Pretty much. It depends on what you wish to do with that specific ruler, of course, but unless you’re trying to make the game harder for yourself (i.e., pure roleplaying) there are some skills which you really should be getting on every single ruler.
CK3 has always been rather anachronistic, but the “Regents” thing they introduced in the latest DLC for when the King is travelling is one of the more ahistorical things they’ve done. A medieval monarchs court consisted of his household and councillors. It was not a place - it was the people centered around the monarch. If the King/Queen moved, so did the court.
In fact, moving the Monarch around was often an essential part of ruling the Kingdom. The ruler went to the different parts of the Kingdom to remind everyone who is King/Queen and to dispense justice - i.e., to hold court. It’s why we call it that. Not to mention it was often the only way to “collect” taxes. Keep in mind that much taxation was in kind; i.e., produce. Depending on location, such taxes could not just be converted to coins; the actual economies of the middle ages did not work that way. What you could do was “eat it”. Move to an estate - eat up the surplus produce there, before moving to the next one, etc. Visiting the estates of vassals often had the same purpose. You didn’t send taxes to the King. The King came to the taxes.
The idea of the court being a place doesn’t happen until the late middle ages (and in some cases not until the 16th century or so).
I do like their making the activities/events more intent based. It’s one of the weaknesses of the CK series, IMO - most of the time, it’s about things (sometimes interesting, but often not) happening to you. Having more of a focus on the character’s intentions is a step in the right direction.
That makes sense, thanks. I can see elements of that even with the limited amount of time I’ve spent poking around in the skill trees. I’m mainly fine with things like that, as the more I play CK3 the more I enjoy playing sub-optimally, really leaning into the RPG elements of leadership. More chaos, more fun. :)
This is the way. The problem with CK3 at launch was that roleplaying was limited so that players (at least me) tended to minmax which is fun for 100 hours but then gets old.
Now it seems much better to me, alot of variety and fun to be had. Set up some goal for yourself and make decisions based on your current characters personality traits (much less fun to play what you think is the optimal way over and over and struggle against your character).
Hmm.
I played for a while at launch (looks like over 200 hours) but moved on to something shiny. It felt like I was spending most of my play time arranging marriages for random people in my court. It sounds like the game has improved a bit since then. I tried it again a few months ago, and remember not liking the holding court system - I had no idea what any of the choices meant or did. But maybe I’d like to jump back in and try it out again. Who does the best YouTube’s these days that will help me understand the new features?
Ike
Don’t know why, but I decided to play this again. Went through re-familiarising with Ireland before deciding on something new, but still in the realms of comfort (Christian Feudal lord). Tempted as I was by Wessex in 867 start and chucking the Vikings out, I’d done that in CK2 and had some loving memories of a few characters who ‘suprised’ me. One was a Petty Queen who read the riot act to Mercia and made them play nice. The other was a disfigured character who just didn’t die and brought years of stability to what was the early British kingdom, and expansion into Wales.
So this time instead, I chose Rhodri ‘The Great’ in Wales. He starts with amazing stats, but of concern is the 8 children, 6 of which are male and up for a slice of the Welsh pie when he dies. So that succession is my immediate concern. I don’t accrue enough piety to make a son into a monk. Nor do I want to burn dynasty points to disinherit. I knew in prior, failed starts that the eldest would oftentimes try and murder his siblings, so I was leaning on that. And also for Rhodri to stay alive as long as possible and pounce on opportunities to expand his demense.
From the start, I looked for an unmarried Welsh courtier, married him matrilinearly to my eldest daughter then granted him a piece of land that was de jure part of Mercia. I then grabbed the claim to the southern Wales duchy and made them mine. My hope was to rile them up into a revolt and start handing out titles to sons instead. But in hindsight, I expect that idea would be awful with respect to the general power of my next player character. I did have enough land to form the Wales kingdom title, but the 500 gold was a long way off. But overall, succession looked ‘ok.’
In 877, the third eldest son was murdered. Ok, a little more land for everyone, but not perfect. But then the murderer (my eldest) was then seemingly murdered a year later by someone else. I don’t know who. That was a little bit of a concern though - I had bet on the eldest to be the one I’d be playing, and he was rightly groomed for the role. The second eldest, Merfyn, would be the key title holder, and boy does Merfyn have a lot to write about. In 878, Wales as a kingdom was also formed, and in 880, Rhodri finally died from cancer at the age of 60.
Next up is Merfyn. Not amazing stats, wife is pretty bleh. She was a Welsh lowborn, so that’s why I chose her for my second born. When succession happened, I lost a bit of land to the remaining brothers of Merfyn. One got the duchy and lower titles of a 2 province duchy. The others got other dregs of land, but I was still the strongest overall. I picked a few alliances within my small realm and got to work stirring the unrest pot. Build up some gold and then revoke a title to result in half the kingdom rebelling. I squashed that rebellion, chucked a bunch of rebels into jail and revoked their lands. Control was secured and the kingdom felt good again.
But this is where Merfyn started to surprise me. I know when I sent him to unversity, his learning stat reached 50. I’ve never seen a single attribute that high before. And that was from a base of 9 and no intellectual trait. Just a mix of so many other traits saw it rise to stupid levels. Learning languages in the end was a quick, 24 month, 95% success rate activity. He would deal with stress with journalling or exercise, both positive events I can choose when managing stress. He remained in good health until very late in life, and eventually died at 85 of old age. He just became this wise old man who I could play nicely with. No murder plots, just a casual opportunity to stir to pot for the good of the realm and start moving Wales into a direction I like.
What is that direction though? Well, I put a halt to the game when that succession happened. Things are feeling strong in the kingdom of Wales. A lot of buildings had gone up thanks to frequent requests to the Pope for money (lots of piety due to high learning skill). That gave me more money, and that in turn meant funding a decent standing army. It probably can’t deal with England yet (move levies), but might do ok against Scotland, so I’m setting my sights on nibbling away up North. Ireland is out - nearly all tribal holdings still which is stupid expensive to convert right now. I have two sons and a daughter, so setting up alliances again is a must, as is seeking out claimants and hoping for some land disputes.
Fun stuff. I do like how much more CK3 feels transparent about what is happening. And I mean beyond the tooltips. Murder plots for instance give me an idea of actual progression rather than a “surprise, it’s murder time” dialogue. But what I do miss is “My Opinion of xx.” I understand I should be able to form my own opinion of how much I should like/dislike a character. But the game doesn’t give me numbers to help me decide that. Similarly, I don’t know what a vassal’s opinion is of their liege? Nor do I get a clear overview of the power balance within a realm. I shouldn’t be playing this game with exams looming so close, but here I am.
I tried to get back into CK3 last weekend, but the initial spam of choices in the few hour or so of playing is just too much. Previously, I’d made it past that a few times and really enjoyed the game (even if I was still scratching only the top 20% of its depth). But even just clicking thru many of them with little regard for what the choice does it’s a daunting task that I haven’t broken thru in my last few attempts at getting back into this.
Yeah, there is a lot. And even after writing my post and looking at a few things, I finally found vassal opinion of liege.
When getting back into the game, my advise is to just focus on “you.” From the start, choose an ambition, get your council in order and choose a partner and let time flow. And just set a small goal for your first generation. It might be as simple as fabricate a single claim on an adjoining county. Or if a duke, to pull revoke a title before you die. When it comes to kids, send them off to other people to be their guardian. It means you don’t have to deal with the stress (both in game and real life) of working out what trait they should have.
That is totally how I got into this last year when I was playing it fairly regularly. I got a couple of generations in a few times. Now if I can shake off this stupid shingles vax maybe I’ll charge thru the beginning and get somewhere.
I love the title of this thread lol.
Don’t neglect your court physician. He might rememdy you with some leeches. (Hope you have a speedy recovery).
Hey, I’ve not jumped into the game yet, but I saw this mod:
Has anyone tried it?
I haven’t but have heard good things from other people.
Despite playing morrowind, oblivion, and skyrim to death back in the day I must admit I know very very little about elder scrolls lore, too little to get much value out of a mod like this.
I haven’t, but One Proud Bavarian did a playthrough a few months back that made me want to try it some day.
I picked this up on PS5 as part of a Black Friday sale because apparently cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t enough of a time sync for me.
It’s a bit clumsy and a lot to absorb, but damn if it isn’t the perfect counter programming for an RPG shooter.
Is the idea with the Irish tutorial to just try everything straight away and then start over with a real play through?
Even a single Ireland tutorial won’t teach you all you need to know I think. You’ll get the basics, but an Irish kingdom is a relatively easy kingdom to maintain. Moving up to Emperor tier, or running a kingdom with different cultures and power-hungry vassals is a challenge that won’t be seen in Ireland, unless you start moving over to integrating the rest of England/Wales/Scotland into your primary title through war or inheritance. I was still learning new stuff as I tried to replicate my Frisian coastal empire I had originally done in CK2 within the world of CK3.
Well, I continued on with my Irish Tutorial campaign (the Petty King of Munster). And I made all sorts of blunders trying things out, though I thought I was getting it together when I captured Dublin. But it automatically went to one of my vassals that I didn’t have a good relationship with (it was his claim that got me to go to war I think?). So then I revoked the title from him and took it myself. Pissing everyone off. No big deal, my King is old and I just need to get this bit sorted before he dies.
So I decided to make a Duchy, spent a lot of money on things that put me slightly in debt, and didn’t have the funds to make a claim for the Kingdom of Ireland (I was about 450 short). And then he died. And that’s when I realized how the succession laws and I think my mistake of making the Duchy. My 2nd born took it, leaving my heir (and now my current King) with the rest of Munster…but his younger, evil brother controlling the Duchy of Meath.
Ugh. Lesson learned (if I have it right; not 100% sure). So now I have a dilemma: I can either declare war on him immediately, which I’ll likely win. We have a much larger force. Or, because he’s only 17 and just married, I can have him murdered and save everyone the war (I’m the current and only heir). The murder has a 75% chance of success and will take 14 months. What’s the smarter strategy here? How important is it to have family as a vassal (versus murdering him and having to (eventually) grant the title to someone else?
If the war makes him unlanded, you should wage it as soon as possible, from a power-grabbing standpoint. If it just take the duchy title but leaves him with the counties (and therefore the majority of the actual “power”), it’s a little riskier, because he’ll then be a difficult vassal who you might have to fight a second war with to bring to heel - or have to deal with via intrigue.
The first two centuries are always interesting because of confederate partition; the first successful ruler dies and his lands get split amongst his sons, inevitably leading to conflict between them. This cycle lasts until primogeniture gets adopted, or somebody forms a single kingdom to be passed down from father to son.
Whatever makes sense for the CK3 story you’re writing in your head. Which, in my case, is “always murder”. :)
This a very good synopsis. It’s as if waiting for the game to mature before playing has resulted in an overload of game mechanics I’m forced into learning within 10 minutes. I get the fatigue of eventually clicking notifications just to make them go away. The equivalent of not reading the terms and conditions. After that I’m committed to not really knowing what I’m doing and losing interest. It’s a pity, I remember playing the game back before any expansions and it was 8 hours before I dragged myself away. It was amazing. It seems there is a continuing pressure to add more features and mechanics to maintain the existing gamerbase at the expense of unnecessary complexity.