Crusader Kings III

[Syt]

I was assuming there'd be more changes in the 1.8 patch, but it seems they're clearing out a whole lot of small issues from the bug/issues lists, so that's good. (Maybe it's me, but e.g. in EU4 they seemed to have a habit of letting those pile up a lot)

[garbon]

There's an option, I *think* it's under properties. Right click on the game title in your list. You can turn of updates. Not sure about rolling back.

My recall is that it turns off auto updates until you launch the game. Anything to really stop it is a little more convoluted.

P'dox does allow rolling back as Zanza has said but they don't necessarily save all patches.

[Jacob]

As long as I can continue my game I don't mind too much. When I posted, I thought my current play-through was borked.

[Jacob]

Also... in my current game, for the first time ever, I tried out the advice of stacking one type of men-at-arms rather than diversifying. In this case, I did Huscarls and Varangian Veterans (both heavy infantry)... the difference is significant. Those dudes - with buildings to buff them (which I had anyways) - are making mincemeat of basically any opposition. It's pretty wild.

[Solmyr]

You probably want at least one set of siege engines so that your sieges don't take forever later on.

[Josquius]

Yep. Especially late game. It's annoying that it's the only way to get siege. They are absolutely necessary for wars.

[Jacob]

Yeah yeah, two stacks of siege engines of course.

[Syt]

Seems the ne patch added fun new surprise features. Tool tips behave erratically and under certain circumstances your ruler can automatically change religion.

[Syt]

OPB playing the open beta of After the End as High Chieftain of Eyefour in Florida.

Trigger warning: due to CK3 map constraints, the mod's map of the Americas is NOT oriented North-South.

 

[Jacob]

I played a bunch of CK3, but this is the first time I've continued a game for a long time (usually I play the first three or four rulers and lose interest).

Man, that bloodline trait where you get gold for inflicting casualties in battles is pretty strong when combined with a focused retinue that consistently slaughters the opposition.

[Syt]

Ah yes. "The Smiler" - radiates right through that helmet ...

[Josephus]

That a mod?

[Valmy]

Looks like an Elder Scrolls mod to me.

[Syt]

Yes, the Elder Kings mod. It recreates much of Tamriel, based on TES games and Elder Scrolls Online. Its start dates are 2E 440 and 450. In 440, the Illniviri Potentate still hangs on to ruling Cyrodiil, and the Colovian Estate trying to oust the Tsaesci (Ayleids) potentate. This start has larger countries to start.



450 is the Interregnum, with Cyrodiil devolved into competing warlords, and the entire map is generally more divided.



The mod obviously had to figure out a way to turn the scaled down maps of e.g. Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim into a proper "large" world map. One work around is to turn e.g cities like Balmora or Kvatch into counties, with each barony representing part of it (one castle, one city, one temple). And some "empty" areas e.g. in Skyrim get counties with a small barony, because you can't have empty counties in game. It's a reasonable workaround IMO.

Heck, the small town I lived in used to have 3 or four different jurisdictions - one part was clerical land, then there was a part where Lübeck-style city right was in effect, and another where ducal rights applied. All this in a town < 1000 people. So I can live with this.

They went pretty deep with some of the mechanics. E.g. characters get their birthsigns, can join religions, as follower of the Tribunal you get to choose whether to revere Almalexia, Vivec, or Sotha Sil, some religions allow you to have multiple pantheons etc. And of course there's secret cults of Hircine, daedra worshippers and all that. For Khajit they seem to have the different variants (governed by onder what moon they were born). There's even Rieklings on Solstheim, and various Goblin tribes. Due to where it's set in the timeline, there's obviously no Imperial presence on Vvardenfell yet (so no Ebonheart next to Vivec, no Ft. Moonmoth, no Pelagiad etc.).

There's a magic system, and I think alchemy?

There's a few gameplay mechanics/stories, like the Council of Eight, and the Orcs can create Orsinium, from what I can tell. In my quick test play yesterday, Sixth House worshippers started spreading in Vvardenfell. It's starting about 100 years before the events of Elder Scrolls Online (which is mostly non-canon, I think?), and runs till the end of the Second Era, which excludes all mainline games (Arena is set in 3E 399, according to Google ), but its timeline would include ESO and Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard. Not sure how much of that is in the mod. They do have Mannimarco and his Worm Cult (main antagonist of ESO's original campaign), though.

And some other familiar faces show up, like Divayth Fyr and his, erm .. "daughters" (I think technically they were clones)?

[/img]

And the map is quite beautiful.






(Every district of Imperial City is a separate barony).




Whiterun, I think suffers from being divided into Dragon's Reach, Jorrvaskr, Temple, and City - at the very least there should be a visible "wall" around them? Though might be appropriate for the era, idk when the wall we see 900 years later was built.

I was also way too happy to see the good ol' Colovian fur helmet.



There's some culture based tech and troops (e.g. kagouti cavalry, war mages ...), but it looks like it could be expanded more. There's academies/collges, and e.g. the Tribunal Temnple gets its own holy order, led by a High Ordinator.

There's already a ton of content here, and it's likely only getting a lot better. (E.g. many house crests of lower houses/counties are still some default CK3 designs.)

I started from this mod list:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2906273279

There's a bunch of optional mods in there - pick/choose what you like. I also added a few mods that I generally like:
- Nameplates (adds names to all event windows)
- Submod for EK2 - Holdings Art (for lore friendly graphics in the holding windows)

There's also graphics mods that change the overall art style for much of the game - there's one for each race, but you can only have one active at a time (similar to the race based UIs for the Star Trek total conversion for Stellaris, I guess - haven't tried them yet). And more submods and EK2 specific versions (or compatibility patches) for existing mods.

Also make sure you check the game rules when starting a game, esp. if you decide to use VIET - it has a setting for total conversions, so that "lore-unfriendly" events should not or only very rarely occur.

[Josquius]

I played my viking game right to the end. Slow start and lots of struggles learning as I went along, but ended up ruling supreme and it just being a question of time before the world would be mine.
Most curious was where random kingdoms around me would somehow become asteratu with zero interaction on my part.

Some nitpicks.

1: Your personal regiments should be upgradable. You should be able to take you catapults up to cannon without disbanding and reforming. I like the idea of them being actual named regiments that exist through time. Let them gather history too.
2: More of a 'history tab' would be nice too. Yeah you click on titles to see past holders. But it would be cool if there was a way to present this stuff in a more visually appealing way, maybe show a trimmed family tree of it all, etc... Paradox has to work on its end-game. Sure, a little victory FMV doesn't add anything and is quite pointless, but fun, but some nifty data rep would be good.
3: The sahara is poorly represented. My troops just march right through. There's a low supply rate but otherwise they're normal provinces.
4: I wonder if they've ever experimented with naval combat and how to implement it. It does seem a sad missing factor that troops effectively just pay to teleport across the sea with nothing bad ever happening along the way.
5: Does China ever appear? In CK2 they had the western protectorate and would sometimes send in mega doom stacks. I saw none of that here.
6: I do think there's a fundamental problem in the mismatch between the sweeping time scale of peacetime play and what should be a far tighter period of time of war.
7: Sieges are worth too much. As I mentioned pages back a problem I had was being crusaded and the crusaders seizing enough land in the first stages before I can properly respond that they pretty much got an auto victory.