Haha.
It’s not often my army is the small fry in a war, but when I am with or against someone like say the Ottomans, France or I think Sweden, someone up north over there I try to keep my little guys next to my allies big ones or just got harass some area they’re all ignoring to get a few war points.
Yeah, as a small player you need to be careful as it’s easy to get wiped and then your vassals will start thinking “hmm, you’ve got no troops anymore, might be a good time to REVOLT.” That has happened to me more than a couple of times, usually when I land my ~3k army on the shores of Acre during a holy war only to see a huge Muslim army coming for me.
You know, I was just clicking random threads on the forum and it took me a couple of seconds to realise I had clicked crusader kings…
That’s a real missed opportunity. If you showed up in here mentioning Match.com or something, that would’ve been pretty memorable.
Has anyone played the LotR: Realms in Exile mod much yet? I tried it out briefly, looks cool, but not sure if it ‘works’ or not?
I started this last night.
Why can’t I declare war after I raise my armies. It feels like that should happen first.
Historically accurate!
Mostly it is to do with feudal levy laws, and how these levies are the farmers and workers for an area. So a king could only call upon them for specific purpose. You couldn’t call an army, and deprive the lord of the farmers, just because.
There are ways to get around this, and laws and such that allow prepared armies, or professional ones. One of the things that made Vikings so powerful in CK II was their prepared invasions allowed them to collect armies prior to war.
I don’t know in CK III what techs or laws allow this, I haven’t gotten it yet, but I imagine since this was modeled in CK II it will be here in some form.
Ah, ok. Thanks!
It looks like increasing your Men At Arms is the retinue equivalent in CK III, so investing in that increases your permanent army capacity.
So you can’t prestack your dudes on their stuff before they get a chance to respond.
Not that it solves much when mid-late game your men at arms stack is strong enough to solo armies 3x their size (or more) so instead you declare war, raise the stack in the closest province as possible, and then immediately march without waiting for your levies to raise.
Any way to just raise men at arms? Right now I’m basically combining my stakes and disbanding all but like 6,000 levies (for siege and protect the siege engines).
Really loving the game. My current game started as a Orthodox county of Lecce in southern Italy in the original start date. Now I own all of Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, Balearics, Tunis, and modern Libya. Cataphracts might be a bit op, I got nearly 3,000 and they basically crush anyone they are up against, including other armored cavalry. Also the whole Byzantine empire system of governance could do with an overhaul.
Overall loving my campaign of turning Italy into a beacon of Greek Orthodox stability, hope to move on to a French or German start next.
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.