Well, murder was my choice. But then both my agents dropped out and my percentages were too risky. So I went to war and now he’s my vassal. I’d have rather eliminated him as he still owns an important seat, but I’m nearly back to where I was with the last king. Now my main goal is raising the gold needed to declare myself king.
My king is 41 and I need 400 in gold. That’s about 17 years of game time. Gonna be close!
The attempt is appreciated… :)
I forget, but are you Catholic? If so, you might have a Decision option to request funds from the Pope in exchange for some of your piety. That can be helpful, especially early on when you’re small.
Me with every paradox game ever:
I should probably just wait until they release edition X, before picking up and playing X-1.
Edit: To be fair to Paradox, there are a number of games in my library that are somewhat complex that I rarely get around to tackling and spending as much time with them as I’d like, or wished when i purchased it.
Good idea. But it’s not letting me do so at the moment. Apparently it will in 10 years? I couldn’t tell you why.
Meanwhile, I have bigger issues. My vassals are killing each other. Is that something I should care about? Why are they doing that?
I assume yes, because the one that one then had a large enough army to join forces with two other vassals and take me on. And kick my butt. I ended up in prison, but then I got released and I didn’t lose my titles. The half-brother I went to war with lost his duchy, but not me. Instead I owe favors to these jerks and they’ve installed themselves on my council for 10 years each. And they’re awful at their jobs, thereby limiting my spying ability and stewarding, etc. etc.
Basically, it’s a hot mess now and I have no real moves. But I’m in power. If there was a ‘give up and go farm’ option I would take it.
So I loaded this up again after many months. I have all the main DLC (possibly a mistake due to the next question I am about to ask); Is there any way to simplify the intro in some way? It’s a barrage of notifications. Decision paralysis is kicking in hard. I’m not sure what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
And now on to chapter two! What a story… :)
Hahaha! Welcome to the world of CK3!
There might be some requirements for asking the pope for money, maybe being a king-level leader or something.
In case it helps, another helpful way to make money early on is ransoming the prisoners you get in wars. And it often pays to ransom them before you end a war, as high-level leaders can be released as part of a settlement.
Organizing your vassals structurally is important to mitigate the likelihood that they’ll go around starting wars with each other, but there’s more to it than organization. Generally speaking, you also want to select vassals with consideration to personality traits, faith, culture, etc. Most of it kind of makes sense, like, putting two ambitious counts of a different faith and culture next to each other = bad idea. I found Italian Spartacus’ video on Vassals and Councils a worthy investment of time to help with this. It’s long but you’ll be a better king after watching it.
I think the only notifications I turn off are the available decisions eg feast, tournament, hunt, etc that you can only do every ‘x’ years.
Unless you’re particularly waiting for one of them to become available, there no harm in turning them off to reduce UI clutter.
Watched. And thank you! That was worthwhile. What I knew about vassals before that video wouldn’t have taken a minute of that video to explain.
I think I’m going to abandon the tutorial game and get a fresh start. It’s not that I won’t mess it all up again, it’s just that I’m not enjoying the family I created in this one. I was so negligent I don’t even know which way is up at this point.
I’m glad the video was helpful. I’ve found all his content quite good. Enjoy your new game!
I’m very much still learning the game as well, and working on learning how to shift from tribal to feudal systems. To focus that a bit, I’ve got a game going where I’m trying for the Brave & Bold achievement:
I’m a little over 50 years in, with my second ruler. We’ve taken Polania to Poland and now the empire of West-Slavia, which should keep the realm together on the death of our current ruler.
As part of going feudal, we have to reform a religion, and rather than adopt Catholicism, I’m trying to reform the Slovianskan religion. So the current goal is to take control of 3 Slovianskan Holy Sites. We’ve got 2 so far, but getting the 3rd has been delayed by the Pope launching a Crusade for Hungary, of which we currently own one county.
The pain-in-the-butt Crusade has gone on forever. We’re hopelessly outnumbered and losing badly, but I’ve been able to hold off defeat for about 5 years now by launching armies into Europe to lay siege to their home counties. We’ve been stuck at -65% to -80% on the war for the longest time. I’m pretty sure we’re going to lose, and the logical thing would be to just let it happen, but I’m curious to see how long I can hold off defeat. Will the Pope give up if we burn Cologne to the ground?
I disabled all the DLC and things are a lot more chilled. Maybe all I needed to do what you suggested and just clear the first batch of notifications and it would have eased off. But I couldn’t see much I was interested in in the DLC as a newish player.
I ended up sticking with my Munster game this weekend, due to the “just one more unpause” phenomenon. My ineffectual and powerless 2nd ruler died early-ish (55 years old) and out of the blue, so his son, Connall, has taken over. The usual chaos ensued, but this time I was a little more ready and had more money on-hand to defend against the 3 wars that were launched at me. Plus an alliance due to Connall’s marriage to a baroness and well, we’re still in power. In fact, I just claimed the Kingdom of Ireland and a whole new game mechanic opened up to me: the high court!
This new title is going to cause some trouble with the Kingdom of Alba, who, in recent years, took some counties in Ireland. But I left that for my next session (hopefully tonight).
Poor Connall is really shy and some of the things I’ve needed to do to survive have gone in direct conflict to his nature. So his stress levels are through the roof and his health is in question. I’m hoping he can hold on while his heir of 2 years old gets groomed for the throne.
Therefore, my goal with what’s left of Connall’s reign is to consolidate titles that need to be handed out and get the proper vassals in-place; dispose of one really pesky vassal who has a pressed claim on my county (and is always causing trouble); and groom the player heir-to-be. If I can pull it all off we could be in good shape for years to come.
Nice! I generally enjoy the stress mechanic. I mean, it’s still pretty easy to at the very least try to do what you want, but sometimes that stress can pile up and take you down quickly. It’s also fun to role play the characters, trying to make decisions according to their personality. That adds a whole web of increased difficulty.
I do think there is something to be said for sticking with the game and learning from it until it gets to a point where it’s largely hopeless. Just as things can go sideways fast, your fates can have a pretty strong turn for the better too.
I need help understanding a mechanic (or if I’m missing something). I have vassals that “own” counties spanning multiple duchies. That wasn’t a problem when I didn’t have the duchy titles created and I wasn’t a king, but now that they are and I am, I want to hand out titles, but this misalignment is an issue. Is there any way to fix this besides revoking titles? I’m assuming no, short of giving vassals multiple duchy titles, which I don’t want to do.
My Irish game has gone to pot again, btw. The one pesky vassal waited until I was pulled into a war with an Ally to start a faction and declare freedom. I had no army to fight back in time and I lost two duchies as a result.
It’s not necessarily a problem for a vassal to have holdings under multiple lieges unless a lord holds no county there directly. If a vassal holds the entire duchy, then they’ll want that title.
I presume you want to avoid the tyranny hit or war for revoking the counties. My CK playbook is very rusty, but here’s what springs to mind:
Give the duchy to a different claimant, preferably someone with a holding there.
Fabricate claims so you can revoke counties without tyranny.
Find a way to jail the vassal so you can revoke safely. Rebellion can be useful.
A dead vassal holds nothing, and inheritance could split up the holdings (you may need to force a law change).
IIRC, Ireland has lots of 2 county duchies, which makes this a frequent issue there.
Keeping some gold in the bank to hire mercenaries is often better than investing everything in developments, or you can send mercs to war and keep levies at home. Just be careful of how many of “your” levies really belong to potential rebels.
Helpful tips, thank you!!
My ruler - High King Connall - has really done well considering the spot he was put in, the rebellion that hit him early on, and the debt issues that ensued thereafter. He’s ended up
All in all, in spite of his shy & trusting traits that make stress a way of life, he has united the kingdom and set up his now 19 year old heir with an opportunity to expand power. He even has a nice statue in the throne room, befitting a king that turned the whole game around.
Next up: I have to prepare for the chaos that will happen when he dies. He’s 55 now and things aren’t ready for succession to go smoothly. I have one vassal who will clearly try to take power.
Yeah, Shy is one of the worst traits in the game. I used to give it to characters when I was creating them at the start of the game, but Shy characters are constantly gaining stress from events and interactions.
The “chapter III” / season pass thing has been announced today:
I must admit I was shocked, playing as a landless adventurer will be added to the game! I can remember way back at the CK2 release people were requesting this. With how much I enjoyed playing the first big expansion that added travel to ck3, I have faith in this team to pull it off. The byzantine content looks good too.
I jumped in and ordered it. So with the landless adventurer, do you know if you will be able to go from that to a count and then climb the ladder to emperor?
Because that would redefine the rags to riches experience. That’d be cool.
