Noob's questions to CK3 community

[[G.W.] Sunbro Greg]

Hello, Crusaders!
First of all, thank you all for taking time to answer my questions, I really do appreciate it.

So, I'm only recently into this genre, with the previous game that I played being Stellaris (still love it), and I must admit that I've found just the right type of games for me! As CK3 sure is a very deeply developed game, I find myself wondering about quite a few things before stepping out from the post-tutorial zone.

So let's start with the basic things, like CHARACTER CREATION, first.
1) What would be better if I'm starting my own empire? Start as a kid with getting a child-unique perk and hoping for a good education or start as an adult without this randomness?

2) What is more important at the start - to get good stats or good perks that grant you % of lifestyle learning / opinions / passive income of prestige and piety? During your life, will you be able to get stats just by doing stuff or do you have to get the perks that boost your stats? And can you actually get two or three lifestyle trees fully maxed out on one character?

3) When creating my own character, can I only play as a ruler or can I, for instance, start as a super low-born and then get elected by someone to be a court physician etc-etc?

4) About the eras. When starting, there are only 2 of them. If I choose the earlier, will I still be able to play through the latter one once the corresponding age strikes? Aka, the technology, the rest of the stuff will still appear, right? Or will I be locked to the setting of the old era?

5) I want to play an authoritarian kingdom with high moral values and prime focus on learning/religion and diplomacy. Which perks / stat allocation would you recommend?


Next, I would like to ask a bit about the mods.
1) So, one of the things I absolutely hated in Stellaris was, well, how finite the life can be. This is why I went with the setup that ultimately granted immortality to my character. I know that CK2 had a way to be immortal, but CK3 alas does not have it. I heard there was a Highlander-styled mod that would be able to grant you immortality, and I would like to try it. Would you actually recommend it? What are the drawbacks of immortality? Don't want to be unkillable, just don't want to die from age-related stuff.

2) I heard that the game has some pretty nice QoL mods that add more clothing and some backgrounds, like "Community Flavor Pack" etc. Would you recommend those? Are they not already covered by the base game? Will they ever be? Which other mods would you recommend?

3) Don't feel like doing a full rework of the game I have not even properly started, so I was going to ask about some mods that add interesting stuff. I heard there was a trade route mod, a mod that adds more warrior models fighting during battles and so on and so forth. Which ones would you recommend and why?

Thank you for all your answers. If I come up with any more questions, I'll write them down.

Have a good day!

Edit: also, are DLCs retroactive or should I start a new game each time a DLC launches (like in Stellaris and Total War: Warhammer)?

[[G.W.] Sunbro Greg]

Thanks a lot! Good to know that I can start at an earlier era without missing stuff later on.

[BJÖRK ALBUMS]

also keep in mind that marrying people with good stats/ qualities is important to a long run, you're probably going to have to wait a few generations before you get the intelligent beautiful god king ruler of your dreams. Also, morality stuff is defined by religion not ruler, so for your goal breaking off your own religion would be best, but picking and choosing certain things gets very expensive- keep in mind your mostly wrangling vassals who are doing their own thing rather than telling them what to do, this also factors into being authoritarian, which is sort of impossible imo, you pretty much never have complete control over whats going on in your kingdom unless youre playing tall/ with very very specific culture/religion. Your vassals will do stuff you dont like, and its never as simple as throwing them in jail or killing them.

In terms of being immortal, it certainly can be fun, but most of the fun of CK3 is dynasty building, it is after all a dynasty sim, playing as a single character can get pretty repetitive. The most fun this game has to offer honestly isnt getting a great character and stomping AI, its scrambling to recover from a death, fighting all the factions and eventually coming back from it, its much more roleplay oriented than other grand strategy games.

[[G.W.] Sunbro Greg]

Thanks a lot!

[Holo]

1. If you want to start as a custom character but not feel like cheating, just make a custom 18 year old ruler with reasonable characteristics, so a more or less middling character with 10s all around, or if you want to RP from the get-go, make him to your heart's desire. Its all about how you want to play. If you wanna min-max, feel free to do that, and if you wanna RP in some special way, that is also very easy to do - just read what each trait does, there's not that many in vanilla so you might as well go through them and it'll be useful once you are warding your children, so that you make good future rulers rather than ambitious gluttonous cravens that will immediately ruin your entire run so far (always make sure you're warding your kids, never trust your courtiers even if they're the most holy and cool person in the world).

2. Like I said in #1, it depends. If you want to make a great Kingdom, or an Empire, min-maxing is the way to go, but if you want to stay a Duke, or hold two Dutchies, feel free to do that as well. You really get the feel for perks as you play. For example, using the middle Diplomacy perk line, you can easily confederate an entire Kingdom in a few decades, or even some Empires (aka Scandinavia in vanilla is pretty easy). Like the first poster said, a genius character will easily fill two or three trees completely, HOWEVER, that will generally be impossible unless you have a large court that supports your character, and your dynasty has unlocked certain traits, that basically mean your character won't suddenly die and so on and so forth (which means that its generally only going to happen mid game and onwards).

3. Nope. Only rulers are available, however you could choose to be the ruler of a county in a larger Duchy or Kingdom, and give yourself the Peasant Leader trait and others that you think may fit, so it would feel like you are a commoner. In the end though, you still play as a noble.

4. They're interlinked and progress no matter what, so you can start in either. If you start in the later, you will have most of the Tribal things unlocked, but it depends on what you are. Horse Lords, of course, will have much less technological development than the Western Kings.

5. That's for you to decide, but this one is hard to do in vanilla because of how barebones it is. Specifically, you can't really do much with religion, of course, you can build temples and stuff (once you unlock them) and convert counties if you started out in a strange land, but generally speaking religion ends at you requesting funds from the Pope (who may be part of your own reformed religion) and Holy Wars. Moral values aren't *really* a thing, of course traits matter, and vengeful characters will gain less piety and be more likely to start assassinations, but in the end nothing is "hardcoded," and its not really a system in the game. No playing as Theocracies either.

6. Infinite life mod, like the guy above me said. And just like he, I say that you should let death deal you the bad hand. I've played with immortality, and its simply boring, as part of the fun is from realm management, aka, making sure that you can reconquer your lands once you die and all of them are split between your children, which is done through many ways, such as assassinations, or disinheriting, because you pretty much only unlock Primogeniture (only 1 child inherits) in late game.

7. Instead of modding by hand, install a Collection, you can find them in the workshop just like mods, and the big ones such as Community Historical Mods (I got the name a tad bit wrong here) and CCM (which is a branch off of the CHM, and is going to be unsupported going forward but still works) are always very stable, as long as you follow the directions that are given when setting them up. You can also add on any mods that you want after this is done, for example I always play with a renown rework, because I think its very limited in the base game. Just drop these personal mods at the end of the load order, and check their descriptions to make sure they won't conflict with what you have already loaded.

8. Look above. I'd say try and play vanilla for a few full game runs, maybe two or three, and then try out overhaul mods. You will never want to play vanilla again. After playing with Sinews of War, a mod that adds population mechanics, plagues, levies not being generated out of thin air, county edicts, I pretty much cannot imagine going back to the "build a building for 500 more troops" type game which allows insignificant counties to somehow grow into big realms.