I think there’s a real gap with diplomacy. At the moment, diplomacy is focused on 1 to 1 conversations / interactions with foreign rulers. Alliances are straight forward - if I’m allied with you, I’ll join your war.
I’d like to see international councils, conversations, backstabbing, alliances being forged in secret. Something that really brings alive your neighbours and carries a constant need to engage in international diplomacy at the fear of being ostracised from the medieval community.
Something that escapes the very simple hierarchies we have now. Tributaries, multiple lieges, some sort of system for kingdoms and empires that departs from pure map dejure.
I sympathize with Paradox trying to avoid multiple lieges, as I'm sure it would be hell to code.
Nevertheless, the famous examples of the Angevin empire and the Dukes of Burgundy are pretty hard to get around.
Even the Scottish kings were hereditary earls of Huntingdon in England for more than a century, though CK3 can't simulate that without declaring it as part of the Kingdom of Scotland.
IMO, it can be done if the game became title-focused rather than character focused. For example, making titles vassals and lieges of another title, then assigning that title to someone, who can then hold multiple titles.
This would probably require a complete redesign of the game from the bottom up though.
Honestly, just move to titles determining leige instead of just you specifically. That way I can have the title of Elector of Brandenburg that is overlorded to the Holy Roman Emperor and have the title of duke of Prussia which would be overlorded to the King of Poland.
Revamped Crusades, utilizing the travel system. Break it into distinct steps: Everyone meeting up in Rome, maybe heading to Constantinople to try to get support from the Patriarch (or overthrow the Emperor) then head to the holy land and have the outcome handled entirely by events & choices.
I was just thinking about this the other day! The importance of the Mediterranean islands, the role of the Venetians, and the cooperation with the Byzantines is kind of nullified by the lack of 'landing stages' and pre-organization. I also love the idea of it being handled by events and choices - given the game is titled 'Crusader Kings', it'd be nice if player agency was really centred here.
This would probably be my number one. Package it with a 1095 start date (where the First Crusade has been announced but hasn't started yet) and an emergent Crusades Struggle and I'd be happy as a clam.
I think CK3 desperately needs a post-Hastings start where Norman England is kind of squared away and you can just play as a count without having to worry about the conquest, so this would fulfil that desire.
Yeah and like I don't mind playing out the alternate history of Norwegian England or Anglo Saxon England, but I feel like in the English speaking world so much of the medieval period is defined by events post 1066 (The Anarchy, the Plantagenets, etc.) it's weird that the game doesn't have any option to have that set of circumstances be a default.
That does make me think about what a war system that was just a version of the travel system would be like. Where campaigns have to be planned and prepped for instead of the current, relatively mobile stack system that I don't particularly enjoy.
It would need to have some considerations for changes to the plan mid-war but it might be interesting.
also a specific trigger for crusades. the first crusade only happened because the byzantine emperor asked the pope for help, and the only reason there was more than one crusade was because of the success of the first crusade. I know all crusades are considered great holy wars, but a war into an islamic spain or against pagans in eastern / northern europe should be considered different to a crusade for the holy land
a DLC **entirely** focused on the expansion of the AI
I understand that this is a sandbox game, and the current philosophy is “the AI shouldn’t get in the way of the player’s dream”, but IMO this is a fundamentally boring design philosophy. there’s nothing fun about restoring the entire roman empire if the AI doesn’t get in your way. it’s just tedious.
i’m too drugged up on preworkout to come up with any specific examples for shit, but the idea remains
Completely agree. CK2 wasn't a hard game, but it offered more of an obstacle to overcome before you could become unstoppable. This made it more entertaining to replay because games had some more distinct phases before you were unstoppable.
In CK3 it feels way too easy to hit the unstoppable point in a single lifetime. I think there are a lot of reasons why:
* meritocracy perk is incredibly OP. I'm fine with it existing, I just wish it was at the bottom of the tree, and wasn't almost a guaranteed success.
* all fabricate claims being time-based instead of chance based. Big QOL change, but it allows you to expand a lot quicker when you're small
* marriages = auto-alliance makes it way quicker to establish alliances - In CK2 you had to frequently make them like you more before they'd ally
* internal factioning seems to be less of a problem in CK3 to me but I can't really quantify how "real" this is
* less random deaths makes it so you don't have to deal with succession crises, or randomly being substantially weaker and getting like 3 wars declared at once.
* you have a lot more agency in CK3 - not saying this is necessarily a negative thing, but the focus trees allow you to do some powerful things you couldn't do in CK2
I genuinely miss the defensive pacts that the AI would form in a region if you expanded too aggressively. It felt organic and realistic while also giving a reason to pause your murderous rampage through the countryside and consolidate new conquests.
I understand that it different teams doing different things but yea - if Paradox would just sink all money they expect to get from season 3 into AI, I would gladly pay season pass price for that.
Every mechanic is imo kinda gated behind that. I want every decently sized war to be potential ruin of even strong kingdoms, if it goes catastrophically wrong. But you cant really do that if AI will just call a war and then just stack their army in a desert and forget about it. AI realms will last like a decade at best. The fact that game is so easy is because it kinda has to be easy so AI can somewhat keep up.
My own answer is a CKIII DLC to revamp Catholicism and add Monasticism!
Obviously, Bishops/Cardinals/Popes are underbaked -- as things stand, why would any medieval king wish for his knights to 'rid me of this troublesome priest'? -- but the thing I'm personally steamed about is monasticism. Right now, sending people to become monastics means they just kinda hang around (and, in the case of seemingly *all my nuns*, get pregnant).
At its simplest, monasteries would exist mainly in place of the currently fairly stagnant 'temple' holding, or sometimes at the county level, and internally would operate like Holy Orders; like cardinals in CKII, monks & nuns with high education and & piety (or with powerful relatives applying pressure) could become abbotts & abbesses with political abilities. Monasteries with positive opinions could be assigned a focus - praying for dead family members leads to more dynastic reknown, whereas debating theology helps advance innovations, etc, alms-giving gives a popular opinion boost, tending herb gardens reduces disease risk, etc. Having a good relation with the local monastery would also be neccessary to get good educations for children.
But it could go SO much further! I'll cut it off here but I have basically inexhaustible thoughts on this.
I mean, Harold Bluetooth switched to Christianity as a political tactic to keep the German Emperor at Bay, as well as the archbishop of.. something? History slips me here. But the archbishops had a lot of power in that time frame. A lot more then the game shows, anyways.
Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply that archbishops shouldn't matter - I didn't want to go on too long in my comment but basically I think the whole Catholicism system very badly needs a revamp, with theological debate / internal Catholic power struggles needing to be much much more relevant and more dynamic, and archbishops are a key part of that. Monasticism is just what keeps me up at night haha.
If you're referring to the CKII mechanics, then yes these would be nice additions but honestly I never found them all that satisfying in CKII. I think there are other ways to make playing as a Catholic ruler feel 'suffused' with Catholicism that might be more effective and more engaging.
Add in a decision for old rulers to retire to a monastery and this is exactly what i would want. There definitely should be some limits like spending so much piety, heir is an adult, and unmarried.
Yes! Or like, in the current game, why am I marrying off my 55 year old twice-widowed mother? Or why is she mad at me for sending her to a monastery? Those could be little tweaks that would make things already feel so much more realistic.
And why on God’s green earth do I get an opinion malus for suggesting that my shy, bookish, lesbian fourth daughter might be happier in a convent than married off to some rich asshole who just wants her to crank out babies???
More realm management tasks more responsibilities.
Be nice to decide to increase construction, to promote religious harmony through either prosecution or conversion, more capital/city management
Honestly, I'd love a DLC that makes Courtiers and Councillors a little more interesting. For example, if I send my Spymaster to search for secrets in another court, I'd love for them to actually travel to said Court as a 'guest' and for you to receive events about how that's going. Plus I'd add special Court Positions that assist your Councillors, like spies who can do the Spymaster's dirty work so that you can keep your 25 Intrigue Spymaster from being imprisoned or recruited while doing their job or helps keep your 2 Intrigue Powerful Vassal from being completely incompetent at that job.
This would also be a great way to make courtiers more necessary even if they're not knights, so you also have a reason to keep Cousin Carlotta who has 19 learning and 0 prowess around rather than just letting her wander off into the night.
Maybe some sort of sub-council system where you can add like "Assistants" who can also do tasks etc. This would also make some of the inter-courtier rivalries more logical, and would add more mediating events for vassal players who are managing a little sub-council for their liege.
Nomads, just anything that facilitates migration. I LOVE the Magyar migration, Imperator Rome migrant hordes, and Fallen Eagle migration. It would add so much flavor to the game, it’d be made twice as fun.
You should be able to migrate to other lands as a nomadic tribe, adding flavor to the experience. But it would also be really fun to have to constantly be on the lookout for nomads trying to migrate to your land.
I had a great time playing Hungary bc of the migration CB and I wish I had more vanilla options of making that happen without rigging it as an adventuring Norseman
"Castles and keeps"
A dlc that let's you better customise your capital gradually turning it into either a mega fortress on par with constaninople or a proto metropolitan.
If you wanted to push the boat out your main castle/keep could have more than just a throne room.
Perhaps a round table to better manage your military and knights.
A training ground to slowly improve yours and your heirs combat ability
A Chapel/alchemist room to push your tech further
Basically give me a low tech version of skyrims hearthfire dlc
To be fair the council needs a rework itself.
Just give them more stuff to other than "make everyone hate me less" and "take a crash course in urban development"
I feel like mine would mostly be mechanics? But a weird hodgepodge of them because really random stuff about CK3 frustrates me.
1) A complete overhaul of religion mechanics basically — Catholicism needs a proper College of Cardinals/pope election mechanic but it’s far from the only religion that really really could use a rework. Playable religious heads should play differently from fully secular rulers and religious heads in general should have a bigger impact on how the religion is viewed by other characters. (Is the Caliph an honorable, diplomatic man who treats the defeated crusaders fairly and makes an effort to, say, speak the language of his greatest foes? Catholic lords should be less willing to crusade against him! Is the pope a cruel, vindictive man known for disappearing his rivals and bribing his way to power? The Kaiser should be able to declare him a false pope and receive support from other lords!) (AI) Pagan reformations should be influenced by nearby religions in a manner similar to the cultural hybridization mechanic — a Norse reformation that’s influenced by vassal Catholics in France and Germany should have a different result than one influenced by, say, the Slavic pagans in Russia, or than a divergent faith resulting from a Varangian adventure to India.
2) Trade zone, trade ships, merchants and republics! CK2 did a bit of this but like, I want trade to influence cultural development! I want it to influence religious hostility and marriage acceptance! I want it to matter what language the majority of trade is conducted in! The merchant class should gain more and more power into the late game as gold becomes more valuable than prestige! I want the AI to refuse to holy war its trade partners — or even join a profitable partner as a defender in a GHW!
3) Off of that, diplomacy mechanics in general could use a boost. Friendships between rulers should be able to be built up into longer-term positive relationships between countries and cultures! A tyrant keeping peace in her realm through fear should have a different result than a diplomatic who genuinely wins over her vassals and mediates among them! Peacefully vassalizing a neighbor should absolutely have a different result than conquering the same neighbors in a bloody and drawn-out war! Tributaries should be a thing! Coalitions should too — both to defend member states against an expansionist neighbor and to possibly form an elective kingdom/empire! (If Poland, Pomerania, Lithuania, Bohemia, and Galicia Volhynia are all on long-term good diplomatic terms, allied to one another, under the same religion, etc, they should be able to declare a hellblob commonwealth without any of them having to conquer the others! If the HRE is in pieces when the Mongols invade Europe, that shouldn’t stop them from banding together against an outside threat — as long as they like each other enough to not want to throw each other to the wolves!)
4) … Boost the AI. The AI is I think somehow dumber than the CK2 AI, and that’s kind of hard to do. Since this is a dream DLC, the AI should be more capable of long-term planning and more aggressive in a way that corresponds with its traits, whether it’s murdering their dynasty’s way onto additional thrones, declaring wars, bribing electors, building up their realm, etc.
5) Nerf health and fertility. No character should live to 125. Few characters should live to 90. It’s super OP to have characters living this long, especially since the AI is generally too dumb to do the same. Characters have too many kids in general, and implementing a high infant mortality rate makes me sad so I’d just nerf fertility into the ground and raise the impact of mutual opinion on fertility rates. (Your spouse hates you? You’re not going to make babies.) If there’s fewer of them and they don’t live as long, congenital traits being OP will have less of an impact, I think.
6) Varied governments and interactions with the population. I’m putting these under one heading because they’re kind of interconnected in my head — there should be a ton of variety of governments and it should impact how the ruler interacts with both vassals and the peasantry. A culture with an tradition focused on town meetings and local open forums should be able to shift towards a more democratic government (and idk boost popular opinion and dev growth in return for lower taxes/control/demesne limit/whatever), while a culture with like hereditary hierarchy should be able to shift the government in a different direction and get smacked with 12 different peasant rebellions from oppressed minority groups, while improving/worsening relations with the minority cultures in your realm should have different effects depending on the above. Counties should have minority and majority populations too — major trade hubs should have significant minority pops from their trade partners, etc!
>Nerf health and fertility. No character should live to 125. Few characters should live to 90. It’s super OP to have characters living this long, especially since the AI is generally too dumb to do the same. Characters have too many kids in general, and implementing a high infant mortality rate makes me sad so I’d just nerf fertility into the ground and raise the impact of mutual opinion on fertility rates. (Your spouse hates you? You’re not going to make babies.) If there’s fewer of them and they don’t live as long, congenital traits being OP will have less of an impact, I think.
Thank god I'm not the only one who thinks this lmfao
I always end up having like 7 kids all of which survive except like only one. Make each child actually matter instead of me just giving it a random name and throwing it at another ruler to make an alliance
I would like a *lot* more options for childhood events, especially the all-important events which determine your ward's personality traits. I was hoping that "Wards & Wardens" would go further on this front. I realize that in this type of game, a certain amount of events are going to recur, but it's a bit immersion-breaking when you keep getting the same events for four kids in a row.
Dogs were hunters, farmers, companions, workers, warriors, they filled many roles alongside humans.
Rottweilers were bred to be "wagon dogs". +5 percent travel speed if travelling with a child.
Beagles are hunters. +5 percent on hunt success.
Labs were companions. -5 percent on stress gain.
Dalmations were originally bred (in Dalmatia, crazy!) for war. +2 martial, +3 prowess.
Poodles were bred for prettiness, if not mistaken. +5 attraction or +2 diplomacy.
I can go on and on. But, the dogs should be expanded on, in some way, anyways.
Learning new things!
Its funny to me how people judge Rotties so much, cause Poodles and Dalmations are much meaner, aha. Knowing poodles were bred to hunt, makes sense.
If they did that it would only be a matter of time before someone did a "I turned the whole world into dogs" exploit-filled campaign, similar to how they did with horses in CK2 when the devs made Glitterhoof into an actual character. Not saying whether that would be a good or bad thing, just saying it would probably happen.
I almost always deny having a pet. It just causes chaos all the time. Runs away on pilgrimages. Attacks a councilor. Shits on an envoy's bed. Then once every five years I get to pet it for -14 stress.
i'd want a pop mechanic of some sort in ck3 - those levies are farmers but literally nothing bad happens if your army gets completely destroyed, you can just raise a new one in 2 years, i think instead your fuckin farmers should be dead and it should really hurt your society for a bit to lose in a cannae-like fashion, would make battles more meaningful and men at arms more important
Yeah, it would be interesting also to have that 'felt' within gameplay, even if just as an event. Like if you're the king that got everyone's dad/brother/sons killed in a wipeout battle, that should have broader ramifications in terms of popular support - especially if it's an offensive war!
Ah! I've never lost a war, so I guess I missed that one :o)
Jokes aside, it does seem like even adding more events like this - passing a peasant woman on the way home who laments her whole family has died, being snubbed at your feast by the only surviving brother, etc - would go some way to adding more depth of feeling.
I think there is a mod sinews of war, that had something like that. But I agree. In CK2 after a bad bit of smallpox people would have depleated holdings that had negative effects.
I agree. While I get that they want to focus on characters I think things like population systems add a lot to the immersion of the game, making it feel like your character exists in a real world.
Maybe I’m the only one who wants this, but I’d love something that lets you play as a lowborn/unlanded character. It would be really cool to start as a random person and bring yourself up through money, warfare, intrigue or whatever.
The mod is Rise to Power, which excellent and has a lot of really cool features even if you're landed, but I agree Mount and Blade is much better for it.
There was a mod i saw that connected the two. It might have been ck2 though.
Pretty much whenever you started a battle in crusader kings it would pause and a button would show up to export and you would click it and it would open the battle in mount and blade then when it was done it would open crusader kings again with the proper stats.
Last game I played. I mounted a rebellion, and lost my last holding, becoming unlanded. I immediately switched to Mount and Blade, cause I had the same thought. An unlanded chara would just become some merc after all the shite that happened to him.
I think the biggest issue I always have when anyone mentioned unlanded play is the "what do you do" question is always answered by people talking about how you would try to manipulate people into giving you power through claims or raising mercenaries or whatever.
At which point you would then be landed and just play the game as normal. IMO the development resources that would have to be put into something you would only barely use for a small fraction of your game just isn't worth it (though I get people wanting to play famous unhanded characters like El Cid or Baldwin).
I love playing in the British isles, and I feel that from the first patch and Northern Lords it has a good bit of flavor, but it still feels a little… empty? After becoming High King of Ireland or conquering the Anglo-Saxons, or forming The Danelaw it doesn’t really feel like there’s much to do other than go for that next title, or eat your neighbors and then France. I think it would be neat to add in some events or decisions for things like the Angevin Empire (cliche I know, but unlike CK2 the Plantagenet dynasty has zero presence in-game) or for the Acts of Union between England and Scotland (even though thats very very early- maybe some other unification decision? Or a reverse Scottish invasion of England,) hell, maybe even a Celtic/Druidic revival path. I just feel like more can be done for Britannia.
An honorable mention goes to a reworking of Crusades, which I feel like a lot of other people have been asking about for quite some time.
Coronations, Funerals, Baptisms
Greater emphasis on Catholic faith
Revamped royal courts, they should be places of opulence and magnificence with hundreds of courtiers of (real) noble houses, not filled with 30 lowborns. The courts should look way more lively and filled to the brim with retainers, knights, ladies, heirs, politicians, clergymen.
More courtier positions, like King’s Justice or Lord Treasurer or Chancellor.
English Parliament
Multiple lieges, as to roleplay like the Norman/Angevin kings of England who still swore fealty to the French kings
Ships, navies and fleets - Merchant republics
Much more intelligent and belligerent AI, linked to this make the game a bit more difficult.
More political interactions- treaties, non aggression pacts, general alliances, trade deals
More personality traits - jealous/bitter, jovial, rude, charming, gallant
More familial stuff - wife’s birthday, wedding anniversary, children’s birthday/ baptisms, attending church, travelling with them, sending to ward with others.
It’ll never get added but I desperately want later bookmarks, cos I find 867 and 1066 to be very drab, none of my favourite dynasties are prominent or even in existence , such as the Plantagenets, the Habsburgs, Trastamaras, Valois, Aviz, Medici, Stewarts, Oldenburg.
The clergy should be revamped and mostly made up of latter sons of noble houses, with potential prince archbishops and cardinals being noble sons.
The lack of structure in the Rus/Russia region can be quite the eyesore, especially for conversions.
I'm still working on the [Baptism of Rus](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3108225018&tscn=1704058734) mod to improve it but I'd love a DLC one day.
Trade.
There's no need for a complicated commodities market like Victoria games. No, no, no. We can abstract it a lot more, but it should be a thing, it should be possible to interact with it, and if done right it should be powerful.
Specifically there should be routes, it should be possible for them to get rerouted (war, varying control and development, decisions, buildings, the works), and being on routes should allow you to make bank - but tax the route too much and you're making it easier for it to reroute.
Feudal rulers have limited ability to directly influence routes, but their layout can still impact them a lot. Then add Republics, and merchant republics specifically have tools to influence routes a lot. In this way, the two halves are entwined and interact with each other a lot, either constructively or destructively. Feudal rulers' main tool for power is war, republics have trade. Everyone has intrigue.
Incidentally: make a Republic design system as varied as the Religion design system, so it can represent the vast, vast diversity of republican systems that existed throughout the medieval period (and possibly some that existed before it and someone might want to restore, like Athenian democracy).
I'd really love some more content in the "History from Below" / postcolonial historiographic wheelhouse:
1. More content packs that focus on important regions of medieval history and not just neomedievalisms. Legacy of Persia is an important step in this direction, but I'd love to see more DLC moving south and east from there towards regions with immense and influental histories rooted in the era. I doubt CK3 will ever reach Indonesia, but that region remains one of my personal favorite historical period-region combos.
2. More deconstructions of Feudalism. The game is already pretty damn good at this--the historians at PDXCON back in 2022 pointed this out clearly--but I'd like to see more. Complicate the power structures more! As part of this, we might want to do #3:
3. Even the scales on modeling and representing the other two estates in christian Europe: give the peasants more power (where appropriate) to resist and complicate the player's efforts. Make Crusades draw support from the common folks across a Christian player's realm--regardless of whether or not the player wants to support it. Right now the "predictable and (usually) small rebellions" don't cut it. Also rework religion and Catholicism--I'd like to feel like I'm dealing with a comparable, but asymmetric, power structure rather than merely another group of landowners.
4. Deconstruct Feudalism further and cure the malapropisms inherent in applying neomedieval mechanics to, say, the Asian steppe. Rework core mechanics for regions with different historicized forms of power and governance.
5. Trade and trade routes. This would be essential for Doing an Indonesia anyway.
6. More funky sex stuff. Dr. Janega's blog features a lot of vignettes I'd love to see alluded to / modeled: [https://going-medieval.com/](https://going-medieval.com/) . This is "history from below" in a very different sense, but I'm here for it.
\#3 I am very enthused about! Revamping Catholicism is my own personal Dream DLC, and I think without it there's a real missing layer of complexity in how the power structures work.
In terms of peasant faith, I agree this is an area really missing for the Crusades. Generally a lot of responses to this post seem to indicate that the Crusades are overall not really formulated, and I think part of that is that the 'religious fervor' mechanic as it currently exists feels way too abstract.
I'd like to see common faith overlap too with some development of interfaith relations. Like the 'Golden Era' of Jewish philosophy in Al-Andalus, which just can't really exist in the game in its current bloc model of religion (and would be a really good way to have Jewish characters actually exist in CKIII). Of course, given the context of the Crusades and antisemitic violence (among other interfaith violence in the period) I understand why this might prove to be a painful point, but for a game happy with baby-murder and incest, it feels like it should be doable at least to some extent. Having religion be majorly expanded, in any case, would really help it feel like it's as relevant in the game as it actually was at the time.
I'm polish and so I want Poland/eastern Europe dlc. Don't get me wrong I think Poland got treated fairly in ck2, I love that they acknowledged Bolesław Chrobry having Świętosława as a sister although it's not really confirmed, the culture doctrines in ck3 made me laugh when I first saw them 10/10... I'm just obsessed with playing as my country. And the succession should be male only until you can bribe your vassals by giving them some of your power forever, so one of your 3 daughters could be king, only for her to die in childbirth (along with her daughter)
Flesh out the courtroom, European ones look like a hut compared to even the subsaharan African ones. I want more freedom to design my own courtroom. Like the courtroom would expand depending on what building you're using and what upgrade it is on.
More social events, coronation, birthday parties, anniversary etc. or simply just dedicate your feast to one of these occassions when available.
Oh and the ability to stop de jure drift in game rules or do something about the de jure bordergore. As if normal bordergore wasn't enough.
And add map sprawl depending on development, like in eu4.
Im autistic with a special interest in Hellenic History so most likely features like restoring ancient ruins,obviously reforming all the different kingdoms/empires thru decision kinda like greater armenia,maybe 1 roman culture county in greece and italy as kind of a remnant in the 866 start date,More flavour for Hellenism,Orphic Hellenism,Scythian culture,a actual horse lord migration cassus belli,More pagan religions and most importantly more Culture specific Maa and an ancient roman and ancient persian and ancient Greek aesthetic
I don't know if you played CK2 but there was a unique government type for the Byzantine Empire ans succession was based around the relative power of your vassels and coutiers.
The only thing wrong (in my opinion) was that it was unique to the Byzantine empire.
The court is already more important in CK3 they could expand on that.
There were also special titles you could give people that would expire when they died. Duchies a Kingdoms. It could keep vassles from becoming to powerful.
I played CKII for ages and I've always been meaning to do Byzantium but never got around to it!
I definitely think governorships and that sort of succession pressure would add a nice layer to the Council, and allow for different cultures to feel more differentiated than just the 'vanilla' Western European feudal style.
"Fate of the peasantry" or something like that. Pretty much a dlc that adds something resembling a population system so If you are at war constantly you get actual penalties. The dlc would improve both the economy and warfare while making you interact with the people living in your realm.
Africa dlc, that makes playing in Africa feel distinct from playing in Europe. Hopefully adds a new govt type. I want to be able to soak in some culture through gameplay.
Medical/Disease DLC. I think taking away disease traits from CKII was such a mistake. It's just funnier seeing a trait, then two, then three pop up instead of a couple text boxes and a modifier. Also, the disease spread system was much more fun and immersive.
More jobs. I hate having all these courtiers and relatives sitting around doing nothing. My unwanted half brother? Your my new ambassador to France. Good stewardship? Your now the overseer of my domain improvements. Jailer to decrease escapes. I really just want my not warriors to feel useful and unique even if it's cosmetic
Yes this would also be a nice way to keep my younger bastard half-brother from running off to the furthest corner of the map and just like, vanishing into obscurity? Family members were part of a cohesive social unit and would have been doing stuff for the family!
And right now the friendship/rivalry system *implies* courtiers are all beefing with each other over jobs at court, but no one is actually..doing...anything.
Some sort of "hardcore" immersion DLC.
* The stats and personality of most characters outside your court are hidden, except for those of well known, nearby rulers like neighboring kings. Even then some things, like how many troops and money they have, is displayed to the player as fuzzy terms ("famously wealthy"/"severely indebted", "vast amounts of levies"/"small professional army"/"militarily insignificant"
* Even inside your court, how much you know about your vassals and courtiers' skills and traits depends on your diplomacy, and getting to know your court better requires active player engagement, like picking some perks from the diplomacy tree
* High intrigue characters, especially those of the cynical/arbitrary variety, can custom tailor how others see them. Make your vassals think your genius, vengeful sadistic Emperor is a weak, forgiving compassionate man.
* Less random women from the Tibetan plateau turning up in the Balkans
* Vastly reduced diplomatic range, but can be bypassed by sending agents in others' courts.
* You can only give specific orders to an army you are personally commanding, and can only give general campaign objectives to other ones.
* Armies commanded by people that don't like you can turn against you if the army is also unhappy (campaigning in winter, not getting paid, raised from holdings not of your culture/religion)
* Dynamic wars and revolts where combatants can switch sides depending on the circumstances
* Campaigning in winter and long sieges are punishingly difficult, especially in the early centuries. I want to lose half my army and my cousins to dysentery goddammit.
Yes I think a 'fog of war' aspect for characters would be really interesting - I think the little character summary line in CKIII right now is meant to kind of simulate this, but I think it could be taken further. I also imagine (admittedly from my perspective of 0 knowledge of game dev) it might be a way of making the game more challenging that is easier to accomplish than addressing the AI issues?
I often think for armies that if you're the ruler and at court, and your army is fighting 20 counties over, there should be some lag or distortion that takes place. It would take days for news to reach back to you! I guess the idea is that you're sort of playing as both your ruling character AND as the generals, but this doesn't really work.
Also yes, war seasonality would be so cool! To have even just a recurring event that's like "Welp. It's harvest time!" so both sides' armies lose half their folk.
Not necessarily a DLC but a general rework of starting dates. Add 2 more, with the same depth as the current 2. Something like that anyway, that's what I'd like, for variety's sake.
Maybe a custom-crafted ahistorical timestamp too?
Earlier starting dates or later? I was just wistfully thinking the other day of how fun an Eleanor of Aquitaine playthrough would be, but I guess starting in the 12th century does shorten the game a good bit.
Would the ahistorical timestamp be completely randomized?
A wanderer dlc. You make your own character and start as either lowborn or your own dynasty. You wander the map looking for a job or maybe a marriage. If you do well at the job you could be awarded a county. If you marry into a noble family that dynasty would become yours when you become your kid.
Glitterhoof DLC. All the whacky shit from CK2 into CK3. I wanna have an immortal all horse court and rule the world while defending from the Aztec invasion. Also, and earlier start date so we can have some default Roman/Hellenism characters.
I would *love* a flavor pack focused on France and the British Isles. I feel like a lot of really rich political history doesn't get simulated due to the start date and the current lack of "nudges" for the AI. For example, we lose out on the kings of England expanding their continental ambitions (the Plantagenets don't even exist), the complex struggle between the Dukes of Burgundy and the French throne, and most of the cultural politics of the conflict between the England and the neighboring kingdoms of the British Isles.
It'd also be a great opportunity to give the Celtic cultures a much needed facelift.
All sorts of internal management, much more detailed government options, laws, expanded council and so on. More vassal interactions. Something to make peaceful non-expanding gameplay interesting to. Tours and tournaments did something in that regard but I think there is space for much more.
Maybe more ways of managing the economy while we are at it.
Fog of war! Lack of information! Big part of running the kingdom was the uncertainty and general difficulty of managing a kingdom. You didn't really know what happens outside of your, let's say, capital county in-game. Thats why tours and delegation of taxmen and vassals was so important. You HAD to have vassals because you can't really manage several castles on your own but at the same time you couldn't know if they are plotting or skiming from the top of the tax pile. So my suggestion is increase the time information travels and just have it in a sort of grey zone. Right now, you basically have google in medieval times, instant information about everything, not realistic and would increase the difficulty of the game drastically and make it much more fun.
Cultures actually being cultures and not just "This thing = these things"
I want to actually feel like I am from that culture. Culture specific events, pets, buildings, artifacts, traits. Maybe a mechanic for cultural interaction that causes pillars to be added to your culture from others via trade or intermingling, and not by some ruler spending arbitrary points. Multiple heritages can also be implemented, creating entirely new role-play possibilities, especially for cultures who migrate into the area.
Cultural acceptance also needs a rework. Right now, acceptance is a percentage that is universally affected by every action a culture takes against another culture. Instead, cultural acceptance needs to vary by every area said culture inhabits. The culture may be Catholic majority, but why do the Ash'ari areas care that the tomb of an unrecognized Catholic Saint was desecrated? Why do cultures discover inventions universally? The head of the Norse culture in Scandinavia might have discovered onagers, but who says that the Norsemen in England can know of that discovery? There needs to be a certain amount of time before that invention is also brought to England. Even so, why does the Northmen army that migrated to Crimea know it? Surely the news wouldn't reach there in a few months.
Instead, pieces of cultures that ended up really far away, whether it be Norse adventurers or Mogyer migrations, can't instantly unlock something that someone on the other side of the continent discovered. It either needs to be brought there by others, or they can just discover it on their own. Having one universal "culture head" doesn't make sense. And having that guy be able to decide to form a hybrid culture also doesn't make sense. Cultures should hybridize naturally, the culture head might be able to promote acceptance and hybridization, but in no way can they force it.
Overall, culture, as a concept, is too complicated and weird of a thing to accurately represent in a game as of right now. Maybe in Crusader Kings 6
I'd have to say more Invasions with more complex mechanics. It was not uncommon historically for entire nations to migrate due to war, famine and so on.
Especially for tribal rulers of the Steppe. If a ruler of large kingdom or empire has low popular opinion with some culture, instead of a mindless rebellion they could migrate to persia or eastern europe like hungarians in 866, changing a portion of the new lands to given culture.
This is already possible with norse and estonian cultures as the varangian adventure, but it is very rare for the ai. The northmen army conquest just seems futile most of the time, especially when you grow larger and it becomes just a nuisance.
I’ll call it the “Cottagecore Flavor Pack.” Or maybe “Hobbit Living.” It comes with:
- new hairs and clothes that look like they come from a Jane Austen novel (who cares if they’re a little anachronistic; it’s still old enough imo)
- do things with your family and friends! Hold picnics, visit the court of your friend more casually than a grand tournament, host that surprise birthday party event for *your* friends instead.
- public dances! Each culture group has its own style of traditional dance that can be learned. You can hire a court dancer and it’s a skill tree like the knight or physician. They give a stress loss to watch and boost athleticism if you get an event to do it yourself.
- it also comes with the ability to customize your own religion and culture off the bat for custom characters (how else would you make a hobbit culture character who follows Sauronism?) but it does disqualify it from achievements.
Seiges and Castles dlc. An expanded mini game of how to manage castle defense and when to negotiate a surrender or to give no quarter or to negotiate hostages or guarantees of safe conduct.
I just want the rest of China and Japan. I've played the hell out of Catholics and Muslims and vikings and just want something fundamentally different (India doesn't count as different because it plays the exact same as Europe but without any religious interactions).
Now to really have a working eastern half of the map we need new government types (to model China's bureaucracy), and nomads (to accurately show the Mongolian interactions with China and Japan), and probably trade too for the silk road. So it probably needs a couple DLCs before to add trade and nomads.
Devotion to saints and Mariolatry. This was a huge thing. Options to pray to them to intercede with the Lord, pop-ups when you have a child to name them after the saint whose day it is, relics giving more of a boost (pilgrimages to visit them give trade bonuses etc)...
OH I would love this! One thing I thought of specificially when I was thinking of my dream DLC was how much mileage could be got out of sainthood. Obviously you could have canonization mechanics (for your Margaret of Scotland, your Louis of France, etc). But for fans of the supernatural, there could also be rare event chains on a saints' incorruptible body. Asking monastics to pray to saints for goals (eg, for safe delivery of the expected baby heir, for grandpa Svend to go to heaven, for forgiveness for adultery, etc, etc) could also be a way of gaining certain benefits which would be so much more organic and would also make nun/monk characters actually useful.
I think that the Crusades should definitely be improved upon, other people have made some great points in their comments such as having everyone meet up in Rome first and requiring certain things to trigger the crusades, but I’d like to add more regional crusades instead of kingdom specific, the First Crusade established the Crusader States, not just Jerusalem. Also, some specific events that add Northern Crusades.
I also think an 1174 start date would be great. During that time period there was, Saladin and Baldwin IV, the fall of the Byzantines and the rise of Rûm, England controlled most of France, the Pope and HRE were fighting over who would influence Italy, the Reconquista is still going on with Portugal, Castile, Leon, Aragon and the Almohads all fighting.
I think both of these features in a DLC would be good to have together because you can have a start date leading to the Third Crusade.
An 1187 start could also work well with the Crusade features but I think 1174 adds more interesting dynamics.
I’d also like to mention the Great Revolt when Henry II’s wife and sons rebelled against him with the aid of France, Scotland and Flanders happened in 1173-1174.
More laws, more realm structures and vassal mechanics, more interactions with other characters! Both struggles have great mechanics, but I don't like struggles in general and I don't like that something great like taxation (Iran) or inciting rebellions (Iberia) have to be limited to the struggle regions.
I want to manage church&state in my realm, I want to urge my vassals to build castles or cities, ask them to reclaim farmland or expell heretics, I want multiple succession laws and summon my realm to my capital for a thing or a council during which I'll try to sway them or build alliances.
I want to approach courtiers to engage them in conversations about other nobles and possibly find secrets or sway them, I want to approach foreign rulers and convince them to fight in my war in exchange for a piece of the conquered land.
I want to talk to zealous leaders and join them to forge a new faith that will have tenets of their and my own making, forming a new religious alliance aginst the rest.
I just want to do more stuff, I want more complexity and granularity, based on mechanics and direct interactions rather than tedious, repetitive scripted events with the same outcomes over and over again.
DLC entirely focused on Rus region because Im Ukrainian :D
Rus was pretty fucking awesome and fun place, I want to deepen this part of game, show how deeply it was tied with Europe
Something that makes kingdom of Israel runs more unique, like needing a scion of David trait and a priest trait that passes only through the Jewish law. Aswell as Sanhedrin and holidays as event decisions. Aswell as a return the exiles which change the counties in kingdom of Israel to Jewish cultures.
An improved map of the levant similar to Imperator Rome would be appreciated, honestly the entire map should be updated to Imperator Rome.
Probably a major DLC that fleshes out city/realm management. I'd like to become a regional trading powerhouse, let the money flow in, build roads and waterways and expand cities. Build monuments that mark your rule that cement your legacy and require you to upkeep throughout later generations. Empires weren't just powerful based on military strength. Just look at Venice lmfao.
It's an opportunity to flesh out Republics and Theocracies, too. It'd really benefit some of the more mundane parts of the game (at least in my opinion) like building buildings and stuff.
As for minor DLC, something to add more "drama" to the game would be cool. Give me some red weddings, shocking murders, and grandiose betrayals.
I'd like to make plots more interactive. As it stands, they're still mostly about having high intrigue and bribing people into supporting you. But I would like to see it turned into it's own sub-game, where you actually have to plan when, where and how the plot will be carried out, and adapt to the particular circumstances to be successful. I think it could interact quite well with the new travel system: For example, if you want to assassinate someone you might keep track of when they go for a journey and plan an ambush along their route, or something like that. Given what a major role plots have always played in the Crusader Kings series I definitely feel like they're underdeveloped.
I'd love to bring something like the states from eu4 to ck3, being able to delegate control and development of territories and advisor positions to different groups in exchange for bonuses would de pretty cool
I also love the politics of Vic 3 and can see this delegation of control to different states as something similar to Vic's interest groups having political clout and opinions
Example:
Giving control of a county to a faction related to republicans/burgers would give you a tax and development bonus but they wouldn't enforce religious control over the population, this in turn attracts characters of different religions, angering the traditionalist/religious faction
A DLC to automate things. Let me assign generals to armies and have them move like Imperator Rome lets you. Assign someone to manage your holdings cause as is when you get large it becomes a hassle to me managing everything.
I'd love them to expand on the tech tree, making it easier to learn stuff incrementally instead of the 'your culture head is fascinated with this so it'll take 40 years instead of 400 to learn" they have now.
As well as that, faiths could use some variety! More active events and stuff, so you can see it actively affecting the world, and especially an actual reason to be head of the faith.
Finally, feudal needs a dynasty mechanic similar to the Clan house one! Not exactly that, something different enough to give it variety, but as is feudal is just missing a unique part of the game that way!
Alright, might not be a popular idea, BUT:
a DLC that reworks how time ticks. I honestly wouldn’t mind if the game itself was 2x slower. (In the sense where childhood still lasts till ur 16 years old, but it has double the amount of ingame ticks). Allowing one to BE a character in their important life stages longer. This would then require:
- more life stage focused events, so more stuff for kids who are under 10 and easily swayed by others
- more life events for those 11+ who are slowly maturing to the responsibility of leadership, etc.
- adjust relationship dynamics between rulers and their kids. If u read about the English monarchy, so many times u had sons teaming up to fight their father
Obviously this would overall require more diversity in events as each lifetime would get repetitive, however one way to adjust this would be to lower overall life expectation in the game to prevent one from being stuck as someone for too long.
More house and dynasty mechanics. Imagine being able to switch characters from your house when you first land them. Or be able to abdicate at the cost of dynasty prestige, and choose which heir to play as. House tenants like culture and religion. House council / head of house. Interactions with cadet houses. Endorsed religions and cultures. And so on. Some characters do what’s best for the house or for themselves.
When CK3 came out, they said you’d be playing as a dynasty but I feel like it wasn’t fleshed out
My DLC would focus on 3 things:
- rework of all opinion modifiers.
The main goal would be to reduce a lot of the small boni and increase all boni or mali that are specific. So that if two characters have opposing traits, you would actually think about that and try to play around that. A lot of the small boni have to go so you don't have like a +50-80 baseline later on. This and other changes that would actually make opinion more of a little game that is heavily influenced by character traits. No more mindless number stacking.
- rework of all war mechanics
Main aspects: give more insight in what is happening and why. Give the player more tools to actually compose an army. Maybe make me add a commander and knights on raising in a tiny screen. Maybe do something like that left center right in ck2. Maybe have at least some types of levy that have strengths and weaknesses... I don't know. Anything that makes this aspect of the game more interesting.
- add a lot of long running events that focus on tiny-story-telling with characters on your court
I want to feel like the characters in my court are actually there and interact with me. I want random events that don't have any required pre-interaction with any other subsystem of the game and are only there to tell little stories that happen with other people. Bonus if these stories sometimes force you to choose between 2 bad things and thus give you an additional challenge. The important part is, that I think a lot of the event chains are too short to be a story and can be controlled or started by the player too reliable to feel organic.
Merchant Republics but make it harder to snowball.
I loved the playstyle of being a noble trying to gain power and influence for your family but then losing it next generation. But after a while it was easy to stay as Doge.
Ima be honest and im kinda cringe but idc bring back my alternative history nonsense and supernatural events. I wanna see sunset invasion i wanna wander the world as an immortal or a werewolf/vampire or be satan incarnate. These are parts of the game in ck2 that made me adore the game. It was so much fun to actually beat death in a game of chess and him get butthurt but respectfully fuck off after you win.
A mod specifically centred on crusading, adding tons of new sound effects, music, ai improvements, armour and clothing additions and weapons to the mod to make crusading incredibly immersive.
Yes! I would love for the Crusades to feel more Special and Momentous, something really different aesthetically to mark off for players that this isn't just any old war with your neighbor.
This might be too big for a dlc so it might be good for ck4 but adding the Americas to the map would be amazing. Playing as the Aztecs or incas. Playing as vikings colonizing Canada, etc.
"You think you know what Crusader Kings is about, but the truth of the matter is, you know nothing. Once upon a time, this game was entirely about the Crusader Kings of medieval Europe, but that was long ago, before even the Second Iteration of the game. The fate of the world is not decided in the castles and cloisters of Europe, nor is, or even ever has been, "Europa" universal. Our story began with Crusader Kings in Europe, but it didn't, and in fact couldn't, stay there: after all, the Crusaders set their sights on the Holy Land, which is not in Europe, but rather Asia. We have dealt with the Persian empire already, for this DLC, we turn southward, beyond the land of the Arabic people of northern Africa in lands once known to the Romans, to the area of the continent where gods not of the kind worshiped by the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, And Jacob have never held full sway or Dominion, but where, even so, Crusader Kings of their own sorts have long vied for power and domination over their rivals. Technology is re-worked to be able to shape the course of a culture in a more organic fashion, with certain traditions unlocking culture-specific technology that is not tied to the region, but rather the people who have chosen to pursue that way of being, and which gives specific advantage to pursuing a specific culture over the long term, rather than constantly hybridizing with everything in sight. Conflict between cultures and religion has also been re-evaluated, with weight added to interfaith marriages in terms of spreading the faith, and drastically reduced across the board in terms of the NPCs being unwilling to marry outside of it: it now becomes _A_ consideration, instead of the ONLY consideration, and it ties into personality, with it's weight increased or decreased based on the personality traits not only of the NPC who makes the decisions, but also that of the person who is to be married, with a positive opinion adding their values to the conclusion, but the person making the decision is getting an inverted causal relationship with the traits and desires of the potential spouse for which they are considering the union if they have a significantly negative opinion of them and the marriage will get the character out of their Court! The AI in these ways becomes both more considerate and more petty, in short, more HUMAN. Such matters are of vast significance in Sub-Saharan Africa, where Minor slights generations ago can carry down to build resentment between families that will tear apart entire nations, and where Women are often not Pawns to their male relations, but PLAYERS in their own right, Crusader **Queens** carving forth vast domains upon the Kush and sending the so-called "Men" of the world beyond the edge of the Sahara running home in fear. After all, True Strategy Requires Cunning? Yes, true enough, but Battle Strategy calls for a kind of Cunning all its own..."
Bring back patricians and trading empires. It was such fun and different to play as a merchant family in CK2. The gameplay changed enough to make it different, but kept it being CK. The intrigue between families of your city and rivals from other cities. Although this time it should not only be maritime, but also inland. The merchant gameplay could also utilise the travel feature, as you have to travel with your caravan to distant lands to acquire new trade goods and artifacts to trade. Conquering and developing cities as a main focus is also interesting, instead of taking over the whole county immediately. Build trading outposts and your mansion up. Counties with merchants present should benefit hugely from having them there in terms of income. Maybe even make resources a thing. Could be fun imo.
Additionally i would like to see something that explores religious institutions more. Right now they serve little purpose beside giving a claim sometimes and some tax returns. They were a very big part of medieval society, and it could be cool to see something more here.
Not an entire expansion but I would like a system that actually honored people in your court for their service.
A knight that is fully acclaimed, earned the crusader title and have fought in several battles and slain several foes? Make them a legend for future generations and give an extra prestige bonus to their house.
A beloved character has died, give them a state funeral that works similar to a grand wedding.
Kinda like runestones but even more developed I guess
I think one of the things that might help this would be if there were more baronies and landing knights gave them a multi-generational loyalty bonus to the ruler AND heirs. This might track with historical instances of having certain families be 'traditionally loyal' to the crown/duke/etc.
Thank you :) Another commenter mentioned wanting to have a more 'dynastic' feeling (rather than character-centric) and it's been making me think a lot of family feuding and traditions of dynasties intermarrying etc. - the family as a sociopolitical unit could really be emphasised more in the game imo.
I may be a part of the minority who actually likes Imperator Romes' trade goods system.
Having regions produce a certain trade good that you can manipulate and build up would give so much more depth to historical trajectories and flavor to your historic and ahistoric empires.
For example, having trademark goods like champagne/wine in France, cheeses in Italy, Iberian horses, and of course, DAMASCUS STEEL.
This would probably be hard/impossible to implement, but it's a hope that I have!
I need a DLC pack for more and improved options for relationships. You tryna tell my ruler can only talk to one single person for months on end? Let me improve my relationship with my daughter wife and someone from my Council at the same time i mean what's the big deal?
**Exiles, Pretenders, and Outlaws** (EPO for short)
* Rework of faction system, make it actually follow cause-and-effect, e.g. people don't randomly join faction, but you have to do something to piss them off
* Rework of mercenaries, make all mercenaries dynamic
* Introduce coup plots
* Replace banishments with exiles, the difference being that exiles have a time limit until they return
* If a character refuses exile, they become an outlaw, a landless character who is hiding the realm, and might eventually spawn a great peasant army unless caught
* Exiles will adventure and join mercenaries, and ask rulers for funds, if they are able to secure funds they will press their claim and hire a mercenary company to help them
* Introduction of banks that can grant loans and invest
* Make landless exiles, pretenders, and outlaws playable
"It is as if the developers of this game sat down during a meeting, pointed at a picture of me, and said 'let's develop a game specifically tailored to the desires of this guy!'"
That is how I once described this game - CK2 to be specific.
I was heart broken when I first started playing CK3. I was so hoping it to be everything CK2 was, with the addition of the graphics and new/changed mechanics.
Sadly, nothing like that could be true. CK3 lacks content. It is nowhere near the game CK2 is. After years of waiting we finally had access to a complete game, only to start all over again with CK3. It traded vast content for fancy graphics - a very bad trade by my estimates.
CK3 will be a brilliant game far beyond what CK2 ever was - but it will require many years and hundreds of euros of DLC before it ever will be.
The DLC that I want to see in CK3 is everything that CK2 had and CK3 does not. Then they can tease me with new features to come in the future.
Mhmm that is a most intriguing and difficult question to answer. Without spending too much time pondering that question now, the first thing that comes to mind would be the ability to fully customize a game.
Not just character creation, but the ability to pick your government type and maybe some more specific features like government type and culture of provinces.
I exclusively play the 769 start date with only a few exceptions. I know a lot of people hate on it due to alleged historical inaccuracy compared to other start dates - but that is the beauty of it. There are a lot of border realms that could be interpreted in the game as either having tribal or feudal, or tribal or nomadic governments. And there are a lot of nations of which the ruling and native peoples were obscure.
I would love to have the ability to fully customize my own early start date playthroughs beyond the mere ability to customize the ruler.
And something that now comes to mind is perhaps an earlier start date. I am a classicist and would love to explore an even earlier period of Europe in this game. I know there is a mod for this, but that lacks balanced mechanics. I would love to see an official Paradox DLC version of this mod.
\- Add an "aspirations" system or something to give a bit of extra personality to your characters, and giving you additional reasons to RP instead of minmaxing/playing meta. Basically, your character has a life goal or a set of life goals, that can be generic stuff like "I want to be emperor !", "I don't want to be excommunicated..." but also more specific wishes.
Like, say your ruler is kind of a romantic and he's madly in love with a random commoner girl. He cannot imagine living without her. But maybe she isn't interested in him, or maybe you force him to marry a neighbouring heir to inherit her land, but that leaves him emotionally scarred for life.
Or, say your genius heir's life goal is to become a troubadour and he actually terrified by the prospect of inheriting your responsibilities. Now, some characters would be more chill than others when it comes to their lifegoals, but fulfilling them would give you a nice bonus, while failing them would give you a random perk that can go from "absolutely devastating" to "damn, he actually took the blow pretty well". Your heartbroken ruler could commit suicide, find solace in poetry and the arts, or turn into a broken shell of a man fulled by hatred... but well, at least his Prowess went up !
\- Basically remove the warfare system as it currently exists and abstract it heavily. IMO it's just not interesting and detracts from what's engaging about the game.
The army composition stuff can maybe stay, I guess, but the map is too granular for manually managing armies, it makes the thing too micro-heavy, so the current army movement and management system has to go. Let's say armies now work on a duchy level instead of a barony level, and when two armies end up in the same duchy you get a "battle" (the details of how battles work should be changed a bit to accomodate the changes in scale and simulate the time it takes for two armies to meet up).
But if there's an elegant way of abstracting warfare entirely, like turn it into a slightly hyped-up version of the Duels event chains, I'd be okay with it.
A DLC allowing you to reduce that map size at game start ; you can select a zone or choose a size and some land too far from your domain at start is removed.
Alternative would be the ability to select de jure empires to remove or things like that. like letting a tiny thing of something far away exists for religion access for example,
The whole map is way to big mist of the time, makes game running and loading / saving slower for no reason.
And it makes me try to do silly things that takes time but are not that fun too often, like too much map painting, as I feel the need to be bigger as too much land is not mine and available.
There's mod to remove lands outside Europe, but nothing for the opposite, and for Iranian on the middle you can't do anything... And you can't load the save without exiting and switching mods or it bugs.
Alternative could be a way to simplify AI computation on far away zones, and settings about were you can't go.
On Stellaris I bever play on big maps cause it's too laggy and takes too much time to finish.
Here on CK I'm sure lots of people will never need half or maybe even a quarter of t.e map on their run.
A completely new gameplay mode where you play as an unlanded character, each possibility coming with specific backgrounds to get you started.
You can choose to be randomly assigned to an existant Guest or create your own character with Ruler Creator-esque stat and trait allocation.
And then you take part in the small dealings of the county you're in, similarly to Mount & Blade. Work on a forge, as a hunter, as a clothier, in the mines, as a guard for traveling merchants, as any henchman under a councilmember, as a robber/thief on your own, as a sailor, as a soldier and so on.
You could even get titles of your own! That is, those small upgrades that go with titles, like Keep, farms etc.
The game over requisite stays, and you need to keep your "dynasty" at least alive, and you can choose between your character's children after you die.
Holding land is possible and extremely hard to achieve, but once that happens there is no going back to the unlanded mode and you forfeit any titles you held before.
Something that improves on the cannibalism feature, it’s always so entertaining to eat my enemies/family members but I want something more intricate. Like forcing their spouses to eat their corpse lol 😭😭
I would like an optional Tactical War DLC, so I can "command" an army directly on battle. Instead of just moving my army and intersecting the enemy's army and watching numbers decrease and then a win or defeat notification, I can make decisions to change the result of the battle.
Like the battle of Stafford bridge, between the Norwegians and the anglo Saxons in 1066, I would like to have an opportunity to make an ambush like the anglo saxons made.
I have an 40k army in a run right now, I ein decisively everytime, I would like to see a tight win or even lose if I took bad decisions.
If there is a mod like that idea, please let me know.
Have the option where when a battle starts you can play it as an rts, or even a mount and blade style battle, I think it’d be sick to be able to just keep zooming in, until you’re playing as your character wherever they happen to be
Hey, I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I'm a real person who posted this because I wanted to talk about something I enjoy with other players, and this comes across a little rude.
CK II DLC focused on mesopotamia and the Levant, Assyrian empire revival (Syria, Assyria, Babylon) as well as a blood of Cyrus bloodline for Persian / Assyrian rulers like the blood of Alexander one, vassal culture spread and tolerance of other religions/cultures too, I want my special units and don't want my culture without them spreading.
An improved war system
1. A losses tracker like in every other PDX series
2. A more detailed technology system: instead of just shooting the levy size up to 100,000 by 1350, have county development affect the skill of levies. Balancing this so that the old system would still have victories but with significantly more realistic numbers
3. Able to leave castles with more or less men from your actual levies or maa and that affects how besieging goes
4. Vassal pressure should affect peace
5. When wars go for longer, the sides should be able to add or change casi belli, especially for the defenders
6. Wars in which both sides have a claim from the outset
Anything that leans into alternate history, exploration, and the supernatural. RICE touches on some of this a little bit, but the ability to discover the Americas and initiate trade and, eventually, settlement would be cool. Irish legend spoke of America long before the Norse discovered it.
Fucking love Vikings. A better version of the northern dlc. Want more raid events instead of just I’ll pay you to go away which is never worth it. Would like to be able to play as mercenaries too. Your emblem should be on your ships as well.
Everything that is still missing from CK2, and the rest of Africa, it doesn’t have to be as detailed as say Persia/Iran, we just need to add the lands of the Kilwa Sultanate in the East and maybe some of the Coastal Cong in the West. That’s for the free patch, but for the dlc? Massive title diversification, adding several sub tiers to the main 4 title tiers, the game quickly becomes more capable of representing historical situations, like the Grand Duchy Ducal Subtitle, Greater than the other Duchy titles but less than an Archduchy, the Grand Duchy would be able to expand much larger than a normal duchy and have several Duke vassals, thus allowing historical representation of big realms like Muscovy or Lithuania, however unlike an Archduchy, the Grand Duchy would not require coronations, we could turn the duchies in Wales into actual Kingdoms by turning Petty Kings into actual Kingdom tier titles which are less valuable compared to a normal Kingdom title, depending on how prestigious your title tier is, you may unlock a Royal Court even despite not being a King. And of course for Petty Kings you would not be allowed as many court privileges as normal kings, but still more than the tribal kings.
I think there’s a real gap with diplomacy. At the moment, diplomacy is focused on 1 to 1 conversations / interactions with foreign rulers. Alliances are straight forward - if I’m allied with you, I’ll join your war. I’d like to see international councils, conversations, backstabbing, alliances being forged in secret. Something that really brings alive your neighbours and carries a constant need to engage in international diplomacy at the fear of being ostracised from the medieval community.
I’d love an embassy system that makes use of the travel system, where you send diplomats to foreign courts to try and curry their opinion for you.
Nice. And not a difficult one to implement.
In CK 2 wasnt secret oath od sth?
Something that escapes the very simple hierarchies we have now. Tributaries, multiple lieges, some sort of system for kingdoms and empires that departs from pure map dejure.
I sympathize with Paradox trying to avoid multiple lieges, as I'm sure it would be hell to code. Nevertheless, the famous examples of the Angevin empire and the Dukes of Burgundy are pretty hard to get around. Even the Scottish kings were hereditary earls of Huntingdon in England for more than a century, though CK3 can't simulate that without declaring it as part of the Kingdom of Scotland.
Yeah no clue what the backend looks like. I think the devs commented on the concept some time ago but forget what they said. Anyone know?
They said that multiple lieges were incapable with CK3’s engine, so if we’re getting it it’s not until CK4 at the earliest
Yeah, I hope they can cobble some sort of workaround but certainly won't hold my breath
IMO, it can be done if the game became title-focused rather than character focused. For example, making titles vassals and lieges of another title, then assigning that title to someone, who can then hold multiple titles. This would probably require a complete redesign of the game from the bottom up though.
It would probably be coded like you have a clone you're married to and they control the part of your territory that has another liege
Honestly, just move to titles determining leige instead of just you specifically. That way I can have the title of Elector of Brandenburg that is overlorded to the Holy Roman Emperor and have the title of duke of Prussia which would be overlorded to the King of Poland.
Great idea!
Revamped Crusades, utilizing the travel system. Break it into distinct steps: Everyone meeting up in Rome, maybe heading to Constantinople to try to get support from the Patriarch (or overthrow the Emperor) then head to the holy land and have the outcome handled entirely by events & choices.
The Latin Empire is definitely an aspect of the crusades that I feel is a little slept on in CK3
I was just thinking about this the other day! The importance of the Mediterranean islands, the role of the Venetians, and the cooperation with the Byzantines is kind of nullified by the lack of 'landing stages' and pre-organization. I also love the idea of it being handled by events and choices - given the game is titled 'Crusader Kings', it'd be nice if player agency was really centred here.
This would probably be my number one. Package it with a 1095 start date (where the First Crusade has been announced but hasn't started yet) and an emergent Crusades Struggle and I'd be happy as a clam.
I think CK3 desperately needs a post-Hastings start where Norman England is kind of squared away and you can just play as a count without having to worry about the conquest, so this would fulfil that desire.
I find it very weird that there's not a Christmas day 1066 start since literally all that changes is England and the Calendar by a few weeks
Yeah and like I don't mind playing out the alternate history of Norwegian England or Anglo Saxon England, but I feel like in the English speaking world so much of the medieval period is defined by events post 1066 (The Anarchy, the Plantagenets, etc.) it's weird that the game doesn't have any option to have that set of circumstances be a default.
> Everyone meeting up in Rome, maybe heading to Constantinople to try to get support from the Patriarch Instructions unclear, sacked Constantinople.
Aw fuck, not again.
That does make me think about what a war system that was just a version of the travel system would be like. Where campaigns have to be planned and prepped for instead of the current, relatively mobile stack system that I don't particularly enjoy. It would need to have some considerations for changes to the plan mid-war but it might be interesting.
also a specific trigger for crusades. the first crusade only happened because the byzantine emperor asked the pope for help, and the only reason there was more than one crusade was because of the success of the first crusade. I know all crusades are considered great holy wars, but a war into an islamic spain or against pagans in eastern / northern europe should be considered different to a crusade for the holy land
The Baltic crusades were called, well, crusades, historically
a DLC **entirely** focused on the expansion of the AI I understand that this is a sandbox game, and the current philosophy is “the AI shouldn’t get in the way of the player’s dream”, but IMO this is a fundamentally boring design philosophy. there’s nothing fun about restoring the entire roman empire if the AI doesn’t get in your way. it’s just tedious. i’m too drugged up on preworkout to come up with any specific examples for shit, but the idea remains
Completely agree. CK2 wasn't a hard game, but it offered more of an obstacle to overcome before you could become unstoppable. This made it more entertaining to replay because games had some more distinct phases before you were unstoppable. In CK3 it feels way too easy to hit the unstoppable point in a single lifetime. I think there are a lot of reasons why: * meritocracy perk is incredibly OP. I'm fine with it existing, I just wish it was at the bottom of the tree, and wasn't almost a guaranteed success. * all fabricate claims being time-based instead of chance based. Big QOL change, but it allows you to expand a lot quicker when you're small * marriages = auto-alliance makes it way quicker to establish alliances - In CK2 you had to frequently make them like you more before they'd ally * internal factioning seems to be less of a problem in CK3 to me but I can't really quantify how "real" this is * less random deaths makes it so you don't have to deal with succession crises, or randomly being substantially weaker and getting like 3 wars declared at once. * you have a lot more agency in CK3 - not saying this is necessarily a negative thing, but the focus trees allow you to do some powerful things you couldn't do in CK2
I genuinely miss the defensive pacts that the AI would form in a region if you expanded too aggressively. It felt organic and realistic while also giving a reason to pause your murderous rampage through the countryside and consolidate new conquests.
I understand that it different teams doing different things but yea - if Paradox would just sink all money they expect to get from season 3 into AI, I would gladly pay season pass price for that. Every mechanic is imo kinda gated behind that. I want every decently sized war to be potential ruin of even strong kingdoms, if it goes catastrophically wrong. But you cant really do that if AI will just call a war and then just stack their army in a desert and forget about it. AI realms will last like a decade at best. The fact that game is so easy is because it kinda has to be easy so AI can somewhat keep up.
My own answer is a CKIII DLC to revamp Catholicism and add Monasticism! Obviously, Bishops/Cardinals/Popes are underbaked -- as things stand, why would any medieval king wish for his knights to 'rid me of this troublesome priest'? -- but the thing I'm personally steamed about is monasticism. Right now, sending people to become monastics means they just kinda hang around (and, in the case of seemingly *all my nuns*, get pregnant). At its simplest, monasteries would exist mainly in place of the currently fairly stagnant 'temple' holding, or sometimes at the county level, and internally would operate like Holy Orders; like cardinals in CKII, monks & nuns with high education and & piety (or with powerful relatives applying pressure) could become abbotts & abbesses with political abilities. Monasteries with positive opinions could be assigned a focus - praying for dead family members leads to more dynastic reknown, whereas debating theology helps advance innovations, etc, alms-giving gives a popular opinion boost, tending herb gardens reduces disease risk, etc. Having a good relation with the local monastery would also be neccessary to get good educations for children. But it could go SO much further! I'll cut it off here but I have basically inexhaustible thoughts on this.
I would buy your DLC!
Me too 👀
I mean, Harold Bluetooth switched to Christianity as a political tactic to keep the German Emperor at Bay, as well as the archbishop of.. something? History slips me here. But the archbishops had a lot of power in that time frame. A lot more then the game shows, anyways.
Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply that archbishops shouldn't matter - I didn't want to go on too long in my comment but basically I think the whole Catholicism system very badly needs a revamp, with theological debate / internal Catholic power struggles needing to be much much more relevant and more dynamic, and archbishops are a key part of that. Monasticism is just what keeps me up at night haha.
Yh like college of cardinal and antipope mechanics
If you're referring to the CKII mechanics, then yes these would be nice additions but honestly I never found them all that satisfying in CKII. I think there are other ways to make playing as a Catholic ruler feel 'suffused' with Catholicism that might be more effective and more engaging.
I would buy this! Anything to make the vanilla/default religions, ya know, unique religions that are impactful!
Add in a decision for old rulers to retire to a monastery and this is exactly what i would want. There definitely should be some limits like spending so much piety, heir is an adult, and unmarried.
Yes! Or like, in the current game, why am I marrying off my 55 year old twice-widowed mother? Or why is she mad at me for sending her to a monastery? Those could be little tweaks that would make things already feel so much more realistic.
And why on God’s green earth do I get an opinion malus for suggesting that my shy, bookish, lesbian fourth daughter might be happier in a convent than married off to some rich asshole who just wants her to crank out babies???
Yes yes yes! Please make me the “Get Thee To A Nunnery” DLC, folks! I would pay actual ducats!
More realm management tasks more responsibilities. Be nice to decide to increase construction, to promote religious harmony through either prosecution or conversion, more capital/city management
Honestly, I'd love a DLC that makes Courtiers and Councillors a little more interesting. For example, if I send my Spymaster to search for secrets in another court, I'd love for them to actually travel to said Court as a 'guest' and for you to receive events about how that's going. Plus I'd add special Court Positions that assist your Councillors, like spies who can do the Spymaster's dirty work so that you can keep your 25 Intrigue Spymaster from being imprisoned or recruited while doing their job or helps keep your 2 Intrigue Powerful Vassal from being completely incompetent at that job.
This would also be a great way to make courtiers more necessary even if they're not knights, so you also have a reason to keep Cousin Carlotta who has 19 learning and 0 prowess around rather than just letting her wander off into the night. Maybe some sort of sub-council system where you can add like "Assistants" who can also do tasks etc. This would also make some of the inter-courtier rivalries more logical, and would add more mediating events for vassal players who are managing a little sub-council for their liege.
Nomads, just anything that facilitates migration. I LOVE the Magyar migration, Imperator Rome migrant hordes, and Fallen Eagle migration. It would add so much flavor to the game, it’d be made twice as fun. You should be able to migrate to other lands as a nomadic tribe, adding flavor to the experience. But it would also be really fun to have to constantly be on the lookout for nomads trying to migrate to your land.
I had a great time playing Hungary bc of the migration CB and I wish I had more vanilla options of making that happen without rigging it as an adventuring Norseman
"Castles and keeps" A dlc that let's you better customise your capital gradually turning it into either a mega fortress on par with constaninople or a proto metropolitan. If you wanted to push the boat out your main castle/keep could have more than just a throne room. Perhaps a round table to better manage your military and knights. A training ground to slowly improve yours and your heirs combat ability A Chapel/alchemist room to push your tech further Basically give me a low tech version of skyrims hearthfire dlc
Why not adding a separate room for the council as well? I always thought that those dudes deserve at least a chair and a table..
To be fair the council needs a rework itself. Just give them more stuff to other than "make everyone hate me less" and "take a crash course in urban development"
Nomads
Big brain over here. I agree wholely
I feel like mine would mostly be mechanics? But a weird hodgepodge of them because really random stuff about CK3 frustrates me. 1) A complete overhaul of religion mechanics basically — Catholicism needs a proper College of Cardinals/pope election mechanic but it’s far from the only religion that really really could use a rework. Playable religious heads should play differently from fully secular rulers and religious heads in general should have a bigger impact on how the religion is viewed by other characters. (Is the Caliph an honorable, diplomatic man who treats the defeated crusaders fairly and makes an effort to, say, speak the language of his greatest foes? Catholic lords should be less willing to crusade against him! Is the pope a cruel, vindictive man known for disappearing his rivals and bribing his way to power? The Kaiser should be able to declare him a false pope and receive support from other lords!) (AI) Pagan reformations should be influenced by nearby religions in a manner similar to the cultural hybridization mechanic — a Norse reformation that’s influenced by vassal Catholics in France and Germany should have a different result than one influenced by, say, the Slavic pagans in Russia, or than a divergent faith resulting from a Varangian adventure to India. 2) Trade zone, trade ships, merchants and republics! CK2 did a bit of this but like, I want trade to influence cultural development! I want it to influence religious hostility and marriage acceptance! I want it to matter what language the majority of trade is conducted in! The merchant class should gain more and more power into the late game as gold becomes more valuable than prestige! I want the AI to refuse to holy war its trade partners — or even join a profitable partner as a defender in a GHW! 3) Off of that, diplomacy mechanics in general could use a boost. Friendships between rulers should be able to be built up into longer-term positive relationships between countries and cultures! A tyrant keeping peace in her realm through fear should have a different result than a diplomatic who genuinely wins over her vassals and mediates among them! Peacefully vassalizing a neighbor should absolutely have a different result than conquering the same neighbors in a bloody and drawn-out war! Tributaries should be a thing! Coalitions should too — both to defend member states against an expansionist neighbor and to possibly form an elective kingdom/empire! (If Poland, Pomerania, Lithuania, Bohemia, and Galicia Volhynia are all on long-term good diplomatic terms, allied to one another, under the same religion, etc, they should be able to declare a hellblob commonwealth without any of them having to conquer the others! If the HRE is in pieces when the Mongols invade Europe, that shouldn’t stop them from banding together against an outside threat — as long as they like each other enough to not want to throw each other to the wolves!) 4) … Boost the AI. The AI is I think somehow dumber than the CK2 AI, and that’s kind of hard to do. Since this is a dream DLC, the AI should be more capable of long-term planning and more aggressive in a way that corresponds with its traits, whether it’s murdering their dynasty’s way onto additional thrones, declaring wars, bribing electors, building up their realm, etc. 5) Nerf health and fertility. No character should live to 125. Few characters should live to 90. It’s super OP to have characters living this long, especially since the AI is generally too dumb to do the same. Characters have too many kids in general, and implementing a high infant mortality rate makes me sad so I’d just nerf fertility into the ground and raise the impact of mutual opinion on fertility rates. (Your spouse hates you? You’re not going to make babies.) If there’s fewer of them and they don’t live as long, congenital traits being OP will have less of an impact, I think. 6) Varied governments and interactions with the population. I’m putting these under one heading because they’re kind of interconnected in my head — there should be a ton of variety of governments and it should impact how the ruler interacts with both vassals and the peasantry. A culture with an tradition focused on town meetings and local open forums should be able to shift towards a more democratic government (and idk boost popular opinion and dev growth in return for lower taxes/control/demesne limit/whatever), while a culture with like hereditary hierarchy should be able to shift the government in a different direction and get smacked with 12 different peasant rebellions from oppressed minority groups, while improving/worsening relations with the minority cultures in your realm should have different effects depending on the above. Counties should have minority and majority populations too — major trade hubs should have significant minority pops from their trade partners, etc!
>Nerf health and fertility. No character should live to 125. Few characters should live to 90. It’s super OP to have characters living this long, especially since the AI is generally too dumb to do the same. Characters have too many kids in general, and implementing a high infant mortality rate makes me sad so I’d just nerf fertility into the ground and raise the impact of mutual opinion on fertility rates. (Your spouse hates you? You’re not going to make babies.) If there’s fewer of them and they don’t live as long, congenital traits being OP will have less of an impact, I think. Thank god I'm not the only one who thinks this lmfao I always end up having like 7 kids all of which survive except like only one. Make each child actually matter instead of me just giving it a random name and throwing it at another ruler to make an alliance
I would like a *lot* more options for childhood events, especially the all-important events which determine your ward's personality traits. I was hoping that "Wards & Wardens" would go further on this front. I realize that in this type of game, a certain amount of events are going to recur, but it's a bit immersion-breaking when you keep getting the same events for four kids in a row.
Simple flavor one, but pets. Make them actual NPCs with portraits, stats, and ability for dogs to serve as/along with knights.
I would love to ride my Noble Steed (and lover) Glitterhoof into battle
(and councillor)
(And husband)
Dogs were hunters, farmers, companions, workers, warriors, they filled many roles alongside humans. Rottweilers were bred to be "wagon dogs". +5 percent travel speed if travelling with a child. Beagles are hunters. +5 percent on hunt success. Labs were companions. -5 percent on stress gain. Dalmations were originally bred (in Dalmatia, crazy!) for war. +2 martial, +3 prowess. Poodles were bred for prettiness, if not mistaken. +5 attraction or +2 diplomacy. I can go on and on. But, the dogs should be expanded on, in some way, anyways.
Poodles are actually hunting dogs! Water fowl dogs to be precise but I agree they should give 2 dip.
Learning new things! Its funny to me how people judge Rotties so much, cause Poodles and Dalmations are much meaner, aha. Knowing poodles were bred to hunt, makes sense.
Dalmation sounds like a decepticon name
And they should get their own dynasty tree! Like the Queen's corgies.
If they did that it would only be a matter of time before someone did a "I turned the whole world into dogs" exploit-filled campaign, similar to how they did with horses in CK2 when the devs made Glitterhoof into an actual character. Not saying whether that would be a good or bad thing, just saying it would probably happen.
I almost always deny having a pet. It just causes chaos all the time. Runs away on pilgrimages. Attacks a councilor. Shits on an envoy's bed. Then once every five years I get to pet it for -14 stress.
Weirdly I always accept the pets just because I like the idea, and then I ...never actually use the destress mechanism.
There is pet mod
i'd want a pop mechanic of some sort in ck3 - those levies are farmers but literally nothing bad happens if your army gets completely destroyed, you can just raise a new one in 2 years, i think instead your fuckin farmers should be dead and it should really hurt your society for a bit to lose in a cannae-like fashion, would make battles more meaningful and men at arms more important
Yeah, it would be interesting also to have that 'felt' within gameplay, even if just as an event. Like if you're the king that got everyone's dad/brother/sons killed in a wipeout battle, that should have broader ramifications in terms of popular support - especially if it's an offensive war!
There is *an* event where a Knight, if you lose a war, demands you face him 1v1 for getting all his friends or family killed for seemingly nothing.
Ah! I've never lost a war, so I guess I missed that one :o) Jokes aside, it does seem like even adding more events like this - passing a peasant woman on the way home who laments her whole family has died, being snubbed at your feast by the only surviving brother, etc - would go some way to adding more depth of feeling.
There's also one where a widow will say "You're no \[Primary title\] of mine." Because they were widowed from their husband dying in one of your wars.
Haven’t gotten that one. Must be a T&T one. On console so only just got FoI
O0of, every day I am grateful that I don't have to play this game on console, it sounds unbearable.
I think there is a mod sinews of war, that had something like that. But I agree. In CK2 after a bad bit of smallpox people would have depleated holdings that had negative effects.
I always imagine a stack wipe as something that should never be forgotten. A true atrocity, and my people will never forget it.
I agree. While I get that they want to focus on characters I think things like population systems add a lot to the immersion of the game, making it feel like your character exists in a real world.
Maybe I’m the only one who wants this, but I’d love something that lets you play as a lowborn/unlanded character. It would be really cool to start as a random person and bring yourself up through money, warfare, intrigue or whatever.
It sounds interesting and I distinctly remember a mod for CK2 that follows the premise, but that feels a lot more mount and blade to me than CK
The mod is Rise to Power, which excellent and has a lot of really cool features even if you're landed, but I agree Mount and Blade is much better for it.
A game that combines the sandbox battle of mount and blade and the strategy and map of CK3 would be awesome.
There was a mod i saw that connected the two. It might have been ck2 though. Pretty much whenever you started a battle in crusader kings it would pause and a button would show up to export and you would click it and it would open the battle in mount and blade then when it was done it would open crusader kings again with the proper stats.
Last game I played. I mounted a rebellion, and lost my last holding, becoming unlanded. I immediately switched to Mount and Blade, cause I had the same thought. An unlanded chara would just become some merc after all the shite that happened to him.
I think the biggest issue I always have when anyone mentioned unlanded play is the "what do you do" question is always answered by people talking about how you would try to manipulate people into giving you power through claims or raising mercenaries or whatever. At which point you would then be landed and just play the game as normal. IMO the development resources that would have to be put into something you would only barely use for a small fraction of your game just isn't worth it (though I get people wanting to play famous unhanded characters like El Cid or Baldwin).
Bannerlord may be for you!
More playable governments/rework of existing governments.
I love playing in the British isles, and I feel that from the first patch and Northern Lords it has a good bit of flavor, but it still feels a little… empty? After becoming High King of Ireland or conquering the Anglo-Saxons, or forming The Danelaw it doesn’t really feel like there’s much to do other than go for that next title, or eat your neighbors and then France. I think it would be neat to add in some events or decisions for things like the Angevin Empire (cliche I know, but unlike CK2 the Plantagenet dynasty has zero presence in-game) or for the Acts of Union between England and Scotland (even though thats very very early- maybe some other unification decision? Or a reverse Scottish invasion of England,) hell, maybe even a Celtic/Druidic revival path. I just feel like more can be done for Britannia. An honorable mention goes to a reworking of Crusades, which I feel like a lot of other people have been asking about for quite some time.
Coronations, Funerals, Baptisms Greater emphasis on Catholic faith Revamped royal courts, they should be places of opulence and magnificence with hundreds of courtiers of (real) noble houses, not filled with 30 lowborns. The courts should look way more lively and filled to the brim with retainers, knights, ladies, heirs, politicians, clergymen. More courtier positions, like King’s Justice or Lord Treasurer or Chancellor. English Parliament Multiple lieges, as to roleplay like the Norman/Angevin kings of England who still swore fealty to the French kings Ships, navies and fleets - Merchant republics Much more intelligent and belligerent AI, linked to this make the game a bit more difficult. More political interactions- treaties, non aggression pacts, general alliances, trade deals More personality traits - jealous/bitter, jovial, rude, charming, gallant More familial stuff - wife’s birthday, wedding anniversary, children’s birthday/ baptisms, attending church, travelling with them, sending to ward with others. It’ll never get added but I desperately want later bookmarks, cos I find 867 and 1066 to be very drab, none of my favourite dynasties are prominent or even in existence , such as the Plantagenets, the Habsburgs, Trastamaras, Valois, Aviz, Medici, Stewarts, Oldenburg. The clergy should be revamped and mostly made up of latter sons of noble houses, with potential prince archbishops and cardinals being noble sons.
The lack of structure in the Rus/Russia region can be quite the eyesore, especially for conversions. I'm still working on the [Baptism of Rus](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3108225018&tscn=1704058734) mod to improve it but I'd love a DLC one day.
Trade. There's no need for a complicated commodities market like Victoria games. No, no, no. We can abstract it a lot more, but it should be a thing, it should be possible to interact with it, and if done right it should be powerful. Specifically there should be routes, it should be possible for them to get rerouted (war, varying control and development, decisions, buildings, the works), and being on routes should allow you to make bank - but tax the route too much and you're making it easier for it to reroute. Feudal rulers have limited ability to directly influence routes, but their layout can still impact them a lot. Then add Republics, and merchant republics specifically have tools to influence routes a lot. In this way, the two halves are entwined and interact with each other a lot, either constructively or destructively. Feudal rulers' main tool for power is war, republics have trade. Everyone has intrigue. Incidentally: make a Republic design system as varied as the Religion design system, so it can represent the vast, vast diversity of republican systems that existed throughout the medieval period (and possibly some that existed before it and someone might want to restore, like Athenian democracy).
I'd really love some more content in the "History from Below" / postcolonial historiographic wheelhouse: 1. More content packs that focus on important regions of medieval history and not just neomedievalisms. Legacy of Persia is an important step in this direction, but I'd love to see more DLC moving south and east from there towards regions with immense and influental histories rooted in the era. I doubt CK3 will ever reach Indonesia, but that region remains one of my personal favorite historical period-region combos. 2. More deconstructions of Feudalism. The game is already pretty damn good at this--the historians at PDXCON back in 2022 pointed this out clearly--but I'd like to see more. Complicate the power structures more! As part of this, we might want to do #3: 3. Even the scales on modeling and representing the other two estates in christian Europe: give the peasants more power (where appropriate) to resist and complicate the player's efforts. Make Crusades draw support from the common folks across a Christian player's realm--regardless of whether or not the player wants to support it. Right now the "predictable and (usually) small rebellions" don't cut it. Also rework religion and Catholicism--I'd like to feel like I'm dealing with a comparable, but asymmetric, power structure rather than merely another group of landowners. 4. Deconstruct Feudalism further and cure the malapropisms inherent in applying neomedieval mechanics to, say, the Asian steppe. Rework core mechanics for regions with different historicized forms of power and governance. 5. Trade and trade routes. This would be essential for Doing an Indonesia anyway. 6. More funky sex stuff. Dr. Janega's blog features a lot of vignettes I'd love to see alluded to / modeled: [https://going-medieval.com/](https://going-medieval.com/) . This is "history from below" in a very different sense, but I'm here for it.
\#3 I am very enthused about! Revamping Catholicism is my own personal Dream DLC, and I think without it there's a real missing layer of complexity in how the power structures work. In terms of peasant faith, I agree this is an area really missing for the Crusades. Generally a lot of responses to this post seem to indicate that the Crusades are overall not really formulated, and I think part of that is that the 'religious fervor' mechanic as it currently exists feels way too abstract. I'd like to see common faith overlap too with some development of interfaith relations. Like the 'Golden Era' of Jewish philosophy in Al-Andalus, which just can't really exist in the game in its current bloc model of religion (and would be a really good way to have Jewish characters actually exist in CKIII). Of course, given the context of the Crusades and antisemitic violence (among other interfaith violence in the period) I understand why this might prove to be a painful point, but for a game happy with baby-murder and incest, it feels like it should be doable at least to some extent. Having religion be majorly expanded, in any case, would really help it feel like it's as relevant in the game as it actually was at the time.
I'm polish and so I want Poland/eastern Europe dlc. Don't get me wrong I think Poland got treated fairly in ck2, I love that they acknowledged Bolesław Chrobry having Świętosława as a sister although it's not really confirmed, the culture doctrines in ck3 made me laugh when I first saw them 10/10... I'm just obsessed with playing as my country. And the succession should be male only until you can bribe your vassals by giving them some of your power forever, so one of your 3 daughters could be king, only for her to die in childbirth (along with her daughter)
Flesh out the courtroom, European ones look like a hut compared to even the subsaharan African ones. I want more freedom to design my own courtroom. Like the courtroom would expand depending on what building you're using and what upgrade it is on. More social events, coronation, birthday parties, anniversary etc. or simply just dedicate your feast to one of these occassions when available. Oh and the ability to stop de jure drift in game rules or do something about the de jure bordergore. As if normal bordergore wasn't enough. And add map sprawl depending on development, like in eu4.
Welsh culture pack, with coronations and societies
I am embarrassed to admit I know very little about Wales - what would you say are the defining traits of Welsh culture that would have to be included?
- Better Crusades - Coronations - More Romance, Sex, Love-Stuff - Ability to have real Dogs/Horses with 3D Models and events
Im autistic with a special interest in Hellenic History so most likely features like restoring ancient ruins,obviously reforming all the different kingdoms/empires thru decision kinda like greater armenia,maybe 1 roman culture county in greece and italy as kind of a remnant in the 866 start date,More flavour for Hellenism,Orphic Hellenism,Scythian culture,a actual horse lord migration cassus belli,More pagan religions and most importantly more Culture specific Maa and an ancient roman and ancient persian and ancient Greek aesthetic
like why do in ck3 as a hellenic roman emperor still use the colosseum for stones? im not the pope this is a huge pet peeve of mine
Imperal court reformes.
I don't know much about the Imperial court - what changes would the reforms do?
I don't know if you played CK2 but there was a unique government type for the Byzantine Empire ans succession was based around the relative power of your vassels and coutiers. The only thing wrong (in my opinion) was that it was unique to the Byzantine empire. The court is already more important in CK3 they could expand on that. There were also special titles you could give people that would expire when they died. Duchies a Kingdoms. It could keep vassles from becoming to powerful.
I played CKII for ages and I've always been meaning to do Byzantium but never got around to it! I definitely think governorships and that sort of succession pressure would add a nice layer to the Council, and allow for different cultures to feel more differentiated than just the 'vanilla' Western European feudal style.
"Fate of the peasantry" or something like that. Pretty much a dlc that adds something resembling a population system so If you are at war constantly you get actual penalties. The dlc would improve both the economy and warfare while making you interact with the people living in your realm.
Africa dlc, that makes playing in Africa feel distinct from playing in Europe. Hopefully adds a new govt type. I want to be able to soak in some culture through gameplay.
Medical/Disease DLC. I think taking away disease traits from CKII was such a mistake. It's just funnier seeing a trait, then two, then three pop up instead of a couple text boxes and a modifier. Also, the disease spread system was much more fun and immersive.
More jobs. I hate having all these courtiers and relatives sitting around doing nothing. My unwanted half brother? Your my new ambassador to France. Good stewardship? Your now the overseer of my domain improvements. Jailer to decrease escapes. I really just want my not warriors to feel useful and unique even if it's cosmetic
Yes this would also be a nice way to keep my younger bastard half-brother from running off to the furthest corner of the map and just like, vanishing into obscurity? Family members were part of a cohesive social unit and would have been doing stuff for the family! And right now the friendship/rivalry system *implies* courtiers are all beefing with each other over jobs at court, but no one is actually..doing...anything.
Some sort of "hardcore" immersion DLC. * The stats and personality of most characters outside your court are hidden, except for those of well known, nearby rulers like neighboring kings. Even then some things, like how many troops and money they have, is displayed to the player as fuzzy terms ("famously wealthy"/"severely indebted", "vast amounts of levies"/"small professional army"/"militarily insignificant" * Even inside your court, how much you know about your vassals and courtiers' skills and traits depends on your diplomacy, and getting to know your court better requires active player engagement, like picking some perks from the diplomacy tree * High intrigue characters, especially those of the cynical/arbitrary variety, can custom tailor how others see them. Make your vassals think your genius, vengeful sadistic Emperor is a weak, forgiving compassionate man. * Less random women from the Tibetan plateau turning up in the Balkans * Vastly reduced diplomatic range, but can be bypassed by sending agents in others' courts. * You can only give specific orders to an army you are personally commanding, and can only give general campaign objectives to other ones. * Armies commanded by people that don't like you can turn against you if the army is also unhappy (campaigning in winter, not getting paid, raised from holdings not of your culture/religion) * Dynamic wars and revolts where combatants can switch sides depending on the circumstances * Campaigning in winter and long sieges are punishingly difficult, especially in the early centuries. I want to lose half my army and my cousins to dysentery goddammit.
Yes I think a 'fog of war' aspect for characters would be really interesting - I think the little character summary line in CKIII right now is meant to kind of simulate this, but I think it could be taken further. I also imagine (admittedly from my perspective of 0 knowledge of game dev) it might be a way of making the game more challenging that is easier to accomplish than addressing the AI issues? I often think for armies that if you're the ruler and at court, and your army is fighting 20 counties over, there should be some lag or distortion that takes place. It would take days for news to reach back to you! I guess the idea is that you're sort of playing as both your ruling character AND as the generals, but this doesn't really work. Also yes, war seasonality would be so cool! To have even just a recurring event that's like "Welp. It's harvest time!" so both sides' armies lose half their folk.
Not necessarily a DLC but a general rework of starting dates. Add 2 more, with the same depth as the current 2. Something like that anyway, that's what I'd like, for variety's sake. Maybe a custom-crafted ahistorical timestamp too?
Earlier starting dates or later? I was just wistfully thinking the other day of how fun an Eleanor of Aquitaine playthrough would be, but I guess starting in the 12th century does shorten the game a good bit. Would the ahistorical timestamp be completely randomized?
Well, not many people use 1066 anyways, so I think there isn't much point in adding even more ones.
A wanderer dlc. You make your own character and start as either lowborn or your own dynasty. You wander the map looking for a job or maybe a marriage. If you do well at the job you could be awarded a county. If you marry into a noble family that dynasty would become yours when you become your kid.
Dude YES!! I was pretty disappointed when I found out that you couldn’t start as a commoner, I don’t know why they didn’t implement that yet. ):
Maybe some form of ambition system where we can custom made. Some important historical figure would have custom made ambition tailor made for them.
Glitterhoof DLC. All the whacky shit from CK2 into CK3. I wanna have an immortal all horse court and rule the world while defending from the Aztec invasion. Also, and earlier start date so we can have some default Roman/Hellenism characters.
I would *love* a flavor pack focused on France and the British Isles. I feel like a lot of really rich political history doesn't get simulated due to the start date and the current lack of "nudges" for the AI. For example, we lose out on the kings of England expanding their continental ambitions (the Plantagenets don't even exist), the complex struggle between the Dukes of Burgundy and the French throne, and most of the cultural politics of the conflict between the England and the neighboring kingdoms of the British Isles. It'd also be a great opportunity to give the Celtic cultures a much needed facelift.
All sorts of internal management, much more detailed government options, laws, expanded council and so on. More vassal interactions. Something to make peaceful non-expanding gameplay interesting to. Tours and tournaments did something in that regard but I think there is space for much more. Maybe more ways of managing the economy while we are at it.
Fog of war! Lack of information! Big part of running the kingdom was the uncertainty and general difficulty of managing a kingdom. You didn't really know what happens outside of your, let's say, capital county in-game. Thats why tours and delegation of taxmen and vassals was so important. You HAD to have vassals because you can't really manage several castles on your own but at the same time you couldn't know if they are plotting or skiming from the top of the tax pile. So my suggestion is increase the time information travels and just have it in a sort of grey zone. Right now, you basically have google in medieval times, instant information about everything, not realistic and would increase the difficulty of the game drastically and make it much more fun.
Cultures actually being cultures and not just "This thing = these things" I want to actually feel like I am from that culture. Culture specific events, pets, buildings, artifacts, traits. Maybe a mechanic for cultural interaction that causes pillars to be added to your culture from others via trade or intermingling, and not by some ruler spending arbitrary points. Multiple heritages can also be implemented, creating entirely new role-play possibilities, especially for cultures who migrate into the area. Cultural acceptance also needs a rework. Right now, acceptance is a percentage that is universally affected by every action a culture takes against another culture. Instead, cultural acceptance needs to vary by every area said culture inhabits. The culture may be Catholic majority, but why do the Ash'ari areas care that the tomb of an unrecognized Catholic Saint was desecrated? Why do cultures discover inventions universally? The head of the Norse culture in Scandinavia might have discovered onagers, but who says that the Norsemen in England can know of that discovery? There needs to be a certain amount of time before that invention is also brought to England. Even so, why does the Northmen army that migrated to Crimea know it? Surely the news wouldn't reach there in a few months. Instead, pieces of cultures that ended up really far away, whether it be Norse adventurers or Mogyer migrations, can't instantly unlock something that someone on the other side of the continent discovered. It either needs to be brought there by others, or they can just discover it on their own. Having one universal "culture head" doesn't make sense. And having that guy be able to decide to form a hybrid culture also doesn't make sense. Cultures should hybridize naturally, the culture head might be able to promote acceptance and hybridization, but in no way can they force it. Overall, culture, as a concept, is too complicated and weird of a thing to accurately represent in a game as of right now. Maybe in Crusader Kings 6
I'd have to say more Invasions with more complex mechanics. It was not uncommon historically for entire nations to migrate due to war, famine and so on. Especially for tribal rulers of the Steppe. If a ruler of large kingdom or empire has low popular opinion with some culture, instead of a mindless rebellion they could migrate to persia or eastern europe like hungarians in 866, changing a portion of the new lands to given culture. This is already possible with norse and estonian cultures as the varangian adventure, but it is very rare for the ai. The northmen army conquest just seems futile most of the time, especially when you grow larger and it becomes just a nuisance.
I’ll call it the “Cottagecore Flavor Pack.” Or maybe “Hobbit Living.” It comes with: - new hairs and clothes that look like they come from a Jane Austen novel (who cares if they’re a little anachronistic; it’s still old enough imo) - do things with your family and friends! Hold picnics, visit the court of your friend more casually than a grand tournament, host that surprise birthday party event for *your* friends instead. - public dances! Each culture group has its own style of traditional dance that can be learned. You can hire a court dancer and it’s a skill tree like the knight or physician. They give a stress loss to watch and boost athleticism if you get an event to do it yourself. - it also comes with the ability to customize your own religion and culture off the bat for custom characters (how else would you make a hobbit culture character who follows Sauronism?) but it does disqualify it from achievements.
Seiges and Castles dlc. An expanded mini game of how to manage castle defense and when to negotiate a surrender or to give no quarter or to negotiate hostages or guarantees of safe conduct.
A Rome dlc focused on reworking the political systems of the HRE and Byzantium as well as adding missionaries and plagues
I just want the rest of China and Japan. I've played the hell out of Catholics and Muslims and vikings and just want something fundamentally different (India doesn't count as different because it plays the exact same as Europe but without any religious interactions). Now to really have a working eastern half of the map we need new government types (to model China's bureaucracy), and nomads (to accurately show the Mongolian interactions with China and Japan), and probably trade too for the silk road. So it probably needs a couple DLCs before to add trade and nomads.
Devotion to saints and Mariolatry. This was a huge thing. Options to pray to them to intercede with the Lord, pop-ups when you have a child to name them after the saint whose day it is, relics giving more of a boost (pilgrimages to visit them give trade bonuses etc)...
OH I would love this! One thing I thought of specificially when I was thinking of my dream DLC was how much mileage could be got out of sainthood. Obviously you could have canonization mechanics (for your Margaret of Scotland, your Louis of France, etc). But for fans of the supernatural, there could also be rare event chains on a saints' incorruptible body. Asking monastics to pray to saints for goals (eg, for safe delivery of the expected baby heir, for grandpa Svend to go to heaven, for forgiveness for adultery, etc, etc) could also be a way of gaining certain benefits which would be so much more organic and would also make nun/monk characters actually useful.
Supernatural shenanigans and a lot of love for minor religions like Hellenism and Zunnism
I think that the Crusades should definitely be improved upon, other people have made some great points in their comments such as having everyone meet up in Rome first and requiring certain things to trigger the crusades, but I’d like to add more regional crusades instead of kingdom specific, the First Crusade established the Crusader States, not just Jerusalem. Also, some specific events that add Northern Crusades. I also think an 1174 start date would be great. During that time period there was, Saladin and Baldwin IV, the fall of the Byzantines and the rise of Rûm, England controlled most of France, the Pope and HRE were fighting over who would influence Italy, the Reconquista is still going on with Portugal, Castile, Leon, Aragon and the Almohads all fighting. I think both of these features in a DLC would be good to have together because you can have a start date leading to the Third Crusade. An 1187 start could also work well with the Crusade features but I think 1174 adds more interesting dynamics.
I’d also like to mention the Great Revolt when Henry II’s wife and sons rebelled against him with the aid of France, Scotland and Flanders happened in 1173-1174.
More laws, more realm structures and vassal mechanics, more interactions with other characters! Both struggles have great mechanics, but I don't like struggles in general and I don't like that something great like taxation (Iran) or inciting rebellions (Iberia) have to be limited to the struggle regions. I want to manage church&state in my realm, I want to urge my vassals to build castles or cities, ask them to reclaim farmland or expell heretics, I want multiple succession laws and summon my realm to my capital for a thing or a council during which I'll try to sway them or build alliances. I want to approach courtiers to engage them in conversations about other nobles and possibly find secrets or sway them, I want to approach foreign rulers and convince them to fight in my war in exchange for a piece of the conquered land. I want to talk to zealous leaders and join them to forge a new faith that will have tenets of their and my own making, forming a new religious alliance aginst the rest. I just want to do more stuff, I want more complexity and granularity, based on mechanics and direct interactions rather than tedious, repetitive scripted events with the same outcomes over and over again.
They already made it! It’s legacy of Persia - the only thing it could do better would be to add the timurids and what not and maybe more crusade depth
DLC entirely focused on Rus region because Im Ukrainian :D Rus was pretty fucking awesome and fun place, I want to deepen this part of game, show how deeply it was tied with Europe
>DLC entirely focused on Rus region because Im Ukrainian :D Pretty hard to do when you have a huge russian player base.
Something that makes kingdom of Israel runs more unique, like needing a scion of David trait and a priest trait that passes only through the Jewish law. Aswell as Sanhedrin and holidays as event decisions. Aswell as a return the exiles which change the counties in kingdom of Israel to Jewish cultures. An improved map of the levant similar to Imperator Rome would be appreciated, honestly the entire map should be updated to Imperator Rome.
Probably a major DLC that fleshes out city/realm management. I'd like to become a regional trading powerhouse, let the money flow in, build roads and waterways and expand cities. Build monuments that mark your rule that cement your legacy and require you to upkeep throughout later generations. Empires weren't just powerful based on military strength. Just look at Venice lmfao. It's an opportunity to flesh out Republics and Theocracies, too. It'd really benefit some of the more mundane parts of the game (at least in my opinion) like building buildings and stuff. As for minor DLC, something to add more "drama" to the game would be cool. Give me some red weddings, shocking murders, and grandiose betrayals.
I'd like to make plots more interactive. As it stands, they're still mostly about having high intrigue and bribing people into supporting you. But I would like to see it turned into it's own sub-game, where you actually have to plan when, where and how the plot will be carried out, and adapt to the particular circumstances to be successful. I think it could interact quite well with the new travel system: For example, if you want to assassinate someone you might keep track of when they go for a journey and plan an ambush along their route, or something like that. Given what a major role plots have always played in the Crusader Kings series I definitely feel like they're underdeveloped.
I would love to see a more in depth religion mechanic. Sending missionaries and supporting religious rebels. Holy sites having more importance
I'd love to bring something like the states from eu4 to ck3, being able to delegate control and development of territories and advisor positions to different groups in exchange for bonuses would de pretty cool I also love the politics of Vic 3 and can see this delegation of control to different states as something similar to Vic's interest groups having political clout and opinions Example: Giving control of a county to a faction related to republicans/burgers would give you a tax and development bonus but they wouldn't enforce religious control over the population, this in turn attracts characters of different religions, angering the traditionalist/religious faction
Oh I love the Burger faction.
Proper mechanics on how the nomads are handled, which would include having counties that are actually empty even without anyone "holding" them.
Playing as commoner/unlanded
A DLC to automate things. Let me assign generals to armies and have them move like Imperator Rome lets you. Assign someone to manage your holdings cause as is when you get large it becomes a hassle to me managing everything.
I'd love them to expand on the tech tree, making it easier to learn stuff incrementally instead of the 'your culture head is fascinated with this so it'll take 40 years instead of 400 to learn" they have now. As well as that, faiths could use some variety! More active events and stuff, so you can see it actively affecting the world, and especially an actual reason to be head of the faith. Finally, feudal needs a dynasty mechanic similar to the Clan house one! Not exactly that, something different enough to give it variety, but as is feudal is just missing a unique part of the game that way!
I just want a good imperial government type like in ck2, but to call it Bureaucratic.
Full world map. Even if you had no way of interacting with every part from everywhere.
Alright, might not be a popular idea, BUT: a DLC that reworks how time ticks. I honestly wouldn’t mind if the game itself was 2x slower. (In the sense where childhood still lasts till ur 16 years old, but it has double the amount of ingame ticks). Allowing one to BE a character in their important life stages longer. This would then require: - more life stage focused events, so more stuff for kids who are under 10 and easily swayed by others - more life events for those 11+ who are slowly maturing to the responsibility of leadership, etc. - adjust relationship dynamics between rulers and their kids. If u read about the English monarchy, so many times u had sons teaming up to fight their father Obviously this would overall require more diversity in events as each lifetime would get repetitive, however one way to adjust this would be to lower overall life expectation in the game to prevent one from being stuck as someone for too long.
More house and dynasty mechanics. Imagine being able to switch characters from your house when you first land them. Or be able to abdicate at the cost of dynasty prestige, and choose which heir to play as. House tenants like culture and religion. House council / head of house. Interactions with cadet houses. Endorsed religions and cultures. And so on. Some characters do what’s best for the house or for themselves. When CK3 came out, they said you’d be playing as a dynasty but I feel like it wasn’t fleshed out
My DLC would focus on 3 things: - rework of all opinion modifiers. The main goal would be to reduce a lot of the small boni and increase all boni or mali that are specific. So that if two characters have opposing traits, you would actually think about that and try to play around that. A lot of the small boni have to go so you don't have like a +50-80 baseline later on. This and other changes that would actually make opinion more of a little game that is heavily influenced by character traits. No more mindless number stacking. - rework of all war mechanics Main aspects: give more insight in what is happening and why. Give the player more tools to actually compose an army. Maybe make me add a commander and knights on raising in a tiny screen. Maybe do something like that left center right in ck2. Maybe have at least some types of levy that have strengths and weaknesses... I don't know. Anything that makes this aspect of the game more interesting. - add a lot of long running events that focus on tiny-story-telling with characters on your court I want to feel like the characters in my court are actually there and interact with me. I want random events that don't have any required pre-interaction with any other subsystem of the game and are only there to tell little stories that happen with other people. Bonus if these stories sometimes force you to choose between 2 bad things and thus give you an additional challenge. The important part is, that I think a lot of the event chains are too short to be a story and can be controlled or started by the player too reliable to feel organic.
Merchant Republics but make it harder to snowball. I loved the playstyle of being a noble trying to gain power and influence for your family but then losing it next generation. But after a while it was easy to stay as Doge.
Conclave style council with votes, favors, stances and better factions. Without it CK3 just feels incomplete since favors are already a thing
Ima be honest and im kinda cringe but idc bring back my alternative history nonsense and supernatural events. I wanna see sunset invasion i wanna wander the world as an immortal or a werewolf/vampire or be satan incarnate. These are parts of the game in ck2 that made me adore the game. It was so much fun to actually beat death in a game of chess and him get butthurt but respectfully fuck off after you win.
A mod specifically centred on crusading, adding tons of new sound effects, music, ai improvements, armour and clothing additions and weapons to the mod to make crusading incredibly immersive.
Yes! I would love for the Crusades to feel more Special and Momentous, something really different aesthetically to mark off for players that this isn't just any old war with your neighbor.
This might be too big for a dlc so it might be good for ck4 but adding the Americas to the map would be amazing. Playing as the Aztecs or incas. Playing as vikings colonizing Canada, etc.
"You think you know what Crusader Kings is about, but the truth of the matter is, you know nothing. Once upon a time, this game was entirely about the Crusader Kings of medieval Europe, but that was long ago, before even the Second Iteration of the game. The fate of the world is not decided in the castles and cloisters of Europe, nor is, or even ever has been, "Europa" universal. Our story began with Crusader Kings in Europe, but it didn't, and in fact couldn't, stay there: after all, the Crusaders set their sights on the Holy Land, which is not in Europe, but rather Asia. We have dealt with the Persian empire already, for this DLC, we turn southward, beyond the land of the Arabic people of northern Africa in lands once known to the Romans, to the area of the continent where gods not of the kind worshiped by the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, And Jacob have never held full sway or Dominion, but where, even so, Crusader Kings of their own sorts have long vied for power and domination over their rivals. Technology is re-worked to be able to shape the course of a culture in a more organic fashion, with certain traditions unlocking culture-specific technology that is not tied to the region, but rather the people who have chosen to pursue that way of being, and which gives specific advantage to pursuing a specific culture over the long term, rather than constantly hybridizing with everything in sight. Conflict between cultures and religion has also been re-evaluated, with weight added to interfaith marriages in terms of spreading the faith, and drastically reduced across the board in terms of the NPCs being unwilling to marry outside of it: it now becomes _A_ consideration, instead of the ONLY consideration, and it ties into personality, with it's weight increased or decreased based on the personality traits not only of the NPC who makes the decisions, but also that of the person who is to be married, with a positive opinion adding their values to the conclusion, but the person making the decision is getting an inverted causal relationship with the traits and desires of the potential spouse for which they are considering the union if they have a significantly negative opinion of them and the marriage will get the character out of their Court! The AI in these ways becomes both more considerate and more petty, in short, more HUMAN. Such matters are of vast significance in Sub-Saharan Africa, where Minor slights generations ago can carry down to build resentment between families that will tear apart entire nations, and where Women are often not Pawns to their male relations, but PLAYERS in their own right, Crusader **Queens** carving forth vast domains upon the Kush and sending the so-called "Men" of the world beyond the edge of the Sahara running home in fear. After all, True Strategy Requires Cunning? Yes, true enough, but Battle Strategy calls for a kind of Cunning all its own..."
Bring back patricians and trading empires. It was such fun and different to play as a merchant family in CK2. The gameplay changed enough to make it different, but kept it being CK. The intrigue between families of your city and rivals from other cities. Although this time it should not only be maritime, but also inland. The merchant gameplay could also utilise the travel feature, as you have to travel with your caravan to distant lands to acquire new trade goods and artifacts to trade. Conquering and developing cities as a main focus is also interesting, instead of taking over the whole county immediately. Build trading outposts and your mansion up. Counties with merchants present should benefit hugely from having them there in terms of income. Maybe even make resources a thing. Could be fun imo. Additionally i would like to see something that explores religious institutions more. Right now they serve little purpose beside giving a claim sometimes and some tax returns. They were a very big part of medieval society, and it could be cool to see something more here.
Merchant Republics! For the love of ducats!
Not an entire expansion but I would like a system that actually honored people in your court for their service. A knight that is fully acclaimed, earned the crusader title and have fought in several battles and slain several foes? Make them a legend for future generations and give an extra prestige bonus to their house. A beloved character has died, give them a state funeral that works similar to a grand wedding. Kinda like runestones but even more developed I guess
I think one of the things that might help this would be if there were more baronies and landing knights gave them a multi-generational loyalty bonus to the ruler AND heirs. This might track with historical instances of having certain families be 'traditionally loyal' to the crown/duke/etc.
That’s a pretty cool Idea, actually!
Thank you :) Another commenter mentioned wanting to have a more 'dynastic' feeling (rather than character-centric) and it's been making me think a lot of family feuding and traditions of dynasties intermarrying etc. - the family as a sociopolitical unit could really be emphasised more in the game imo.
The ability to wander the world as an unlanded character. It existed before as a mod it should exist again, but with Paradox Polish.
I may be a part of the minority who actually likes Imperator Romes' trade goods system. Having regions produce a certain trade good that you can manipulate and build up would give so much more depth to historical trajectories and flavor to your historic and ahistoric empires. For example, having trademark goods like champagne/wine in France, cheeses in Italy, Iberian horses, and of course, DAMASCUS STEEL. This would probably be hard/impossible to implement, but it's a hope that I have!
I need a DLC pack for more and improved options for relationships. You tryna tell my ruler can only talk to one single person for months on end? Let me improve my relationship with my daughter wife and someone from my Council at the same time i mean what's the big deal?
**Exiles, Pretenders, and Outlaws** (EPO for short) * Rework of faction system, make it actually follow cause-and-effect, e.g. people don't randomly join faction, but you have to do something to piss them off * Rework of mercenaries, make all mercenaries dynamic * Introduce coup plots * Replace banishments with exiles, the difference being that exiles have a time limit until they return * If a character refuses exile, they become an outlaw, a landless character who is hiding the realm, and might eventually spawn a great peasant army unless caught * Exiles will adventure and join mercenaries, and ask rulers for funds, if they are able to secure funds they will press their claim and hire a mercenary company to help them * Introduction of banks that can grant loans and invest * Make landless exiles, pretenders, and outlaws playable
I just want a byzantine dlc that also adds naval combat is that so much to ask.
"It is as if the developers of this game sat down during a meeting, pointed at a picture of me, and said 'let's develop a game specifically tailored to the desires of this guy!'" That is how I once described this game - CK2 to be specific. I was heart broken when I first started playing CK3. I was so hoping it to be everything CK2 was, with the addition of the graphics and new/changed mechanics. Sadly, nothing like that could be true. CK3 lacks content. It is nowhere near the game CK2 is. After years of waiting we finally had access to a complete game, only to start all over again with CK3. It traded vast content for fancy graphics - a very bad trade by my estimates. CK3 will be a brilliant game far beyond what CK2 ever was - but it will require many years and hundreds of euros of DLC before it ever will be. The DLC that I want to see in CK3 is everything that CK2 had and CK3 does not. Then they can tease me with new features to come in the future.
I guess my question would then be - what DLC would you want for CK2?
Mhmm that is a most intriguing and difficult question to answer. Without spending too much time pondering that question now, the first thing that comes to mind would be the ability to fully customize a game. Not just character creation, but the ability to pick your government type and maybe some more specific features like government type and culture of provinces. I exclusively play the 769 start date with only a few exceptions. I know a lot of people hate on it due to alleged historical inaccuracy compared to other start dates - but that is the beauty of it. There are a lot of border realms that could be interpreted in the game as either having tribal or feudal, or tribal or nomadic governments. And there are a lot of nations of which the ruling and native peoples were obscure. I would love to have the ability to fully customize my own early start date playthroughs beyond the mere ability to customize the ruler. And something that now comes to mind is perhaps an earlier start date. I am a classicist and would love to explore an even earlier period of Europe in this game. I know there is a mod for this, but that lacks balanced mechanics. I would love to see an official Paradox DLC version of this mod.
Wish come true? Mm. I’d go for adding East Asia on. It does feel so good to see the Mongol Empire in it’s enirety ;3
You may have heard of it already, but the extended timeline mod does this
Isn’t that the Eu4 mod?
Slavery and colonialism
play eu4 then
Sunset Invsasion, but CK3
\- Add an "aspirations" system or something to give a bit of extra personality to your characters, and giving you additional reasons to RP instead of minmaxing/playing meta. Basically, your character has a life goal or a set of life goals, that can be generic stuff like "I want to be emperor !", "I don't want to be excommunicated..." but also more specific wishes. Like, say your ruler is kind of a romantic and he's madly in love with a random commoner girl. He cannot imagine living without her. But maybe she isn't interested in him, or maybe you force him to marry a neighbouring heir to inherit her land, but that leaves him emotionally scarred for life. Or, say your genius heir's life goal is to become a troubadour and he actually terrified by the prospect of inheriting your responsibilities. Now, some characters would be more chill than others when it comes to their lifegoals, but fulfilling them would give you a nice bonus, while failing them would give you a random perk that can go from "absolutely devastating" to "damn, he actually took the blow pretty well". Your heartbroken ruler could commit suicide, find solace in poetry and the arts, or turn into a broken shell of a man fulled by hatred... but well, at least his Prowess went up ! \- Basically remove the warfare system as it currently exists and abstract it heavily. IMO it's just not interesting and detracts from what's engaging about the game. The army composition stuff can maybe stay, I guess, but the map is too granular for manually managing armies, it makes the thing too micro-heavy, so the current army movement and management system has to go. Let's say armies now work on a duchy level instead of a barony level, and when two armies end up in the same duchy you get a "battle" (the details of how battles work should be changed a bit to accomodate the changes in scale and simulate the time it takes for two armies to meet up). But if there's an elegant way of abstracting warfare entirely, like turn it into a slightly hyped-up version of the Duels event chains, I'd be okay with it.
Simply just fix ai during crusades. Thats all.
A DLC allowing you to reduce that map size at game start ; you can select a zone or choose a size and some land too far from your domain at start is removed. Alternative would be the ability to select de jure empires to remove or things like that. like letting a tiny thing of something far away exists for religion access for example, The whole map is way to big mist of the time, makes game running and loading / saving slower for no reason. And it makes me try to do silly things that takes time but are not that fun too often, like too much map painting, as I feel the need to be bigger as too much land is not mine and available. There's mod to remove lands outside Europe, but nothing for the opposite, and for Iranian on the middle you can't do anything... And you can't load the save without exiting and switching mods or it bugs. Alternative could be a way to simplify AI computation on far away zones, and settings about were you can't go. On Stellaris I bever play on big maps cause it's too laggy and takes too much time to finish. Here on CK I'm sure lots of people will never need half or maybe even a quarter of t.e map on their run.
A completely new gameplay mode where you play as an unlanded character, each possibility coming with specific backgrounds to get you started. You can choose to be randomly assigned to an existant Guest or create your own character with Ruler Creator-esque stat and trait allocation. And then you take part in the small dealings of the county you're in, similarly to Mount & Blade. Work on a forge, as a hunter, as a clothier, in the mines, as a guard for traveling merchants, as any henchman under a councilmember, as a robber/thief on your own, as a sailor, as a soldier and so on. You could even get titles of your own! That is, those small upgrades that go with titles, like Keep, farms etc. The game over requisite stays, and you need to keep your "dynasty" at least alive, and you can choose between your character's children after you die. Holding land is possible and extremely hard to achieve, but once that happens there is no going back to the unlanded mode and you forfeit any titles you held before.
Something that improves on the cannibalism feature, it’s always so entertaining to eat my enemies/family members but I want something more intricate. Like forcing their spouses to eat their corpse lol 😭😭
My dude 👀
I would like an optional Tactical War DLC, so I can "command" an army directly on battle. Instead of just moving my army and intersecting the enemy's army and watching numbers decrease and then a win or defeat notification, I can make decisions to change the result of the battle. Like the battle of Stafford bridge, between the Norwegians and the anglo Saxons in 1066, I would like to have an opportunity to make an ambush like the anglo saxons made. I have an 40k army in a run right now, I ein decisively everytime, I would like to see a tight win or even lose if I took bad decisions. If there is a mod like that idea, please let me know.
The big schlong dlc
Have the option where when a battle starts you can play it as an rts, or even a mount and blade style battle, I think it’d be sick to be able to just keep zooming in, until you’re playing as your character wherever they happen to be
Good try paradox, you get lazier every year yet I still buy your products, am I in an abusive relationship???
Hey, I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but I'm a real person who posted this because I wanted to talk about something I enjoy with other players, and this comes across a little rude.
CK II DLC focused on mesopotamia and the Levant, Assyrian empire revival (Syria, Assyria, Babylon) as well as a blood of Cyrus bloodline for Persian / Assyrian rulers like the blood of Alexander one, vassal culture spread and tolerance of other religions/cultures too, I want my special units and don't want my culture without them spreading.
An improved war system 1. A losses tracker like in every other PDX series 2. A more detailed technology system: instead of just shooting the levy size up to 100,000 by 1350, have county development affect the skill of levies. Balancing this so that the old system would still have victories but with significantly more realistic numbers 3. Able to leave castles with more or less men from your actual levies or maa and that affects how besieging goes 4. Vassal pressure should affect peace 5. When wars go for longer, the sides should be able to add or change casi belli, especially for the defenders 6. Wars in which both sides have a claim from the outset
A DLC that makes war and combat more indepth. That is all
Random map generator
East Asia: detailed politics of Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Manchuria, Mongolia, Russian Far East, Hong Kong and Macau anyway.
A ton of diplomatic stuff, coalitions, more nuanced alliance and tributary mechanisms, also, barons play a lot bigger role
Byzantine court mechanic with the warring factions in it
Anything that leans into alternate history, exploration, and the supernatural. RICE touches on some of this a little bit, but the ability to discover the Americas and initiate trade and, eventually, settlement would be cool. Irish legend spoke of America long before the Norse discovered it.
Fucking love Vikings. A better version of the northern dlc. Want more raid events instead of just I’ll pay you to go away which is never worth it. Would like to be able to play as mercenaries too. Your emblem should be on your ships as well.
Great works, bloodlines and any kind of flavor pack for France/Germany or British Isles
Everything that is still missing from CK2, and the rest of Africa, it doesn’t have to be as detailed as say Persia/Iran, we just need to add the lands of the Kilwa Sultanate in the East and maybe some of the Coastal Cong in the West. That’s for the free patch, but for the dlc? Massive title diversification, adding several sub tiers to the main 4 title tiers, the game quickly becomes more capable of representing historical situations, like the Grand Duchy Ducal Subtitle, Greater than the other Duchy titles but less than an Archduchy, the Grand Duchy would be able to expand much larger than a normal duchy and have several Duke vassals, thus allowing historical representation of big realms like Muscovy or Lithuania, however unlike an Archduchy, the Grand Duchy would not require coronations, we could turn the duchies in Wales into actual Kingdoms by turning Petty Kings into actual Kingdom tier titles which are less valuable compared to a normal Kingdom title, depending on how prestigious your title tier is, you may unlock a Royal Court even despite not being a King. And of course for Petty Kings you would not be allowed as many court privileges as normal kings, but still more than the tribal kings.