Crusader Kings 3 - Its Crusader Kings 2 with a paint job

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Do not reform Rome. It is nothing more than a self-destruct sequence that gives you an impossible to overcome barrage of peasant revolts, Mongolian Hordes and diseases. The devs clearly intended for your empire to start imploding and eventually split the very instant you take the "am rome!" decision.

Every single year, a peasent revolt numbering (your max army count + 5000 extra levies) will spawn, evenly dispersed throughout a huge chunk of your empire. They are impossible to beat due to the sheer number of sieges they lay upon your realm, intercontinentally, perfectly organised, EVERY year.

My mistake, apparantly they can actually be beaten with like 30 minutes of micromanaging your rally points every fucking time but I think I'm done with this campaign. Lmao. Fuck CK3 Rome.

Glad SOMEONE also thinks reuniting Rome is nothing more than a meme to post on le plebbit. It's incredibly disappointing. Peasant revolts are nothing if you have competent commanders, can split your army up a lot and dumpster them, keeping them active until for next peasant revolt. The PLAGUES though, holy shit why. It's like PDX thought ahead of my example and made it so that everyone competent will most likely die in droves. It's supposed to stop but I believe it's still bugged since its inception. I am 100% positive this is PDX being pissy over Imperator flopping, which was their fault to begin with. So Rome being hell on earth as soon as you reform it for the rest of the game is their revenge. Then there was the part with cleaving the empire, and guess what? You get which side is the worst. I saw someone cleave the empire after they conquered the world, they got the Byzantium Empire's territory and an AI got the entire rest of the world, most likely trying to emulate the Western Roman Empire being fucked, but the coding is so dogshit that no matter what you will be fucked. This is definitely spite driven. I think I saw someone had their army defeated instantly despite having 20k troops vs 300+ peasant troops (at the end of the battle), the game just made their army go to 0 in a single day and forced their retreat.
There are mods I assume that fix this bullshit (besides Fallen Eagle), because there's a reason no one ever plays after reforming, no one talks about this shit either.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

There are mods I assume that fix this bullshit (besides Fallen Eagle), because there's a reason no one ever plays after reforming, no one talks about this shit either.

I've accomplished the same damn thing before with an administrative "generic pagan" empire stretching from Iceland to Persia, but because it wasn't the Roman Empire it eventually became very stable and prosperous. I had to abandon that too purely because it got so boring, then I figured that surely the Roman Empire would still have flavour content and interesting things happening after reaching such gargantuan size, so I'll try the Byzantines. You finally get all that land, you ready yourself for excessive glory and conquest as you proclaim yourself the R word, then they just kick your sand castle down and send you straight back to Greece, your neighbours now vastly more powerful because of all those roads and cities THAT I BUILT FOR THEM.

I heard it was much better in CK2.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

I've accomplished the same damn thing before with an administrative "generic pagan" empire stretching from Iceland to Persia, but because it wasn't the Roman Empire it eventually became very stable and prosperous. I had to abandon that too purely because it got so boring, then I figured that surely the Roman Empire would still have flavour content and interesting things happening after reaching such gargantuan size, so I'll try the Byzantines. You finally get all that land, you ready yourself for excessive glory and conquest as you proclaim yourself the R word, then they just kick your sand castle down and send you straight back to Greece, your neighbours now vastly more powerful because of all those roads and cities THAT I BUILT FOR THEM.

I heard it was much better in CK2.

Compared to CK3, if you know the mechanics well enough you can pretty painlessly reform the Roman Empire. No crazy plagues, riots, nice bonuses (IIRC), sick golden wreath, yeah CK2's is better, you feel like a God by the end of it rather than building up a house only for it to be set on fire. In fact CK2 is a lot more fun for me than CK3, I'd argue it's just better overall because of how much development time I got.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Khans of the Steppe released. It's interesting. I'm definitely playing it wrong. There's a land fertility and grazing mechanic now for Nomadic realms, forcing you to migrate often to greener pastures. A new resource called "herd", which essentially represents the total man and horse power of your horde (realm). You can use it to replenish your men-at-arms or as currency when dealing with other Nomadic rulers. Your dominance over your vassals and tributaries is affected by herd size also and many of the significant decisions you will be working towards require certain amounts of herd. I think becoming Greatest of Khans required 10,000 herd?

I'm still getting used to it, I need to rewire my brain so as to stop making the association of "bigger blob = more power" . It seems to be way more about location and herd size for Nomadic governments.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Got addicted to this shit some time ago, decidede to buy a bunch of DLCs in bulk on the recently sale and because piracy is a sin and now the game's performance is abysmal.

Stuttering all the time, going to zero FPS constantly, it's unplayable. WTF is this shit, is that normal? And don't say anything about my CPU because the game stops to a halt even when it's paused (ryzen 7700x btw).

I can't even describe how depressed I'm right now. FUCK YOU GAME.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

because piracy is a sin

...you're just too lazy aren't you?

Stuttering all the time, going to zero FPS constantly, it's unplayable.

Happened to me a few times, try deleting everything (mostly the saves folder, I hear that can cause chugging) in the CK3 folder in Documents\Paradox Interactive.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Khans of the Steppe released. It's interesting. I'm definitely playing it wrong. There's a land fertility and grazing mechanic now for Nomadic realms, forcing you to migrate often to greener pastures. A new resource called "herd", which essentially represents the total man and horse power of your horde (realm). You can use it to replenish your men-at-arms or as currency when dealing with other Nomadic rulers. Your dominance over your vassals and tributaries is affected by herd size also and many of the significant decisions you will be working towards require certain amounts of herd. I think becoming Greatest of Khans required 10,000 herd?

I'm still getting used to it, I need to rewire my brain so as to stop making the association of "bigger blob = more power" . It seems to be way more about location and herd size for Nomadic governments.

As a followup, the nomad meta I think is to build your herd as large as possible, migrate to wherever the best season and fertility is and do your best to DOMINATE your fellow nomads along the way. When you migrate to new land, you either have to appease the other nomads in that area by giving them herd/gold/favours upon moving there so they will alllow you to do so peacefully, or you can insist on migrating anyway against their wishes and start a migration war. It's obviously best to do so by force and start a war if you're playing Temujin, but the option to play a more diplomatic nomad is there.

It's quite fun, the game naturally nudges you to go south west in to the warmer climates at first, DOMINATING the smaller nomads as you work your way toward the Cumans and Kipchaks occupying the Western Steppe region, which from what I've seen will always start with the "Endless Summer" seasonal modifier (for the Temujin start date at least). This gives insanse buffs to the fertility of that region and thus the herd growth, income and military numbers of all nomads residing there. You want to get to the region where the best season is first, then to where the best fertility is within that region, amassing herd all the while. The other powerful nomads will be doing the same thing however and you will have to contend with them eventually if you go this route.

Whenever you migrate to a new area, immediately look to see which neighbours you can declare war upon with the Bring Under Tributary CB. There will often be many weak neighbours you can force to become your tributaries with minimal effort. They will then tithe herd to you as a tributary until you migrate away or a stronger nomad siezes them from you. Each tributary is effectively a temporary boost to your herd income. The CB to establish tributaries is really cheap also, 75 prestige usually.

Also, just like tribals, raid whenever your army is idle and your gold is low.

If you have the event for the Conquerer trait enabled, don't accept it.... it completely ruins the progression, immediately creates and gives you the Mongolian Empire title, enough troops to take all of Asia and renders all of the new mechanics pointless. I think they didn't consider it when designing this update. You might as well just enable God mode.

EDIT: We now have cataphract archers. Both of the most badass horse units in the game had a baby. They're recruitable by cultures with the "Iron Cavalry" tradition, which the Cumans have by default and a couple of other nomads. The Mongols do not, but they can adopt tradition if they have a certain armoury building in their camp.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Happened to me a few times, try deleting everything (mostly the saves folder, I hear that can cause chugging) in the CK3 folder in Documents\Paradox Interactive.

The stuttering is happening with only one file. I'll probably nuke just this one.

The rest is alright.

I was reading about this problem and some people pointed out that when their character died the game went back to normal. My emperor is 74 yo, so I guess I just need to run at 5 speed for a few seconds and see...

 

[Waifu Denier]

Got addicted to this shit some time ago, decidede to buy a bunch of DLCs in bulk on the recently sale and because piracy is a sin and now the game's performance is abysmal.

Stuttering all the time, going to zero FPS constantly, it's unplayable. WTF is this shit, is that normal? And don't say anything about my CPU because the game stops to a halt even when it's paused (ryzen 7700x btw).

I can't even describe how depressed I'm right now. FUCK YOU GAME.

Don't worry, you will start to see some real FPS drops once they add in China. I still miss the CK2 Black Death speed boost which would actually cull like 30% of total NPCs and lop off entire family tree branches.

 

[WarrenZHarding]

In fact CK2 is a lot more fun for me than CK3, I'd argue it's just better overall because of how much development time I got.

Ck2 shits all over CK3. I need 130 mods just to make CK3 playable and even then I ususally quit after a few hours. I play out my vanilla CK2 games to the bitter end bc there always feels like theres something to strive for or some character actively trying to fuck me over. The fundamentals of that game are just so much more engaging. CK3 just hides its lack of mechanics behinds walls of event text.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

CK3 just hides its lack of mechanics behinds walls of event text.

See now this right here is why CK3 feels so lacking. CK3 is far more like an RPG than a grand strategy game, which sadly makes a lot of people like it enough for it to probably stay in that direction. It's too streamlined, flavorless (or too much of the wrong flavor), and has no challenge. People go "well of course there's no challenge, you're playing *insert basic playstyle here*" and fail to realize that's it's not the playstyle, that's just the game.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

Am I the only one ITT who likes the damn game? In it's defence I also felt CK2 got samey and boring fast before I got the DLC, and I hadn't even touched CK3 yet at that point. The difference between vanilla and all-DLC CK2 is night and day. Having said that, I have a hunch that you guys are comparing all-DLC CK2 with no-DLC CK3, the way it would have been right after release before you lost interest because, being vanilla, it was samey and boring. It's becoming closer to CK2 in terms of variety and freedom with each new update.

I will concede on the difficulty point, CK3 is very easy if you try. The fun is in the role-playing and self challenges IMO. You don't have to reform your faith and culture in to a race of ultra-powerful Ubermensch and create an empire every time.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

If you have the event for the Conquerer trait enabled, don't accept it.... it completely ruins the progression, immediately creates and gives you the Mongolian Empire title, enough troops to take all of Asia and renders all of the new mechanics pointless. I think they didn't consider it when designing this update. You might as well just enable God mode.

Damn, all that cool shit only to be immediately ruined because PDX is afraid to make thing too difficult.

Am I the only one ITT who likes the damn game?

I like it as its own game, but not as a successor. I still play it often but only when taking the game as its face value rather than as a sequel, or else I'll just end up booting up CK2. They both have their perks that makes them worth playing but playing one and expecting the other to be similar will only result in a headache.

I have a hunch that you guys are comparing all-DLC CK2 with no-DLC CK3

Mostly comparing all of CK2 and all of current CK3 (have not tried the Steppes obviously), but even base CK2 I find more enjoyable than base CK3. Though that's just my opinion, they're pretty different games at this point.

You don't have to reform your faith and culture in to a race of ultra-powerful Ubermensch and create an empire every time.

Amen, was landless for centuries in my longest playthrough as God's strongest Coptics. Ended it off by taking Jerusalem and purging the unfaithful from the land.

 

[WarrenZHarding]

Am I the only one ITT who likes the damn game?

I dont hate CK3. I just find it disappointing as a sequel to CK2. For clarity, I have all the dlc for both CK2 and CK3, so when I say "vanilla" I mean "unmodded."

My reasons for preferring CK2 stem mostly from the feel that CK2 was a strategy game that had RPG elements while CK3 seems to insist on being an RPG with strategy elements. There isnt anything wrong with that design in a vacuum, but its very disappointing to me as someone who loved the grind of CK2. You had to really think hard about how to handle each problem, who to cozy up to, who not to piss off, and you only had a finite amount of time and resources to set your plans into motion. And, critically, it felt like AI players were actually playing against you. Many times small realms I was sharpening my swords for would suddenly ally into a powerful neighbor, throwing my plans into shambles and changing the game from conquest to subterfuge as I tried to undermine the new alliance. Its brilliant.

CK 3...well, we all can agree its far too easy. Even difficulty mods dont help too much. The dozen healthy kids you get and the game breaking mana bars (legitimacy...great idea...terrible execution) make it so if your player survives ten years they'll never fear serious internal division until succession... and then you can disinherit heirs for a pittance. You also dont worry about friendly characters fucking you over or changing their personality the way they could in CK2.

All that said, there are some good ideas in there, and Id be lying if I said I dont fire up a game every month or so...but Ive never been compelled to play one beyond one or two characrers because the struggle is gone. I dont want to be told I HAVE to rp to have fun in the game, and that feels like the design philosophy, and it frustrates me.

Still, I have a retard's hope. Some of the recent dlc's have been solid...although I have to qualify that by saying Roads to Power and Khans of the Steppe either added back features we already had in 2 or aped ideas from mods (landless gameplay). Still, the herd mechanic for nomads is actually cool and interesting the way it effects how many troops you get. Id hope for more stuff like that in the future, but pdx is more concerned with those chinkbux this season. Cant wait to see how bad they fuck performance seeing as how buggy Khans has been on launch. But hey...maybe next year we finally get the European content that actually makes western feudal feel distinct and interesting. Anyway, rant aside, I WANT to like CK3, and I even have stretches where I do enjoy it, but it will probably never replace CK2 for me the way EU4 made me move on from 3 eventually.

 

[latinlover]

To its credit, Khans has been the first time I've gotten even remotely close to being challenged, as a smaller nomadic ruler you will absolutely get bullied by neighbouring, marginally stronger nomads.

Once you grow somewhat bigger though, it becomes a retarded 'XY pledges tribute to you' spam in which you'll literally paint the entire map in like 20 years if you just keep accepting more and more tributaries. It really does not make sense that I have my domain in the northeastern corner of the map with like 1-2 vassals nearby and the king of Ireland is just begging to give me money. This is by far the most broken government type, way more so than administrative was.

I think one positive aspect of the DLC is if you're playing non-nomadic you'll actually get some stronger nations on the map for once, but boy is it hard to go back to the barebones feudal (or god forbid tribal) system once you try all the new fancy ones with a million mechanics tied to them.

 

[Waifu Denier]

CK 3...well, we all can agree it’s far too easy. Even difficulty mods dont help too much. The dozen healthy kids you get and the game breaking mana bars (legitimacy...great idea...terrible execution) make it so if your player survives ten years they'll never fear serious internal division until succession... and then you can disinherit heirs for a pittance. You also dont worry about friendly characters fucking you over or changing their personality the way they could in CK2.

They also kept power creeping various mechanics which reached an apex with Roads to Power. I mean I like landless gameplay and also the idea of continuing when losing your last title, but adventurer gameplay is like the purest distilled essence of CK3 being Sims Medieval instead of its grand strategy lineage. Freely choosing your heir, no real danger from mutiny, extremely easy stat gains like in an RPG, accumulating god like stats for your army via camp upgrades, you pretty much downgrade whenever you conquer and become a landed ruler.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

in which you'll literally paint the entire map in like 20 years if you just keep accepting more and more tributaries.

Semi-related:

 

[WarrenZHarding]

You know what? I take back all I said about CK3. At least they didnt turn the Mongols into niggers.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

You know what? I take back all I said about CK3. At least they didnt turn the Mongols into niggers.

Even when the Mongols were Mongoling they were far more appealing than the average nignog. Find me an African warlord who did even 1% of "Chinggy diggy" did, find me a nigger who dropped sick ass quotes like "There, where I have passed, the grass will never grow again" like Atilla (yeah I know Huns and Mongols are different). Tell you what, the one thing the clickers and street apes outdid Atilla in was being scourges of God.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Some nonsense going on with the Legacy of Valyria mod, one of the devs left and-like clockwork-asked for their contributions to be removed. Modders and ego.