Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[Space Satan]

 

[catfood]

Sorry but If you can't figure out on your own what primogeniture and ultimogeniture means you are retartet. R00fles!

 

[BlackAdderBG]

These 3d portraits are so fucking ugly, same as in new Total War games.

 

[thesecret1]

its nice they're removing latin and all those agnatic cognatic wtf purple hair viconia doesn't understand, she needs "MALE PREFERED" to know where enemy lies, it's not like latin in medieval game makes all kinds of sense or adds to immersion or anything

At some point, one just has to accept he's no longer the target audience. Meme-spewing redditors screencapping their immortal horse emperor of Rome duelling the bear emperor of China atop the Tibetan plateau are who CK3 is tailored for.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

CK3 Dev Diary #18 - Men-at-Arms, Mercenaries and CBs​

Hello everyone, and welcome back!

This week we’ll be talking about a lot of additional details surrounding warfare. Just a few bits and pieces that have changed since CK2.

Casus Belli
One thing that is as it ever was, however, is that you need a Casus Belli to go to war, and that CB determines what happens when the war is won (or lost!). The most common ones are for pressing claims, as you’re familiar with from CK2. In different situations there will be a different options, of course, and some are even unlocked in special ways, such as the ones unlocked by perks, as shown off in the Diplomacy Lifestyle dev diary.

War Declaration Cost
One thing that has changed a little is the fact that different CBs come with different “declaration costs” attached to them. This is usually Prestige or Piety, depending on whether you are starting a war against a fellow believer or someone from another faith. On the other hand, we don’t want to keep you from taking advantage of a great opportunity just because you’re missing 10 Prestige at a crucial moment, so the costs are optional, in a sense.

You can declare a war without paying its cost, at which point you’ll instead pay something bigger, such as a Level of Fame or Devotion.

Levels of Fame/Devotion brings their own benefits, so ideally you want to avoid this, but it’s not as big a problem as - say - truce breaking. It’s not going to cripple your play, just set you back a little bit in exchange for getting to raise your armies and take some new titles while your enemy is weak. This is also one of the ways that Piety and Prestige gain has become more valuable than it was in CK2. You want to use it for more stuff, and it’s always useful to have lying around!

Men-at-Arms
We have talked about armies before, where we talked about the difference between your levies and your Men-at-Arms. Your levies are your unwashed masses, indistinguishable peasants more than willing to die for the few measly pieces of gold you throw their way. Men-at-Arms, on the other hand, are more specialist troops, and the component that gives you more control over precisely how you win your wars. They are in many ways your elite troops, ready to march through mountains and marshes for you.

You have a maximum number of Men-at-Arms regiment slots for your army, and in addition they have an upkeep cost. It’s small when they’re unraised, but the moment you have them stand up to go to war, they’ll demand a lot more pay!

Even though you can max out your MaA slots, there are other ways you can expand your army. Each MaA regiment can be increased a set number of times, to field even more of your deadly warriors. This will naturally increase their maintenance cost as well (both raised and unraised) so think twice before hiring twice as many soldiers!

There are many different types of MaA regiments, and what their type is determines a number of things, such as what terrain they are good at fighting in, and what kind of MaA Regiments they are good at countering, or get countered by. Over time, you may also be able to acquire new types of MaA Regiments. This means that the bulk of armies are likely to be quite different if you start in 867 compared to when you reach the end of the game.

MaAs also include siege engines, which is one of the easiest way of speeding up your land grabs. However, siege weapons are almost useless in regular combat, and taking them uses up one of your MaA slots, so it’s a decision that has to be carefully thought through.

In addition to a standard slate of MaA types, different cultures gain access to different unique MaAs. These will vary greatly across the world, but are generally specialised in the conditions of warfare that’s typical for the culture in question.

You will also be able to look at battle reports to get an indication of what kind of impact specific types of MaAs have on your battles. This can let you figure out whether your strategies are paying off, or whether it’s finally time to get some Pikemen to counter the Light Cavalry that your rival is always fielding.

So to sum it all up, Men-at-Arms are great for countering specific troop types, adjusting to specific types of terrain, and directly bolstering the number of soldiers in your army! Sometimes, strategising and countering isn’t enough, however, and that’s where Mercenaries come in!

Mercenaries
Mercenaries are familiar to any CK2 player, of course, but they have changed a little now.

First of all, you no longer pay monthly maintenance for them. Instead you pay their cost for three years up front, and then they’re yours for that time to use as you see fit. They’ll stay with you through thick and thin (although mostly the thick of battle).

Once the three years are almost up, you’ll receive an alert warning you that the Mercenaries are about to pack up and get on their way! You’ll then have the opportunity to pay them for another three years of service. This also means that they aren't going to betray you the second you go into debt, which I know will sadden a lot of you, but this new system makes it a lot easier to keep track of what you have and don't have during war.

So Mercenaries are an expensive way of doing warfare, but sometimes it’s the only way you’ll survive. However, in order to find a Mercenary Company that fits you in both size and shape, we have a new system for generating them to make sure there's always a wide range to choose from.

Each culture generates between one and three Mercenary companies depending on the number of counties of that culture, with each additional company being bigger and more expensive than the previous one. They will also pick a county of their culture to keep as their headquarters, and will be available to be hired by anyone within a certain range of that county.

With each culture generating Mercenaries, their names and coats of arms are either picked from a generated list of names specific to their culture so that you can get historical or particularly flavourful companies in there.

On top of everything else, Mercenary companies come with one or more specific Men-at-Arms types, which means that you may want to consider not only which company is the biggest one you can afford, but which is the best suited for the war you’re about to fight.

This should all offer you a lot of varied strategies for how you go about your wars. Is it worth saving up for the CB cost or mercenary-Gold ahead of time? What Men-at-Arms should you be using against your ancestral enemies? Who would win in a fight between the the White Company and the Company of the Hat??

You’ll just have to wait until release to see...

 

[AwesomeButton]

"First of all, you no longer pay monthly maintenance for them. Instead you pay their cost for three years up front, and then they’re yours for that time to use as you see fit." -- this is total bullshit from a historical accuracy perspective.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

CK3 Dev Diary #19: Factions and Civil Wars

Hello kings and queens, dukes and duchesses! I am back with another Dev Diary, and today we’re going to be talking about Factions and Civil Wars in Crusader Kings III!

Much like in CK2, vassals who are unhappy with the current state of affairs in the realm will create a Faction that other vassals can then join. Factions that grow large enough will eventually deliver an ultimatum to their liege, demanding certain concessions in exchange for continued peace.

Anatomy of a Faction

[A screenshot showing a Claimant Faction with Faction Members, Discontent, and Military Power displayed]

All Factions have a Military Power rating, which is a ratio between the combined military strength of all members and the military strength of their liege. Factions also have a Discontent score, which gauges how close the Faction is to sending their ultimatum.

Factions will begin accruing Discontent once their Military Power goes over a certain threshold, typically 80%. Stronger Factions acquire Discontent rapidly in an attempt to seize the moment, while weaker Factions hem and haw a little in the hopes that more supporters will join their cause. Either way, once Discontent reaches 100% the Faction will soon deliver their ultimatum; at that point, their liege must either accept their demands or fight all joined faction members in a civil war.

Civil Wars

[A screenshot of the map showing several Faction Members at war with their liege, who is the player]

Unlike in CK2, when a civil war is declared faction members do not form a new temporary realm. While they nominally remain vassals of their liege, they will immediately stop providing taxes and levies to them, and their liege will lose access to certain powers (such as imprisonment).

During a civil war the faction members turn hostile to both their liege and all non-faction vassals, though they will focus on fighting their liege. The exact war goal varies depending on the Faction type, but both sides earn war score by defeating hostile armies and sieging down hostile provinces.

Once one side emerges triumphant, they will enforce their demands. A victorious Faction will enforce their ultimatum with some additional concessions thrown in, while a victorious liege will imprison all faction members and gain title revocation reasons against them. If a white peace is agreed to, things largely go back to the way they were, though the liege gains an imprisonment reason against all the rebels. Actually imprisoning the rebels is another matter entirely, as a failed imprisonment attempt can trigger another rebellion.

Types of Factions
There are currently 5 distinct types of Factions, each of which has its own goals.

• The Independence Faction, seeking to gain independence from their liege.
• Claimant Factions, seeking to replace their liege with a new one.
• The Liberty Faction, seeking to reduce Crown Authority in the realm.
• Populist Factions, seeking to form a new realm of their religion and culture.
• The Peasant Faction, seeking to pay fewer taxes to their liege.

Vassals only join The Independence Faction if they feel like they do not belong in their liege’s realm. This can be due to a variety of reasons, but it generally boils down to a combination of three major factors: not being a de jure vassal of their liege, not sharing their liege’s culture [group], and their religious hostility towards their liege (more on that in a future Dev Diary!). As a result, Independence Factions tend to be ‘clumpy’, forming distinct regional blocs within a realm.

[A screenshot of an ongoing Independence Faction War against the HRE, showing the clustering of rebels within Italy]

Claimant Factions, on the other hand, are all about opinion. Vassals who personally dislike their liege while still feeling like they belong to their liege’s realm will favor this type of Faction. Of course, Claimant Factions are also an area where opportunistic vassals can push to acquire titles for themselves or their relatives!

The Liberty Faction is the place for vassals who are almost happy with the current state of affairs. They want to lower either the realm’s crown authority laws or their obligations to their liege, and are typically the easiest Faction to manage.

Populist and Peasant Factions are special in that they are not created by unhappy vassals. Instead, they are created by unhappy counties.

[A screenshot of the Faction Tab showing an active Kurdish Apostolic Populist Faction and a Peasant Rabble Faction]

Much like vassals, counties have an opinion of their holder which is influenced by culture, religion, events, and war. When the opinion of a county drops too low, they will join one of these two factions. Like the other factions, if these factions gain enough Discontent, they will send an ultimatum, and will revolt if the ultimatum is refused. This completely replaces the random province revolt chance that existed in CK2 — gone are the days of “Duke McPeasantFace has declared the 19th Orthodox Uprising on you.”

Populist Factions are the more dangerous type of county faction and form when counties wish to be governed by a ruler of their own culture and/or religion. While Populist Factions are created by and primarily consist of counties, sympathetic vassals in your realm may also pledge loyalty to their cause. A successful Populist revolt will cause all member counties and vassals to break away and form a new realm!

While an Independence Faction causes all members split off into their own separate realms, a Populist Faction will create a single realm with all members united under one ruler. That ruler will always share the Faction’s culture and religion, and as a hero of the liberation war they will almost always be a competent commander. In addition, a successful Populist Faction will automatically usurp or create an appropriate title for their leader to hold, which can even generate new Kingdom-tier titles in certain circumstances!

[A screenshot of the Kingdom of Jüterbog, split off of the HRE by a successful Polabian Popular Revolt]

All of this taken together means that any realm formed by Popular Revolt will end up being a formidable foe that likely has several De Jure claims on its neighbors. This can substantially alter the balance of power in your region — even if you weren't the initial faction target!

On the other hand, Peasant Rabble are the simplest and least dangerous type of Faction. Unlike all other Factions, there is no minimum Military Power requirement for the Peasant Rabble to revolt, and its Discontent will always tick upwards at a constant rate. When the Rabble inevitably revolt, they will almost certainly be weaker than the liege they are targeting — but don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security! Every time the Rabble’s forces occupy a county, all of that county’s levies will immediately join them. What started as a minor uprising can quickly balloon out of control if left unchecked! Luckily their only demands are to pay reduced taxes and provide fewer levies to their liege, which is an annoying if manageable setback.

Faction Management

So as a ruler, how do you manage all of these Factions? Well, there are several ways!

For starters, any alliances you have made with your vassals will prevent them from joining a Faction against you. This makes arranged marriages within your realm valuable even if you don’t benefit as much militarily as you would from a foreign marriage.

Adding to this, any vassals you have a hook on will be unable to join a Faction against you, whether that hook is due to them owing you a favor or due to blackmail.

You can also attempt to intimidate vassals away from their Faction, as a high Dread will lower their willingness to be in one. If the threat of imprisonment and torture doesn’t work, actual imprisonment will — vassals in your dungeons can not be part of any Faction. Just be careful, as an unjust imprisonment attempt may provoke a powerful Faction into revolting early, regardless of their Discontent!

[A screenshot warning the player that imprisoning this vassal may trigger a Faction Revolt]

Finally, if all else fails you can actually address the grievances your vassals have with you. Vassals who are happy enough will never join any kind of faction, which means improving their opinion of you and fixing structural issues in your realm will ensure that nobody challenges your rule!

That is all for this week, but I have an extra special treat in store you next time when we finally begin diving into how religion works in Crusader Kings III!

Blooper Reel: The Extremely Popular Revolt
Very early on in CK3's development, I started looking into ways to make Popular Revolts more challenging. No matter how large a revolt got, their forces would always be spread out across all of their member counties, making it trivial to pick off their armies one at a time.

To help remedy this, instead of letting each county spawn its own army I made it so each duchy would spawn a single army based on the combined military power of all faction counties inside of it. However, I made a mistake — instead of adding up the military power of all counties in a duchy, I accidentally added up the military power of all counties in the world... per duchy.

It turns out that no matter how many knights you have or how good of a commander you are, 8.8 million angry peasants will overwhelm you in battle every time.

 

[vonAchdorf]

March Update:

 

[Fedora Master]

I rate all updates meh without reading em.

 

[Zombra]

...

Dude, you're not sea. Show some respect.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

...

Dude, you're not sea. Show some respect.

He hasn't posted since Jun 29, 2015. If he comes back I'll change the avy.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Dev Diary #20 - Religion and Faith
​

Come one, come all! Zealots and cynics, fundamentalists and heretics! It is time for us to finally talk about religion in Crusader Kings III, and all that it entails.

While parts of the religion system in CK3 may seem familiar to fans of the previous games, the system itself has been completely rebuilt from the ground up. As a result, there is little point in talking about changes from CK2; instead, I will start diving into how religion works in CK3 and what that means to you as a player.

The Religious Hierarchy
The most logical place to start talking about religion in CK3 is with… Religions! As a game concept, a Religion is defined by four main things:

• What Traits are considered Sins and Virtues (3 each by default)
• What Religion Family it belongs to (Abrahamic, Oriental, or Pagan)
• What the standard religious Doctrines are for its Faiths
• What Tenets are available to its Faiths

Individual characters and counties will never believe in a whole Religion — they believe in a Faith instead, with each Religion having several Faiths under it. For example, Catholicism and Orthodoxy are Faiths under Christianity, while Theravada and Mahayana are Faiths under Buddhism.

[Screenshot showing a selection of either Christian Faiths, including distinct Coptic and Apostolic Faiths]

Similar to the way that Faiths belong to a Religion, Religions belong to a Religion Family. Religion Families are little more than groups of Religions, but this does serve an important purpose, as it plays a significant part in how Faith Hostility is calculated (more on that in a later Dev Diary).

Anatomy of a Faith
So if a character believes in a Faith, what does that mean for them? Well, each Faith is based on its parent Religion and inherits those attributes, but will be differentiated from other Faiths by its Tenets, Doctrines, and Holy Sites.

Tenets
Tenets are mechanical representations of the most important rites, rituals, and traditions of a Faith. Every Faith has exactly 3, picked from a total of around 50 different Tenets in the whole game. Tenets are the things which make a Faith special and unique, the things that set it apart from the other Faiths even within the same Religion (and especially outside of it).

[Screenshot of the Catholic Faith’s 3 Tenets - Armed Pilgrimages, Communion, and Monasticism]

Taking Catholicism as an example, we see one of their Tenets is that of Communion. This Tenet is what allows the Catholic Pope to excommunicate rulers, as well as allowing rulers to buy Indulgences from the Pope.

[Screenshot of the Communion Tenet, promoting values of honesty and community among adherents]

You may notice here that Communion also modifies what traits are considered Sins and Virtues by the Faith. While every Faith inherits 3 Sins and Virtues from its parent Religion, Tenets can add, modify, or remove these.

While some Tenets are unique to a single Faith, others are shared among multiple Faiths. For example, both Catholicism and Orthodoxy have the Communion Tenet. However, it is important to note that no two Faiths have the exact same combination of Tenets — as a result, every Faith will play at least a little differently, and some drastically so!

[Screenshot of the Sacred Lies Tenet, promoting scheming and treachery among adherents]

Doctrines
While less impactful than Tenets, Doctrines are still a crucial part of each Faith. A Faith’s Doctrines determine both its clerical structure as well as what its adherents can and cannot legally do.

[Screenshot of the Catholic Doctrines]

Every Faith has at least 18 Doctrines, with a few extras depending on the circumstances. While every Religion has a default stance for each Doctrine, these should be considered guidelines more than actual rules; individual Faiths can and do break away from standard dogma when appropriate. The different Doctrines are broken up into 4 categories:

• Main Doctrines
• Marriage Doctrines
• Crime Doctrines
• Clergy Doctrines

Main Doctrines cover how a Faith is organized on a fundamental level. These include things such as the traditional gender roles of a Faith, if the Faith has a Religious Head or not, how accepting (or unaccepting!) the Faith is of other Faiths and Religions, and if its priests must be part of a dedicated theocracy or if lay clergy are permitted.

Marriage Doctrines cover who is allowed to get married and how: if rulers can have multiple spouses, if concubines are permitted, if and when divorce is permitted, if extramarital relations can result in legitimate heirs, and who can even get married in the first place.

The Crime Doctrines cover what acts, if any, are considered immoral or even outright criminal. Characters who are publicly known to have violated these principles are Shunned, suffering an opinion penalty with all characters of that Faith, and may even be considered an outright Criminal who can be lawfully imprisoned and punished for their violations against divine law.

Finally the Clergy Doctrines determine how priests must behave and what their primary role in society is. The Clergy Doctrines also determine what power, if any, secular rulers have over the clergy within their realm.

Holy Sites
Finally, every Faith has some number of Holy Sites that this Faith considers to be more sacred than the rest. Controlling these Holy Sites will give a bonus to all characters of that Faith; this can create a significant source of conflict in the game, as many different Faiths can share specific Holy Sites, and every one of them wants to be the one in control!

[Screenshot showing the five Orthodox Holy Sites and their corresponding bonuses]

Moddability
I’m going to go on a quick tangent here and talk about modding Faiths and Religions in Crusader Kings III. Primarily, I want to mention that everything I have talked about so far is completely modular! This means Religion Groups, Religions, Faiths, Doctrines, Tenets, and Holy Sites can all be swapped in and out, modified, changed, or new ones added with even just a basic knowledge of scripting.

[Screenshot of a script snippet showcasing the Coptic Faith’s parameters]

This is one of the primary reasons we settled on the Faith, Tenet, and Doctrine system for CK3. Even though religion has a massive impact and touches dozens of game systems, it is easy for even new modders to dip their toes into the pool and start adding or changing things as they see fit. For experienced modders, this setup improves productivity and reduces the risk of introducing bugs. This has also had the side-effect of improving our productivity here at the office, which brings me to...

This is my Faith. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
At current count, we have 99 different Faiths in Crusader Kings III, all of which are fully playable. That more than doubles the number of playable religions we had in CK2 after Jade Dragon released.

[Screenshot of Egypt and Nubia, showing the diverse number of Faiths in the region]

Remember what I said earlier about how no two Faiths have the same combination of Tenets, and how every Faith would play at least slightly differently?

Yeah.

Your options are quite extensive:

• You can play as the good ol’ Catholics, or one of their heresies like the Cathars.
• You can play a different branch of Christianity, such as the Coptic Church or the Armenian Apostolic Church.
• You can play as a more unusual branch of Christianity like the Adamites.
• You can play not just as Sunni or Shia, but as individual religious movements or schools within them such as the Ash’ari or Maturidi, and the Isma’ili or Qarmatian.
• You can play as various Jewish movements, such as the Karaites or Rabbanists.
• You can play as a Dualist sect, such as Sabianism or Manicheanism.
• You can play as individual branches of Hinduism, such as Vaishnavism and Shaktism, or make the choice between Therevada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhism.
• You can play as one of three different schools of Confucianism, shaped by differing philosophies and focuses.
  
• You can play as a distinct African pagan Faith such as Bori Animism or the Senegambian Roog Sene.
• You can play as either Tengri or Magyar steppe pagans each with their own special traditions.
• You can play as one of the Indian or Tibetan pagans as well, extending beyond Bon and into other regional and cultural Faiths.
• Finally, don't forget the old favorite pagan Faiths like Norse (now called Asatru)!

While many of these faiths will have some similarities and common elements (especially within the same Religion), none of them are identical to each other. They all differentiate themselves mechanically in at least one way, and often in many ways. But… let’s say you’ve looked at every single one of these Faiths, and none of them are quite right. What, then, is a soul-searching medieval ruler to do?

Well, join us next week for the Dev Diary on Custom Faith Creation and Pagan Reformation!

 

[Fedora Master]

Lol Asatru, a made up neopagan term.

 

[RNGsus]

Lol Asatru, a made up neopagan term.

That's because CK3 takes place in modern sweden.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

Having Adamites and Qarmatians in is good, although I worry that this system just means a whole bunch of really bland religions all over the map.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

It's not like the CK2 ones were too deep either. At least with this system you can adjust your particular sect to your liking (always annoyed me that in vanilla CK2 you couldn't get a religious head for the Bogomilists).

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

Oh the CK2 system wasn't a whole lot better. This system just seems to look like slapping the whole pagan reformation mechanic on every single religion and calling it a day. I think it's a useful system for dynamic heresies and such, but I don't trust paradox to implement anything for any of the religions other than catholic/norse beyond a few generic tenet based events.

 

[fantadomat]

Paradox are a bunch of atheistic dipshits,the have zero chance of catching the fervent of a religious zeal,thus all religions are bland. The closest they got was in EU4 with orthodoxy restoring the Pentarchy. The games do lack any feedback of your actions,like capturing Jerusalem or mecca,an events that will send ripples around the world for decades. In reallity if mecca and meddina get owned by non kebabs,the whole kebab world will just drop everything and go for a full on wahabi jihad lol. But in their games nobody really cares,you just get a missionary.

 

[RNGsus]

It's not like the CK2 ones were too deep either. At least with this system you can adjust your particular sect to your liking (always annoyed me that in vanilla CK2 you couldn't get a religious head for the Bogomilists).

The what now? The Bogdanoffists?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Dev Diary #21 - Custom Faiths and Pagan Reformation​

Oh, hello there! Interested in becoming a heresiarch, are we? Or maybe you just want to organize your ancestor’s ancient spiritual traditions into a true reformed Faith, one that can stand up to the Crescent and Cross? Either way, you’ve come to the right place!

To start us off, I’m going to go into how the process of creating a new Faith or reforming a pagan one works. After that, there will be a teaser of some Tenets and Doctrines that you may be interested in picking for your newly-founded Faiths

Faith Creation
Creating a new Faith is no easy task. Only the most pious rulers will be able to convince the clergy within their realm that they alone know the true will of the divine and, in doing so, take the first steps towards establishing a new Faith. However, with a little bit of devotion and a lot of time, you too will be able to reshape your Faith to suit your dynasty’s needs!

When looking at your own Faith’s tenets and doctrines, you will see a button at the bottom labeled ‘Create New Faith’. Clicking this button will open the Faith Creation window, which can be viewed at any time — even long before you have acquired the means to actually create a new Faith! This will allow you to play around with the different options and get a feel for what is possible, allowing you to set long-term goals for yourself.

[Screenshot of the Faith Creation window showing modified Tenets and Doctrines]

You can change every single Tenet and Doctrine of your hypothetical new Faith on this screen, though the list of what Tenets are available to pick varies from Religion to Religion. For example, Tenets based on the concept of Dharma are exclusive to Oriental Religions, whereas Monasticism was common practice and is thus available to everyone. This means when creating a new Faith, you must first ensure you are a member of the Religion that you want to base your new Faith off of.

Beyond simple availability, it is also easier for some Religions to accept certain Doctrines than others. For example, Islam is used to polyamory and will happily accept a new Faith espousing it. In contrast, a new Christian faith that claims God intended us to have multiple spouses will be met with a little more skepticism...

The way this plays out in CK3 is that each Tenet and Doctrine has a Piety cost associated with it. The further you deviate from your original Faith, the more Piety you will need in order to convince the priests that yes, you actually have had a vision from the divine and yes, you actually are enforcing their will and not just trying to make some weird personal sex cult.

[Screenshot of the scaling costs for the Cosanguinity Doctrine]

After you have made all the changes you want, you will be given the total amount of Piety your character needs in order to create their new Faith. This cost can get quite high, meaning that creating a new Faith or reforming a pagan one ends up being a life-long goal for most characters. It is highly recommended to attempt this with characters who have a Learning education and/or who have multiple Virtuous personality traits, and having the ability to go on frequent pilgrimages or donate gold & troops to holy causes helps too! Finally, timing your divine revelation to completely coincidentally occur when your Faith is suffering from low Fervor will make it much easier to get everyone to buy into your new canon (I will talk more about Fervor in our future Dev Diary on heresy outbreaks).

Once you are happy with your Tenets and Doctrines and have accumulated the necessary amount of Piety, you can officially convert to your new Faith. You and your capital county will adopt it immediately, but it won’t be easy for a ruler to convince their vassals and subjects to adopt this strange new Faith — they might be more inclined to stage an uprising and depose their mad king from the throne! After all, if you die before your new Faith gains a foothold in the world, there is a good chance your Faith will die with you…

Pagan Reformation
Pagan Faiths in Crusader Kings III start out with the special ‘Unreformed’ Doctrine.

This Doctrine grants notable bonuses to Tribal rulers early on, but it locks them into the Tribal government type and provides substantial Opinion penalties to any non-Tribal vassals they acquire. Since Tribal realms are notoriously unstable, successful chieftains will eventually want to look into either converting to a reformed religion so they can feudalize, or reforming their pagan religion into a true organized faith.

Like with Faith Creation, rulers must earn a substantial amount of Piety to organize their Faith’s disparate shamans into a coherent clergy. In addition, they must have at least 3 of their Faith’s holy sites located within their realm.

[Screenshot showing 3 of the Vidilist Holy Sites]

Once you accomplish this, the process is quite similar to creating a new Faith of an existing reformed Religion. Your vassals may still be reluctant to convert to your newly reformed Faith, but because reformed Faiths gain a bonus to conversion against unreformed Faiths, you will have a much easier time convincing them to go along with your reformation than a heresiarch within in an existing Faith would have with making a new heresy.

[Screenshot showing a Vidilist reformation event]

Tenet and Doctrine teaser

To finish this off, here are a few choice tenets and doctrines which you can pick when creating a new Faith in CK3. Many of these are also used by already existing Faiths, but some are only available to custom Faiths created by players. As you can see, there is a lot of variety in the kinds of custom Faiths you can create — ultimately every kind of playstyle should have some set of Tenets and Doctrines to support it!

[Screenshot of the Tenets Warmonger, Human Sacrifice, Ritual Cannibalism, Christian Syncretism, Dharmic Pacifism, Carnal Exaltation, Divine Marriage, Sacred Childbirth, and the Doctrines Pluralism and Fundamentalist]

That is all I have for you this week, but join us next time as my colleague @Heptopus talks about the diversity across the world in CK3 and the many different ways you can tailor the game experience to match your personal preferences!

 

[Axioms]

So I happened to browse bay12 for a bit today and I noticed that Paradox is using an at least superficially identical espionage system to the one I developed for Axioms Of Dominion. They even use the word Secrets in an identical way to my system. Of course the scope of my game allows for way cooler secrets. https://axioms-of-dominion.fandom.com/wiki/Secrets

And there are other functions that Paradox doesn't have the creativity to come up with. But still. Only took them 7 years to debut a concept with nearly identical functionality, for what functionality they have which isn't much, and an identical name. Granted the name is one of 4 or 5 "obvious" terms to use but still. Give them 10 years of DLC and they might get a system as detailed and nuanced as Axioms has/had.

Edit: I see they also have a system similar to my Government/Treaty/Charter system, although again in a massively scaled down way that suggests it is a placeholder for a system that is actually cool, called "Feudal Contracts".

 

[Theodora]

Haven't really been paying attention, but the number of at least somewhat distinct religions is pretty cool, and prime for some quality byzantine hijinks.

 

[fantadomat]

Haven't really been paying attention, but the number of at least somewhat distinct religions is pretty cool, and prime for some quality byzantine hijinks.

If they put some effort in it,i would agree. But they are all generic religions that have a bunch of different modifiers that you have in the custom religion tab. EU did have a really good religion mod "Dei Gratia",but it hasn't been updated in quite some time. I believe it got mixed in the meou and taxes. Still nothing like declaring war on mamluks,your vassals decide to siege mecca and seeing the whole of isliamic world declare a jihad on to your sorry ass .

 

[thesecret1]

They actually seem to be doing something right with the religion for once... Even if it's just shitty modifier flip, it'd gonna be more than what CK2 had in that department. It makes me worry that they'll skimp on flavour though - once you start having dozens of religions, it starts being hard to make them all feel flavourful and distinct. Hopefully there'll be mods that'll improve it in that regard.

 

[Hace El Oso]

You can't do anything right with religion in a medieval game unless you operate under the premise that people(generally not pagans) honestly took their faith seriously and weren't just LARPing for some grotesque god-king. Like Fanta says, a lot of the fun of these games relies on that.