Crusader Kings III |OT| Long Live The King

[Jintor]

my grandson and heir (dad got killed in the civil war when Dublin tried to go Catholic) is married to the heir presumptious of Scotland, assuming bisexual King Dugal of Scotland isn't going to have any more male heirs, so hopefully that comes to pass. In the meantime I'm just grinding up the piety to reform the religion to let ladies be councilmembers and the money to plop another castle down in my county

 

[fuzzyset]

I'm learning that the game saying "Your army is superior" does not guarantee a victory... or even a close fight. I need to see if this is comparing my army + my allies when telling me this? Seems confusing.

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Knights and composition of army can really change how the fights play out. Are you talking about the estimate in the Declare War screen? Cause that includes your and their allies. If you have powerful allies, but they just have a strong army themselves, you'll get crushed until your allies arrive. I managed to get a marriage alliance with the HRE in the tutorial game. I declared war on Wales/Norway cause our army strength was "similar", but that didn't take into account that the HRE forces needed to cross a continent to help...

 

[Stone Cold]

I think tribes might currently be broken, takes too long to change to feudal and when you do it breaks your military and income. Fun ride though, pretty much played all day today and loved every second of it

 

[foamdino]

I'm starting a new game (my previous / first game came to an end with a lunatic child heir after father died immediately after becoming sick during a pilgrimage)

My first big decision (literally right at the start):
I have 16 intrigue to start but I have a stewardship education - is the additional learning experience for the education background worth picking the stewardship lifestyle or do I ignore the extra 5 exp/ month and double down on the intrigue lifestyle?

There are some great perks in the intrigue tree that I want to try out and I also don't want to ignore the diplomacy / family perks that ensure you get stat upgrades for your kids...

 

[KuwabaraTheMan]

I finally managed to form my own Kingdom, so that's one goal down. I'm still trying to build up the piety to reform my faith, but I also just saw a new major decision to dismantle the papacy if I can completely occupy Italia, so that's another goal to work towards (although Catholicism might die off before I can even get there the way things are going right now). My borders look like an absolute mess right now, so I'm going to try and get things a bit more contiguous as well.

On a more personal note for my ruler, I succeeded in my scheme to become soulmates with my childhood crush, so that was a fun.

 

[Tya]

I was watching Etalyx play while I played myself. Look who showed up in his game.

 

[platypotamus]

The game recommends I ally with one of my vassals.
Why would I wanna?

 

[edo_kid]

My giant brother was having an incestuous afair with my dwarf sister, and she was immediately killed by her old husband that i just married off too 1 min ago... that made me laugh lol

Holy wars are great, this is the 2nd time i put a family member in charge of the whole Kingdom by having the most achievements in it.
It's easy, i just switch the place for something near me so im the first to arrive then i start conquer stuff far away from the enemy to rack up points.
By the time the rest of the guys arrive i already have a massive adavantage in points.

Also this is my 3rd time in a 5 kids pregnancy run that i got the "suspicious event" but never got it to succeed in finding out more since the % are so low, anyone have got it? I'm kinda curious if you can get a bastard child without knowing lol

I let my titles get broken up and then either roll with it or go on a fuckery spree to reclaim them. It's a setback, like losing a war, but dealing with setbacks is part of the game.

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Breaking up the Kingdom titles really helped out a lot for me, now my brothers could only get duchies which is easier to revoke when i want later.

I'm not exactly advanced but this is what I'd guess

a) murder or deliberate suicide charges into enemy territory

b) try and work around it by spending resources on upgrading your primary holding (this is my current method)

c) restructure the law (this takes forever)

I became a bit more okay with it once I realised everybody else suffers from it too, it's the easiest way to see that e.g. whoever is ruling England now has dropped from 2k to 800 troops and it's time to go real estate speculating, or launch a war of liberation or whatever.

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Some of those are children so can't send them into battle. I for sure do the b option, only upgrade my counties and if i upgrade other is for gold/tax structures only.

They ain't gonna caught me slipping lol half of my total army comes from my place.

 

[Bregor]

The game recommends I ally with one of my vassals.
Why would I wanna?

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Vassals don't give you all their troops when you call on them for levys, only a percentage. If they are your ally you might be able on them during a fight and they will raise the remainder of their troops and come to your aid. Of course, they will expect you to help them as well.

 

[Jintor]

I'm trying not to rely on allies too much because getting bogged down in ally wars when the AI is so idiotic right now is a huge pain in the tuchus

 

[edo_kid]

Vassals don't give you all their troops when you call on them for levys, only a percentage. If they are your ally you might be able on them during a fight and they will raise the remainder of their troops and come to your aid. Of course, they will expect you to help them as well.

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Pretty much this, also they don't work against their own liege lol i did try that.

 

[fanboi]

So if you can't manage to get all the titles needed for an Empire and you have more then one Kingdom title, the strat is to just adopt Elective Monarchy in the least desired title and hope that your heir is elected, right?

 

[Sblargh]

So if you can't manage to get all the titles needed for an Empire and you have more then one Kingdom title, the strat is to just adopt Elective Monarchy in the least desired title and hope that your heir is elected, right?

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Yes. And for some reason the same person usually wins all elections.

 

[Heshinsi]

Is there a way to raise just your own personal levies? In CKII in the military tab, you had the ability to raise either your own or the full realm levies. I don't see that option in CK3. Also in the previous game you could raise levies for specific counties. Now it either raises everything, or the closest to a specific rally point. I find myself relaying more on mercs for some stuff due to how I can form small rapid strike forces. Sometimes I don't need everyone and their mothers showing up to crush a tiny rebellion.

 

[Cindres]

That seems to kind of be what they do. You beat them, start beseiging their capital, and they run off to siege yours.

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When I had this in a war it was because I had a stronger army as their army was split in two and they were trying to run around long enough for their two groups to join up and be bigger than mine
Smart. Very fucking frustrating cos they kicked my ass after

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What I do is let them get sufficiently away while I'm sieging their Capitol, then split my troops into two. Group A is small - siege men-at-arms, some Levies and a Knight. Group B is the rest of my levies/knights/maA which I use to track them down and fight.

Obviously this tactic only works if Group B can beat the enemy army, but it works well for me.

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This does make sense, particularly the two army thing as I had another group coming in to assist the enemy from the sea, guess they were just biding time.

 

[Poodlestrike]

I'm trying not to rely on allies too much because getting bogged down in ally wars when the AI is so idiotic right now is a huge pain in the tuchus

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I got into a few of those myself today, lol. Fortunately the penalty for saying no isn't too bad. Just take the ones you can win yourself.

 

[Jegriva]

The game recommends I ally with one of my vassals.
Why would I wanna?

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So they would not join factions against you.

 

[johnsmith]

I think tribes might currently be broken, takes too long to change to feudal and when you do it breaks your military and income. Fun ride though, pretty much played all day today and loved every second of it

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Yeah happened to me to. Eventually I recovered and was stronger than a tribe could ever hope to be. But you need to make the switch when you're in a good position. You don't want any wars or succession shenanigans getting in the way. It'll take an entire lifetime to get it fixed. Stockpiling gold ahead of time is a must.

 

[Vault]

The Ai is so bad its unbelievable

also the Succession laws are a massive step down from CK2, who the heel thought this was good?

 

[Hella]

Yeah I hope they patch the army AI soon. Each individual army seems to constantly switch its objectives, rendering it extremely ineffective at accomplishing anything. I think you'd see entirely different maps if it were fixed.

 

[eonden]

The Ai is so bad its unbelievable

also the Succession laws are a massive step down from CK2, who the heel thought this was good?

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Seems like they thought the easy solution to people blobbing up super fast was forcing gavelkind for a long stretch of time. It kinda works, but it makes it much more annoying.

But they really need to nerf the tribal people, as they start way stronger and do not go down until way later in the game, when compared to CK2. That lets vikings get waaay to much control of Britain and even Iberia.
Plus find a way to make fervor less nutty. If Cristianity is doing decent with Holy Wars, then it just internally collapses because heresies start to pop up and can easily get hold on the smaller divided areas of the world... which is mostly Catholic.

 

[Poodlestrike]

I think that the succession law changing system needs an overhaul, and I'd like more options generally, but I do like that it defaults you to gavelkind and that it's kind of a PITA to change off it. I actually sort of wish it defaulted to the one that generates titles. Fuck the blobs, you should have to work at it to keep a big kingdom together over time.

 

[Rodrigues solitaire]

I'm about to murder, as Emperor of Hungary, my 11 year old grandson, the Byzantine Emperor, so that my daughter becomes Empress and my dynasty unites the two empires.

My heart is fucking racing lmao 95% let's fucking goooo

Edit: FUCK IT WAS DISCOVERED

Edit 2: Let's fucking goooooo back at 95/95 just bribed everyone I could

Edit 3: Succesful, and now my daughter is the Byzantine Empress. Only my fucking niece, a vassal of the Byzantine Empire, who is married to my son, is waging a war to install someone else on the throne lmao for fuck's sake

Edit 4: I'm up against a force of 108k (!) with a mere 20k of my own ... I'm going to lose the Byzantine Empire ...

The last hope I have is a 20% murder scheme against the claimant ...

I flew too close to the sun. I FLEW TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN!

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Managed to become heir to both empires two generations later so at last the empire is united.

This is the state of the wold right now with about half a century left in the game, with the Magyar horselord start in 867:

Yup, the AI blob is INSANE lol. Western Europe has been ruled by the Islamic Toledo Empire for centuries now and they keep expanding. I'm hoping the unification of the Hungarian and Byzantine Empire will finally be enough to hold the line in Central Europe.

Anyway, think this will be the height of my empire - expansion is pretty much impossible as all money and time is spent on keeping the tens of factions vying for independence at bay. All my resources are getting more and more exhausted with every new ruler and have no titles left to keep vassals happy so this might actually be the begin of the break-up.

It's not even fun to play anymore as literally every minute is spent with the Factions screen open and frantically clicking around lmao, but will see it through to the end.

Love the game but yeah there are a lot of potential improvements visible over such a long game started from its very beginning.

 

[Stone Cold]

I'm excited to try a feudal kingdom on my next play though, any good recommendations on fun/interesting starting vassals?

 

[eKongDiddy]

What a crazy night of playing. First it was exposed that my niece and her father were having an incest affair.

Then next thing I know, my other niece was having an incest affair with her father!!!

Then my own wife turns out to be a cannibal and my Spymaster revealed she killed my martial about 40 years ago!

I can't expose her secret yet, but I have created my own religion now and started a witch cove. Witchcraft, equal opportunity, and same-sex relations are allowed now. First time playing as a righteous king. No wars in his lifetime. His main goal has been expanding the realm and his faith.

 

[Hazzuh]

And this don't work either, it is only to select the main heir the secundary kingdoms still get divided.

I guess creating kingdom titles when you have partition enabled is not a good choice if you then have multiple kids. I had to destroyed them and force my other 2 sons only to get duchy's.

Man what a pain in the ass how do you guys deal with multiple male heirs?

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The most reliable strat IMO Is to change the succession law to be elective and then use bribes / hooks / assassinations to get your chosen candidate the majority of the vote.

 

[Jintor]

I see the idiot AI topic is big on reddit with some CK3 programmers promising AI changes in the first big patch, so at least they're listening

 

[eonden]

I never thought I would see naked scots controlling britain in a game until last week. Somehow Adanism became a thing in Scotland and they have started to push through the isles.

Edit: NSFW picture due to naked woman:

Spoiler: NSFW

 

[Jintor]

whelp. my hated rival sent my a rather nice gift with a... strange effect on the cup when I touch it. how nice! oh i appear to be coughing blood. hmm... i need to fire my spymaster before i cark it.

This is what i get for having 1 in intrigue

Man if this stock of 2k piety disappears once I cark it I'm gonna be so mad

 

[barjed]

Once you start snowballing the game becomes way too easy. I am almost able to adopt feudalism with my slavic High King but I think I will start a new play-through shortly after.

After three generations of diplomatic kings (with the final one crowning himself the high king) the current one had super high intrigue so instead I went for a tyrant. I expected some domestic realm drama, rebellions but nah. You just fabricate hooks on everyone or abduct them. This locks them out of schemes against you completely. You become virtually untouchable extremely quickly.

Right now I have six vassal kings - of Poland, of Galicia-Volhynia, of Estonia, of Pomerania, of the White Rus and of Bohemia. ALL six are currently imprisoned thanks to me abducting people left and right. The torturer tree allows you to do bad things to your prisoners without any piety penalty. It's very easy to keep your dread maxed thanks to this - simply do a lottery every couple of months and select a new winner to torture. Also an easy source of skill points and stress reductions.

The 867 start is simply meh, because it encourages this sort of blobbing behavior. Unlimited CB and multiple fragmented tribes mean you eat everything up instantly. I will stick to 1066 from now on.

 

[fanboi]

Once you start snowballing the game becomes way too easy. I am almost able to adopt feudalism with my slavic High King but I think I will start a new play-through shortly after.

After three generations of diplomatic kings (with the final one crowning himself the high king) the current one had super high intrigue so instead I went for a tyrant. I expected some domestic realm drama, rebellions but nah. You just fabricate hooks on everyone or abduct them. This locks them out of schemes against you completely. You become virtually untouchable extremely quickly.

Right now I have six vassal kings - of Poland, of Galicia-Volhynia, of Estonia, of Pomerania, of the White Rus and of Bohemia. ALL six are currently imprisoned thanks to me abducting people left and right. The torturer tree allows you to do bad things to your prisoners without any piety penalty. It's very easy to keep your dread maxed thanks to this - simply do a lottery every couple of months and select a new winner to torture. Also an easy source of skill points and stress reductions.

The 867 start is simply meh, because it encourages this sort of blobbing behavior. Unlimited CB and multiple fragmented tribes mean you eat everything up instantly. I will stick to 1066 from now on.

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I disagree it is very easy it goes south fast since you are one guy finding out you are
Sleeping with your mom for open revolt.

 

[Jintor]

Useless ally AI. Fucking having to second guess scotland prancing around instead of helping me crush this rebellion instantly. This ally AI issue is really souring me on this right now. At least make it so giving it orders is tied to relationship or martial skill or something cos just having to watch my idiot allies not just stack on me is a huge pain

 

[Anoxida]

Once you start snowballing the game becomes way too easy. I am almost able to adopt feudalism with my slavic High King but I think I will start a new play-through shortly after.

After three generations of diplomatic kings (with the final one crowning himself the high king) the current one had super high intrigue so instead I went for a tyrant. I expected some domestic realm drama, rebellions but nah. You just fabricate hooks on everyone or abduct them. This locks them out of schemes against you completely. You become virtually untouchable extremely quickly.

Right now I have six vassal kings - of Poland, of Galicia-Volhynia, of Estonia, of Pomerania, of the White Rus and of Bohemia. ALL six are currently imprisoned thanks to me abducting people left and right. The torturer tree allows you to do bad things to your prisoners without any piety penalty. It's very easy to keep your dread maxed thanks to this - simply do a lottery every couple of months and select a new winner to torture. Also an easy source of skill points and stress reductions.

The 867 start is simply meh, because it encourages this sort of blobbing behavior. Unlimited CB and multiple fragmented tribes mean you eat everything up instantly. I will stick to 1066 from now on.

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Im experiencing extreme difficulty at the moment since Im trying to play "good". So no tortures or tyranical actions. The vassal limit is forcing me to give away kingdoms in my empire and kingdoms love to try and break away from you during heir transitions and its been hard for me to keep it together now that Ive taken over like 80% of europe. Im new at this though so im probably still playing suboptimally. Going from tribal to feudal is a rough change that im still trying to recover from 150 years later. Switching frpm tribal to feudal cut my army and income in half but i do think its the right decision long term.

 

[barjed]

I disagree it is very easy it goes south fast since you are one guy finding out you are
Sleeping with your mom for open revolt.

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Not really. My current king is exposed as a murderer, a sodomite and a liege of multiple different pagans chiefs (while catholic). All of my powerful vassals are at -100 opinion.

But like I said. The kings are all imprisoned. The rest is terrified of my king because of the maxed dread. I can execute two hostile schemes at once. I could kidnap almost anyone from my realm with 80%+ chance of success.

Playing as the tyrant is simply too powerful atm.

 

[fanboi]

Not really. My current king is exposed as a murderer, a sodomite and a liege of multiple different pagans chiefs (while catholic). All of my powerful vassals are at -100 opinion.

But like I said. The kings are all imprisoned. The rest is terrified of my king because of the maxed dread. I can execute two hostile schemes at once. I could kidnap almost anyone from my realm with 80%+ chance of success.

Playing as the tyrant is simply too powerful atm.

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Yes but your ruler will die, and the kings in prison will die which will get new heirs and so on.

 

[Anoxida]

Question, before I used to be able to apoint and fire council members at will but now the other council members appoint people for me and I cant fire them for X amount of years. I hate this and I need it to back to the way it was. I have no idea what made this change.

 

[Jintor]

Question, before I used to be able to apoint and fire council members at will but now the other council members appoint people for me and I cant fire them for X amount of years. I hate this and I need it to back to the way it was. I have no idea what made this change.

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If someone had a hook on you, they might have wormed their way into your council.

Fucking Wales launched a war while I was busying imprisoning my idiot uncles who teamed up with my shithead rival to try and steal my throne. All three are going to rot in prison forever while I figure out what to do about Wales which pulled in nearly 8k men in some alliance stack that completely fucked me. At least I only lost a County I guess.

Bizarre that the enemy AI knows to take their armies and anchor off the coast until their allies arrive creating an unstoppable doomstack but won't do it if they're allied to me. I had a cute baby in the last days of the war so he's gonna inherit both Scotland and Ireland, if I can get the bloody place back...

 

[-Tetsuo-]

Question, before I used to be able to apoint and fire council members at will but now the other council members appoint people for me and I cant fire them for X amount of years. I hate this and I need it to back to the way it was. I have no idea what made this change.

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Council rights is part of feudal contracts. Check your vassals to see if any of them have it.

 

[eonden]

Question, before I used to be able to apoint and fire council members at will but now the other council members appoint people for me and I cant fire them for X amount of years. I hate this and I need it to back to the way it was. I have no idea what made this change.

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Someone might have used a weak hook on you to get a position on the council.

 

[Anoxida]

Council rights is part of feudal contracts. Check your vassals to see if any of them have it.

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Yeah but why would a lowly count have that in his contract? I didnt put it there.

It has nothing to do with hooks I assure people that. I never let anyone get a hook on me.

 

[Jegriva]

AI is clearly the top priority for future patch. And also pathfinding.


How many of you have seen the AI forming the Empire of Italia... in Hungary? It seems to be a particularly common occurrence in the 1066 start.

 

[Martinski]

After playing to conquer big areas and making empire realms. I think it is time to start a 'troll' game and make as worst dynasty as possible with inbreds and shitty traits and see how long i can take it.

And i have already married my son to my sister. Starting of good.

 

[johnsmith]

Also does anybody think that the requirements for a cadet branch are too low for the ai. My main dynasty is completely gone and replaced by dozens of cadet branches.

 

[-Tetsuo-]

Anyone know what this means?

 

[eonden]

Anyone know what this means?

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That that title has its own special rules that are different from the general rules you have for your titles. Normally it means it is either an election title, or it has some level of preferential treatment (male dominant / neutral / etc). If you click on the title, you can access it and see what rules apply to it.

 

[Najaf]

Quick question for someone more experienced. My starting character is about to die, just finished a big war where all my sons died, so my grandson (oldest son's son) is set to be heir. However, his two cousins are set to get two titles (a duchy and a petty kingdom). I don't have the gold to create a kingdom before I die. I can remove my heir from the succession line, and I assume it would go to his male cousin (who seems to be at least on par stats wise), which would avoid losing my county count needed to eventually create a kingdom title once I have the gold, but is there any way for me to verify my new heir? I'm playing iron man for the achievements, so I can't rely on save-scumming. Basically, I don't want to have to immediately go to war with my cousins via unpressed claims. Better to have a peaceful transition and have the other county fall in line once the heir is a king.

edit: Well I can't disinherit the heir because it costs too much prestige... Should have looked at titles lost at succession earlier. Guess its going to be civil war.

 

[Muffin]

Those fckin Norse assholes took important parts of my land. Not sure if I can bounce back from this.

Edit: And now Scotland is having a go at me too. Just great

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So uh I was having a war against Östergötland and Scotland and suddenly got an event, something about me fighting the Scots at many occasions and me being a good Catholic and something about St. George, and suddenly my war was invalidated and I just simply was given all of England?

I'm not gonna complain lol, but why did that happen? My high faith rank? I'm Paragon of Virtue currently, and I didnt really try for it.

 

[platypotamus]

Quick question for someone more experienced. My starting character is about to die, just finished a big war where all my sons died, so my grandson (oldest son's son) is set to be heir. However, his two cousins are set to get two titles (a duchy and a petty kingdom). I don't have the gold to create a kingdom before I die. I can remove my heir from the succession line, and I assume it would go to his male cousin (who seems to be at least on par stats wise), which would avoid losing my county count needed to eventually create a kingdom title once I have the gold, but is there any way for me to verify my new heir? I'm playing iron man for the achievements, so I can't rely on save-scumming. Basically, I don't want to have to immediately go to war with my cousins via unpressed claims. Better to have a peaceful transition and have the other county fall in line once the heir is a king.

edit: Well I can't disinherit the heir because it costs too much prestige... Should have looked at titles lost at succession earlier. Guess its going to be civil war.

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Can you dissolve any of the titles so someone can't inherit and it doesn't break apart?

 

[eonden]

Is tyranny inherited? Cause I went on a small clensing to try and reorganize some of the Germania vassals I inherited into a more manageable organization and I am afraid it will end up fucking my descendants for centuries.

 

[Anton Sugar]

My first character died (I had an heir and am playing as him now) and that felt like it really opened up the game for me. Mentally, because I'm still new to the game and think of "character death" as a blanket bad thing.

But also, I forgot it functionally changes things in terms of perks (my heir had different interests, so I got out of the military perks) and your land/kingdom. Really loving this so far and I also like that I can leave the game alone for a little bit on my second monitor while I work without worrying about everything burning down, like in some games.