Crusader Kings 3 is a game with a lot of moving parts. You have several global resources to gather, relationships with families, neighbors, vassals, and courtiers that need juggling, and all kinds of schemes and wars to worry about.
All of this can be hard for players of Crusader Kings 3 to deal with, especially if CK3 is your first grand strategy game. Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do that will make your game easier (especially if you don't mind locking out achievements).
Crusader Kings 3: Best Minor Houses For A Game of Thrones Mod
This Game of Thrones-themed Crusader Kings 3 mod lets players live out their GoT fantasies. Here's which minor houses are worth playing.
Game Rules
Before you begin a new game of Crusader Kings 3, you have an opportunity to modify the game rules. When you select your starting character, you should see both a "Difficulty" bar below the character's portrait and information, and a "Game Rules" button just beneath it.
You can set the Difficulty setting to "Very Easy," "Easy," and "Normal." Normal has no bonuses or penalties, while the other settings provide a variety of bonuses.
Easy:
- +15 to Hostile Scheme resistance
- +10 Fertility
- -25 percent to the Short Reign Penalty duration
- -25 percent to any Tyranny opinion losses
- -25 percent to all Stress gains
- +66 percent chance that Champions will survive battles
- -15 percent Disease chance
- A small Health boost
- Factions form slightly slower
Very Easy:
- +30 to Hostile Scheme resistance
- +20 Fertility
- -50 percent to the Short Reign Penalty duration
- -75 percent to any Tyranny opinion losses
- -50 percent to all Stress gains
- +75 percent chance that Champions will survive battles
- -75 percent Disease chance
- A moderate Health boost
- Factions form significantly slower
- All vassals get a permanent +25 opinion modifier
- All lieges get a permanent +50 opinion modifier
Crusader Kings 3: The 9 Most Important Things To Do First
Newcomers might be overwhelmed by Crusader Kings 3 at first. Here's what everyone should do immediately in the game.
Aside from these basic bonuses, several of the other game rules can make your life as a medieval ruler much easier. Most of them also disable achievements, but enabling them has no other penalties. Here are some of the most useful game rules to modify:
- Exclave Independence. If you set this to "Total (AI Only)," then every territory that isn't connected to a ruler's capital by sea will become independent the moment they're at peace with all their neighbors. "AI Only" means your own exclaves are immune to this rule.
- Plague Frequency. If the plague mechanic is hammering your home territories too hard, you can turn them off completely. However, you should keep in mind that the Black Death has its own independent rules.
- Realm Stability. You can make factions far less common by setting this to "Extreme Stability."
- Casus Belli Costs. Set this to "No Costs" to stop spending Prestige or Piety on wars. However, this rule doesn't get rid of Fame or Devotion requirements, nor does it get rid of the penalties that come from breaking treaties or alliances.
- Culture Conversion Speed/Faith Conversion Speed. A realm with a uniform faith and culture is much more stable, so you may want to boost both of these to "Significantly Faster." This makes the conversion actions take one-quarter of the normal time, including conversion actions performed by vassals and foreign rulers.
- Randomized Faiths. Every ruler starts the game with a random faith, including every vassal and your chosen starting character. Every county also adopts its direct ruler's faith. The only exceptions are heads of faith, such as the Pope and any Caliphs. This rule tends to make larger nations shatter into pieces, which means players have fewer big rivals to worry about in the early game.
- Random Ruler Placement. This swaps rulers around between domains, which are mostly the same and follow the same religions. This can create the same kind of realm-breaking chaos as Randomized Faiths.
- Domain Limit. Personal domains are a big source of gold and levies, so you can give yourself a big advantage by setting this rule to "+3." Just be aware that this rule applies to every ruler in the game.
Crusader Kings 3: How To Become A Dragonrider In The Game Of Thrones Mod
With the dragon update out, many players are wondering how to become a Dragonrider in CK3 AGOT, and there are thankfully a number of ways.
Ruler Designer
Once you select a starting ruler, you can replace them with your own created character. You can modify their appearance and stats however you want, and this includes giving them a load of positive traits and maxing all their skills. You can only give them a bonus score of 400 if you want to enable achievements, but there's no other limit to how high you can go.
You can also use the Ruler Designer to modify your future vassals, and make them amazing at being your chancellor, marshal, spymaster, and so on. You can even do this for an achievement-enabled game, since only your actual ruler needs to meet the point limit. Just make sure to give your super-vassals "Loyal," and avoid making them angry...
The only problem with this approach is that the Ruler Designer only works when you start a new game. Your ruler's children can inherit congenital traits like Herculean and Genius, but not other traits or your ruler's skill bonuses. If you want to grant these bonuses to your ruler's children, you'll need to use the next method of making CK3 easy.
Crusader Kings 3: 15 Best Starting Rulers For The Game Of Thrones Mod
For fans interested in experiencing the CK3 AGOT mod for Crusader Kings 3, these are the ideal rulers to start with.
Console Commands
Just about every Paradox grand strategy game has a console you can bring up and commands you can type in to alter the game state. Here's how to get access to it in Crusader Kings 3:
- From the game's launcher, choose "Game settings" on the left and scroll to the bottom. Press the Launch button next to "Open game in Debug Mode."
- If you own the game through Steam, right-click on the game's name and select "Properties." Under the General tab is a field called "Launch Options." Type "-debug_mode" into this field, but without the quotation marks.
- If you own the game through GOG, select the game on Galaxy, then click on "More" (next to the Play button), "Manage Installation," and then "Configure..." You should see a box you can check by "Custom executables / arguments." Check this box, and you should see an Arguments fields you can add "-debug_mode" to.
- You can also find several mods for CK3 that let you toggle debug mode. In fact, you can use these mods to add or remove other features that come with debug mode, such as the cheats that appear on the interaction menu and each character's hidden ID and stats.
- From the Crusader Kings 3 folder, select the "binaries" folder, right-click on "ck3.exe" and select "Create shortcut." Right-click on the shortcut, select "Properties," and then look at the "Target" field. At the end of the field, add " -debug_mode" after the quotation marks.
Once debug mode is active, you can hit the ` key to bring up the console. As a debugging tool, the console has a lot of commands you don't need if all you want to do is cheat. Here are some of the most useful commands to remember:
- kill [character ID]
- change_diplomacy/martial/stewardship/intrigue/learning/prowess [amount] [character ID]
- add_piety [amount] [character ID]
- add_prestige [amount] [character ID]
- cash [amount] or gold [amount]
- give_title [title ID] [character ID]
- yesmen (AI characters will always accept your proposals. Type again to disable.)
For most of these commands, you can skip adding the character ID if you want it to target your active ruler. To learn what a character's ID number is, hover your cursor over their portrait. It should be one of the stats that appeared when you turned debug mode on. You can also see county IDs by hovering over them.
One way to discover new commands is with the Tab button. If you type in "add_" and press Tab, the console will show you all the things you can add. If you type in "change_" and press Tab, you can see all the stats you can change, and so on.
Crusader Kings 3: How To Hatch Dragon Eggs In The Game Of Thrones Mod
There are a few ways to hatch dragon eggs in CK3 AGOT, even if dragons are currently extinct.
Character Switching
One of the more creative ways you can make Crusader Kings 3 easier is by using the "Switch Character" option in the main menu. You can use this option to switch at any point between your primary character and any other ruler or vassal in the game. And unlike the Ruler Designer, you can switch characters at any point during the game. Some of the ways you can abuse this feature include:
- Force a neighboring ruler to surrender or white-peace a war they aren't losing.
- Have a neighboring ruler offer to become a vassal of your main ruler.
- Have your vassals shut down a faction they started.
- Have your rivals shut down their schemes against your main ruler.
- Have a king or emperor grant independence to most of their vassals.
- Have a neighboring ruler try to revoke a title from a strong vassal, inciting a war against tyranny.
However, this method of cheating comes with an important warning: don't unpause the game while you control a different character. The AI will make decisions on your character's behalf while you aren't controlling them, and you might not like all their ideas. If you want your rivals to make several decisions that can't all happen at once, be sure to switch back to your main ruler between each decision.
Crusader Kings 3
- Released
- September 1, 2020
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T for Teens: Drug Reference, Language, Mild Violence, Suggestive Themes
- Developer(s)
- Paradox Interactive
- Publisher(s)
- Paradox Interactive
- Engine
- Clausewitz Engine
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Franchise
- Crusader Kings
- Platform(s)
- PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Grand Strategy
- How Long To Beat
- 70 Hours
- PS Plus Availability
- Extra & Premium
- File Size Xbox Series
- 11 GB (November 2023)
