Crusader Kings 3: Which Innovations to Get First

Most grand strategy games have some sort of tech tree, and Crusader Kings 3 is no exception. But while CK2 gives each county its own technology level, in CK3 your technology bonuses are completely based on your ruler's culture.

Each Innovation in Crusader Kings 3 comes with a few useful bonuses, but not all of them are equally helpful to the average player. So if your ruler ends up being the head of their culture, it helps to know which Innovations to focus on first.

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How to Get Innovations Fast

Crusader Kings 3 Greek Innovations — The innovations list for Greek culture in 1066 in Crusader Kings 3.

To see what Innovations your culture can access, you should click on the candle icon above your ruler's head in the lower-left corner. This will bring up the menu that shows your ruler's culture, and from there you can select the Innovations tab.

To have any control over this menu, your ruler must have more counties with your culture in their realm than any other ruler on the map. You don't need to be an independent ruler, but your liege will count as the culture head if they belong to the same culture.

A culture head also needs to be an adult. If a child young enough to need a regency controls the most counties of a culture, the adult with the next-most counties becomes the culture head until the child grows up.

If you want to research a particular Innovation, you'll need to meet a few requirements.

Your culture must have access to the right era.
- All cultures can access Tribal Innovations.
- To unlock the Early Medieval era, the date must be at least 900 AD, your culture must have at least half of the Tribal Innovations, and the culture head can't control a tribal government.
- To unlock the High Medieval era, the date must be at least 1050 AD, and your culture must have half of the Early Medieval Innovations.
- To unlock the Late Medieval era, the date must be at least 1200 AD, and your culture must have half of the High Medieval Innovations.
To research a Cultural or Regional Innovation, your culture must either belong to a specific region, or you'll need to introduce your culture to enough regional counties with your steward's Promote Culture job. Each Regional Innovation says which region it requires, and how many counties you'll need to start the research.

Every Innovation a culture can research has a five percent chance to progress every month, but you can increase the odds in two ways.

As the cultural head, you can choose an available Innovation to be your Fascination. Fascination increases the odds by 24 percent (to 29), plus an extra point for every point of the ruler's Learning skill. So a ruler with Learning 40 provides a 79 percent chance to progress every month.
Another way to boost this number is with the Learning Lifestyle perk "Scientific." This gives you a flat 20 percent to your monthly Fascination odds.
The other booster is Exposure. You get this if your culture shares a realm, a border, a religion, or something else in common with a culture that has an Innovation yours doesn't. Exposure provides a flat 40 percent bonus to an Innovation's progress, but the Innovation in question is random and unchangeable.
If you choose an Exposure Innovation as your Fascination, the bonuses stack.
The Exposure Innovation has a blue border, while the Fascination Innovation has a yellow border.

The last factor that matters to Innovations is your culture's Development. Each time an Innovation progresses, no matter what the odds are, it increases by 0.3, plus a bonus based on the average Development of every county that belongs to your culture. This means that a small, highly developed culture can innovate faster than one that's spread out. In other words, it may be worth the hassle to keep your ruler's culture as an imperial core instead of spreading it out to every province.

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The Best Innovations in CK3

Crusader Kings 3 Manorialism — Manorialism, an essential Innovation in Crusader Kings 3.

Tribal

Mottes, City Planning, Barracks, Crop Rotation, Ledger. These four Innovations unlock the ability to build castles (Mottes), cities and temples (City Planning), military buildings for men-at-arms (Barracks), and buildings that boost your domain income (Crop Rotation). The order you get them depends on your home territory, but be sure to get them all. Finally, Ledger gives you an extra building slot in every settlement.
Onager, Mustering Grounds. Onager is the first Innovation to unlock a siege weapon, and siege weapons make sieges go several times faster. Mustering Grounds let you create more men-at-arms, which is never a bad thing.
Longships, West African Canoes. Your culture must be present in Northern Europe and West Africa respectively, but these two Innovations give you a big discount on embarkation costs and let you transport troops on major rivers. If you somehow get your culture into both regions, you can embark for free.

Early Medieval

Battlements, Manorialism, Burhs, Bailiffs. These Innovations let you upgrade your castle's main building (Battlements) or your cities and temples (Manorialism). The first three also let you upgrade your minor buildings to level four (along with the first duchy buildings), while Bailiffs give you yet another building slot.
Mangonels, Household Soldiers. Mangonels are 50 percent better than onagers, and the extra men-at-arms you get from Household Soldiers stack with the bonus from Mustering Grounds.
Hereditary Rule. This unlocks Partition, the first succession law you can access after Confederate Partition. While Confederate Partition creates new titles when dividing a ruler's lands, Partition only divides the titles you currently own. This lets you keep your realm together by only controlling one kingdom or empire title at a time.
Royal Prerogative. This lets you enact High and Absolute Crown Authority. These laws lower your vassals' opinions, but the extra levies and powers you get are worth the trouble.
Chronicle Writing. If you plan on expanding through marriage claims or fabricated claims, Chronicle Writing makes the process faster by letting you press every valid claim in a single war.

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High Medieval

Hoardings, Windmills, Castle Baileys, Guilds. These Innovations unlock the next set of building improvements. Hoardings and Windmills are especially important, since they let you upgrade the central buildings (something which the Windmills description fails to mention). Windmills and Guilds also give you two more building slots, along with access to powerful windmill and watermill buildings.
Trebuchets, Men-at-Arms. The next siege engine type, and the next men-at-arms booster.
Heraldry. This unlocks the High Partition and House Seniority succession laws. They aren't as useful as comparing Partition to Confederate Partition, but they can still be an improvement.
Divine Right. This Innovation lets you press all of another character's claims at once, instead of just your own.

Late Medieval

Machicolations, Cranes, Royal Armory. With these Innovations, along with the ones from previous eras, you can reach the best building levels in the game.
Bombards, Standing Armies. By this point, your men-at-arms can fight wars without any levies, and your siege weapons can crack castle defenses in a matter of days.
Primogeniture. This unlocks the best succession laws in the game. All your ruler's titles will go to a single child, no matter what.
Renaissance Thought. The Increase Development job slows down as a county's Development level goes up, but Renaissance Thought lifts the slowdown cap to 90. Crusader Kings 3 has an Innovation like this in every era, but unlike other Innovations, these don't stack. This means Renaissance Thought is ultimately more useful than the other three.