Crusader Kings III

[Josephus]

CKIII is missing a certain...a certain...something.

[Syt]

Since I saw this on reddit again (not my screenshot) - in my last game I got this event, too:



This is my kind of humor.

[Jacob]

Obviously Catan was cosplaying some sort of Wheel of Time scenario.

[Syt]

Elder Kings 2 mod has been released (Elder Scrolls total conversion):

[Solmyr]

Been playing my Vladimir's Second Choice game, with Muslim Russia. I finally got the bloodline strengthened so that now pretty much every new child gets the best inheritable traits. Here's the guy who made it happen, Gavriil. He himself was tough as hell, living to the ripe old age of 98 and reigning for 78 of those years (seen here during the last year of his reign). His heir was 70 upon inheritance and only lasted for 12 years.



Genghis Khan also showed up during Gavriil's reign, but they never fought and actually had pretty good relations. Gavriil's grandson Lev faced a Mongol invasion, but his army far outstripped the Mongol one (120k to about 50k), plus he was allied with the Kaysan Empire (Iberian Muslims who took over France) for another 80k or so. The Mongols were driven back and now I am waiting for them to disintegrate.

Muslims are in general the most powerful force in this game, with Tulunids and Umayyads consistently remaining big empires. The Tulunids were actually destroyed by the Mongols soon after the above picture, but the Kaysan dynasty in Western Europe rose to power. Italy and the Balkan kingdoms are Orthodox, and Catholics are mostly relegated to Northern and Central Europe after France fell. They did actually win a crusade for Germany against the Kaysan, though mostly because they had huge numbers of order troops and I didn't really feel like bothering to defend against it.

[Jacob]

I found that the syncretism tenet is pretty fun for reforming Asatru. Having a great time intermarrying with all kinds of christians in my current game. Very different flavour from a usual viking game when I can ally with the rulers of Italy, Lotharingia, Frania etc. Once I get into diplomatic range, I could even ally with the Byzantines.

[Solmyr]

So while defending against a Crusade, I went to occupy Rome and in the process stole the Pope's hat.  My ruler can actually wear it and it will show up on the character model

[Syt]

[Jacob]

Man, so in my Christian syncretic Norse game I married off like a million cousins and nieces and nephews to Christian rulers for the novelty (and maybe they'd work their way into rule). And instead of tearing into the Christian countries, I nibbled away at various pagans and muslims instead.

Then the Pope declared a crusade (for about 8 counties in East Francia) and basically EVERY Christian ruler joined. I was outnumbered something like 8 to 1. Holy fuck.

So I ate the loss (relatively minor), but the whole "co-exist with Christians" is completely off the table. Fuckers.

[Jacob]

Also... I realize, I don't really enjoy the fighting when there much more than 20,000 or 30,000 troops involved. Way too much micro management

[Syt]

On conversion: In the earliest CK2 start I once commenced as a lowly pagan count in the Balkans. I managed to unite a nice kingdom, mostly by murdering a lot of my family, gaining me the kinslayer trait. I then converted to Christianity, and the Pope immediately absolved me of my sins.

[Syt]

Taking a break from V3 I was messing around with CK3 mods this weekend. I think Community Flavor Pack (more clothes) with Ethnities and Portraits Expanded (more ethnicities and clothes), Units Expanded (better 3D models on map), and Culture Expanded (more cultures, cultural traditions, culture decisions), together with Regional Immersion and Cultural enrichment (basically small flavor packs for various regions) and VIET (more random flavor events, ranging from stubbing your toe at night - +1 stress - to collecting snail slime for alchemy) are a pretty solid foundation.

There's some additional options that work quite well with these - e.g. Beauty is Beauty (prettier characters who have the "beautiful" trait), Fair Lord and Fair Ladies (makes characters a bit less grubby), and the whole Unified UI/RUI:Character suite of mods and sub mods, which redesigns the character window to be offer better overview and functions.

Then there's some more flavor mods, e.g. Epithet which adds *drumroll* more epithets (usually with small events), or Patrum Scuta for more historical crests and coats of arms, Better AI Education, Multilingual Education, Improved Personality Formation System and New Personality Events for Children (to shake up child rearing), and several quality of life features: Show me Your Council (to look at other rulers' councils), Nameplates (adds name and relation to you - if any - to characters in event windows), Displayed Birth and Death Dates (no more hovering over a character's age ... ), Farewell Chaplain (for a price of piety you can replace your court chaplain - interval can be set in game rules - 10 years, 25 yrs, once per lifetime).

I also like Social Relations Expanded (which adds some more complexity to social relations, e.g. friend of a friend or friend of my enemy modifiers, being part of a murderer's family, etc.), Succession Expanded (adds more succession laws) and Muslim Enhancements (adding more details and flavor to the Muslim world).

I tried Dynamic Trade Routes - it's an incredibly ambitious mod, but I'm not sure if it adds enough to add that much complexity to the game's calculations. You can look at it here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821835496 But what it basically does is add a system of about 40 trade goods that are produced across the map based on (as much as possible) historical sources. Salt, copper, lead, iron, grain, spices, wool, timber, fish, furs .... Each holding either has a surplus or deficit for each trade good which can give bonuses or penalties to a county (e.g. not having iron will weaken your men-at arms, not having food will create a famine, having plenty building mats will speed up construction ...). Goods are traded based on a tiered system (subregion trades the most with each other, followed by region with slightly less, etc. up the chain). Trade can be improved by building ports, markets etc. Additionally, you can mint coins, copper, silver, gold, in small or large denominations which can give further bonuses, depending on purity, etc. The mod also adds various trading spots across the map. E.g. you can buy a horse (a new artifact type) from a breeder, there's slave markets, and trading caravans where you can buy artifacts. Plus you can use raiding armies to trade with foreign courts. And more. It's pretty impressive what they did with this, but I'm also not sure it adds enough (or makes some of the trade functions meaningful enough) to play much with it, by YMMV.

Sinews of War tries to add its own flavor of realism, e.g. redoing the agricultural system, trying to abstractly model people moving from country to city, add disease outbreaks, adding a decay factor to Empires, etc. It looks interesting, but it seems to clash with some of the other mods I use (and e.g. AI wouldn't make use of new units added by Cultures Expanded).

There's two more interesting mods, but there's currently no good working compatibility patches with RICE/EPE/Cultures Expanded (EPE seems to be the issue, and the modding community waits for a fix from Paradox to prevent the root cause which can currently not be solved by modders, apparently). Ibn Battuta's Legacy mostly redraws map areas in an attempt to be more historical, in particular Africa, Middle East and (in general) places Ibn Battuta traveled to. Africa Plus aims to rework cultures and religions in Africa, improve name lists/titles and add flavor events (there's a similar one for India that does something like that for India, but it seems that mod is not very well balanced).

Finally there's Rajas of Asia, which started as a mod to expand gameplay for India but has since expanded the map to include Japan, China, Indochina and Indonesia. There seem to be some compatibility issues with EPE at the moment (some female Chinese headgear not showing up). They add cultures/religions relevant for the map areas, a tributary system, and plan to add a special government to model the Chinese bureaucracy. There's patches to integrate with CFP and EPE, but I'm not sure if everything else also plays "nice" with it, so I haven't tried it yet.

Saw one mod that changes marriage ages for females to 12 and males to 14. "It's realistic, it's based on Roman law!" Whether or not that's the case, I'm not sure I need *that* kind of accuracy in my medieval Sims game. (Not to mention that IIRC marriage age and adulthoood in CK games is linked, so I don't need 12 year old spymasters or 14 year olds leading cavalry charges )

[Solmyr]

Thanks Syt. Can you do this kind of mod overviews for EU4, HOI4, Stellaris, and Imperator as well?

[Syt]

Thanks Syt. Can you do this kind of mod overviews for EU4, HOI4, Stellaris, and Imperator as well?

(Scroll up the thread, I linked a good overview Youtube video of mods there.)

Again, there seems to be some compatibility issue with latest EPE (though I haven't noticed much breaking). And keep in mind that some mods will be incompatible or not fully integrated with one another. E.g. mod A adds new troop types, but some other mod makes it that AI doesn't recruit them, having several mods that change functionality of certain UI windows may also not be a great idea.

Other than that I poke around collections etc. to see what mods other people use. And some I like the sound of but think they make playing a pain. E.g. there's one that hides skills and traits depending on how far away they are (e.g. you'll have a good idea about your family and courtiers, but not a vassal half way across the map), and obscuring skills by assigning grades (e.g. 0-3 is F, 4-6 is E, etc.), adding a bit of uncertainty to your decisions. However, this breaks down every time you have a sorted list, because if you sort e.g. by martial, it will put them all in numerical order, so you'd still know who your best marshal would be, even if they're all rated "A".

I will add Omniscience to the recommended mods, though. It adds more notifications for things - children who can start an education, vassals you can demand a conversion of, unmarried courtier, guests arriving/leaving, decent raiding targets, foreign top level artisans outside your court with an inspiration etc. It can be a bit spammy, but if (like me) you tend to forget to assign an education to kids or check on your courtiers whether they can marry (easy way to fill up on knights), then this is a good one to have.

Saw one character model mod referring to Loverslab. Apparently they have their own mod section for CK2 and 3 (I know them from Skyrim modding, as some Wabbajack modpacks, even SFW ones, will use some of their mods), browse at your own risk ... I'm not sure if I should cringe at or applaud the people who use these games to act out their fantasies. https://www.loverslab.com/files/category/263-crusader-kings-3/ (NSFW, most likely)

[Syt]

New Dev Diary for upcoming 1.8.0 patch.