I like the idea of Flavor Packs, depending on what they cost.
There's already a store page for it on Steam. In Euros, it's 6,99.
$6.99 US, as well. Basically perfectly where I would have wanted it. I was thinking between $5-$10. Based on the features from the video, I think that's a pretty good price. What I like about these is while there's less content than traditional expansions, they're also much more narrowly focused, so you don't feel like you're missing out on major features if you skip them if you're not interested in the culture they're adding. Hopefully these can be developed alongside more full-featured releases. They're also adding most of the big features they've talked about that they could easily put in this paid pack as a free patch, like winter, duels, and the poetry stuff.
I feel like CK3 and I:R have decided on a bit of a different DLC style than EU4 and HoI4 went with. I think I like it better overall, hopefully the rest of the community does as well and this becomes the norm moving forward.
I do like the CK2 model of "Big expansions introduce a new mode of play" though. That's always enough to rope me back in, and usually to play a region of the map I previously didn't touch.
I don't think this is true. I also saw it as in my library already yesterday, but now that I actually go check it lists as separate for purchase and not something I have despite having the pass.
Edit: Correction it IS in the expansion pass. If you actually launch the game it shows up, despite the steam store trying to get you to buy it and listing a price.
Your rival flinging a corpse at your castle now gives you an imprisonment reason if they’re your subject.
It always seemed weird that you were supposed to just shrug that one off and carry on with your day as if one of your subjects hadn't just tried to kill you with smallpox/plague/whatever the corpse turned out to be carrying.
Messed around with the new pack very briefly. Won the initial war playing Halfdan and got the new Danelaw event. Gave an option to send a letter to Wessex to negotiate splitting up England. In my case it was accepted so Wessex became the kingdom of England while my holdings became the Danelaw kingdom. Could potentially make the early game less chaotic by bypassing some of the stuff you'd normally do for a Kingdom title at the expense of giving you a more resilient opponent later on since Wessex won't fracture so much on succession.
Hmm. The Asatru holy sites got mixed up a bit. The sites in Denmark and Frisia are gone, and replaced by sites in Jorvik and Kiev. That'll probably make reforming the faith a bit trickier.
Hmm. The Asatru holy sites got mixed up a bit. The sites in Denmark and Frisia are gone, and replaced by sites in Jorvik and Kiev. That'll probably make reforming the faith a bit trickier.
Jorvik makes it a little easier for some. Halfdan starts with it and Ivar is just a short distance from it. It's also a coastal county so a pretty quick conquest.
Hmm. The Asatru holy sites got mixed up a bit. The sites in Denmark and Frisia are gone, and replaced by sites in Jorvik and Kiev. That'll probably make reforming the faith a bit trickier.
Jorvik makes it a little easier for some. Halfdan starts with it and Ivar is just a short distance from it. It's also a coastal county so a pretty quick conquest.
Sure but getting all the way to goddamn Kiev is going to be a legitimate problem
Hmm. The Asatru holy sites got mixed up a bit. The sites in Denmark and Frisia are gone, and replaced by sites in Jorvik and Kiev. That'll probably make reforming the faith a bit trickier.
Jorvik makes it a little easier for some. Halfdan starts with it and Ivar is just a short distance from it. It's also a coastal county so a pretty quick conquest.
Sure but getting all the way to goddamn Kiev is going to be a legitimate problem
That one's going to be a pain to take and more of one to hold but you shouldn't need it to reform the faith.
Making it harder to access the holy site bonuses is a downer for reasons separate from reformation though.
Started a new game the other day once I'd gotten a bit back into the groove after a long break, once again as Halfdan. Ivar killed Aella but then lost his own conquest after I won Northumbria. Alfred the Great died from an illness, gout, or similar really early on. Didn't even have power in Wessex for more than a month after his dad was killed in a hunting accident. I took over some Mercian and Wessex land and then the duke of Cornwall triggered the Negotiate the Danelaw event. When I've used the decision as Halfdan, the person that would get the Kingdom of England was the ruler of Wessex and therefore a potential pain point further down the line. Cornwall negotiating with me meant a 2 or 3 county Kingdom of England to contend with while Mercia and Wessex would lose out on that opportunity so it was an easy choice to accept. It had not occurred to me that the decision would also be available for Anglo-Saxon characters to trigger too.
I was pretty into starting up this flavor pack, but I'm having trouble getting going. As often happens with these games, the first couple hours of a game are so fun, but as you get into the mid to late game it really starts to drag for me.
What is this I don't even.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
One thing I did in my last game that I liked a lot was pick out a reasonable size goal to work towards (Kingdom of Bohemia, in my case) and just work on acquiring/maintaining/keeping it. Then just kind of let time pass and deal with things as they pop up. I found focusing on my dynasty and demesne to be more satisfying than my usual goal of painting the map. If I was feeling ambitious, I would work on getting my dynasty on other thrones, since there's actually a tangible benefit of doing that now.
I was pretty into starting up this flavor pack, but I'm having trouble getting going. As often happens with these games, the first couple hours of a game are so fun, but as you get into the mid to late game it really starts to drag for me.
One pain point with the pack is that the base Innovation system still is pretty awful if you're not the cultural head. You're at the mercy of whatever the king of Sweden or Denmark decide to focus on and their lack of learning. If playing as one of the non-Scandinavian starts you can end up with nothing to really spend money on as you can't yet upgrade feudal buildings or build more holdings due to tech limitations but can't afford to dump that money into men-at-arms because your passive income generation can't support a big army yet. If you are playing a Scandinavian start, you still deal with the whole tribal to feudal thing. The requirements have lowered but it's still something that will take a while.
Alright, I decided I'll do the self contained adventure concept. Basically, I'm going to take a character, Varangian Adventure into the Danelaw, and just make it my goal to have Asatru England.
Which brings me to three main questions:
Any tips for Conversion? Reform into Itinerant Preachers seems key.
Is it really just a much better call to convert to local culture and be Anglo-Saxon? It seems way too costly in the end to try to culture convert England to Norse, though it would be fun. Maybe too hard if I'm not going to convert religion though.
Lastly: one of my goals has been to start conquering Duchies in random places, granting them to a son, then granting that son independence so that my lineage carries on conquering the world in my stead, but I don't have to manage it. Is this really stupid? I'd like to try to make it work but it seems like I'd end up splitting my holdings reeeeal fast.
Alright, I decided I'll do the self contained adventure concept. Basically, I'm going to take a character, Varangian Adventure into the Danelaw, and just make it my goal to have Asatru England.
Which brings me to three main questions:
Any tips for Conversion? Reform into Itinerant Preachers seems key.
Is it really just a much better call to convert to local culture and be Anglo-Saxon? It seems way too costly in the end to try to culture convert England to Norse, though it would be fun. Maybe too hard if I'm not going to convert religion though.
Lastly: one of my goals has been to start conquering Duchies in random places, granting them to a son, then granting that son independence so that my lineage carries on conquering the world in my stead, but I don't have to manage it. Is this really stupid? I'd like to try to make it work but it seems like I'd end up splitting my holdings reeeeal fast.
Cultural conversion is relatively quick. Switching to Anglo-Saxon would likely put you further on tech and give you quicker control over it, but you'd lose on the cultural and regional techs from being Norse. Longboats make a big difference when raiding. Varangian Veterans are a nice upgrade compared to normal heavy infantry and you can get dynasty perks that increase how many troops your heavy infantry regiments can recruit. With the DLC, you get a number of things from being Norse now.
Religion takes longer to convert though you'll actually get some help from your vassals. Having some rulers spend time on some theology perks helps speed it up.
Alright, I decided I'll do the self contained adventure concept. Basically, I'm going to take a character, Varangian Adventure into the Danelaw, and just make it my goal to have Asatru England.
Which brings me to three main questions:
Any tips for Conversion? Reform into Itinerant Preachers seems key.
Is it really just a much better call to convert to local culture and be Anglo-Saxon? It seems way too costly in the end to try to culture convert England to Norse, though it would be fun. Maybe too hard if I'm not going to convert religion though.
Lastly: one of my goals has been to start conquering Duchies in random places, granting them to a son, then granting that son independence so that my lineage carries on conquering the world in my stead, but I don't have to manage it. Is this really stupid? I'd like to try to make it work but it seems like I'd end up splitting my holdings reeeeal fast.
Cultural conversion is relatively quick. Switching to Anglo-Saxon would likely put you further on tech and give you quicker control over it, but you'd lose on the cultural and regional techs from being Norse. Longboats make a big difference when raiding. Varangian Veterans are a nice upgrade compared to normal heavy infantry and you can get dynasty perks that increase how many troops your heavy infantry regiments can recruit. With the DLC, you get a number of things from being Norse now.
Religion takes longer to convert though you'll actually get some help from your vassals. Having some rulers spend time on some theology perks helps speed it up.
Longboats. THAT is why I suddenly couldn't raid across sea. Fuck's sake. Thanks!
*converts to anglo-saxon* What are these things we sailed here on? Longboats? What sort of name is that? Burn em
I dislike the Innovations system being based on culture sooooo much. Nevermind that I'm chilling in English castles I've injected so much development from "aggressively recruiting" skilled workers from abroad during raids to the point where Jorvik makes Paris look kind of backwater. Because the Norse back in Sweden are still living in hurts made out of mud and feces my realm is having trouble figuring out how to write down chronicles.
*converts to anglo-saxon* What are these things we sailed here on? Longboats? What sort of name is that? Burn em
I dislike the Innovations system being based on culture sooooo much. Nevermind that I'm chilling in English castles I've injected so much development from "aggressively recruiting" skilled workers from abroad during raids to the point where Jorvik makes Paris look kind of backwater. Because the Norse back in Sweden are still living in hurts made out of mud and feces my realm is having trouble figuring out how to write down chronicles.
Yeah, I go back and forth on it. I like it in concept, but it has some glaring inadequacies.
My Dane Jarl Varangian Adventured into Essex, as planned.
In just a real unfortunate turn of events, we had a failure to culturally communicate.
All the locals are Catholic, and the Jarl has attended a few church gatherings where there was eating the body and blood of their god, which he was real into.
So he threw a huge party, spent all the money possible, and sacrificed the best prisoners to let the guests eat that body and blood as well, figuring, "Hey, we have some commonality here."
And BOY HOWDY are the penalties high for inviting a county that apparently "doesn't practice human sacrifice" (I really think Catholicism should have some sort of ritualistic cannibalism trait) to a human sacrifice gathering. Lots of uprisings after that.
Any idea if de jure title drift continues upon player succession? I'm curious whether if my character dies and my heir takes over, and the de jure drift rules still apply, whether the progress would be maintained.
I'm also trying to decide if integrating titles is even really worth it.
Any idea if de jure title drift continues upon player succession? I'm curious whether if my character dies and my heir takes over, and the de jure drift rules still apply, whether the progress would be maintained.
I'm also trying to decide if integrating titles is even really worth it.
It did in Crusader Kings 2. I'm gonna assume it works the same in Crusader Kings 3. Otherwise, you'd have to have a single King or Queen rule for such an implausibly long time that de jure drift might as well not be a thing at all.
Still, I decided to pull the trigger on CK3, and after a few days I gotta say I like just about everything better about it. Everything has been easier to navigate and more manageable.
After a few games I've come to like starting in Ireland. Lot going on, not a lot of foreign fuckery coming in. As long as I don't marry anyone who's about to go to war with England I can mostly ignore the world beyond the island in the early game.
Managed in one game to screw up my family marriages and ended up with my ex-wife as high queen and my 9 year old heir as the petty king above me. Figured out what I did (sleeping with the Queen of Norway may have been involved, also not keeping an extra duke level title to fall back on), too, not the fuckthisgame bullshit I ran into in CK2 nor a bullshit game over, being my own heir's vassal just meant I went out on stupid ass wars until I died in Spain*.
Now, a question, because I keep hitting something of a wall at the kingdom level, taking forever to whittle away at Scotland and Whales to work my way towards Emperor of Britannia. My vassals don't give a fuck about wars. Even ones I've gotten alliances with I can't seem to call on, only the one that's my actual son. I could screw my kids onto all those thrones but it's already hard not to find spouses for my kids that aren't cousins or at war with the pope or something.
*-fun highlights of that campaign: My 3 year old grandson was taken hostage during battle. What the fuck kind of family takes a toddler into battle overseas? "Your wife has gained the trait Pregnant." "The HELL she did!"
So, your vassals aren't going to directly join a war along side you. Instead, they are providing troops directly into your forces. You can see how much each vassal is giving you by going into their Manage Contract screen (Right click on the vassal and look in the Vassalage & Court section), where it will show you how many troops and how much gold they are adding to your forces. They are supporting you, just not directly on the field with their own troops. After all, if you die, they just get a new boss, same as the old boss. You can force your family members to join you directly if they are below you in regards to your dynasty standing.
The benefit of getting alliances with your vassals is that they cannot join factions against you so you don't need to worry about them rebelling.
You can force your family members to join you directly if they are below you in regards to your dynasty standing.
Well, that helps. Ok, so cousin marriages it is, then.
Ok, kids, everyone line up boy-girl-boy-girl in order of your highest skill, I'll explain when you're older. "This will give them the Incest secret." Game it ain't a secret when everybody on the island already has the same last name.
You can force your family members to join you directly if they are below you in regards to your dynasty standing.
Well, that helps. Ok, so cousin marriages it is, then.
Ok, kids, everyone line up boy-girl-boy-girl in order of your highest skill, I'll explain when you're older. "This will give them the Incest secret." Game it ain't a secret when everybody on the island already has the same last name.
If that's the way you want to play it, you can just reform your faith so that incest is legal. The Pope won't be happy with you, but at least your family won't be secretly incestuous.
0
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
You can force your family members to join you directly if they are below you in regards to your dynasty standing.
Well, that helps. Ok, so cousin marriages it is, then.
Ok, kids, everyone line up boy-girl-boy-girl in order of your highest skill, I'll explain when you're older. "This will give them the Incest secret." Game it ain't a secret when everybody on the island already has the same last name.
If that's the way you want to play it, you can just reform your faith so that incest is legal. The Pope won't be happy with you, but at least your family won't be secretly incestuous.
Throw in some Divine Marriage to make it really pop.
You can force your family members to join you directly if they are below you in regards to your dynasty standing.
Well, that helps. Ok, so cousin marriages it is, then.
Ok, kids, everyone line up boy-girl-boy-girl in order of your highest skill, I'll explain when you're older. "This will give them the Incest secret." Game it ain't a secret when everybody on the island already has the same last name.
If that's the way you want to play it, you can just reform your faith so that incest is legal. The Pope won't be happy with you, but at least your family won't be secretly incestuous.
Throw in some Divine Marriage to make it really pop.
Why is it that every discussion about CK inevitably turn to "why don't you just start your own weird sex cult" within, like, five posts? I wonder what Godwin would have to say about this. :P
Posts
And also because it was leaked beforehand. That made it less surprising as well.
There's already a store page for it on Steam. In Euros, it's 6,99.
$6.99 US, as well. Basically perfectly where I would have wanted it. I was thinking between $5-$10. Based on the features from the video, I think that's a pretty good price. What I like about these is while there's less content than traditional expansions, they're also much more narrowly focused, so you don't feel like you're missing out on major features if you skip them if you're not interested in the culture they're adding. Hopefully these can be developed alongside more full-featured releases. They're also adding most of the big features they've talked about that they could easily put in this paid pack as a free patch, like winter, duels, and the poetry stuff.
I think Stellaris has been roughly in the middle. There's both the big expansions and flavor packs.
Good on Paradox for experimenting with their model.
The expansion pass covers the Northern Lords, yes.
Fun sentence on the Steam page for the DLC: "This game will unlock in approximately less than an hour". That just sounds weird
Edit: Correction it IS in the expansion pass. If you actually launch the game it shows up, despite the steam store trying to get you to buy it and listing a price.
It always seemed weird that you were supposed to just shrug that one off and carry on with your day as if one of your subjects hadn't just tried to kill you with smallpox/plague/whatever the corpse turned out to be carrying.
And legitimately maybe the best real change:
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Jorvik makes it a little easier for some. Halfdan starts with it and Ivar is just a short distance from it. It's also a coastal county so a pretty quick conquest.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Sure but getting all the way to goddamn Kiev is going to be a legitimate problem
That one's going to be a pain to take and more of one to hold but you shouldn't need it to reform the faith.
Making it harder to access the holy site bonuses is a downer for reasons separate from reformation though.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
One pain point with the pack is that the base Innovation system still is pretty awful if you're not the cultural head. You're at the mercy of whatever the king of Sweden or Denmark decide to focus on and their lack of learning. If playing as one of the non-Scandinavian starts you can end up with nothing to really spend money on as you can't yet upgrade feudal buildings or build more holdings due to tech limitations but can't afford to dump that money into men-at-arms because your passive income generation can't support a big army yet. If you are playing a Scandinavian start, you still deal with the whole tribal to feudal thing. The requirements have lowered but it's still something that will take a while.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Which brings me to three main questions:
Any tips for Conversion? Reform into Itinerant Preachers seems key.
Is it really just a much better call to convert to local culture and be Anglo-Saxon? It seems way too costly in the end to try to culture convert England to Norse, though it would be fun. Maybe too hard if I'm not going to convert religion though.
Lastly: one of my goals has been to start conquering Duchies in random places, granting them to a son, then granting that son independence so that my lineage carries on conquering the world in my stead, but I don't have to manage it. Is this really stupid? I'd like to try to make it work but it seems like I'd end up splitting my holdings reeeeal fast.
Cultural conversion is relatively quick. Switching to Anglo-Saxon would likely put you further on tech and give you quicker control over it, but you'd lose on the cultural and regional techs from being Norse. Longboats make a big difference when raiding. Varangian Veterans are a nice upgrade compared to normal heavy infantry and you can get dynasty perks that increase how many troops your heavy infantry regiments can recruit. With the DLC, you get a number of things from being Norse now.
Religion takes longer to convert though you'll actually get some help from your vassals. Having some rulers spend time on some theology perks helps speed it up.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Longboats. THAT is why I suddenly couldn't raid across sea. Fuck's sake. Thanks!
I dislike the Innovations system being based on culture sooooo much. Nevermind that I'm chilling in English castles I've injected so much development from "aggressively recruiting" skilled workers from abroad during raids to the point where Jorvik makes Paris look kind of backwater. Because the Norse back in Sweden are still living in hurts made out of mud and feces my realm is having trouble figuring out how to write down chronicles.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Yeah, I go back and forth on it. I like it in concept, but it has some glaring inadequacies.
In just a real unfortunate turn of events, we had a failure to culturally communicate.
All the locals are Catholic, and the Jarl has attended a few church gatherings where there was eating the body and blood of their god, which he was real into.
So he threw a huge party, spent all the money possible, and sacrificed the best prisoners to let the guests eat that body and blood as well, figuring, "Hey, we have some commonality here."
And BOY HOWDY are the penalties high for inviting a county that apparently "doesn't practice human sacrifice" (I really think Catholicism should have some sort of ritualistic cannibalism trait) to a human sacrifice gathering. Lots of uprisings after that.
I'm also trying to decide if integrating titles is even really worth it.
It did in Crusader Kings 2. I'm gonna assume it works the same in Crusader Kings 3. Otherwise, you'd have to have a single King or Queen rule for such an implausibly long time that de jure drift might as well not be a thing at all.
Still, I decided to pull the trigger on CK3, and after a few days I gotta say I like just about everything better about it. Everything has been easier to navigate and more manageable.
After a few games I've come to like starting in Ireland. Lot going on, not a lot of foreign fuckery coming in. As long as I don't marry anyone who's about to go to war with England I can mostly ignore the world beyond the island in the early game.
Managed in one game to screw up my family marriages and ended up with my ex-wife as high queen and my 9 year old heir as the petty king above me. Figured out what I did (sleeping with the Queen of Norway may have been involved, also not keeping an extra duke level title to fall back on), too, not the fuckthisgame bullshit I ran into in CK2 nor a bullshit game over, being my own heir's vassal just meant I went out on stupid ass wars until I died in Spain*.
Now, a question, because I keep hitting something of a wall at the kingdom level, taking forever to whittle away at Scotland and Whales to work my way towards Emperor of Britannia. My vassals don't give a fuck about wars. Even ones I've gotten alliances with I can't seem to call on, only the one that's my actual son. I could screw my kids onto all those thrones but it's already hard not to find spouses for my kids that aren't cousins or at war with the pope or something.
*-fun highlights of that campaign: My 3 year old grandson was taken hostage during battle. What the fuck kind of family takes a toddler into battle overseas? "Your wife has gained the trait Pregnant." "The HELL she did!"
The benefit of getting alliances with your vassals is that they cannot join factions against you so you don't need to worry about them rebelling.
Well, that helps. Ok, so cousin marriages it is, then.
Ok, kids, everyone line up boy-girl-boy-girl in order of your highest skill, I'll explain when you're older. "This will give them the Incest secret." Game it ain't a secret when everybody on the island already has the same last name.
If that's the way you want to play it, you can just reform your faith so that incest is legal. The Pope won't be happy with you, but at least your family won't be secretly incestuous.
Throw in some Divine Marriage to make it really pop.
Why is it that every discussion about CK inevitably turn to "why don't you just start your own weird sex cult" within, like, five posts? I wonder what Godwin would have to say about this. :P