Players don't really stick with CKIII?

[Captain Wolf]

I played CK III on launch. At the time, it seemed like it was going to be the most popular Paradox title. I think it is now the least playeed Paradox game. The game has good graphics and UI. Any idea what happened?

[Yhvh10]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Originally posted by TsumaTek:

Easily over 1000 hrs modded. I always seem to find some creative way to approach this game......Cheers

List a few unmodded ways. Not counting simply playing in a different area on the map or painting it.

Heres a few I've done

1.) Play as an OP pagan warlord. I like to do 69 on all stats. Conquer an Empire. Reform faith. Be evil. Sadistic, Diligent and Brave. Have like 20 kids. Do not disinherit or otherwise remove kids from succession. Die and then play as one of the children, no stat boost or anything, as the entire empire descends into chaos. If you really want to be spicy, have a great holy war where you get a small kingdom (Estonia for ex) and then play as that as you try to restore your father/grandfathers empire.

2.) Create an RP nation. A good example here is I landed in Iberia as a viking. And conquered the Iberian peninsula. I restored the Era Zarharrak faith, then I immediately created a new faith off it called Andrastianism (Anyone who plays Dragon Age knows where I'm going). Created a head of faith and called the Head of faith title the "Imperial Chantry". And then finally I ended the Iberian struggle, renamed Hispania to "Tevinter", created a custom Tevinter culture, and then proceeded to spend the next 200 years making Europe and Africas lives miserable.

3.) Play tall. A good trait for this is Diligent and stewardship education. Take a small island and then proceed to ONLY operate out of that island. Best one I've found for that is the Isle of Mann tbh. But if you dont want that, as in order to get kingdom for Isle of Mann, it takes some work, mainly raiding. Iceland or the Canaries are good choices. Then just focus on developing your island empire from that point. If you really want to be fun, you could even do an England and conquer the surrounding regions while ruling out of your island.

4.) Small title. This is honestly one of the ones I had more fun with. But basically, just play as a Count or Duke tier character. Take a single duchy, and then focus entirely on that. Not kings or emperors, just a duke/duchess. It forces more of a role of Intrique, family dynamics, relationships with neighbors and politics rather than just "Heavy Infantry go brrr".

[KingKickAss]

Originally posted by Captain Wolf:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

List a few unmodded ways. Not counting simply playing in a different area on the map or painting it.

Some people like an easy walkthrough. Others, like a challenge. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons to like this game. Strategy is not one of them.

I'm genuinely asking because I can't really come up with anything thats possible with what the game allows.

Originally posted by Yhvh10:

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

List a few unmodded ways. Not counting simply playing in a different area on the map or painting it.

Heres a few I've done

1.) Play as an OP pagan warlord. I like to do 69 on all stats. Conquer an Empire. Reform faith. Be evil. Sadistic, Diligent and Brave. Have like 20 kids. Do not disinherit or otherwise remove kids from succession. Die and then play as one of the children, no stat boost or anything, as the entire empire descends into chaos. If you really want to be spicy, have a great holy war where you get a small kingdom (Estonia for ex) and then play as that as you try to restore your father/grandfathers empire.

2.) Create an RP nation. A good example here is I landed in Iberia as a viking. And conquered the Iberian peninsula. I restored the Era Zarharrak faith, then I immediately created a new faith off it called Andrastianism (Anyone who plays Dragon Age knows where I'm going). Created a head of faith and called the Head of faith title the "Imperial Chantry". And then finally I ended the Iberian struggle, renamed Hispania to "Tevinter", created a custom Tevinter culture, and then proceeded to spend the next 200 years making Europe and Africas lives miserable.

3.) Play tall. A good trait for this is Diligent and stewardship education. Take a small island and then proceed to ONLY operate out of that island. Best one I've found for that is the Isle of Mann tbh. But if you dont want that, as in order to get kingdom for Isle of Mann, it takes some work, mainly raiding. Iceland or the Canaries are good choices. Then just focus on developing your island empire from that point. If you really want to be fun, you could even do an England and conquer the surrounding regions while ruling out of your island.

4.) Small title. This is honestly one of the ones I had more fun with. But basically, just play as a Count or Duke tier character. Take a single duchy, and then focus entirely on that. Not kings or emperors, just a duke/duchess. It forces more of a role of Intrique, family dynamics, relationships with neighbors and politics rather than just "Heavy Infantry go brrr".

I think the third and fourth one you suggested was the first thing I actually did in CK3. I took Sardinia and completely maxed it out, living completely isolated from everybody. But unfortunately there wasn't much else to do after that. The first idea is something I haven't done yet, make an enormous empire and watch it collapse.
And your second idea seems neat, but it makes me really aware of how bland the base game is without any of the DLCs, I would have to spawn in as like a Norse guy in Iberia to start and just make everybody Norse or something since you can't make your own culture. I really wish there was a way to spread your religion/culture beyond your borders.

[Kimlin]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

Originally posted by TsumaTek:

Easily over 1000 hrs modded. I always seem to find some creative way to approach this game......Cheers

List a few unmodded ways. Not counting simply playing in a different area on the map or painting it.

Start as a count, create a small Kingdom and then take the throne of every kingdom through marriage. The goal is to paint the map with your Dynasty without using warfare to conquer. The game play is to ensure your family stays in power in all of those kingdoms with finance and military aid when able.

[Kimlin]

Originally posted by KingKickAss:

I really wish there was a way to spread your religion/culture beyond your borders.

There are ways. If you plays as Norse you can raid a kingdom until you kidnap a child of the ruler. Then you can convert, free the child and marry them to one of your kids. Then murder the family of that child until they are the ruler. Then watch as your religion becomes the theirs.

[Germaine's Bra]

If you want something harder, Go Gideon Dynasty in Africa 867 and stay Jewish the whole time. There is no marrying into kingdoms it seems, and everyone wants you dead.

I should start naming my heirs Raymond.

[Valektra]

The reason I don't play it as much is pretty simple: I get all the mods and the game set up the way I want it. They update it and break everything.

[D・U・P!]

Originally posted by Clemente:

It's just not that great of a game. It's shallow and easy. It's a dumbed down version of CKII; and perhaps that is just not fun for a strategy game.

People who buy these games want complexity. When you can grab the most backwater county of the Bizantine empire and become the Roman Emperor in a few years, there is something fundamentally wrong with the game.

Also, the community's good will is starting to fade: Paradox's business mode is awful and butchering down core mechanics in order to sell us an overpriced DLC has had it's toll.

It feels like they have spent years hiring great marketing experts instead of programmers.

But hey, just like Victoria III, if the sales numbers are strong, then that's the bottom line for them. Hopefully, a new studio will emerge to take up the grand strategy mantle and these hacks can find new jobs as baristas or beggars; I don't care. :)

b-big floyd?

[Machiavelli]

They blundered with content delivery and this is the result.

[Crazy Bananazzz]

Originally posted by Captain Wolf:

I played CK III on launch. At the time, it seemed like it was going to be the most popular Paradox title. I think it is now the least playeed Paradox game. The game has good graphics and UI. Any idea what happened?

It's because the game is a reskin of CK2 without any of the soul and the addition of unimmersive crap like development and fabricating claims.

[brytus_titan]

Originally posted by Valektra:

The reason I don't play it as much is pretty simple: I get all the mods and the game set up the way I want it. They update it and break everything.

THIS!!!

[brytus_titan]

The problem with the game is three fold. 1) It's more made for Roleplaying strategy game hybrid. Yes, there is strategy involved. But you generally need to approach each playing session with an objective and character/play style you want to portray. It's more of Sims meets CK2 and that's an odd middle ground for some people. If you aren't going to embrace the "humanity" of your characters and dynasty and the interpersonal rivalries and so on, it's going to get boring quick as a raw strategy game.

2) A lot of people are just lazy. They aren't going to play the game long enough to figure out what they would like to explore and don't like about the game and if they do, they aren't going to spend the time to look up the mods that will fix those problems. The game is fairly easy to mod mechanically. So there are mod fixes for nearly everything from AI to better battles to missing mechanics (or mechanics that you wish were in) to stuff from CK2 to total conversions to a wide variety of settings and franchises. It's the mods that allow you to really make the game the kind of experience you are looking for. But you have to be committed enough to actually browse and search for the mods and tweaks you want in the vanilla game.

3) However, that is also the biggest Achilles heel of the game. A lot of people lose interest because the more complex mods get broken by their constant needless updates. And no, using mods isn't a knock on the game itself. The coolest mods are often the ones that completely change the flavor of the game and give you a new game or experience to try out when you get bored of the current one you are playing. Want to play CK3 in a fantasy world or ancient Greece or the Tolkien or Elder Scrolls universe and so on and so forth? There's probably a mod for that. Want better looking characters or more clothing options, there's mod for those, too. The problem is that instead of only releasing patches at full states (like 1.6 to 1.7) the dev team releases all sorts of tiny patches like 1.6.0.1 to 1.6.0.2...

And so within two or three weeks of a modder updating their mod to make it work for the new patch, they can break the mod again, making your current playthrough unplayable and the modder have to figure out what they broke and fix it. This is annoying for BOTH SIDES. And lots of modders eventually give up on or lose interest in updating their awesome mods. Essentially, Paradox has hundreds of modders working for free to create tons of DLCs to extend the longevity and replayability of their product and they keep nullifying and sabotaging that content, often for small updates or tweak patches that add very little worthwhile to the game.

And being that every patch could essentially render your latest savefile-- that you've put 10s if not 100s of hours into-- unplayable, I think that's one of the biggest reason many modders and fans of the game even lose interest after a while. You come to dread each new patch because half the time they are patching in stuff modders already figure out how to do months or years ago but they will now break all your mods to do it and you have to hope and pray that your favorite modders are still around and willing to update their mods to the current version. SMH. It's like playing a game in a constant beta state.

[Crazy Bananazzz]

Originally posted by brytus_titan:

The problem with the game is three fold. 1) It's more made for Roleplaying strategy game hybrid. Yes, there is strategy involved. But you generally need to approach each playing session with an objective and character/play style you want to portray. It's more of Sims meets CK2 and that's an odd middle ground for some people. If you aren't going to embrace the "humanity" of your characters and dynasty and the interpersonal rivalries and so on, it's going to get boring quick as a raw strategy game.

2) A lot of people are just lazy. They aren't going to play the game long enough to figure out what they would like to explore and don't like about the game and if they do, they aren't going to spend the time to look up the mods that will fix those problems. The game is fairly easy to mod mechanically. So there are mod fixes for nearly everything from AI to better battles to missing mechanics (or mechanics that you wish were in) to stuff from CK2 to total conversions to a wide variety of settings and franchises. It's the mods that allow you to really make the game the kind of experience you are looking for. But you have to be committed enough to actually browse and search for the mods and tweaks you want in the vanilla game.

3) However, that is also the biggest Achilles heel of the game. A lot of people lose interest because the more complex mods get broken by their constant needless updates. And no, using mods isn't a knock on the game itself. The coolest mods are often the ones that completely change the flavor of the game and give you a new game or experience to try out when you get bored of the current one you are playing. Want to play CK3 in a fantasy world or ancient Greece or the Tolkien or Elder Scrolls universe and so on and so forth? There's probably a mod for that. Want better looking characters or more clothing options, there's mod for those, too. The problem is that instead of only releasing patches at full states (like 1.6 to 1.7) the dev team releases all sorts of tiny patches like 1.6.0.1 to 1.6.0.2...

And so within two or three weeks of a modder updating their mod to make it work for the new patch, they can break the mod again, making your current playthrough unplayable and the modder have to figure out what they broke and fix it. This is annoying for BOTH SIDES. And lots of modders eventually give up on or lose interest in updating their awesome mods. Essentially, Paradox has hundreds of modders working for free to create tons of DLCs to extend the longevity and replayability of their product and they keep nullifying and sabotaging that content, often for small updates or tweak patches that add very little worthwhile to the game.

And being that every patch could essentially render your latest savefile-- that you've put 10s if not 100s of hours into-- unplayable, I think that's one of the biggest reason many modders and fans of the game even lose interest after a while. You come to dread each new patch because half the time they are patching in stuff modders already figure out how to do months or years ago but they will now break all your mods to do it and you have to hope and pray that your favorite modders are still around and willing to update their mods to the current version. SMH. It's like playing a game in a constant beta state.

You have a point about the constant updating. EU4 suffers from this hard.

[Diruk]

Originally posted by (-MoJean-):

I think people are getting tired of gettin liberty war factions with every new ruler. I know I do.

You can adjust stability in settings, friend ^^.

[Angel]

CK3 is lacking mods right now. I've been waiting for the Warcraft, Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings mods to be completed, they're all under development. CK2 mods were much more frequent and numerous.

[Ēarendel]

Originally posted by Seventh Heaven:

CK3 is lacking mods right now. I've been waiting for the Warcraft, Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings mods to be completed, they're all under development. CK2 mods were much more frequent and numerous.

They keep getting post-poned because of the updates. Warcraft mod for example was stuck in 1.5 for awhile. I'm not sure how they will ever be completed, considering Paradox updates games for long-term like 10 years.