened to every kingdom created after a successful crusade. I think once the AI gets the local rebellion options they pretty much default to the option to convert to the local religion to avoid the popup of rebel stacks.
I haven't had any random religious behaviour in my playthrough so far. Is it possible for you to post a screenshot of the political situation in Iberia at the time you have this issue?
 

Serianox

Member
I haven't had any random religious behaviour in my playthrough so far. Is it possible for you to post a screenshot of the political situation in Iberia at the time you have this issue?

Political
https://ibb.co/BTqVCWL
Religious
https://ibb.co/pRjrPMY

This is from the last save point i had available. Not long before this islamic Castille existed but ended up splitting into several smaller counties which got swallowed up by others. Also if you're playing with ironman turned on don't directly exit to desktop as it doesn't save properly. I ended up with 2 saves of mine deleted and losing several hours of progress into this campaign.
 
Last edited:

Kadayi

Banned
I was trying out the 867 start Ireland which I must admit is a slog because you've got very little in the way of money and your only real option is to forge some quick alliances ASAP and raid the hell out of everyone else. However, on the positives, it does allow you to have 4 wives, so a good opportunity to get some positive congenital traits. One thing I didn't realise until a fair way in though is that unlike in CKII where you basically had a wife and 3 concubines, these are all wives and you are free to select your primary from amongst them in terms of which one assist your court in terms of bonuses. Bear in mind it will piss off whomever the incumbent wife is, but worth knowing if you've married yourself a lowborn genius.

Oh yeah also had my first case of a family member deciding to keep it in the family...you'd think with a cousin or his sister, but nope...with him own mother... :messenger_neutral:

Also as I like to noodle one thing I discovered is that albeit every time you start a new game, your characters stats and makeup will vary, that's not necessarily the case with the NPCs. Whenever I was looking to get in some extra wives for the inheritable traits. The same faces kept cropping up again and again with the same stats.
 
Last edited:

MHubert

Member
Political
https://ibb.co/BTqVCWL
Religious
https://ibb.co/pRjrPMY

This is from the last save point i had available. Not long before this islamic Castille existed but ended up splitting into several smaller counties which got swallowed up by others. Also if you're playing with ironman turned on don't directly exit to desktop as it doesn't save properly. I ended up with 2 saves of mine deleted and losing several hours of progress into this campaign.
hm it does seem a bit weird but I think you might be right about the ai doing some fuckery to avoid rebellion. In my current playthrough I have seen the ai doing some pretty weird stuff at times, so I guess the game still needs some ironing out in this department.
 

Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
I was trying out the 867 start Ireland which I must admit is a slog because you've got very little in the way of money and your only real option is to forge some quick alliances ASAP and raid the hell out of everyone else. However, on the positives, it does allow you to have 4 wives, so a good opportunity to get some positive congenital traits. One thing I didn't realise until a fair way in though is that unlike in CKII where you basically had a wife and 3 concubines, these are all wives and you are free to select your primary from amongst them in terms of which one assist your court in terms of bonuses. Bear in mind it will piss off whomever the incumbent wife is, but worth knowing if you've married yourself a lowborn genius.

Oh yeah also had my first case of a family member deciding to keep it in the family...you'd think with a cousin or his sister, but nope...with him own mother... :messenger_neutral:

Also as I like to noodle one thing I discovered is that albeit every time you start a new game, your characters stats and makeup will vary, that's not necessarily the case with the NPCs. Whenever I was looking to get in some extra wives for the inheritable traits. The same faces kept cropping up again and again with the same stats.
Yeah the starting stats for rulers and their popularity with other NPCs will vary, but the game seems to create the same marriage options everytime. I'm not sure why that is though. But I've been using it to my advantage when making a start. If my ruler has shitty traits or has gone into the wrong lifestyle tree I will just restart the game to see if I can get something better.


I wish it would apply that same randomness to you spouses though. Kind of tired of ending up with a chaste homosexual wife as the King of Poland. The first time it happened wasn't a big deal because the Pope liked me and granted me a divorce, but the second and third time I tried he hated me and left me stick with her. So I either had to resort to a 10% chance of seducing her, 27% chance of killing her, or just trying to get with someone else and legitimize the bastards.


This game is ridiculous lol
 

Serianox

Member
If you're using the gamepass version and want to play with ironman turned on remember to turn off the cloud save option when it asks you to name the new save as it is currently broken and keeps rolling back to an older version of the save.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Yeah the starting stats for rulers and their popularity with other NPCs will vary, but the game seems to create the same marriage options everytime. I'm not sure why that is though. But I've been using it to my advantage when making a start. If my ruler has shitty traits or has gone into the wrong lifestyle tree I will just restart the game to see if I can get something better.

It certainly can be played for sure. As I like to noodle I started from the same position on a different ironman and swapped out my dopey queen for a better option ASAP. Totally worth her anger just for the incredible Stewardship boost or her replacement coupled with random stewardship bonuses every so often to county construction rate and random cash drops (50 Gold surprise when I'm barely make 1.3 a month :messenger_dizzy: ). Also despite being martial prowess I opted for Intrigue so I could chase that 30% + fertility bonus plus the 20% from the Temptation focus, going to hold out and get a couple more before either switching back to martial or something else.

I've gotten into sending my unwanted courtiers out to fight as champions as well. It's a good way of thinning the herd.
 

Nobody_Important

“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
It certainly can be played for sure. As I like to noodle I started from the same position on a different ironman and swapped out my dopey queen for a better option ASAP. Totally worth her anger just for the incredible Stewardship boost or her replacement coupled with random stewardship bonuses every so often to county construction rate and random cash drops (50 Gold surprise when I'm barely make 1.3 a month :messenger_dizzy: ). Also despite being martial prowess I opted for Intrigue so I could chase that 30% + fertility bonus plus the 20% from the Temptation focus, going to hold out and get a couple more before either switching back to martial or something else.

I've gotten into sending my unwanted courtiers out to fight as champions as well. It's a good way of thinning the herd.
If you are ever looking for a more cheesy route to take I would recommend putting at least one point into the Stewardship ability ""Golden Obligations". It allows you to use your hooks on people for money. Kind of like a random except with secrets instead of people.


Best part is you can combine that with fabricated hooks. So you can literally make shit up about people and then make them pay you to make it go away. It's fantastic. It's how I have been doing my Austria playthrough the past few days. I have built up a fortune of over 2k gold from just blackmailing people for cash and spent all of it improving my armies and buildings. So even though everyone hates me I have the largest army aside from the Emperor himself so they can't do shit about it lol
 

Kadayi

Banned
If you are ever looking for a more cheesy route to take I would recommend putting at least one point into the Stewardship ability ""Golden Obligations". It allows you to use your hooks on people for money. Kind of like a random except with secrets instead of people.


Best part is you can combine that with fabricated hooks. So you can literally make shit up about people and then make them pay you to make it go away. It's fantastic. It's how I have been doing my Austria playthrough the past few days. I have built up a fortune of over 2k gold from just blackmailing people for cash and spent all of it improving my armies and buildings. So even though everyone hates me I have the largest army aside from the Emperor himself so they can't do shit about it lol

Yeah the Perks are pretty amazing once you start thinking of them as a whole. Linked before but this youtube is a must-watch in terms of giving people an idea of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each and how to use them in combination: -



Curious to know If anyone actually reset a characters Perks yet? I have pondered it, but I'm not sure whether the stress hit is worth it, though stress does decay, so maybe it might if you can keep your levels down low early on until you recover..
 

Bolivar687

Banned
DysKQhw.jpg
Ty0PxVk.jpg


Became Tsar of the Empire of Russia! Won the last few counties by pressing my vassal's vassal's claim on a neighbor. Interestingly, it looks like pressing the claim took that lord's title and all his vassals underneath him. In CK2, I thought that pressing a Ducal claim only gave the winner the de jure counties within that Duchy. I then formed a Holy Order for the Apostolic faith and planned on declaring a Holy War for the Kingdom of Bjarmaland to the North, since my character had attained Paragon of Virtue and accumulated enough faith. Unfortunately, my ruler died shortly after discovering his spouse was sleeping with one of his younger sons from his first marriage. I think my current ruler's going to plot to murder both of them, blaming his father's death on their illicit congress.

I might take a break from this, though, and check out one of the Vikings' historical starts in the Dark Ages now that I have a feel for all the systems.
 

Ladioss

Member
So my first ruler unified Ireland and became the High King, but since then the Kingdom of Alba keeps on declaring war on me and eating up my holdings starting from Ulster.

What are the available counter-measure here, bearing in mind that they have 2X the number of troops I have ?
 
Last edited:

Kadayi

Banned
So my first ruler unified Ireland and became the High King, but since then the Kingdom of Alba keeps on declaring war on me and eating up my holdings starting from Ulster.

What are the available counter-measure here, bearing in mind that they have 2X the number of troops I have ?

1. Assassinate their ruler. That will likely divide their realm up.

2. Form an alliance with a marriage with someone you can call in to help. Wales, England or the Norse.

3. If you have the cash consider mercenaries.

4. Send out for some good Knights/Champions. You change whose leading an army at different times btw. So say for instance you've got a great on the field guy use him when attacking, then when you're sieging a castle, switch to your siege expert to speed up the time. Similarly, there are people with better abilities for attacking across rivers etc.
 
Last edited:

Bolivar687

Banned
1. Assassinate their ruler. That will likely divide their realm up.

2. Form an alliance with a marriage with someone you can call in to help. Wales, England or the Norse.

3. If you have the cash consider mercenaries.

4. Send out for some good Knights/Champions. You change whose leading an army at different times btw. So say for instance you've got a great on the field guy use him when attacking, then when you're sieging a castle, switch to your siege expert to speed up the time. Similarly, there are people with better abilities for attacking across rivers etc.

I'll add that if you're in an unwinnable war, it's often worth it to stall things out as long as possible and wait for an opportunity to arise. Head to their realm and siege some counties or end the occupation while they're away. Bait them out to start coming after your army, then run away, since it will stop them from taking more counties. Wait for their army to break up and then hunt down one of their smaller divisions. Use your high quality armies to punch above their weight and take down their larger, lower quality armies. Eventually someone else may declare war on them and distract their forces.

Just keep in mind capitals are really important, they add a lot to the war score, as does the heir if they're captured after a siege. If the ruler is captured, the war is immediately over.

The longer a war goes on, the higher the Long War modifier ticks up. When defending against an opponent you cannot beat, you should try to sue for White Peace as soon as you can once the Long War modifier pushes the White Peace score into positive.

But as Kadayi wrote, the real main way is alliances. Your younger children are valuable resources you should be marrying off carefully.
 
Last edited:
Fuck me, just got out of a 50 hour binge of the game - fresh off from initially wanting to refund the game.

Not gonna lie, it took me about 8 hours or so to find my groove and finally understand the mechanics of the game and learn how to take advantage of the mechanics that are available.

I couldn't understand a damn thing when I tried playing CKII last week or so, so it is highly impressive that I did eventually get to understand the deep mechanics that lie inside it. Obviously there's more to understand, like really understanding bloodline traits and really getting the hang of understanding how the AI might act based off their own personal skillset and traits - but at least I understood how things work from a basic level.

I didn't even play the tutorial, I just tried to remember what I learned in CKII and applied the same thing - just having to learn the UI. I even played my first campaign using Count Eudes, a hard campaign that starts you off as a child Count who lost his parents and left to care for his siblings.

Started off as an owner of one title, expanding larger, died and taking over my heir, got dragged into a war for the Duke Title started by my brother and claimed under my own name, won and became Duke against my will, forced to hire all my siblings into my council, a rival Count with a bigger army decides to claim the Duke Title for himself, get left abandoned by my siblings during the war, lost and gave up on the title and began plotting my revenge.

Playing as my third generation, I began understanding alliances and the power of marrying kids off into powerful families, how to declare war without a casus belli through fabricating one, and began my conquest. Funny enough, one of my brother became my closest Ally after I began claiming more land with each war, but when he died, his kid became my rival - forcing me to kill his son.

Long story short, by the end, I was became the King of Brittany, and the King of Francia after one of my sons became the King of Lothringa through marriage and became a vassal with my kingdom.

Now I feel like i've hit my wall into that campaign as I feel that my King Robert II is the best character to end it with as playing as heirs seem to be too much work to reclaim and unify the lands again, so I'm done with the game for the time being.

I definitely enjoyed the journey to becoming a king more than being a king, or emperor, itself.

But damn, what a ride.
 

SCB3

Member
Useful Youtube vids for new players



Good to see MATN featured, thanks for this, I was just about to ask as I've not even touched a 4X or CK game outside of Stellaris and a few hours of Civ VI. I'm finding it rough out of the tutorial, I do wish that was a bit longer or did a full and short campaign like Total War Warhammer 2 does, that helped me finally understand TW tbh
 
Last edited:

Kadayi

Banned
Playing as my third generation, I began understanding alliances and the power of marrying kids off into powerful families, how to declare war without a casus belli through fabricating one, and began my conquest. Funny enough, one of my brother became my closest Ally after I began claiming more land with each war, but when he died, his kid became my rival - forcing me to kill his son.

ForsakenExaltedGlassfrog-size_restricted.gif



Sometimes they've just gotta go.

I'm hard-pressed to think a family member whose untimely demise I haven't engineered tbh. My latest approach is to make the dynasty male dead weight who are usually shit in a fight, champions in my army on the basis that they'll either get gud or get killed. I may have lost that first pancake son of mine a couple of times doing this, which miraculously benefits his more capable sibling with better stats who I judiciously held back.
 
ForsakenExaltedGlassfrog-size_restricted.gif



Sometimes they've just gotta go.

I'm hard-pressed to think a family member whose untimely demise I haven't engineered tbh. My latest approach is to make the dynasty male dead weight who are usually shit in a fight, champions in my army on the basis that they'll either get gud or get killed. I may have lost that first pancake son of mine a couple of times doing this, which miraculously benefits his more capable sibling with better stats who I judiciously held back.

Lmao yeah, but I guess because I was role-playing as the kid who had nothing but his siblings as children at the start of the game - so pleasing family, in my lore, felt like something that needed to be addressed because the Dynasty was built by it.

But when my son, who in the second generation of the family, pulled a dirty trick on my eldest, the heir, and almost destroyed the Dynasty due to his actions - all bets were off.

It's funny how the game basically weaves the story as you want it and possesses your mind,

I was in bed the missus and I shit you not I was planning war campaigns in the middle of it all, thinking about who I was going to go to war with, whose land I was going to take, and who I will need to kill off and install my own more agreeable member of my court - visualizing the map in my head and charting courses in the middle of coitus.

JFC, thank goodness I got tired of the game after my 8th or tenth generation - I think I'd easily add another 50 hours and destroy my entire life over it :|
 

Kadayi

Banned
JFC, thank goodness I got tired of the game after my 8th or tenth generation - I think I'd easily add another 50 hours and destroy my entire life over it :|

You think you're done with the game, but the truth is the games not done with you :messenger_grinning_smiling:

When the DLC pack hits you'll be lured back :messenger_sunglasses:
 

Bolivar687

Banned
3ZYhyh5.jpg
liNNbPJ.jpg

The Dark Ages are dope. I started as Ragnar's son Bjorn Ironside but I unfortunately didn't begin with one of the invasions of the British Isles. While my brothers took over duchies, it only took me one county to form the Kingdom of Sweden. I then had the option to add Scandinavian Elective to the succesion law and, although it might have been a mistake, I thought it was too unique not to go with for the roleplaying value. I suspect there should be a way to manage the elections where it might overall be advantageous to future successions.

I then mostly raided and helped out my allies with their own wars of conquest in Britain. One of my own vassals got a toehold in Wales, which I used as a staging ground to take the duchy of Gwynedd. I eventually reached the Exalted Among Men Prestige tier and declared an Invasion on the Kingdom of England. Time was against me because my ruler was in his 70s and the enemy had my son and heir in prison, meaning the war might have immediately ended in their favor if Bjorn died while they had my next character captive. They also had help from Charles the Bald of West Francia but I had enough gold from raiding and sieges to hire the best mercenary company available twice. Unfortunately the Catholics have mostly taken back their lands from the Norse invaders but I'm set up in a pretty strong position to start forming a nice Empire. I'm set to pass everything to my only son on the next succession but if Confederate Partition starts giving away kingdoms, I might just go for the Dynasty of Many Crowns major decision, as that looks like a pretty strong permanent bonus.
 

Kadayi

Banned
3ZYhyh5.jpg
liNNbPJ.jpg

The Dark Ages are dope. I started as Ragnar's son Bjorn Ironside but I unfortunately didn't begin with one of the invasions of the British Isles. While my brothers took over duchies, it only took me one county to form the Kingdom of Sweden. I then had the option to add Scandinavian Elective to the succesion law and, although it might have been a mistake, I thought it was too unique not to go with for the roleplaying value. I suspect there should be a way to manage the elections where it might overall be advantageous to future successions.

I then mostly raided and helped out my allies with their own wars of conquest in Britain. One of my own vassals got a toehold in Wales, which I used as a staging ground to take the duchy of Gwynedd. I eventually reached the Exalted Among Men Prestige tier and declared an Invasion on the Kingdom of England. Time was against me because my ruler was in his 70s and the enemy had my son and heir in prison, meaning the war might have immediately ended in their favor if Bjorn died while they had my next character captive. They also had help from Charles the Bald of West Francia but I had enough gold from raiding and sieges to hire the best mercenary company available twice. Unfortunately the Catholics have mostly taken back their lands from the Norse invaders but I'm set up in a pretty strong position to start forming a nice Empire. I'm set to pass everything to my only son on the next succession but if Confederate Partition starts giving away kingdoms, I might just go for the Dynasty of Many Crowns major decision, as that looks like a pretty strong permanent bonus.

Once you've done that. Try doing the reverse as the Earl of Meath in 867. I know I'd managed to conquer Ireland by the time you popped in one of my noodling playthroughs but on subsequent ones, it's proven to be a real challenge with Ivar the Boneless slap bang across from me and with him already holding Dublin.

One thing I wish the game had was a journal of events similar to what CKII did because honestly, I think I fought about 8 -10 conquest attempts at this point in time. and my dude isn't even 50 yet. Truly epic stuff. That will be lost in time like tears in the rain.

I will write up Kad's guide to micromanaging your Meath court for maximum gains at some point. :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 
Last edited:

SCB3

Member
Ok, I've been playing on and off for a few hours a day and I'm getting a grasp on it I think, this video was fantastic for helping, he literally goes through everything on the menus and doesn't play a single turn, it helped me understand a lot

 
Last edited:

Dargor

Member
So, I dunno if i'm blind or not, but have minor titles been removed? I always liked them cuz they help you with some minor opinion boost for those annoying vassals.

I'm also having big problems with sucession, it takes too long to get out of partition and my kingdom is always falling apart.
 

Serianox

Member
So, I dunno if i'm blind or not, but have minor titles been removed? I always liked them cuz they help you with some minor opinion boost for those annoying vassals.

I'm also having big problems with sucession, it takes too long to get out of partition and my kingdom is always falling apart.

From what i've seen the only minor title available is the court physician one and it's quite annoying since it doesn't tell you when it's empty . That plus having to micromanage getting knights and remembering to remove certain characters from the pool are the worse parts of the game from what i've played so far. I haven't have a problem with sucession so far since it doesn't take long to get out of the first partition one that creates titles if available to do so then again i haven't played the early start date yet so it might be a worse problem in that scenario.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Combat and AI is complete aids in this. I don't understand how they can make it even worse than prior pdox games.

They have, and it's shit.

CKII is still there if you want to play it. CKIII was never going to be the same thing exactly. There are certain things I don't like at present (like the lack of search presets) but the game has only just come out, so there's inevitably going to be a lot of adjustment and updates over the coming weeks and months, as they stated in their recent Dev diary: -


Greetings from all of us in the CK3 team!

The game is finally released, and what a journey it has been! It’s truly humbling to see something that we’ve worked on for so long, and poured so much of our passion into, finally out in the wild. We’re overjoyed with the response we’ve gotten so far, it’s great that so many of you seem to enjoy the game. The amount of stories and experiences already being shared is nothing but mind-boggling, and lots of them are circulating throughout the team, putting many smiles upon our faces (especially all the memes!). We in the team wish to extend a grand ‘thank you’ to all of you for making this launch so fantastic.

In the near future we’ll be looking at collecting and addressing as many of your issues as we can. The upcoming patch (release date TBD) is a mix of improvements that didn't make it into the release (including some really fancy UI upgrades!), and bug fixes based on your feedback. Patch notes will be posted closer in time to when the patch will be released. If you have an issue, make sure to report it here so that it’s sure to be looked at!

In the next few weeks there will be no Dev Diaries, as we’ll focus our efforts on working with the feedback we’re getting from all of you. When something of interest happens, we’ll of course be back! Until then, please keep enjoying the game, sharing your stories, and shaping the world to your liking!


If you issues with the game, or thoughts and suggestions. You'd be as well to register there and voice them.
 

Sakura

Member
So, I dunno if i'm blind or not, but have minor titles been removed? I always liked them cuz they help you with some minor opinion boost for those annoying vassals.

I'm also having big problems with sucession, it takes too long to get out of partition and my kingdom is always falling apart.
If you want to make sure your kingdom stays together, there are a number of things you can do.
Consider divorcing your wife after you already have some sons, or getting her killed. If you have 20 sons it can be a pain in the ass, but that is up to you.
You can also make sure your children are not eligible to inherit. You can disinherit them, which is probably the most costly. You can make them take vows, which removes them from succession. And you can even get them killed, for example by making them knights and sending them off to die.
Make sure you check out your succession under the realm tab, because it will list all the titles your primary heir will get, and which ones you will lose.

Are you playing 867 start? If so I believe you are stuck under confederate partition in the beginning of the game. What you want to do, is get hereditary rule, which requires you to have reached early medieval era (available from 950). Confederate partition sucks because it will create new titles for your heirs if it can, which might give them independence. For example, if I conquered the region of Scotland, when I die, it would just go ahead and create the kingdom of Scotland and give it to one of my sons. Because it is a kingdom and I am a kingdom, it would be equal in rank and so would be independent. Or at least I think that is how it works.
If you are playing a 1066 start, you should be able to get heraldry relatively soon, giving you high partition, so your primary heir will still get most of the titles.
As long as your primary title is higher in rank than the other titles, your kingdom should still be relatively held together when you die.
 

Dargor

Member
From what i've seen the only minor title available is the court physician one and it's quite annoying since it doesn't tell you when it's empty . That plus having to micromanage getting knights and remembering to remove certain characters from the pool are the worse parts of the game from what i've played so far. I haven't have a problem with sucession so far since it doesn't take long to get out of the first partition one that creates titles if available to do so then again i haven't played the early start date yet so it might be a worse problem in that scenario.
If you want to make sure your kingdom stays together, there are a number of things you can do.
Consider divorcing your wife after you already have some sons, or getting her killed. If you have 20 sons it can be a pain in the ass, but that is up to you.
You can also make sure your children are not eligible to inherit. You can disinherit them, which is probably the most costly. You can make them take vows, which removes them from succession. And you can even get them killed, for example by making them knights and sending them off to die.
Make sure you check out your succession under the realm tab, because it will list all the titles your primary heir will get, and which ones you will lose.

Are you playing 867 start? If so I believe you are stuck under confederate partition in the beginning of the game. What you want to do, is get hereditary rule, which requires you to have reached early medieval era (available from 950). Confederate partition sucks because it will create new titles for your heirs if it can, which might give them independence. For example, if I conquered the region of Scotland, when I die, it would just go ahead and create the kingdom of Scotland and give it to one of my sons. Because it is a kingdom and I am a kingdom, it would be equal in rank and so would be independent. Or at least I think that is how it works.
If you are playing a 1066 start, you should be able to get heraldry relatively soon, giving you high partition, so your primary heir will still get most of the titles.
As long as your primary title is higher in rank than the other titles, your kingdom should still be relatively held together when you die.

Thanks guys, and yes, I am playing from 867, I always like playng the earlier starts, more time to play around. But yeah, it sure is harder keeping your realm together this time around, since it takes so long to get a good sucession law.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
Does anyone know the specifics of how new title creation works under Confederate Partition? I'm curious as to the threshold of how many titles or counties controlled you need for a new title to be created. If you don't directly own any land outside of your primary title, your heirs wouldn't inherit anything to get a new title out of, which would be a way to prevent the breakup. If your heir does get land in a potentially independent realm, will the title be created only if you control enough counties to create the title or does it need fewer?

Once you've done that. Try doing the reverse as the Earl of Meath in 867. I know I'd managed to conquer Ireland by the time you popped in one of my noodling playthroughs but on subsequent ones, it's proven to be a real challenge with Ivar the Boneless slap bang across from me and with him already holding Dublin.

I'll probably do a Count run next. I have to admit that my first two playthroughs have been pretty easy because you start with a Kingdom, or very close to it, and it seems the core experience of the game is built around that. But I'm interested in how the strategies change when you're at the smallest level with larger entities to worry about.
 

Kadayi

Banned
I'll probably do a Count run next. I have to admit that my first two playthroughs have been pretty easy because you start with a Kingdom, or very close to it, and it seems the core experience of the game is built around that. But I'm interested in how the strategies change when you're at the smallest level with larger entities to worry about.

I've done that Meath start probably about 10 times now just noodling testing out the systems and the lifestyle perks. You really have to play to the metal to not get ass fucked by the Vikings, because as soon as they sense you're weak they come at you hard and fast and you're just in a state of perpetual war with hardly any income because your realm is constantly being attacked which make creating titles insanely difficult. I love it though,.
 

Serianox

Member
Does anyone know the specifics of how new title creation works under Confederate Partition? I'm curious as to the threshold of how many titles or counties controlled you need for a new title to be created. If you don't directly own any land outside of your primary title, your heirs wouldn't inherit anything to get a new title out of, which would be a way to prevent the breakup. If your heir does get land in a potentially independent realm, will the title be created only if you control enough counties to create the title or does it need fewer?



I'll probably do a Count run next. I have to admit that my first two playthroughs have been pretty easy because you start with a Kingdom, or very close to it, and it seems the core experience of the game is built around that. But I'm interested in how the strategies change when you're at the smallest level with larger entities to worry about.

I think that for a new title to be created on sucession you need to own enough de jure land of a duchy/kingdom and have the option to create it before your character dies but haven't done so for any reason. I imagine a count run is pretty much trying to secure any alliances that you can since if you're that small anything probably doubles your fighting force. With that you slowly creep towards neighbor provinces and use any gold you got to upgrade your main county. Also helps to be under a king or duke since any offensive wars on you insta calls in your liege.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
Interesting Confederate Partition feature - I had only one heir and it apparently created the Kingdom of England title for him upon succession automatically. Not a bad way to save some gold.
 
Top Bottom