The game feels rather empty after you form an Empire.

[DaniTheHero]

The start of my playthrough was quite magical.

Starting off as a duchie or even a Kingdom and slowly clawing away at neighbors through close battles, deceit and marrying off daughters for much needed alliances just to hold more areas on my UK isles.
But when eventually the Britannia Empire was formed and the law that stopped partition was reached, the game stopped really "Evolving" and it sort of became just map expansion and it felt like the Total War auto resolve late game loop.

There wasn't anything interesting anymore as i already knew how all the random events worked,the resource loss if the RNG flip failed didn't matter and how everything is just a numbers game. (There is no "long term" effects unless the flavor text tells you, so every decision only matters for that specific decision and that's it.).

The battles are pretty much who reaches the enemy Capital first. Ironically enough the enemy AI knows this very well, and unless they are REALLLLLLLY far away, they instantly raise all their troops and send them to your capital. Since the naval aspect in this game is still uncompleted, they just walk to the ocean, get a boat and land on my Capital in the English isles.

The AI, especially the friendly alliance AI is terrible as the pathing they take to things is really really bad. I had to call more allies than i actually needed to remedy their uselessness.
I tested it out multiple times when i sent around 10 allies/Dynasty members with at least 1k soldiers each to fight far away expansion wars for me against a nation that has around 700 soldiers, and even though they reached the location fairly quickly, it took them YEARS to finish the job mostly due to the pathing they took.
It seems like unlike the enemy AI that auto rushes your Capital and other main cities, the friendly AI only looks for battles and chases the enemy troops instead of sieging locations.

I spent more time fighting peasant rabbles,religious rebels and people trying to usurp me then really enjoying my full expansion as well. This was also the reason why i resorted for my allies to fight some wars for me as i used my troops to stop rebelling factions.


I tried placing some "fake" goals for myself such as getting the great Schism decision, but most weren't achievable in my playthrough.
I was unable to get all the holy sites under me due to the constant uprisings and the fact that in my save the HRE was not only almost the same size as me, aka huge. but also all my dynasty members that i wanted to call upon(Replacing late game allies as only Empires remain) were under the HRE emperors liege somehow, so they wouldn't fight him.
Why isn't there an option to make people uprise against their Liege?

I was also unable to strengthen the bloodline as the genetics RNG really screwed me over sadly.
I tried to get all skills in a tree as well, but i always died around the middle of the third section of a tree.

I kept going till 1453 just to see at the very least how the end screen looked like, but there was literally nothing but a "The End" text and pictures of all my playable rulers (That mind you never were the children of their fathers due to every women cheating in this game multiple times).

I was really excited at first, but it seems that the warnings that people i deemed salty haters may have been true. The game is quite shallow and we're going to get bombed with DLC's for years to make the experience more varied.

[DaniTheHero]

Also this isn't a complaint to the game, but just me being upset with my own luck, Crusades ALWAYS happen when i'm not only already in war, but also my armies are fighting quite far away so regardless of disbanding and rerallying or marching from there i'd never get there in time lol.

[Kayeka]

Yeah, that's pretty much Crusader Kings. If you're in this for map-painting, you're not going to get your money's worth.

I resolve this issue by having clear goals from the start, maybe reaching said goals, and quitting as soon as there is no more butt to kick larger than my own. I rarely play for more than 200 years. Then I pick a different start that seems interesting and do it again.

[Messsucher]

Good posting. You saw what the game is. Be warned though, here are like religions people ready to come say you that you are wrong. You don't have rights to your opinion. If you say but hey wait a moment what, they say you are a troll.

[JuX]

There is definitely lack of content for empires, as it gradually solidifies your rule on it's own. Bringing you absolute wealth and power, to a point you can do anything with ease.

It would be nice to have things like pandemics destabilizing the empire. First time when i received message of a courtier having the plague, i kicked them out and apparently resolved the whole crisis within an instant... Boring to say the least.


Even creating absurd religions alone isn't sufficient to keep the interest going in the endgame.

[DaniTheHero]

Originally posted by JuX:

There is definitely lack of content for empires, as it gradually solidifies your rule on it's own. Bringing you absolute wealth and power, to a point you can do anything with ease.

It would be nice to have things like pandemics destabilizing the empire. First time when i received message of a courtier having the plague, i kicked them out and apparently resolved the whole crisis within an instant... Boring to say the least.


Even creating absurd religions alone isn't sufficient to keep the interest going in the endgame.

I don't necessary agree that having more "bad things to deal with" is the solution per say.
For example in my Playthrough, as HRE expanded through all of Western Europe very fast and was untouchable, My only option was to Expand through Spain and then South to Africa, and to Scandinavia.

Expanding through Spain and going down apparently was a big mistake, as from that point on i had to deal with constant factions every 2ish ingame years.
Changing their culture didn't help and converting religion takes way too long unless you dedicate learning specifically for that purpose.

Now granted had this wasn't happening, there would be nothing stopping me from pretty much expanding through most of the map, but instead i'd argue that the solution should have been more things to actually do or deal with directly.

For example having political events that are more than just opinion and resource triggers, regarding fate of Dutches or Kingdoms under you.
Or The Asian or Muslim world declaring war on the West/Christianity and them attacking us in our home turf and we have to band together to survive.
Maybe instead of Factions within your Empire constantly rebelling, have smaller unrelated Nations band together against you to stop your expansion and eventually reaching them.(Many small Kingdoms/Duchies banding together at war against you).
Maybe having Cultural battles, instead of factions rebelling against you directly having two neighboring Cultural blobs in the same Kingdom/Empire having dispute and infighting between each other.

These are all ideas i thought on the spot and could be either bad or at least needing some refinement, but boton line there is room to change a lot.

[DaniTheHero]

Originally posted by Messsucher:

Good posting. You saw what the game is. Be warned though, here are like religions people ready to come say you that you are wrong. You don't have rights to your opinion. If you say but hey wait a moment what, they say you are a troll.

I don't mind critisizism as long as it's fair and constructive.

[Jackalen]

You can always create an empire, change characters mid game and then try defeat the empire you built yourself.

[DaniTheHero]

Originally posted by Jackalen:

You can always create an empire, change characters mid game and then try defeat the empire you built yourself.

As humans we tend not to really enjoy destroying what we spent so much time creating lol.
Either way i doubt you'd have the sufficient time to do so if you're playing with 1453 limit

[Team Triss]

Originally posted by JuX:

There is definitely lack of content for empires, as it gradually solidifies your rule on it's own. Bringing you absolute wealth and power, to a point you can do anything with ease.

It would be nice to have things like pandemics destabilizing the empire. First time when i received message of a courtier having the plague, i kicked them out and apparently resolved the whole crisis within an instant... Boring to say the least.


Even creating absurd religions alone isn't sufficient to keep the interest going in the endgame.

Pandemics are a thing, they've screwed my dynasty several times now.

[DaniTheHero]

Originally posted by LoR Team Triss:

Originally posted by JuX:

There is definitely lack of content for empires, as it gradually solidifies your rule on it's own. Bringing you absolute wealth and power, to a point you can do anything with ease.

It would be nice to have things like pandemics destabilizing the empire. First time when i received message of a courtier having the plague, i kicked them out and apparently resolved the whole crisis within an instant... Boring to say the least.


Even creating absurd religions alone isn't sufficient to keep the interest going in the endgame.

Pandemics are a thing, they've screwed my dynasty several times now.

Yes i had smallpox outbreak a couple of times but they always turned out okay luckily.
Pretty much the only RNG aspect of the game i didn't get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over in lol.

[Nugget]

game will need a ton of DLCs before it can rival CK2. It just have so much more content, but it have years of DLC´s. For a "starter" product CK3 is rly good. We just have to wait for more content

[DaniTheHero]

Originally posted by Nugget Hargut:

game will need a ton of DLCs before it can rival CK2. It just have so much more content, but it have years of DLC´s. For a "starter" product CK3 is rly good. We just have to wait for more content

The thing is it's sort of a double edged sword.
I'll either play it a lot now, get burned out and barely care when a small DLC get released in 2-3 months.
Or i won't touch it and lose interest completely and feel like the money i spent on it now wasn't worth it, since most likely when enough DLC's will be out the game will be on a sale anyways.

[JuX]

Originally posted by DaniTheHero:

Expanding through Spain and going down apparently was a big mistake, as from that point on i had to deal with constant factions every 2ish ingame years.
Changing their culture didn't help and converting religion takes way too long unless you dedicate learning specifically for that purpose.

SImply convert the nobles in charge and it converts the entire region.

Been playing with Han culture to form Tibet and i quickly rushed out empire to see if i could and when i did it, i was facing similar issue with majority of my realm being different religion. However i managed to convince almost every noble to convert over and suddenly almost entire realm was following my religion without any effort from my council.

[Magnus Aurelius, Bright Lord]

Originally posted by Nugget Hargut:

game will need a ton of DLCs before it can rival CK2. It just have so much more content, but it have years of DLC´s. For a "starter" product CK3 is rly good. We just have to wait for more content

Pretty much. The game vanilla is good for its price. You either need to accept your spending money into a Hobby with Crusader Kings, and not so much of a game by itself. Some people will go completely insane with rage by this fact alone, you can see them often in the forums. Others, like me, wont care about this fact because we enjoy spending our money in things that we enjoy playing/doing. I spend 200$ per week on movies alone, paying 200$ for Crusader Kings 3 in 8 years is unlikely to affect me. Do I enjoy playing the game ? Yes. My thoughts process for games and hobbies stops there, really.

Crusader Kings III will most likely be supported for the next 8 years and Im excited to see whats coming. Iv played Crusader Kings 2 for 8 years after all, it has given me great entertainement. So far Im enjoying the game as I only have time to play in the weekends anyway so I havent even got time to build an empire yet.

Pro tip : Look for interesting characters to play, there is, in the starting year 1066, the count of Vermandois, who is the last of the Karling (Charlemagne's Dynasty) !! I havent had luck playing that character so far in my three playtrough, especially since the King of France makes it impossible for Vassals to wage war against each other fairly early, leaving you very little time to try to make a successfull move that can make you strong.

I recommend you try playing that character, its pretty fun, and if you do succeed to build an empire, than you would have achieved what his ancestors did and put back the Karling Dynasty to great fame.

[DaniTheHero]

Originally posted by Hobotango:

Originally posted by Nugget Hargut:

game will need a ton of DLCs before it can rival CK2. It just have so much more content, but it have years of DLC´s. For a "starter" product CK3 is rly good. We just have to wait for more content

Pretty much. The game vanilla is good for its price. You either need to accept your spending money into a Hobby with Crusader Kings, and not so much of a game by itself. Some people will go completely insane with rage by this fact alone, you can see them often in the forums. Others, like me, wont care about this fact because we enjoy spending our money in things that we enjoy playing/doing. I spend 200$ per week on movies alone, paying 200$ for Crusader Kings 3 in 8 years is unlikely to affect me. Do I enjoy playing the game ? Yes. My thoughts process for games and hobbies stops there, really.

Crusader Kings III will most likely be supported for the next 8 years and Im excited to see whats coming. Iv played Crusader Kings 2 for 8 years after all, it has given me great entertainement. So far Im enjoying the game as I only have time to play in the weekends anyway so I havent even got time to build an empire yet.

Pro tip : Look for interesting characters to play, there is, in the starting year 1066, the count of Vermandois, who is the last of the Karling (Charlemagne's Dynasty) !! I havent had luck playing that character so far in my three playtrough, especially since the King of France makes it impossible for Vassals to wage war against each other fairly early, leaving you very little time to try to make a successfull move that can make you strong.

I recommend you try playing that character, its pretty fun, and if you do succeed to build an empire, than you would have achieved what his ancestors did and put back the Karling Dynasty to great fame.

I never played CK2 nor do i really know what the wealth of DLC's added to the core experience.

Can you, in a short fashion elaborate, judging by the DLC's for CK2, what sort of content will be added eventually here?