So my goal in this game was to make Africa the seat of civilization and for once to not be abused by Imperial powers. Started out in Mali area with a tiny Duchy.
I have unified all of Africa at this point:
My thrice merged culture has unfortunately not become a dominant force in the world:
However my cat worshiping religion, the Cat-holics has taken Africa by storm and is about to replace Islam in Saudi Arabia and Spain since my Dynastic family is taking over via grandchild betrothals:
I am the the center of the developed world. Constantinople and Italy have nothing on us!
Most of these counties have maxed out at 100 development. I’d researched all the techs available by 1180 I think:
32+ dynasty points per month. You get 2 per empire, and 1 per King as well as half that per consort. So even matriarchial alliances to a ruling female can be worth it. But keep in mind that it is only independent rulers who count. So you can have 20 Kings within your empire of your dynasty, but they’re irrelevant to your dynasty points - you just get the +2 for your emperor.
What I did was conquer a bunch of smaller Kingdoms - Crete, Cyprus, 3-4 in Africa are also nice and small. Then I granted them independence all at the same time - combined with those I had already married into, that got us up to the 10 for Dynasty of Many Crowns. You probably want to do this at the same time (or within a short timespan), to prevent your Dynasty losing power in one of these places, before you’re done.
Each monarch easily gets 15-17 children. There is clearly a hard cap on that… I’ve noticed that once I reach around that number, he gets no more children until one of the existing kids die, when suddenly one of the wives tends to get pregnant shortly after. So that’s worth keeping in mind. I did that mistake in the third run here with the second King- decided to wait with generating the Kwisatch Haderach until the King was 60, but because he had already filled his quota of kids, he almost didn’t generate any (fortunately one of the elder kids god killed).
Actually, looking at the image, I see this is not 100% true. There are some subordinate Kings who are contributing to the score - I’m guessing this is possibly from artifacts? So maybe worthwhile to gift any spare renown generating artifacts to your subordinate Kings if they’ll use them.
Edit: Also, you have way more stamina for this game than I do. I wish I were in year 1300+ now…
Af this point in my campaign I’ve kinda run outta steam. As you say, without goals it’s not real fun. I guess I could just blow off time, but Maybe I’ll try to take over as much of the world as possible.
That’s another thing that really needs to be fixed. Protecting the heir from matriachial marriages is not really useful, if it forgets to protect the heir of the heir. The AI really should refuse those for anyone listed as a likely inheritor.
Don’t recall, really. I haven’t spent much time on it (mostly conquering neighbors, rather than subverting them), but it feels easier than I recall it being in CK2.
What do you do for lifestyles? Personally, as mentioned, I don’t find many good reasons to vary. My default - unless I really need something specific - is to go Chivalry lifestyle for Bellum Justum (cheaper cassus belli), Serve the Crown (+15 dread) and then the gallant tree down to Household guard (for extra dominant champions). At high levels, one champion is literally the equivalent of 100s of levies.
If dude is still young, I will usually go for a Wealth focus and get “It is my domain” plus the ones that give you useful bonuses to taxes. When he is around 40, I switch to Learning and get the complete “Whole of Body” tree. After that, there is usually enough time to also become an August ruler and get one or two epics written. The exception was with the first rulers, where I went for “True Ruler” early on for the vassalization options, but that’s really only useful early on.
I haven’t really found any of the other lifestyle trees remotely useful beyond individual picks (Scientific, is one I often get). But generally they seem to build up to stuff which doesn’t really help much in achieving goals one might have.
I’ve been hoarding counties, so first I go straight down the middle of the stewardship path til I get architect, then I go over to l earning stuff and go down that middle path but also grab that one that gives students more points (pedagogy I think?), then I hop over to diplomacy and get befriend and the one to give children more points, and then sometimes I do the middle diplomatic tree so I can get poets to write stuff, and then I hop back over to learning and go down the left tree to extend my emperor’s life.
I posted it some way above. Starting noble is custom built with Beautiful - Intelligent - Hale. Then 7 years old + Bossy + stat tweak to get the build under 400 points.
Starting with those three traits means you can take the decision that strengthens your bloodline right of the bat. And then I take noble veins (+30 chance to inherit good traits) as the first dynasty legacy. Find a “Genius” wife to marry which is not that hard for Norse - there are two dynasties on the map who have good intelligence traits to start with, and they always generate some daughters and then hope those dice roll well. I’ll also have the ruler seduce any single geniuses within reach, invite them to court, and make them concubines. Roll the dice enough times, and you’re likely to get a genius + beautiful + hale second generation.
In the meantime, I marry all the kiddos off to NPCs with good traits especially focused on herculean and robust characters. And I continue with that breeding program continuously with any dynasty members at my court (and sometimes those outside as well) - breeding in those traits whenever I have the opportunity - constantly setting up marriages to reinforce the traits - ideally with externals. Also, courtiers are also always married to improve the gene pool.
By the time second generation King is around 50-60 (which is when I prepare for the heir), there is usually a niece or grand-niece with Herculean + lesser versions of beautiful and genius. Put those two together, and the likelihood of birthing the Kwisatz Haderach is quite good. Since the woman is usually three steps removed from the dynasty founder (a grand daughter), the risk of bad congenital traits is low. Of five kids in this run, two had the best version of all the traits. But a bit of luck is probably needed here - it was only the fifth and final kid who was a son. But worst case, you should still be able to get two top traits and one of the second tier.
In the third generation, I was actually able to pair the KH with a female dynasty member who was also Herculean+Genius+Beautiful, which guarantees kids with the same traits. Got five. One of the five had a bad congenital trait (barren), which I think is pretty OK (married him off to a fecund spouse).
As mentioned above, though - do keep in mind that characters have a limited number of kids they can have alive. Limit seems to be about 3-5 per spouse, but a total cap around 15-17. So it’s important to really make every kid count and not pick up concubines/spouses who are not going to further the bloodline, heh. Political/trait marriages should ideally be with elder ladies.
By the fourth generation, it’s becoming self-perpetrating. Of 1400+ dynasty members, there are 19 with all three top traits (to be fair - 6 are close family, so don’t really count), but the spread of the top tier traits means it isn’t too hard to find suitable spouses once you’ve gotten the first three blood dynasty legacies (though IMO, only the first is really necessary).
Could probably do the same with any starting character build, but it would obviously take a good deal more generations to breed in the traits.
I’m finding it more fun, only speaking for myself, as a soap opera generator. And it makes better stories when everyone isn’t perfect. I also start by hitting “play as a random character” and I don’t change anything.
My current run I thought would end in the third generation. Not great stats on only son. Internal border gore, opportunistic bigger neighbors and fellow vassals with claims on. And the one son was the only reason I still had most of two duchies with no kingdom. His wife shared some of his lackluster traits (both shy). His spymaster was about to backstab him (internal border gore beneficiary).
I used to do both in CK2 (i.e., playing Bene Gesserit and generating soap opera), but TBH, I don’t really feel CK3 is anywhere close to being as good at supporting the latter play style as CK2 is.
Too few events/decisions. Can run throught the vast majority in the first two generations.
Everything is just way too random and poorly scripted. E.g., at the feast, I’ve several times seen the interaction where due to the table breaking, you just happen to get to sit beside someone you apparently wouldn’t normally talk to… your wife. And at the end, you know it’s not going to be the last time you talk to her. Some observation…
My characters have tons of rivals, the vast majority of which are of zero importance/relevance. usually, the first - and only - time I am made aware of them is when they die or when they petition to end the rivalry. Very occasionally, I learn one of them is trying to kill me. Why? Who knows, game can’t be bothered to explain and really there is no reason to figure out why; it makes no difference.
Currently, I feel like the game need a couple of additional major content packs packing in events (and better scripting of existing events) + a bunch of flavor packs for the regional cultures before it becomes the game it could be (and which the predecessor arguably is). But that’s just my 5 cents, obviously.
Now ~50 in 1125, which means I get a new dynasty legacy about every 15 years or so.
About 20+ independent dynasty Kings and Dukes (app. half of each), but also a fair bit of renown earned by consorts to independent Kings and Dukes. This combined with a lot of my realm-internal Kings/Dukes also earning renown makes up the difference. I haven’t done this consistently, but I can see that one should really take every chance you can to create renown boosting artifacts (tapestries are brilliant for this). You easily get almost 0.5 points from three good items. Any renown items that you don’t need, you gift to Kings/Dukes from your dynasty so that they can use them. While they don’t earn renown for being Kings/Dukes while inside your realm, their items do contribute and it all adds up. Looks as if +% items on subordinates also add to the total. So, multiply and be fruitful. The + fertility legacy that one can pick early might actually be worth it, if you want to go this route.
Excellent strategy. My next game I’m going to do that and really focus on dynasty points. I wonder if it’s possible to fill 4 or more full dynasty skill trees?
Very certainly. I’m at ~1140 now, and I have three full dynasty skill trees plus 4 skills spread out over two other skill trees. The bigger question is - could one potentially max out every dynasty skill tree? I suspect the answer to that is yes, if you go all in on spreading the dynasty everywhere and maximize renown production (it’s closing in on +60 per month now after some murders + further payoffs from marriage alliances). And I’m not really going for maximal renown. I could probably net another +20 renown/mont if I were willing to create more independent kingdoms/dukes of my dynasty.
Also, I’m curious what would be the effect if I had build a culture with the castle building ethos; it says you get some extra renown for holding castles. Even if the amount you get is tiny, with 4000+ dynasty members, the effect would likely be quite significant…
It wasn’t discounted by much due to being pretty recent but I finally grabbed this along with the DLC. I’d bounced off it a few times and could have purchased it thru the Windows/Xbox store for about $10 or so cheaper, but it ran like butt when I tried the Gamepass version so I went on and got it from steam. If I had been able to do the mods I would have gotten in for my Series X, but so far anyway no mods there.
Anyway, I played thru the tutorial finally. And that took a few hours that went be fast. In a good way. Then I continued on a few hours sort of following the prompts and occasionally going rogue and doing something on my own. I focused on stewardship and just built when I could (I seemed to have plenty of money). Then married off some brothers and kids and whatnot. No real idea why but used the filters to at least get the better fertility and alliance based marriages.
I took over a county (duchy?) or two trying to solidify Munster but eventually Scottland took a territory near me, emboldened a rival I never had the strength to attack, and then they both just rampaged over my lands. After losing a few territories I quit figuring I wasn’t going to get out of this mess.
After trying a few other starts as different rulers I went back to the tutorial guy because all the others had dozens of kids/siblings/courtiers to try and keep track of. And that felt overwhelming.
So I still don’t really get the fighting stuff and how knights make a difference with various skills and stuff. But the game is sort of coming together after about 7 hours playtime over the last couple of days.
Champions (Knights) are basically super-strong soldiers. The only skill that really matters on them is Prowess, and that should be as high as possible. And you basically want it as high as possible; each point of prowess gives a knight 100 damage and 10 toughness. By comparison, each levy inflicts 10 damage and has 10 toughness. So a 10 prowess knight basically inflicts the same amount of damage as 100 soldiers, and has the toughness of 10. In addition, the higher prowess, the less chance they have to be killed or injured in battle. In any case, this is why you want to have as many high prowess knights as you can possibly get (it’s usually not that hard to get Prowess 20 knights) - they’re a massive boost to your forces.
Also why the Martial Lifestyle “Gallant” tends to be a no-brainer if you’re intending to go to war. Chivalric Dominance (+75% Knight effectiveness) nearly doubles the effectiveness of your knights and then Kingsguard allows you to recruit +4. If you have 10 knights of Prowess 20 in an army, those 10 knights are essentially damage equivalent to 3750 levies. Especially in the early game, this is huge.
For commanders, I rarely find it worth spending too much time trying to min-max them, as it’s too much work for (IMO) fairly little gain. Most traits give your army +3 - +6 advantage, which means 6-12% extra damage. That can decide a close fight, but why would you even fight a battle at even odds? The Gods are on the side with the big battalions, and unless you do something stupid such as attack across a large river (+40% defender damage) or strait (+60% defender damage), you’ll win those battles were you bring the greater force.
Rule #1: Never fight fair. If you’re ever forced into an actual equal odds battle, you’re doing something wrong.
The only commander trait that really mattes is Military Engineer, which reduces siege time by 30% - you should always try to switch your sieging armies to a leader with that trait before starting a siege. A good modus operandi - especially in the early game - is to have one main army with your best commander, all of your knights, and enough soldiers to crush the main enemy force - and then split out siege detachments with military engineers to siege the enemy’s holdings.
Yes, thanks @strategy . Very helpful. After another restart as Munster (in Ireland) I went with the military focus since it was my earlier education (I think that what is says) and I had almost all of one of the perk lines already filled out.
I got pulled into a Defensive War on the continent (thru some marriage ties I think) and sent my army over. While it appeared that the main battles were going on a few territories south I stayed in the one I landed in and won a couple of battles and sieges over the lands of one of the enemy rulers. Even fought off some sort of counter attack. Eventually we won the war and my troops returned home. Not sure what I got out of it except stronger ties to the dudes I helped over in France.
My new wife is just popping kids out all over the place. Though at least one of them was when I was over in France so…
Still trying to understand who some of the popups are talking about and who controls/owns what lands. But it’s kind of coming together for me. Still, I’ll stick with smaller sized courts for now just to limit my confusion to a dozen characters rather than starting with a court that has 20 or so to deal with.
Well, I’ve dropped 25 hours into this since I grabbed it last week. I kind of thought I had a handle on things after my second game as the tutorial ruler. But when I started a game as a viking it was chaos. Too many new titles and things to learn, so I quickly gave that up and started as a small English ruler (a few counties is all).
Raiders. I didn’t see any in any of my playtime in Ireland, but those bastards poor out of Mercia. And when I tried another run with a small duchy (?) over in northern Europe those sumbitches were everywhere. I’m also letting myself get pulled into wars I probably shouldn’t. I got lucky a few times and finally had to just say no to my idiot son-in-law over in Scandinavia who kept pissing off his neighbors and begging me to join in his little wars. Declining to go to war yet again didn’t kill that particular House. Going kind of crazy did though. My ruler (gen 3 I think) started down a path of mental anguish and never could recover. A neighborly cousin took this as an opportunity to just crush me with the help of some Raiders who popped up at this inopportune time.
I’ve had all previous versions of CK but never gotten more than a few hours into any. Now, all I think about is jumping back into CK3 and creating my own dynastic story. So good. So very good.
