Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

So far I'm liking the ideas. Hostages are indeed an element that has been missing out, and will make hostage-taking more important than it is now - where its either a source of gold or dread from executions, most of the time. Universities and continuining education as an adult also make sense, through it seems like it should also have an option for continuing education via Court Tutor instead of University.

 

[Axioms]

As always Paradox has fine abstract ideas on what to add but their concrete mechanicsa are very mid as the youth say.

 

[None]

I'd argue they don't abstract enough of their ideas, as in not bothering to implement and define them. Why exactly did players need the ability to select a court wet-nurse? It feels like a distraction and reminds me of HOI4's recent designer obsession, focusing in too much on very minor things that didn't need their own mechanics. Still waiting for playable republics or theocracies.

Really reminds me of HOI4's designer obsession. You maneuver division size units around a province-level map, manage an abstracted industry, but oh also you need to pick how many machine guns each individual tank model is going to use. There is a totally inconsistent level of abstraction and I'm sure CK3 has the same issue but in its own way.

 

[Axioms]

I'd argue they don't abstract enough of their ideas, as in not bothering to implement and define them. Why exactly did players need the ability to select a court wet-nurse? It feels like a distraction and reminds me of HOI4's recent designer obsession, focusing in too much on very minor things that didn't need their own mechanics. Still waiting for playable republics or theocracies.

Really reminds me of HOI4's designer obsession. You maneuver division size units around a province-level map, manage an abstracted industry, but oh also you need to pick how many machine guns each individual tank model is going to use. There is a totally inconsistent level of abstraction and I'm sure CK3 has the same issue but in its own way.

The problem is that CK3 doesn't even have an actual social simulation so the wet nurse is flavorful or w/e but it doesn't really do anything mechanically.

 

[None]

I'd argue they don't abstract enough of their ideas, as in not bothering to implement and define them. Why exactly did players need the ability to select a court wet-nurse? It feels like a distraction and reminds me of HOI4's recent designer obsession, focusing in too much on very minor things that didn't need their own mechanics. Still waiting for playable republics or theocracies.

Really reminds me of HOI4's designer obsession. You maneuver division size units around a province-level map, manage an abstracted industry, but oh also you need to pick how many machine guns each individual tank model is going to use. There is a totally inconsistent level of abstraction and I'm sure CK3 has the same issue but in its own way.

The problem is that CK3 doesn't even have an actual social simulation so the wet nurse is flavorful or w/e but it doesn't really do anything mechanically.

Yeah, that is exactly what I'm talking about. The design focus is all over the place. All relationships get abstracted into a flat modifier like opinion, but other areas are needlessly fleshed out and detailed in comparison. Either go full Crusader Sims 3 or leave it be and let me paint maps.

 

[Axioms]

I'd argue they don't abstract enough of their ideas, as in not bothering to implement and define them. Why exactly did players need the ability to select a court wet-nurse? It feels like a distraction and reminds me of HOI4's recent designer obsession, focusing in too much on very minor things that didn't need their own mechanics. Still waiting for playable republics or theocracies.

Really reminds me of HOI4's designer obsession. You maneuver division size units around a province-level map, manage an abstracted industry, but oh also you need to pick how many machine guns each individual tank model is going to use. There is a totally inconsistent level of abstraction and I'm sure CK3 has the same issue but in its own way.

The problem is that CK3 doesn't even have an actual social simulation so the wet nurse is flavorful or w/e but it doesn't really do anything mechanically.

Yeah, that is exactly what I'm talking about. The design focus is all over the place. All relationships get abstracted into a flat modifier like opinion, but other areas are needlessly fleshed out and detailed in comparison. Either go full Crusader Sims 3 or leave it be and let me paint maps.

The whole concept of the game is broken because the characters don't have real relationships, and more importantly the institutions and character aggregates like familys and religion and "realms" don't have real relationships. Generations of loyal bannerman/vassals? Nope. Long running feuds that stem from actual gameplay and not stupid events and rng? Not in Paradox's medieval period.

 

[AdamReith]

Do people really play this game and celebrate when they get random meaningless modifier on a meaningless statistic on some meaningless character?

I think CK2 was at its best when it was all about dynasty management and trying to keep a chaotic kingdom together in the face of escalating entropy fueled by the fundamental principal that an heir strong enough to replace you is strong enough to depose you. (And you need as many as possible due to random dark age mortality)

Just my take anyway, it would have been good to build around that dynamic instead of branching out for random bollocks a ruler wouldn't have time to even think about.

 

[darkpatriot]

I have been enjoying the new DLC, although I think they need to tone down the rewards you are able to get. You are swimming in artifacts from tournament rewards, and the taxation grand tour is ridiculously broken. Many of the other events you can do are also generous with the rewards they offer.

But it is still fairly buggy. Legendary hunts are still broken. So I think I will stop my play through and wait for a few more patches.

But that isn't really what I came here to post about. I had a question. I like to add limitations to my playthroughs to make them more challenging, and one I often use is that I have to remain a vassal. That helps limit the power I personally have (especially before I can engineer my liege becoming an emporer) and gives me more content to interact with as a member of someone else's court/council. And being plunged into wars you didn't start or aren't ready for when you have a weak liege that is being picked on by enemies (internal and external) is also a fun challenge to have at times.


But one thing I have noticed is that I don't seem to ever be a knight of my liege (never get any battle events related to being a knight) or get any of the commander improved events for myself that trigger when you set your marshal to train commanders.

Does the AI just never have their marshal train commanders or are PC controlled characters excluded from these events?

And I guess I'd be curious if anyone else had any conditions/limitations they put on their play to make the game funner or more challenging. I am always looking for additional ways to make the gameplay experience different/more challenging/more entertaining.

 

[Axioms]

Do people really play this game and celebrate when they get random meaningless modifier on a meaningless statistic on some meaningless character?

I think CK2 was at its best when it was all about dynasty management and trying to keep a chaotic kingdom together in the face of escalating entropy fueled by the fundamental principal that an heir strong enough to replace you is strong enough to depose you. (And you need as many as possible due to random dark age mortality)

Just my take anyway, it would have been good to build around that dynamic instead of branching out for random bollocks a ruler wouldn't have time to even think about.

CK3 is powered by memer streamers and Sims: Medieval refugees plus Sims 4 players coming along from that community.

People who want to play a simulation are not the target audience. That's the same reason the broken OP new features in every DLC aren't balanced for months to years. The audience loves to read a guide and then build their super Ethiopia or global Roman Empire even though their technology and culture can't support a Roman empire of that size realistically.

Also memes and map painting are far more suited to the real time, well actually insanely accelerated time, model. You'd need to design the game so that an in game year took at least 10x as long, not counting pauses, as it currently does on speed one, before you got anywhere near slow enough to allow fascimiles of actual historical situations to play out. That's a lot of work. How do you feel about a catapult event for $20?

 

[Axioms]

I have been enjoying the new DLC, although I think they need to tone down the rewards you are able to get. You are swimming in artifacts from tournament rewards, and the taxation grand tour is ridiculously broken. Many of the other events you can do are also generous with the rewards they offer.

But it is still fairly buggy. Legendary hunts are still broken. So I think I will stop my play through and wait for a few more patches.

But that isn't really what I came here to post about. I had a question. I like to add limitations to my playthroughs to make them more challenging, and one I often use is that I have to remain a vassal. That helps limit the power I personally have (especially before I can engineer my liege becoming an emporer) and gives me more content to interact with as a member of someone else's court/council. And being plunged into wars you didn't start or aren't ready for when you have a weak liege that is being picked on by enemies (internal and external) is also a fun challenge to have at times.


But one thing I have noticed is that I don't seem to ever be a knight of my liege (never get any battle events related to being a knight) or get any of the commander improved events for myself that trigger when you set your marshal to train commanders.

Does the AI just never have their marshal train commanders or are PC controlled characters excluded from these events?

And I guess I'd be curious if anyone else had any conditions/limitations they put on their play to make the game funner or more challenging. I am always looking for additional ways to make the gameplay experience different/more challenging/more entertaining.

I think all landed vassals can't be knights, not just player characters.

 

[darkpatriot]

I have been enjoying the new DLC, although I think they need to tone down the rewards you are able to get. You are swimming in artifacts from tournament rewards, and the taxation grand tour is ridiculously broken. Many of the other events you can do are also generous with the rewards they offer.

But it is still fairly buggy. Legendary hunts are still broken. So I think I will stop my play through and wait for a few more patches.

But that isn't really what I came here to post about. I had a question. I like to add limitations to my playthroughs to make them more challenging, and one I often use is that I have to remain a vassal. That helps limit the power I personally have (especially before I can engineer my liege becoming an emporer) and gives me more content to interact with as a member of someone else's court/council. And being plunged into wars you didn't start or aren't ready for when you have a weak liege that is being picked on by enemies (internal and external) is also a fun challenge to have at times.


But one thing I have noticed is that I don't seem to ever be a knight of my liege (never get any battle events related to being a knight) or get any of the commander improved events for myself that trigger when you set your marshal to train commanders.

Does the AI just never have their marshal train commanders or are PC controlled characters excluded from these events?

And I guess I'd be curious if anyone else had any conditions/limitations they put on their play to make the game funner or more challenging. I am always looking for additional ways to make the gameplay experience different/more challenging/more entertaining.

I think all landed vassals can't be knights, not just player characters.

That's definitely not true. My very best knights and commanders are usually my landed vassals (since they have artifacts, have events that provide bonuses fire more often, and are usually from my genetically gifted dynasty), and they do get the commander improved events. Unless you meant that AIs don't use landed vassals as knights even though players can.

Edit: Actually, I am sure the AI uses landed vassals as knights too. Because I capture them after battle all the time.

 

[Axioms]

I have been enjoying the new DLC, although I think they need to tone down the rewards you are able to get. You are swimming in artifacts from tournament rewards, and the taxation grand tour is ridiculously broken. Many of the other events you can do are also generous with the rewards they offer.

But it is still fairly buggy. Legendary hunts are still broken. So I think I will stop my play through and wait for a few more patches.

But that isn't really what I came here to post about. I had a question. I like to add limitations to my playthroughs to make them more challenging, and one I often use is that I have to remain a vassal. That helps limit the power I personally have (especially before I can engineer my liege becoming an emporer) and gives me more content to interact with as a member of someone else's court/council. And being plunged into wars you didn't start or aren't ready for when you have a weak liege that is being picked on by enemies (internal and external) is also a fun challenge to have at times.


But one thing I have noticed is that I don't seem to ever be a knight of my liege (never get any battle events related to being a knight) or get any of the commander improved events for myself that trigger when you set your marshal to train commanders.

Does the AI just never have their marshal train commanders or are PC controlled characters excluded from these events?

And I guess I'd be curious if anyone else had any conditions/limitations they put on their play to make the game funner or more challenging. I am always looking for additional ways to make the gameplay experience different/more challenging/more entertaining.

I think all landed vassals can't be knights, not just player characters.

That's definitely not true. My very best knights and commanders are usually my landed vassals (since they have artifacts, have evens that provide bonuses fire more often, and are usually from my genetically gifted dynasty), and they do get the commander improved events. Unless you meant that AIs don't use landed vassals as knights even though players can.

Edit: Actually, I am sure the AI uses landed vassals as knights too. Because I capture them after battle all the time.

Sorry, I misremembered the restriction. Players can't be knights, I think because it is too risky and takes away too much agency or some dumb shit like that.

There's a mod to let you be a knight:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2861161429

 

[Kjaska]

What I really hate about the travel mechanic is that when I do a Grand Wedding of my daughter, who is at my court, she will travel on her own and slow as fuck, making me wait an extra year on her fat ass

 

[Axioms]

CK3 just has really shit character inter-relation mechanics. Another is example is how you can't do anything to pro-actively request that voters in elective succession *not* vote for you. And you also can't ask them *to* vote for you really. Like there's just general opinion and basically nothing else. You can't propose deals outside of raising opinion or having a "hook".

Relatedly Hooks are the mechanic I love most about CK3 because I was scared when they copied the "Secrets" system from Axioms but they made it halfway shit thank god. Bless Paradox and their dumbasses.

 

[Axioms]

The new dev diary about wet nurses and the associated Reddit thread really shows how bland and blank the canvas of roleplay and social interaction in CK3 is. There's so much cool stuff that would be possible if the characters actually regularly interacted and had "character/inner lives" to interact with. Instead it is some bland BS.

 

[Humanophage]

Paradox simps just don't have many options for comparable games, so I do feel bad for them, especially since their behavior as far as "brand loyalty" makes it less likely that any competitor games would be made.

At least T&T was half-decent, compared to their other shit DLC.

Yeah, Grand Strategy is cool, but there just aren't as many games coming out as there could be.

I think one of the best released recently was Field of Glory: Empires. I'm hoping Kingdoms is even better, I think it has immense potential.

Empires had a good building system and even the simpler in game battle resolve was half decent, and of course turn based games are superior, but Empires did feel a bit lacklustre. It is very much a war game, which the main unique feature of "nation ages" being a very tokeny/victory pointy type thing which puts me off. Same for the legacy point system.

Actually for me nearly every strategy game these days feels like a game made by the alien race of MorningLightMountain in the semi-famous sci novels by Peter F Hamilton. You are an immortal omniscient omnipotent hivemind or, as Paradox calls it, spirit of the nation. Even in CK3 really. I think that's the next phase of strategy gaming. No more MoO or Civ clones please.

I thought Empires was lovely. Except that it becomes unplayable after a certain point because AI turns start taking up a couple of minutes, and it seems to be unrelated to PC power.

If you're interested in a personalist take on politics, I think it is better served by something like Suzerain rather than a strategy game.

 

[Axioms]

Paradox simps just don't have many options for comparable games, so I do feel bad for them, especially since their behavior as far as "brand loyalty" makes it less likely that any competitor games would be made.

At least T&T was half-decent, compared to their other shit DLC.

Yeah, Grand Strategy is cool, but there just aren't as many games coming out as there could be.

I think one of the best released recently was Field of Glory: Empires. I'm hoping Kingdoms is even better, I think it has immense potential.

Empires had a good building system and even the simpler in game battle resolve was half decent, and of course turn based games are superior, but Empires did feel a bit lacklustre. It is very much a war game, which the main unique feature of "nation ages" being a very tokeny/victory pointy type thing which puts me off. Same for the legacy point system.

Actually for me nearly every strategy game these days feels like a game made by the alien race of MorningLightMountain in the semi-famous sci novels by Peter F Hamilton. You are an immortal omniscient omnipotent hivemind or, as Paradox calls it, spirit of the nation. Even in CK3 really. I think that's the next phase of strategy gaming. No more MoO or Civ clones please.

I thought Empires was lovely. Except that it becomes unplayable after a certain point because AI turns start taking up a couple of minutes, and it seems to be unrelated to PC power.

If you're interested in a personalist take on politics, I think it is better served by something like Suzerain rather than a strategy game.

Suzerain was cool and all but it is heavily restricted and linear in a lot of ways. The trade off is having pretty good dialogue and vibes, and nice graphics.

What I'd like ideally is to trade off the hand crafted aspects of Suzerain including dialogue and graphics and narrative, for a larger scope and an emergent experience. Visual novel-esque/character sim games like Academagia, Suzerain, or like Long Live The Queen have lots of interesting aspects but they are wedded to the restricted narrative visual novel esque parts which I don't care for. King Of Dragon Pass has a similar scope and style and similar limitations. I'd prefer a lot more emergence and procedural generation than those games have.

 

[Harthwain]

Do people really play this game and celebrate when they get random meaningless modifier on a meaningless statistic on some meaningless character?

You might just as well ask "Do people really play this meaningless game"?

Different people have different goals. I remember playing a game where my goal was to land as many of my kin as possible (both inside and outside my realm). It was a very fun way of playing. Eugenics is not my way of playing, but I can understand why someone would love playing it that way.

 

[Axioms]

People already reporting piles of crashes with the new patch. But you have to play it now because it is like when LoL releases a new champ that is OP as hell and then nerfs it later. Golden Sovereign trait from University and other crazy new traits are obscene going by the posts on reddit and the plaza. Just like off the charts overpowered. People thought tax tours were OP, that's baby shit.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Meh DLC, meh patch accompanying it.

 

[Akachi]

Modding this game is so bad compared to CK2, as both user and modder. The few times I've tried playing this game and installed a few mods to try to make it slightly better, it always gets a patch that breaks save and mod compatibility soon after, then even if you try to use the Steam beta feature to go to an old version it doesn't matter because the Steam Workshop everyone uses for mods has no version control at all, so everything will update one by one becoming incompatible with the old version. I you go to the new version, someone will be late updating their mod, so it might be nothing works at all on either version.

This sounds like a problem you'd get from having a lot of mods, but all it takes is a few, like 5-10, because unlike CK2 where mods were posted on forums allowing for manual updating and version control, and typically large overhauls or smaller mods dependent on or compatible with them, it is all horrible piecemeal modding like a Bethesda game complete with compatibility patches.

The one time I was able to play for a bit without this happening, I found out some mod made the game unplayable for more than a century or two because of some sort of savegame bloat that would lead to your save file becoming so large, you couldn't save anymore and it would hang permanently, and I couldn't figure out any way to troubleshoot it to narrow down what mod it was like I would have been able to in CK2. Logs were useless, and savegames harder to uncompress while lacking much useful information. I forget, I think there was obfuscation and optimisation even "uncompressed" and a lack of the data I expected to narrow it down.

Seemed like an engine issue really. My guess was there was superfluous data being saved on every dead character permanently, like some sort of mod script data, and in combination with character population increasing with time it became unplayable, since nothing I was using seemed like it should be causing that much bloat. No one else reported issues with mods I was using, but maybe CK3 players don't play campaigns for more than a century.

The engine is so bad compared to CK2's. It amazes me how much you could do in CK2 modding that you can't in CK3 script. From what I recall taking a look, events were gutted compared to CK2; no wonder they are all pointless fluff adding traits to characters to fit the event. Can't remember if it was possible to make them have complex trigger requirements like in CK2. I think the CK3 way to do it was primarily based on triggering randomly after X amount of time, more time-based rather than random chance based on arbitrary quality and quantity of conditions. CK3 players say the engine is better optimised, yet CK2 could have huge character populations where you even remove the hidden limits on fertility applied to large courts, and deletion of characters the engine deems "unimportant", and tons of conditional events that could trigger even from courtiers and barons, and it ran fine to the end date—all on older hardware. Yet CK3 is so well optimised, for performance it has to gut how events work completely and severely limit population much worse than CK2?

Every now and then, I check out the state of CK3 modding hoping it got something like CK2's Historical Immersion Project. Seems there never will be anything similar, and no wonder since the base game is so much worse with zero focus on history and terrible modding support. Terrible DLC too. No surprise all the best CK2 modders didn't even bother. I was acquaintances with a few and I remember they took a look and gave up on CK3 right after release. The most popular CK3 mods are old and from not long after release, kept on life support with minor additions every now and then. Sad really, it's like the Grand Strategy RPG genre both matured and died with CK2.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Wow, CKIII sucks for modding? I thought it was even better, has so many interesting features for modding potential. Weird.
I haven't looked deep enough CKIII to know.

Talking about Performance... did it get better? Thinking about loading it up again on my comp.


Query: Anyone knows how to change the path of the CKII mod folder? Someone here taught me a trick but it didn't work.

 

[Akachi]

Wow, CKIII sucks for modding? I thought it was even better, has so many interesting features for modding potential. Weird.
I haven't looked deep enough CKIII to know.

CK2 had a lot of script functionality added throughout its life cycle, but CK3 is closer to CK2 at release without all of this. To give a couple examples, in CK2 as of patch 2.8 you could make a decision that has a "third party filter" which means a targeted decision can also require a second target (who is the third party), but from what I recall this functionality is not available in CK3 at all. As of patch 3.0 that came with Holy Fury, you could further apply "scripted score values" to these third party targets in order to assign them arbitrary values to determine how good they are for the decision, based on e.g traits and abilities of a character (or whatever you can think of). Scripted score values do not exist in CK3.

As a more practical example, since it may not be obvious what you'd actually be able to do with these two features, third party filters and scripted score values allow for things like creating a slavery system where slaves have prices based on their abilities and can be sold for a price determined by a scripted score, or even traded between characters. In CK3 all of this is impossible, because you can't have a targeted decision with a third party (i.e. you can't target a character, pick a decision, then the decision lets you pick another character) and there is no way to apply scripted score values to characters.

Of course, such simulationism is unfortunately a bit pointless in CK3 in any case due to how it treats characters in general, since courtiers are unimportant and purged nonstop from AI courts for performance, and AI character traits don't matter since events constantly change them as they fancy rather than base what happens off of them.

 

[Axioms]

Wow, CKIII sucks for modding? I thought it was even better, has so many interesting features for modding potential. Weird.
I haven't looked deep enough CKIII to know.

CK2 had a lot of script functionality added throughout its life cycle, but CK3 is closer to CK2 at release without all of this. To give a couple examples, in CK2 as of patch 2.8 you could make a decision that has a "third party filter" which means a targeted decision can also require a second target (who is the third party), but from what I recall this functionality is not available in CK3 at all. As of patch 3.0 that came with Holy Fury, you could further apply "scripted score values" to these third party targets in order to assign them arbitrary values to determine how good they are for the decision, based on e.g traits and abilities of a character (or whatever you can think of). Scripted score values do not exist in CK3.

As a more practical example, since it may not be obvious what you'd actually be able to do with these two features, third party filters and scripted score values allow for things like creating a slavery system where slaves have prices based on their abilities and can be sold for a price determined by a scripted score, or even traded between characters. In CK3 all of this is impossible, because you can't have a targeted decision with a third party (i.e. you can't target a character, pick a decision, then the decision lets you pick another character) and there is no way to apply scripted score values to characters.

Of course, such simulationism is unfortunately a bit pointless in CK3 in any case due to how it treats characters in general, since courtiers are unimportant and purged nonstop from AI courts for performance, and AI character traits don't matter since events constantly change them as they fancy rather than base what happens off of them.

I'd expect that you can do all this stuff but you have to kludge it. Based on various Tobbzn mods I've looked into all of this should be possible. I guess I'd have to ask him about how you'd actually do it since it isn't as straightforward as CK2.

 

[Akachi]

I'd expect that you can do all this stuff but you have to kludge it. Based on various Tobbzn mods I've looked into all of this should be possible. I guess I'd have to ask him about how you'd actually do it since it isn't as straightforward as CK2.

If you could find out, I'd appreciate it since I'm curious, maybe I'd give modding the game (as in creating mods, don't know when modding came to mean consuming them) a chance again. I would be impressed if it's possible, especially displaying third party filter targets in a nice window with the scripted score values next to them. I suspect there's other CK2 script functionality missing, but was deterred enough from what I wanted to do to where I didn't mod for long enough to find out what else.