8 Tips to Up Your Game in Crusader Kings 3

Hmmm, great tips... thanks!

8t😊

I think this game is great i love to be a prick , steal people wifes , murder my rivals what fun lol

I always try to bum rush the house seniority and high crown authority innovations so I can designate my heir before death prestige doesn't carryover so using it to pick an heir is a good idea in the longterm

I cant find the top realm filter for marrying off courtiers

I love how historically accurate this is lol

Always have max personal schemes running: Do romance schemes for free prestige, occasional intrigue perks, and even renown if one of your cultural traditions is chivalry - just find someone with 100% success chance or close to it...

I think I am getting addicted to Crusader kings 3, I didn't play the old ones, but this game is like crack.
I may have a problem, thanks for the tips.

This character finder isn't in the ps5 version correct? Or am I mistaken?

Great video anyway. Thanks

I need ps5 tutorial.

Wow! Hundreds of hours played and most of these were great tips! I Had "aha!" moments and "dur why didnt i think of that..." 😅

Great tips sir, thank you!

Hello, I have a question for you or for other players.

How can I give other vassals a duchy?
During the game, I get the message "Too many duchies", which is why I lose a lot of feedback with vassals.

My domain limit is 9, of which I have about 19 principalities.

I play Ireland, I have conquered Wales, Scotland, England. I would like to convey to the vassals, for example, the Supreme Commander of Iceland - but when I click "give", I get the message "No suitable characters found". What should I do in such a situation?

Please help. :)

Damn, this is the best video so far about CK3 tips for beginners, good insight tips, good pace, well edited video/soud, keep up the good work, gonna take a look at the rest of ur channel but this video is perfect, english is my second language and i can understant everything perfectly too, wichs a bonus.

You and Party elite have some really awesome guides for this game but you all still don't know how to say "De Jure.." 😂

This guy has a voice for television and radio.

Me: 90 hours in my first game
2 minutes into watching: "Yo I can press C!"

Literally been clicking through entire family trees trying to find someone to marry for alliances

One thing I would recommend is don’t convert to another religion too early.

Especially one that isn’t dominant in your realm/region. I went Insular Christian as it was increasing in Francia, dominated Ireland and Wales, as the emperor, many people joined me after I converted. I did it for those three sweet extra wives you get. For a emperor or two I did quite well. Taking most of Italy and most of Germany. However, I now had many more Catholics in my realm. Not only that but I had a lot more family members all over the place. I focused on intrigue for two emperors, not only did the previous four have eight to ten children but these two had 14 and 16 kids, respectively. Those three wives come in handy, I can get a pure blood marriage (hoping for more pure bloods eventually, I focus on blood and family in the dynasty legacy), maybe something political and some good traits. I have lots of pretty, robust and some giant (others in smaller degrees etc etc) gens in a few kids. For a while it was a lot of cousin, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, marriages which didn’t lessen the claims, it only makes them stick. ( Yeah and one seducer emperor also had a baby girl with one of this twin (hey they had the pretty trait) daughters (one kid out of the 16, which also lowered my vassals opinion, due to incest, adultery and fornicating debuffs.) Suddenly I had more claimants, I was constantly fighting and sieging. I went from 15K troops to over 6K by the time this boy king inherited. I still have the realm together but it’s constant independence factions and Catholic peasant rebellions. It’s exhausting. I’m in constant debt. I still have most of the Karling dynasty in my realm, that’s about a hundred members plus +. I far cry from when I had 15K troops and nearly a thousand gold in the bank. I should be able to recover in time (hoping I can convert back to Catholic once I gain the needed piety)
But now the Byzantine empire is big and has almost 20K troops.
Just stay the biggest religion you can.

"Don't get into war after succession"

Well that failed when i died as Whales and England truce broke me because i lost my alliances (i had west & east francia + Aquitaine). I'm used to EU4 logic where the AI never truce breaks because it costs major stability and AE. CK3 says "major Penalties" amd i look it up and its basically just -50opinion with everyone and 300 prestige which is laughable considering the prestige cost is the same as a tribal building and opinion isn't that big a deal (vassals can sit at -100 and be fine and opinion doesn't make a coalition form)

A reasonable truce breaking penalty would be:
Lose 1 level of fame
-100 opinion penalty with everyone via "truce breaker" fame trait
-1 monthly control in all provences for 10 years

Truce breaking should hurt, not just be a mild inconvenience. (And the AI should never do it because their ability to calculate values isn't good enough to see anything as worth it)

For your second tip "bringing your lover to your court then to your council" was the worst thing to do (for me), it was a rampage she killed 2 spouses of me then even ME. Take a look on her main traits before and try to get a kind one at least, especially a physician its a very easy spot to murder. Play very carefully with lovers and scan them sometimes to reveal secrets.

omg the first tip is so useful! thanks

It makes sense to combine the "marry courtiers" and "spousal focus" tips: switch your wife's assistance to "court politics" (+diplomacy) before searching for marriage candidates for a courtier and you'll get better candidates.
Some other considerations:
- High-born courtiers (with coats of arms) produce better marriage opportunities.
- When marrying a courtier dame matrilineally, pay attention to that the partner is not a mayor. She will leave your court and move to his city. (Not sure, maybe the same happens with priests and even priestesses when you marry a male courtier.)
- Breeding courtiers makes little sense. Finding robust wives for your knights is unlikely to produce for you better knights in the next generation. It's better to secure top HR right here right now, which means always inviting them from outside. You can marry even aged dames and turn the "fertile" filter to "all" to find for them not so young husbands with very high prowess (the list is sortable by prowess, BTW) or good combinations of commander traits.
- Higher learning is important for a doctor even more than the stars in the "Physician" characteristic.
- Consider landing your counsellors and knights. When landed, spouses assist them, so if you are inviting through marriage e.g. a guy with high stewardship to appoint as your steward, it's better to marry him to a dame with the highest stewardship in your court so he becomes even better steward after landing.

Personally on confederate partition I usually imprison my secondary heirs before they can have kids, when the succession happens I execute them so I can gobble up those holdings. I also give any surplus or newly acquired holdings to my primary heir’s first son so that too many titles don’t overflow to heir number 3, 4, etc

Great tips.

Cheers for the tips man I'm still very new to this. Half the struggle is even just figuring out HOW to do all these things lol.

Sadistic and Generous are both awesome traits to have. With generous you can relieve stress by giving gifts, with sadistic you can relieve stress by executing people!

Great video, thank you! Question about declaring wars: my current character has only 2 claims at the moment, but the Tab menu states that I can declare many other wars. Where does these other, non claim based, wars come?

Yep got my son a great wife mine tried to off me jailed her she croaked my sone was slain I got his wife who turned out more kids than the one who tried to rub me out.

Jumped on the Xbox release today and boy do I have alot to learn but I'm still enjoying it. Its clear the learning curve to be really successful is high I can't wait to use these tips and see how I get on over the next few days.

Some of these don't seem to work any more. I presume they were patched out?

These tips were amazing! Thank you.

Really great video

Just wanted to say thanks for these awesome tutorials. It made it so much easier to play the game - i was getting really frustrated.

Everything about this game confuses me

CK3 gg

For succession I always go with the elective systems (if possible) and make sure everyone is lined up with the same heir. The best heirs i grant land to even though i cant ally with some. I try to grant everything to house members & give more to the better ones (but usually no more than a duchy). That way they usually wont die in a vassal war. Either way i always make them stop vassal wars if its family fighting. For example, before im able to form Brittania but hold Wales, England, and Ireland.. I make sure the heirs i like at least have unpressed titles in each kingdom (and their own land). When they're elected to all 3 kingdoms with land they have more than the domain limit and i can grant titles again based on my needs. Usually ill grant my old duchy to a son with decent diplomacy and stewardship stats and keep the holdings with the most building slots and best supply/levies. To increase votes in your favor you simply grant counties to house members (with positive opinion)... Ive been able to mix and match claims across 3 generations in my starting duchy so that itll always go back to a member of my house and ill always keep the best county in it since its the capitol. You can keep repeating this process as domain penalties aren't immediate. You'll encounter some rebellions if you don't sway, gift, or feast/hunt almost immediately after succession. If you do it right, its the best method to keep your kingdom in order until you form an empire in my opinion & you can always get dynasty members with good stats instead of some sadistic shy lazy son. Try to get to authority 3 quickly to prevent vassal wars. Also say if you only win 2/3 elections.. you could just go to war on your claims and if you mix the titles right amongst family members, you'll usually get it back at some point if you dont go to war. And faction wars are sometimes really good because you can lock up multiple vassals you don't like and ransom or revoke claims/banish them without a tyrant penalty and stress (if you're just).. Disinheriting should only be used if you cant manage to line your elections up and your vassals are trying to vote for someone you don't like.

A different way to approach number 5 would be, if you're confident you can squash all the rebels, you can just let the war happen and then strip all the titles from your imprisoned vassals and really clean up the realm and make it very neat

You're amazing!!

I'm only a few hours in but for succession, what really helped me was just giving away any land one of your child may inherit to a member of your court. You "lose" a bit of land but you secure a stronger hold on your realm, and you can have really strong courtiers become powerful and loyal vassals.
I also found that it's safer to do that semi-early and not wait for old age, cause you might die unexpectedly!

This may be late, but here's a couple of strategies I ran into. When you're stuck conquering a neighboring kingdom county by county, you can keep an eye on your enemy monarch's core counties, the ones that they themselves rule over. This is their main source of money the same way you have yours. Rather than picking off counties off the edge, you can drive your way forward into their heartlands and start taking the core counties, even their capital. Each victory weakens your enemy nation more than it otherwise would since you chip into the monarch's ability to fight back.

A second tip when you're conquering an enemy piece by piece is to keep an eye on their succession. Especially early on when dealing with confederate partition. If you're lucky, you can find a spot where a single assassination will utterly ruin the nation's stability. I pulled this at one point by assassinating the only son of a catholic king with a bounty of daughters. The oldest daughter got hte title and for the next 90 or so years the nation was beset with civil war after civil war changing the monarch by faction demands every few years and weakening them every time. It really helped keep the whole kingdom on the back foot.

You are a legend! Thank you so mutch a learned a lot from your Video!!!

You can create a hook too so you can use it to invite someone.

I just can't help but be turned off by the idea of using matrilineal marriages when I know they didn't happen in dark age/medieval Europe historically. Kinda like how it bugs me slightly that Catholic and Orthodox are separated into different faiths before 1054.

i try to made india to iceland with a norse Ásatrú, advise ?

As someone who played a little bit of Crusader Kings 2 but never quite got the hang of it and is now trying to figure out CK3 these are the types of tips I really appreciate.

spousal focus decisions... very clever

Being a Latin phrase, De Jure is pronounced either day JUR-ay or day ZHUR-ay. J are only pronounced as a Y in certain Germanic and Nordic languages.

Should I ever force knights to be my knights?

thanks