Should I Stick to CK2?

[English...Ew]

I have CK2 with the majority of dlc for it. After spending all the hours learning the mechanics with dlc and paying Paradox $20 ever time they dropped a dlc, is it even worth upgrading to CK3 with the limited content now available? Other than the graphical upgrade and 3D character models instead of portraits, is there anything else that CK3 does better than CK2? I know CK3 was made by a different dev…are they even comparable?

[Kimlin]

When tours and tournaments comes out the games will differ enough and CK3 should have enough content that it would be worth switching over.

[AC Denton]

There's so many posts about this already, read them.
Also, same dev, kind of; Paradox Development Studio restructured in 2021 but it's still them.

[Aelfric]

CK2 has a better ratio of looks to performance. You can run ck2 on a toaster. Ck3 you will nolonger have a beautiful map feel unless youre on maximum. Short of maximum, it's ugly. But even I could tell that from the early previews of ck3 years ago, ck2's art style is better. And ck2 is worse in several key things - econoomy, buildings, retinue, army, event troops, culture + even when i owned the horse lords dlc for ck2 i played with it off because the gameplay was 20x better with tribals there instead of broken nomads. Fate of iberia dlc is ck3's biggest leap backwards dlc on the other hand, this game at its current pace doesn't seem likely to be any better in 3 years from now.

[Emperor2000]

Originally posted by Kimlin:

When tours and tournaments comes out the games will differ enough and CK3 should have enough content that it would be worth switching over.

When T&T comes out, it is a completly new Game, because there are no longer Teleporters in the Game and the Characters have to travel around, to get to new location and this Update will probably break Save Games.

[Aelfric]

Originally posted by Emperor2000:

Originally posted by Kimlin:

When tours and tournaments comes out the games will differ enough and CK3 should have enough content that it would be worth switching over.

When T&T comes out, it is a completly new Game, because there are no longer Teleporters in the Game and the Characters have to travel around, to get to new location and this Update will probably break Save Games.

Wasn't the king always in the capital before unless leading an army? Not sure instances that they teleported, except maybe with move capital for an abrupt accept local culture within 1 day

[English...Ew]

Does CK3 have a substantial amount of role playing DLC Like the way of life dlc for CK2? Does CK3 have secret societies content? How much control can you take control of the papacy in CK3? The CK series have been one of my more favorite Paradox franchises due to the role playing elements it has along with its strangely and management mechanics. Do these feature still remain in CK3?

[magritte]

Originally posted by Ribera:

Originally posted by Emperor2000:

When T&T comes out, it is a completly new Game, because there are no longer Teleporters in the Game and the Characters have to travel around, to get to new location and this Update will probably break Save Games.

Wasn't the king always in the capital before unless leading an army? Not sure instances that they teleported, except maybe with move capital for an abrupt accept local culture within 1 day

Armies take time to move around but characters show up for events (weddings, feasts etc.) without any travel time. And even for armis, don't the leaders show up at the muster point instantaneously? Not sure how things will work in the DLC though.

[VipreRX]

Originally posted by Communist Healthcare:

Does CK3 have a substantial amount of role playing DLC Like the way of life dlc for CK2? Does CK3 have secret societies content? How much control can you take control of the papacy in CK3? The CK series have been one of my more favorite Paradox franchises due to the role playing elements it has along with its strangely and management mechanics. Do these feature still remain in CK3?

The Way of Life DLC was baked into the base game as were several of the other CK2 DLC, you have to do side by side comparisons if you want to know which.

CK2 is complete and if you don't want to or can't afford to maybe it's better to stick with it than roll the dice on 3 but 3 is only going to continue improving as they refine what did and didn't work in 2. After playing 3 a while I can't go back to 2's clunkyness.

[stun]

Originally posted by Communist Healthcare:

Does CK3 have a substantial amount of role playing DLC Like the way of life dlc for CK2?

no

Originally posted by Communist Healthcare:

Does CK3 have secret societies content?

no

Originally posted by Communist Healthcare:

How much control can you take control of the papacy in CK3?

You can vassalize the title. It has no special mechanics (the tiny number of 1/game decisions are tied to the land itself) and you can't influence his succession in any way.

Originally posted by Communist Healthcare:

The CK series have been one of my more favorite Paradox franchises due to the role playing elements it has along with its strangely and management mechanics. Do these feature still remain in CK3?

Maybe 5-10% of the content of CK2.

[jackhauser71]

no

[Ashling]

Originally posted by Ribera:

You can run ck2 on a toaster.

Yea. Late game, especially crusades, can be a right trouble for CK2, but for the most part any modern or future computer is going to be able to play 2 without any problem.
I remember being able to run it on a dinky, cheap laptop from like 2008, it was great.

Originally posted by Communist Healthcare:

The CK series have been one of my more favorite Paradox franchises due to the role playing elements it has along with its strangely and management mechanics. Do these feature still remain in CK3?

Management is worse as buildings aren't as powerful & they're getting a nerf in the upcoming patch & money is generally less important. Generally, you will not struggle for resources in this game nor will you be punished for screwing things up.

Strategy is mixed. Army tactics are better as supply make CK2 doom-stacking non-viable but strategy is worsened based on an emphasis on characters and a de-emphasis on RNG (making ai nations less likely to random into a powerful position/inheritance and they don't know how to best utilize troops). So better game-play, worse game-world.
Note: combat is being re-worked in the upcoming patch.

Role playing is better. The map feels more alive now that you can see each town/castle/temple, the attribute system makes learning actually viable & gives each attribute and even education status a place (even the bad educations can have their place as they largely downplay the opportunity cost of switching focuses), and relationships generally matter more.

In my own personally opinion, I still like CK2 more just because it gives a better challenge, but CK3 is a nice lazy-river ride when I still want to play a Grand Strategy game and feel like a total conniving gremlin, but I also don't want to think too much.

[English...Ew]

Originally posted by Triangle:

Originally posted by Ribera:

You can run ck2 on a toaster.

Yea. Late game, especially crusades, can be a right trouble for CK2, but for the most part any modern or future computer is going to be able to play 2 without any problem.
I remember being able to run it on a dinky, cheap laptop from like 2008, it was great.

Originally posted by Communist Healthcare:

The CK series have been one of my more favorite Paradox franchises due to the role playing elements it has along with its strangely and management mechanics. Do these feature still remain in CK3?

Management is worse as buildings aren't as powerful & they're getting a nerf in the upcoming patch & money is generally less important. Generally, you will not struggle for resources in this game nor will you be punished for screwing things up.

Strategy is mixed. Army tactics are better as supply make CK2 doom-stacking non-viable but strategy is worsened based on an emphasis on characters and a de-emphasis on RNG (making ai nations less likely to random into a powerful position/inheritance and they don't know how to best utilize troops). So better game-play, worse game-world.
Note: combat is being re-worked in the upcoming patch.

Role playing is better. The map feels more alive now that you can see each town/castle/temple, the attribute system makes learning actually viable & gives each attribute and even education status a place (even the bad educations can have their place as they largely downplay the opportunity cost of switching focuses), and relationships generally matter more.

In my own personally opinion, I still like CK2 more just because it gives a better challenge, but CK3 is a nice lazy-river ride when I still want to play a Grand Strategy game and feel like a total conniving gremlin, but I also don't want to think too much.

Thanks for this.

[stun]

Originally posted by JF:

That is false.

That is true. Antifeatures are not content.

Originally posted by JF:

The game lauched with at least 30-40% of CK2 content... competence trees,

The worst thing ever, this is just horrible. Also no, we had societies.

Originally posted by JF:

a much more dynamic culture system,

NOT ON RELEASE
Also the entire culture=technology system is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare

Originally posted by JF:

languages,

Not a feature

Originally posted by JF:

Stress,

This is a fundamental change in the mechanics of the system you can't parade it as an 'additional feature'.

Originally posted by JF:

knights,

Literally nothing, but that goes for all army combat in both CK2 and 3.

Originally posted by JF:

legacies,

We literally had bloodlines already. Dynasty prestige was much better than the current system to boot.

Originally posted by JF:

hooks,

Again, hooks are not content. Unlike stress which actually has something attached to it, hooks are just a number on the interact screen and nothing more.

Originally posted by JF:

cadet branches,

Don't exist.

Originally posted by JF:

religious reforms

We had those in CK2. We also had the ability to MOD RELIGIONS. Which we do not in CK3, almost every religious change is clashing. Horrible pre-release hacked together alpha build ♥♥♥♥.

Originally posted by JF:

But people seems to confuse "hard to understand" with "deep" for some reason.

They aren't confusing those things because they are the same thing. Deep is not good. Deep is opacity by a different means, it's still just a knowledge check.
CK2 had a very large pool of events. CK3 has a very, ahem, shallow pool of events. Neither game has any real level of strategy to it (unless you're doing instantarrest cheesy pauseruns, I guess) and they basically just serve as idle games that serve up content. But CK3 has three events in total, far more cooldown management, no variance between characters, and worse writing.

[JC]

Originally posted by JF:

People like to point out what was in CK2 that is not yet in CK3, but always fail to mention all the content in CK3 that never was in CK2: competence trees, a much more dynamic culture system, languages, Stress, knights, legacies, hooks, cadet branches, religious reforms for all (instead of only pagans) and much more.

Yea, i'm with ya on this. There are certainly things that CKIII doesn't have that people like, Nomads, republics and secret societies, but i honestly don't need any of them so that part doesn't bother me. The new things that werent in CKII far out weight what it doesn't have to me.

Till now i do think in some ways CKII is a bit better, but i just enjoy CKIII over all more. And by that i mean, i don't play CKII any more. If i'm in the mood to play the game i pick III because of what it does better.

I play the game in smaller kingdoms and more connected to everyone verse vast empires. This new patch is really leaning into that. I guess if all you want to do is have a bigger challenge painting the map go with CKII, if you want to play a deep RP game with challenges play this.

[JC]

Originally posted by stun:

CK2 had a very large pool of events. CK3 has a very, ahem, shallow pool of events. Neither game has any real level of strategy to it (unless you're doing instantarrest cheesy pauseruns, I guess) and they basically just serve as idle games that serve up content. But CK3 has three events in total, far more cooldown management, no variance between characters, and worse writing.

Yea, 8 years later.. Go play Patch 2.0 and it goes from a large pool to a puddle.

I have no idea what you are talking about CKIII has 3 events, there are tons more than 3 but ok. If you want an 8 year old mature game, try waiting 5 more years. For me where it is 3 years in is pretty solid, and it's so much further than ckii was.