Crusader Kings 3

[Mehrunes]

Ran into another idiotic bug. "Too many vassals" issue can only go away if you give away your personal holdings. Creating new duchies to consolidate multiple counts under a single ruler doesn't solve the problem.

Also, from what I've been reading, embracing feudalism as a tribal ruler utterly gimps your nation as all your buildings go fuck themselves without being replaced by low tier feudal buildings as it was the case in CKII. In the entire realm. So not only will all your levies disappear into thin air, but you won't even have the money to maintain even your new gutted army.

[Fencers]

Also, from what I've been reading, embracing feudalism as a tribal ruler utterly gimps your nation as all your buildings go fuck themselves without being replaced by low tier feudal buildings as it was the case in CKII. In the entire realm. So not only will all your levies disappear into thin air, but you won't even have the money to maintain even your new gutted army.

What? That's stupid. That can't be the intention.

[Mehrunes]

More idiotic discoveries. The hidden "real father" parameter of a child isn't actually set in stone as it was in CKII (and, you know, in human reproduction) and can be randomly changed by events. I've actually had that event before and it's not even something solid, it's just about vague rumors. But from what I'm reading on Paradox forum, it can trigger multiple times per child. Or have such wondrous results as the "real father" to be a guy who was imprisoned for decades or even a long time eunuch.

And it's definitely an event's doing and not just it revealing the real father. Because the debug mode's tooltip, while less detailed than that in CKII, does in fact show the real father for "unrevealed bastards". On testing with reloading the tooltip said nothing before the event (i.e. the child isn't a bastard) and then changed after the event. It has even happened to historical children already existing on game start. Then there's the obvious example of it how for some people it has happened more than once to the same child mentioned above.

It was likely coded this utterly stupid way for the sake of hooks, but this is completely ridiculous. Real father should never change and if they wanted such events for hooks where a child that is actually yours gets suspected heritage, they should have created a third value of "suspected father". On top of that, you (and/or your spouse) should have the ability to challenge the disputed heritage. Especially when it comes from an event that is explicitly stated to be just vague rumors.

That would actually deepen the roleplaying by adding even more opportunities. You could set out to find the character spreading false rumors about your child and punish them accordingly. Likewise, you could do the rumor-spreading yourself to destabilize other dynasties. As it is now, the game randomly rewriting the real father parameter long after the fact completely shits on the roleplaying aspect of the game. It probably interferes with the genetics as well.


As for Vikings, it turns out they get special event troops out of their asses (or only the members of the Great Heathen Army on British Isles do, not 100% sure on that), which they then get to magically transport across the world thanks to CKIII's extremely basic naval system. Though it bears emphasizing that the boats are not the culprit here (as some on the forums blame them to be) but just one of the factors. The naval system is the same for everyone, yet the issue of spreading like locusts all over the map is mostly related to the Vikings.


Also, combat seems much more deadlier for named characters than it was in CKII (even in Holy Fury that revamped things in that regard). And because knights/their equivalents are often landed characters, it leads to the amazing results where a huge amount of rulers end up being women. And that's where you run into the other problem that I mentioned before in how AI doesn't do matrilineal marriages for squat. Combine that with knights dropping like flies and you end up with a boatload of counties all over the entire map being launched into a dynastic carousel.

And, to elaborate things on the matrilineal marriage, it's actually much, much worse than it was in CKII where patrilineal marriage was hardcoded standard (which is what caused issues with Holy Fury's matriarchal/equal religions). Because in CKII the problem only extended down the line. I.e. the AI would marry their third daughter or whatever in a patrilineal way, religious rules be damned. That it did so despite matriarchal/equal religion was still inane and if the primary heiress died that would lead to dynasty swapping.

But at the very least the AI in CKII still avoided patrilineal marriages for the primary heiress like the plague. Because of the obvious desire to maintain the dynasty. And that was the case even for religions/laws that had male preference. Meanwhile in CKIII you could have exclusively matriarchal religion and the AI would still pursue patrilineal marriages.


Finally, this is not a bug, but a change in features that I don't understand. Unlike CKII where you could go to the option of ransoming prisoners by either clicking on the prisoner or their liege now you can only do so by clicking on the prisoner. Well, there's also obviously the prison tab, but I like doing things by using the person interaction and the ability to ransom people by interacting with the liege is a weird thing to remove. It's especially annoying if you, for example, capture numerous people from the same holding in a siege.

What? That's stupid. That can't be the intention.

Given the wondrous examples of inane coding above, this is likely. Seems like Paradox decided to do nothing about their QA standards even after the bug festival that was the last few Stellaris patches.


Anyway, bugs and some design decisions aside, I'm still having a ton of fun. Here's my realm at the start of my second ruler's reign:

Gameplan for this ruler is to use my subjugation on Lausitz and invasion on Garðaríki. Greater Poland is already going to be inherited by my heir. I'll likely conquer Lithuania from Estonia bit by bit. Though that one province in Grodno is going to be my first target for the sake of nicer borders. Once my wife and I die and I'll get Greater Poland I'll be finally able to form Wendish Empire and then simply vassilize Lower Silesia.

Luckily the second son turned out to be a bastard so no realm splitting there (as I don't have any empire titles yet) once I reveal it. Speaking of my heir, I betrothed him to the second daughter of Hungary's king, meaning his recently born only son has a meeting with snakes in his near future. Some gold, waying and a the recently dynastic marriage trait managed to convince him despite our abysmal opinion. She also has comely trait, so it's good for the bloodline. The fact that she's my niece is a bit less good for the bloodline though, but sacrifices must be made.

Speaking of which, both Lower Silesia's and Lausitz's rulers are also married to my sisters. The thing is though, since I was focusing on intrigue on my first ruler, once I filled up the Schemer sub-tree, I went for the seduction one. And since one of the perks there allows you to seduce relatives, I had to do just that.

As such, both of Lausitz's ruler's (who has three ducal titles to split) male heirs are actually not just my current ruler's nephews but also brothers. One of his three daughters is also my niece-sister. The same goes for the eldest and youngest of the three sons of Lower Silesia's ruler. Who also holds the High Chiefdom of Upper Silesia, so I'll have to dispose of his middle son for the sake of blood purity and memes.


Looping back to Lausitz's ruler, I noticed something weird about his titles. His other two ducal titles (Luticia and Meissen) had a parchment icon indicating different inheritance law than his primary title. And since all three were confederate male preference ones, for the life of me I couldn't figure out WTF was going on there.

And since it bothered me because it botched the line of succession, making his older son the heir to all three, I swapped characters to check what was going on. It turns out both Luticia and Meissen had the male preference explicitly added as a part of the succession law. But Lausitz itself had nothing specified for gender. So I assume the male preference came from the religion in its case.

The fact that such minuscule difference fucks the line of succession for the realm's titles is yet another case for stellar QA.


Also, here's the Garðaríki in my game, with all the border gore it provides:

[Akka]

Some part of me would like to jump in this game, but on the other hand, I know Paradox with their neverending DLC bonanza and uncomplete patches, and it'll probably be a totally unrecognizable different game two years down, so I think it's probably better to just wait until the end of its shelf life to have a look at it in its final form.

[ParanoiD84]

Some part of me would like to jump in this game, but on the other hand, I know Paradox with their neverending DLC bonanza and uncomplete patches, and it'll probably be a totally unrecognizable different game two years down, so I think it's probably better to just wait until the end of its shelf life to have a look at it in its final form.

This is probably the most complete and well made paradox game at launch though but yeah it will have a very long life cycle with tons of dlc.

Mod support is going to be crazy too can already see mods like warhammer, game of thrones and LOTR coming.

[Mehrunes]

A new peak of how bugged the hidden father value is: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKin...een_levels_of/
Someone got an event where it was "revealed" that their ruler is his own "real" father.

This is probably the most complete and well made paradox game at launch though but yeah it will have a very long life cycle with tons of dlc.

Mod support is going to be crazy too can already see mods like warhammer, game of thrones and LOTR coming.

We already have something much greater. A mod where you can undress anyone at will: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=2217904336 Jokes aside, someone already made a mod version of CKII's Sunset Invasion DLC. With proper headdresses for the Nahuatl and three different faiths for the religion. There's also an interesting project of transposing Imperator: Rome's great Bronze Age mod to CKIII (though, so far at least, it includes only the area of Middle East and Greece).

[Mamut]

Is this game hard to get in for someone who does now have any experience with the Europa Universalis/Heart of Iron/Crusader Kings series? I always likes those games concept but for some reason never actually tried them so far.

[KrayZ33]

Is this game hard to get in for someone who does now have any experience with the Europa Universalis/Heart of Iron/Crusader Kings series? I always likes those games concept but for some reason never actually tried them so far.

I'm going to be honest here, I have 400+ hours in CK2 and I'm having trouble with the new UI.

Especially during wars I no longer know who is who and which troops are from whom.

How the heck do I organize the borders as I did in CK2.
I have trouble seeing my own holdings or all the holdings belonging to a vasal of mine unless I zoom in and click on him so I see the "blue banner" around the county names.

I know that there is a holding list... but like... how do I properly view them on the map when I'm zoomed out.

CK2 has an option that colours my holdings in my colour. So when I own a Duchy and I am a vassal of a king, I can still see the borders of my domain properly. In CK3 this seems to be on a title de-jure level?
I'm not a fan of this whole "you can now see temples and cities on the map" thing either because it's really confusing to look at, especially if you are looking for the castles to besiege.

like - I click on this little fellow and I see all his vassals, but then again, not really how many holdings each vassal has. And I don't see his holdings either and where they are located.. are they all around his domain? are they connected?



So I click on a vassal of him and suddenly, I can see the area he conrols directly (aside from the tooltip which is blocking most of it and there is no way around it) The clear crisp blue line is obviously my superior editing.



And why can't I use and play with this map when I have the Duke selected?

It feels like I have to make a delicate choice as to what I select each time so I don't fuck up my map or rather, so I get what I want out of my map, when I could easily select a map mode in CK2

So basically I'm asking... how do I see the *direct* holdings of my dukes when I'm a king without going to the vassal of my vassal and without having to zoom in so I can see the individual buildings because that extremely high zoom-level is way too busy as soon as you have a bigger kingdom

[Mehrunes]

And why can't I use and play with this map when I have the Duke selected?

It feels like I have to make a delicate choice as to what I select each time so I don't fuck up my map or rather, so I get what I want out of my map, when I could easily select a map mode in CK2

So basically I'm asking... how do I see the *direct* holdings of my dukes when I'm a king without going to the vassal of my vassal and without having to zoom in so I can see the individual buildings because that extremely high zoom-level is way too busy as soon as you have a bigger kingdom

Just Ctrl + left click the map on a given title and keep doing so until you get down to the level you want to for that title. Just like it was done in CKII from the realm map mode. Which was the better option compared to the direct vassal map mode you're talking about. Because direct vassals showed just that, direct vassals of the highest-titled character in the realm. While Ctrl + left click on the realm map mode allowed you to go down to whatever level you wanted to, all the way down to individual vassal counts of vassal dukes of vassal kings of emperors.

And you can do so even when at furthest zoom possible, when you don't even see the clickable flags anymore. No tooltips blocking the way either. Also, Ctrl + right click goes a level back.

Here's how it looks, using Aquitaine from my game as an example:


Ctrl + left click anywhere on Aquitaine and you get this:


And then Ctrl + left click on Barcelona and you get this:

[ParanoiD84]

A new peak of how bugged the hidden father value is: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKin...een_levels_of/
Someone got an event where it was "revealed" that their ruler is his own "real" father.




We already have something much greater. A mod where you can undress anyone at will: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=2217904336 Jokes aside, someone already made a mod version of CKII's Sunset Invasion DLC. With proper headdresses for the Nahuatl and three different faiths for the religion. There's also an interesting project of transposing Imperator: Rome's great Bronze Age mod to CKIII (though, so far at least, it includes only the area of Middle East and Greece).

Yeah lots of mods and work in progress mods already.

And yeah seen that nude mod

[Mehrunes]

Turns out reformed pagan religions lose the ability to raid. Even when you give it the most hostile doctrines possible. Which is a complete downgrade from Holy Fury's pagan reformation.

[KrayZ33]

Can you... not attach armies to allied forces in CK3?
Did they forget to enable this for players? Because AI seems to be able to do so.

[Mehrunes]

Can you... not attach armies to allied forces in CK3?
Did they forget to enable this for players? Because AI seems to be able to do so.

Does it? Personally I haven't seen my allies attaching their armies to mine or different AI rules attaching armies to each other. What I've seen is individual AI rulers marching all their armies together.

And I think that what causes it isn't that the AI attaches their armies to each other but that it's attrition at play here. Because from what I've seen the size of the stacks the AI splits their whole army into roughly matches the general supply limit in the given area. And then the AI simply ignores the attrition and marches the armies together anyway (or does such brilliant things as raiding Navarra all the way from Lesser Poland by going there via land). If the AI encounters a superior force in vicinity and tries to flee the stacks will usually try to scramble in completely different directions.

That aside, you are correct. You can't attach armies to allied forces.


Speaking of allied forces I encountered another weird thing. The AI can make alliances while at war. And the new ally can then join their ongoing wars. Had to deal with 5.5k goddamn Swedes yesterday a few months after I started my kingdom invasion of Garðaríki. At least Garðaríkian forces themselves were nowhere to be seen. Because Garðaríki ruler waged yet another amazing border gore war. This time for the county of Niece.

Also, while I'm on kingdom invasion CB, a tip to other players because I kinda missed this in the tooltip when waging that war during my first ruler's reign (even though, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure invasion CB worked that way in CKII too). In that war, on top of the target kingdom you get to conquer all the counties of the enemy ruler you managed to occupy, even if they are outside of the target kingdom's de-jure territory.

Luckily, in the case of my first ruler's invasion war that wasn't a factor anyway and I didn't miss out on land, since it was a one day war thanks to abductions. But it's something to keep in mind.

[KrayZ33]

It seems like the AI doesn't even care about you crusading anymore
I've never had anyone of the same faith declare War on me in CK2 when I was crusading.

I guess I'd easily let that slide for heretics and very ... "un"-pious (is that a word?) characters. But don't you need to invest a huge amount of piety and prestige to declare war on crusading lords?

I was crusading as a duke of france and got declared war upon by 2 others who are also dukes under the same liege as me. That has been a first for me with that context. (I got destroyed, obviously)

[Mehrunes]

It seems like the AI doesn't even care about you crusading anymore
I've never had anyone of the same faith declare War on me in CK2 when I was crusading.

I guess I'd easily let that slide for heretics and very ... "un"-pious (is that a word?) characters. But don't you need to invest a huge amount of piety and prestige to declare war on crusading lords?

I was crusading as a duke of france and got declared war upon by 2 others who are also dukes under the same liege as me. That has been a first for me with that context. (I got destroyed, obviously)

I don't think there was actually anything preventing the AI from declaring war on crusaders in CKII (well, unless they were also in the crusade). I think what's going on here is that the AI in CKIII is much more aggressive. And unless you're... creatively using the game mechanics (like declaring wars on a bunch of people you just kidnapped with scheming), in CKIII it also takes longer to get the ball rolling (unless you start as the Byzantine Empire or something like that), meaning that the AI will spend a longer amount of time matching the player in terms of military strength. It also has laser focus on exploiting vulnerability, other factors be damned (that's why the Vikings go for individual counties across the map instead of focusing on their neighborhood). So if you got weakened by crusading the AI would do just that, increased opinion from you being a crusader not even registering on their radar. Also, the word you're looking for is impious.

[Dezerte]

I don't quite understand how the succession systems work.

I'm currently on a game where I've created the High Kingdom of Sweden with Sweden, Denmark and Finland. My elected heir stands to inherit the empire, Sweden (and Denmark through partition) while my other son - who already owns 2 counties - stands to inherit Norway, Finland, one duchy and 4 counties leaving my heir with no counties? I made my other son a vassal to try and prevent him from gaining too much, and it currently says (on claimants on my current counties) that he can't press his claim on my counties due to him being my vassal, which he should still be in the succession as my heir has the higher title but the game doesn't seem to reflect that in the succession window.

I noticed I could do the decision for special succession again, so I did it, not sure if anything changed and the decision is still there - I read on reddit that someone suggested going down on Kingdom/Duchy level to apply the elective law (for a whopping 1500 prestige!) which I did for my "main" duchy Uppland, which did give my heir that duchy but I see no option for doing that with counties. Will my heir really have no counties?

[Mehrunes]

I don't quite understand how the succession systems work.

I'm currently on a game where I've created the High Kingdom of Sweden with Sweden, Denmark and Finland. My elected heir stands to inherit the empire, Sweden (and Denmark through partition) while my other son - who already owns 2 counties - stands to inherit Norway, Finland, one duchy and 4 counties leaving my heir with no counties? I made my other son a vassal to try and prevent him from gaining too much, and it currently says (on claimants on my current counties) that he can't press his claim on my counties due to him being my vassal, which he should still be in the succession as my heir has the higher title but the game doesn't seem to reflect that in the succession window.

I noticed I could do the decision for special succession again, so I did it, not sure if anything changed and the decision is still there - I read on reddit that someone suggested going down on Kingdom/Duchy level to apply the elective law (for a whopping 1500 prestige!) which I did for my "main" duchy Uppland, which did give my heir that duchy but I see no option for doing that with counties. Will my heir really have no counties?

It should be impossible to own higher level titles without holding at least a single county. Also, are all your titles that are tagged as "Titles with their own Title Succession" elective?

[Dezerte]

It should be impossible to own higher level titles without holding at least a single county. Also, are all your titles that are tagged as "Titles with their own Title Succession" elective?

Yeah, from what I've understood and read it should but the game is seemingly giving contradictory information on this screen. And yes those titles are on the elective system.

[Fayolynn]

I'm loving CK3 so far, much easier to get into then CK2. I tried like 4-5 times with CK2 and was just completely overwhelmed.

I just ended my first game, well first game that I played past the first generation. I started playing as Murchad and managed to unite all of Ireland as a Kingdom. His son and grandson then managed to conquer Scotland (named Alba in my game). I had just started work on taking over England (Danelaw) when my current king died. His two kingdoms were then split up between his two sons. The primary heir was hated by everyone for being a Gluttonus, Sadistic, Murdering, Kin Slayer. Felt like a good time to call it quits. Had a blast, gonna try and do better next time.

A few questions for anyone who is more knowledgeable.

What is the benefit of forming a Duchy vs having each county being independent?

Other then forming alliances does it matter who you pick to have your children marry?

Is it worth investing money in buildings in your counties?

Is it worth trying consolidate county titles under the duchy title holder? IE: Is it worth it to consolidate the titles Earl of Ulster, Oriel and Ailech under the Petty King of Ulster, so that 1 person holds all 4 titles for the county.

[Mehrunes]

Yeah, from what I've understood and read it should but the game is seemingly giving contradictory information on this screen. And yes those titles are on the elective system.

I see. I noticed a bug in regards to succession being wonky due to titles having their own succession laws, but that's when all had confederate succession with male preference (yes, some still counted as having different succession due to very idiotic reasons). But I have no experience with elective election, so I can't help you with that.

I can help you with the counties though. Assuming the UI shows correct information in this case and your primary heir won't get any of your counties, he will be granted a random country within his realm upon your death. Though I'd lean towards the UI being wrong in this case. Secondary heirs are not supposed to get the capital territory (especially if they are already given territory prior to your death), which in your case I assume is in Uppland. Yet the second son is shown to get every single county in that duchy.