Crusader Kings 3 - Downton Abbey for the 12th Century

  • There’s a UI button on the army to tell it to stop mustering. And since men at arms muster immediately, hitting that button when paused will leave only MAA
  • Force move (ctrl + click) also cancels mustering

Thank you! Very helpful.

Yeah magic teleporting across the world men at arms often make more sense to disband and reform closer to the destination when you’re conquering. With that and careful timing you can often string together a long series of wars and keep under the 6 month timer for losing opinion based on long wars.

I’ve been putting more time into CK3 and for me, this game is more about the stories than the moment-to-moment gameplay. Starting as the Petty King of Munster in 1066, my grandson, Brian, was able to create the Kingdom of Ireland after convincing his uncle to join the Petty Kingdom of Ulster to the realm. King Brian’s wife recently died and a he found a prospective wife in the spunky Duchess of Iceland, Svanhildr. Svanhildr was responsible for several raids into Ireland over the past few years, but Brian figured that marrying her would stop the raids and, as a bonus, his family would eventually inherit Iceland down the road.

A few months into the marriage, Svanhildr got pregnant… by one of her courtiers. The chaste Brian was disgusted and quickly divorced the adulteress, fornicating torturer (I guess he should have looked more closely at her bio). In fact, Brian was so upset that he immediately set out to fabricate claims on both counties in Iceland. After a few years, Brian declared war and, although he had a few allies, decided that this war was personal and would not have any need of their help. After all, he had a 3:2 ratio of superiority and immediately set sail for Reykjavik. There were a few factors that weren’t in Brian’s favor, however. First, Reykjavik is in terrain favorable to the defender. Second, Svanhildr wasn’t a successful raider for those past many years because she employed untrained peasant levies. Third, although Brian decided not to call on his allies, Svanhildr did. Brian’s army of “knights” (a collection of lackeys whose prowess averaged a 9) and peasants got trounced at the very moment one of my allies called for help to settle affairs in northern France. Brian decided to bail out to help his ally and Svanhildr accepted a white peace. But Brian would have his revenge.

Brian took his exhausted army from Iceland to France to offer some assistance to the Duke of Lorraine. It soon became apparent that things weren’t looking favorable for the good Duke and Brian had to get out of northern France before the Duke’s enemies caught up to him. While Brian’s army was embarking on ships in Cherbourg, a 6,000-man army caught up to them and laid waste to everyone. Half of Brian’s advisors were killed or captured, and the Irish expeditionary force was no more. At the exact moment Brian arrived home to reassemble his broken army, Svanhildr showed up with 1500 raiders at the gates of the capital.

After the raiders took their fill and left for home, Brian took the next three years to rebuild his army and his kingdom. He moved the capital to Dublin, sent out a call for knights, invested in some men-at-arms, and built new alliances with better warlords. He also remarried a good Irish girl who stayed true to the end. Several years later, Brian went back to Iceland with a 2,000-man army supported by 7,500 French soldiers and took Vasterland, the eastern Icelandic county. His new chancellor figured out a way (through a random event) to end the truce after only a few months, and Brian went back and finished the job. Poor Svanhildr became a landless noble and her raiding days were over. She eventually died of old age but will never be forgotten. Brian’s successors have erased every trace of Norse culture from Iceland, but the story of the Dread Svanhildr has been passed down from generation to generation.

@Benhur Thanks for the story.

I bought the game a while ago but haven’t done anything other than watch Youtube videos so far. Too many games, too little time. I need to get back to it, so maybe your story will inspire me.

YouTube videos are great sometimes, but other times they have frozen me out of trying a game, especially one with so many moving parts. My suggestion is to open the game and start playing. The tool tips and suggestions features are so good that you’ll not only have a direction to go but also a path to get there. The tutorial starts you out as a powerful Irish lord and tells you all of the steps you need to get on the path to kingship. Once you get tired of that, try the same stuff you just learned for a noble in Iberia or heck, why not India?

Have they said anything about their expansion pass/DLC plans?

@Benhur I played some Crusader Kings II so the game is not completely new to me. It’s more a case of making the time to sit down and play it. Santa gave me High Frontier 4 All for Christmas and I’m learning/playing that right now. Shadow Empire is also waiting for me. Like I said, so many games… :)

No details as of yet. But when they put the game up for preorder with the deluxe edition, they said first there would be a ‘thematic’ DLC which has flavour for the game, then second a major expansion that includes new mechanics etc., and then third another flavour DLC. They also commented that they are aiming for more significant and chunky DLC relative to some other Paradox DLC in the past.

I’m really looking forward to them jamming more awesome stuff into this game.

I’m a little surprised at how quiet they’ve been since release. I know they put a lot of time into changes and fixes for the base game, but I would have expected them to have a bit more for the early post-release cycle of their biggest game.

Last teaser post I saw from the team indicated that they are working on the first non-expansion DLC and the teaser was that the team members reaction to seeing the plan for that DLC was “are you sure this isn’t a full expansion?”. We’ll see what that means hopefully soon.

As it stands, I never get as much mileage out of the pure character stuff(I realize it’s the core of the game) as other people, so I’ll be interested to see what other meat they can add here.

I think it’s great. It’s hard for me to contently play a Paradox game when I know great-sounding new features are just a month or two away!

I’ve got a question for anyone in the know.

One of my character’s daughters was betrothed to a Duke’s son for an alliance (non matrilineal since she was third in line for the throne). Well, the plague wiped out the family and she was left with the title. She killed off her husband to get a matrilineal marriage but not before having a son… who is not of the same dynasty. Fortunately the queen is young and has time to address the issue before it’s game over, but what are my options? I can’t kill my own child (though I will look for some way to become sadistic ion order to do just that) so what can I do?

I’m a bit rusty, but here are some ideas:

See if you have a viable player heir (since the primary heir is non-dynasty), or try doing something to get a different player heir. You might give them some titles before dying.

Have more kids so the inheritance is split and your dynasty survives.

Make the non-dynasty son a knight and try to get him killed in combat.

Change your succession law if you have other relatives who could inherit instead.

Thanks Bobtree. Although I can’t kill my son, I was able to imprison him and move him to the dungeon. I’m working up the willpower to execute him. I do have an heir for my dynasty and could let my first son inherit the kingdom while my second son becomes a duke, but I’d hate to let the kingdom go after working so hard for it. In another twist, my second son, the heir to my dynasty, has the imbecile trait… meaning a -8 malus to every category. I’m already preparing a space for him in the dungeon as my two daughters are pretty decent.

Can’t wait til they add new events. I played so much when it first released, and saw the same events trillions of time, I just quit as it no longer felt like an “experience”, but more like an Excel spreadsheet with triggers. Would like to get back into it when it feels more like an rpg again.

I killed so, so many bad heirs this way, and 1 on accident that I should’ve probably not sent to war in the first place.

It does cause stress though.

Hello? Is this thing on?

What’s Paradox doing with this title?

Something they won’t tell us until March 13th on some event or another.They say there are hints on some posts and twits and so on, but they’re so vague it could be anything.

I think there’s been enough time since release to assume that in a couple of weeks they will announce the first DLC which will be released very soon after. If they just give a ‘this is what we plan to do’ diary I will be disappointed.

Yet, the game is so good, I have alot of faith in the dev team! The radio silence has given me time to take a break and play some other games before I dive back in the day the first DLC comes out.

I lied, that was for DLC. For now, we have (the preview for) some winter and minor map changes.