A beginners’ guide to where to start with Crusader Kings 3
Paradox Interactive’s historical grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3 was released in September 2020 to resounding critical acclaim. Reviewers lavished praise onto its blend of strategy and RPG mechanics, its atmospheric feel and emotional weight; and it sold over a million units on PC within a month. Quite the achievement for the latest title in a series with a notoriously steep learning curve, minimal graphics to show off and a hard-to-understand premise.
Paradox have made an extremely laudable attempt at handholding this time round (the developer has a reputation for not providing good tutorials in its previous titles), but CK3 can still be a baffling and overwhelming experience for many new players. Guides online that mention things like confederate partition succession, domain limits and vassal holdings can become a to understand, and sometimes weird things happen to you without you even knowing what you did to cause it.
That being said, if the game is sitting in your Steam Library with the playtime hours in the single figures, you are missing out on a uniquely brilliant gaming experience. So, with the hotly anticipated DLC, Royal Court, out soon and a console version of the game coming in March, there’s no better time to pick up CK3 — and this getting started guide will help you dust off that old crown and dive right in.
Step One: Understand that CK3 is what you make it
If you are completely new to Paradox titles, before even opening the character selection screen you must understand that it is not a ‘normal’ video game. We gamers have been conditioned over the years to expect a certain way for single-player games to challenge us. We complete various tasks or quests or missions, then we are presented with a win screen, then the credits roll and then we’ve completed the game. If our playable character dies, we lose and have to start again at some previous point.
CK3 is not like this in any way. While many games claim to be “open-ended”, CK3 is the closest you will come to a truly open-ended game. This is because the game doesn’t present any goals to complete in the short term, present a list of quests or give you any missions. There are no win screens, no levels to complete. There is a way of getting a game over, but not in the way you might imagine (it isn’t if your character dies). Unlike other strategy games like Civ, there aren’t even any designated victory conditions, and this can be quite a difficult thing for some people to get their head around. Some people can’t get their head around it at all, and that’s fine. But as long as you’re prepared to alter your expectations a little bit as to what you want a video game to be, then you’ll understand CK3 in no time.
The main thing is that, while advanced players will usually set themselves complicated goals, such as re-establishing the Roman Empire or creating a new state religion that allows you to have an incestuous relationship with your son (yeah, let’s not go there right now), it is possible to have a lot of fun just by letting the game run and going along with it, establish your dynasty’s longevity and ensure that every spouse you have becomes your soulmate. This playstyle, known as “playing tall”, can be just as rewarding as an aggressive map painting game or raiding every square mile as Ivar the Boneless. The only way the game will ever end is if your character dies without an heir, or if you reach the end date of 1453.
Everything else is pure theory.
Step Two: Pick an easy bookmarked character from 1066
When it comes to CK3’s character selection, it can be very tempting to dive into playing straight off as famous British Isles-botherer William the Bastard or, if you’re a fan of the TV shows Last Kingdom or Vikings, the fire-raiding and skol-screaming 867 date. But, to dip your toe in to test the water first, it is far more recommended to play as King Murchad, Duke of Munster in the 1066 start date.
King Murchad is the designated tutorial character (and, if you’re completely new, you should do the tutorial to learn the core game mechanics) but can also be a good general starting character if you would like to learn the game by trial and error. His dukedom is fairly far away from any messy business, he has an easy domain to deal with and is generally well-liked by his court, meaning that it is easy to get started without any nasty surprises or confusing initial mechanics.
Step Three: Simplify the game rules
The list of game rules in CK3 can look overwhelming at first, meaning it is tempting to not bother changing them. However, as a beginner, there are a few recommended adjustments that will make things far more fun from the off.
Firstly, turn off Scandinavian Adventurers. This is a mechanic that can easily wipe you out quickly if you do not know what you are doing, so it’s best to just avoid this completely for now. Scandinavian Adventures shouldn’t even occur with the 1066 starting date anyway, but just in case, still turn them off.
Next, set diplomatic range to restricted. This might seem that you’re making the game harder, but this simplifies certain decisions massively and can help stop confusing things happening later on.
Finally, set the game too easy difficulty. This is fairly self-explanatory, but it’s not worth dropping to very easy because you won’t learn game strategy quite as well and a big part of the game’s value is how rewarding it is to overcome the difficulty curve.
Oh, and don’t enable ironman. While you might want to go achievement hunting from the start, this is CK3’s permadeath mechanic which restricts your game to a single save. You can’t reload from an old save if you mess something up (like accidentally marrying your heir matrilineally to a French princess), so let’s not go there.
Step Four: Play as if you’re playing an RPG
On the face of it, CK3 appears to be a typical strategy game. You are presented with a map, some assets that you control, some resources in the top right corner of the screen and can move armies around by right-clicking. However, to approach CK3 as simply a strategy game would be as much a mistake as approaching Fallout 4 as a first-person shooter.
The mechanics of CK3 have far more in common with an RPG or, even, a life simulator like The Sims. You do not play as a country, faction or as a single character. Instead, you play as your dynasty, that is, the continuing family of the initial character you have selected. While you will be the ruler of some sort of territory, expanding this isn’t necessarily the point of the game. Instead, it is to establish your dynasty’s legacy through your choices and achievements in whichever way you would like this to be. If your current character dies, then you play as your heir. If you don’t have an heir (which is a rare situation, so don’t panic), then it’s game over!
At the top of the screen, you’ll see some critical choices either in the form of little buttons with images or inside of the menu that has a number on it. Working through these is a good starting point (if not always crucial) but pay special attention to the marriage-related ones, or anything alerting you that you don’t have an heir to your dynasty. From there, everything else is up to you.
So, run the game at a slowish pace (three medium speed is good, but move up a tick to four if this is a bit too slow for you), and let the dates tick by until you’re presented with your first event and set of choices. Hit the space bar to pause the game each time something happens to take it in, and just enjoy the story that plays out in front of you and the choices you have to make.
Make your choices based not on what you think the game wants you to do, but on what you want to do. If you want to be an absolute bastard and shout at your subjects, go for it and enjoy the consequences that play out. If you fancy yourself as a bit of a saint, then try and go for the virtuous options and see where that takes you. If you hover over each choice, you’ll be told what the consequences of that choice will be (sometimes as a percentage chance), if it costs anything (in gold, piety or prestige) and if there is any chance of pissing anyone off.
Eventually, stories will play out, you will interact with characters, you’ll face stressful situations, you might be able to host a feast and all sorts of delightful choices will be presented to you as the head of your dynasty.
Oh, and if you are offered a cat or a dog. Take the cat or dog.
Step Five: Read the tooltips
CK3 has a really intuitive pop-up tooltip system. Hovering over anything in colour will produce a pop-up, explaining things in further detail to you. This tooltip itself will also have text in colour which you can produce yet another tooltip to explain that word. It’s a clever set-up that means you don’t have to keep shifting back and forth between different screens or dialogue boxes to get the particular information you would like.
Once you get the hang of these tutorial tooltips, you’ll also learn to get into the habit of reading all of the other gameplay pop-ups. While these are similar to what you find in Civ or the Total War series in that they tell you detailed information on specifics (figures and so on), in CK3 they are far more important — with some essential to understanding what decision to make next.
There you have it. Your five-point starting plan. Revisit soon for more advanced CK3 guides on how to expand your rule, engage in skulduggery, go raiding, and, yes, marry your cousin…
