Hey, thanks for checking out my little guide I've whipped up. I'm a long time player of Crusader Kings netting over 1k hours in the 2nd one. What I hope this guide will become is a fleshed out "FAQ" for new and returning players to the game. Ideally answering questions the tutorial can't really cover without being totally overbearing. I'm here to present you ways to succeed and not feel you were cheated out of your save when you game overed, but instead to realize "Oh, I shouldn't have done that" and go into the next game better than you were.

This guide as of posting this is very much in it's infancy but I plan to keep developing it. Especially if people post comments with specific questions, if I can give you the answer I will and if it's warranted your own section in the guide.

Things I'd like to add, in no particular order

• War mechanics
  
• Building your cities
  
• Roundabout ways of doing things (plan Bs)
  
• Images
  
• Some "victory" conditions I've enjoyed
  
• Mod suggestions
  
• suggested starting locations and dates
  
• suggested rulings for single player and multiplayer

I however will add that I reserve the right to be super casual with the addition of content to this guide. Generally I will reply to comments even if I haven't updated guide in awhile tho and do my best to help you.

Please use the list on the right to skip through the guide at your discretion. It isn't intended to be read straight through.

These are general suggestions in no particular order on how I try to approach the game and it's predecessors.

• Don't fear playing ironman achievements enabled. Yes, mods are super cool. But the goals achievements brought me in CK2 and CK3 have been so fun and memorable to complete. I'm not saying to not enjoy mods, but give it a shot some time if you haven't yet. It's very rewarding and the journey is memorable.
  
• Approach this game like a dynasty simulator, not a map painting sim. This is the dating sim you guys played on your mom's computer when she wasn't home. Make your dynasty as fruitful as possible in all situations, and you will find even when you alone are weak, together you are something!
  
• When you hover your mouse over basically anything in any paradox games (and many things outside of paradox, including steam) you get what are known as "tooltips" these are vital and will give you all sorts of super useful information. I always read the tooltips and 9/10 times your question is answered.
  
• Don't be afraid to switch the lifestyle tree you're training. Maybe that small health bonus from learning/medicine would be super useful to your wounded ruler. Though, you likely won't get any xp bonus for awhile. But you are able to be a sort of, jack of all trades, quite effectively in this game doing this method.
  
• Don't follow the meta. Who cares if your strategy isn't perfect? That's the fun in the game! Build your own path and forge your dynasty in your own unique way. If you want to play as peaceful as possible, you can, and more power to ya! Want to stay a duke most of the game? Dude, why not? Go for it!
  

No, absolutely not. But it's still fun to do so and I encourage everyone to try both sides of the coin! You can have a fantastic experience staying king and below always serving your liege's family. This could potentially lead to some of the best roleplay experiences you'll ever have on this game. Many people enjoy starting as a count and working their way up step by step.

I've personally found enjoyment in playing as a lowly count for 100 years. It's almost a different game than when you are top liege focused on wars. However, there's a chance that you'll just be so powerful there's really no reason for you not to be king. This is actually why I am also going to support starting as a king or emperor.

Starting as top liege can be beneficial as well, the game is very different when you need to worry about more fronts, unruly vassals that don't like you from the start, whatever else might come your way. Considering how long this game is, you could easily expand an empire, decide you no longer have interest in that empire, grant all titles to your noninheriting son, and just move to another empire and start fresh. This idea works well with kingdoms <3 Gravelkind

Below are a few options I've thought upon good options to get rid of titles if you have too many and don't know what is acceptable to do or generally a safe option. If you didn't notice, check the Conquests of Sudo section to look at the first image, see my realm size? I wrote this list because of that.

• Grant to worthy warrior courtier and hope they expand on their own
  
• Grant to daughter's maternally married husband who has gave your daughter a son
  
• Grant to a random nobody if the county isn't that valuable
  
• Grant to a courtier that you want to be loyal to you for any reason you seem fit
  
• Grant to your player heir a couple of your de jure capital counties
  
• Grant to holy parties
  
• Grant to weak counts in the same dutchy
  
• Granting of course to your other children should be obvious
  
• Granting titles to your father if you are the firstborn and he was overthrown is a good plan!

No. Marry some of your best daughters maternally and as I said in the "Titles!" section you should grant titles to her husband for your soon future grandchildren to take over, still keeping it in the family and dynasty. Of course, sometimes alliances are king, but if you don't need to have those 3000 levies for war in 5 years, why not have a stronger family forever instead? I feel this is a common thing people push for and it's simply not as well long-term as it seems.

Eventually, however, this is a very viable method to be able to war without raising your troops, assuming the alliances are basically permanent. However with all of this being said, if you know your wife cheated on you for your daughter, yeah just get an alliance out of her for some early game gains.

This is my save, and I generally have all these alliances just waiting for me to call on. See images!

While there are many solutions to this, I'll explain a method I like to use and you guys can determine if it's right for you or to just maybe take something from it to make it work for you.

If you are one struggling with revolts, you need more loyal vassals, not more vassals. Grant counts away who would stand against you where possible, or dukes if you are an emperor. Pause the game and look at how everyone views your family to know who the biggest threats will be and utilize your factions menu. Plan to tank one or two more serious revolts, not declaring any major wars during this time all while raising an heir to be a master of intrigue. Use this guy to be a total tyrant and mass-produce children cause you're safe at your castle w/ your wife ofc.

When you are ready to start taking titles from people, you could trigger a revolt by requesting titles from someone who will decline, rightfully imprison (worst case you capture them anyways), and take titles. You of course could also just imprison them without cause if you're so inclined, maybe kidnap them first. Repeat for the entire de jure kingdom. Create said kingdom title, disinherit a worthy child who isn't your primary heir, grant him/her the entire kingdom. Repeat this process. Ensure your kids have good relations too where possible. The revolt if you can win will imprison all the traitors whom you can then revoke from and grant to your kids!

-Placeholder section - I gloss over factions in Revolts! -

This is a super rough draft, that i'll edit randomly when I feel like it. Check comments as I also answer questions there.

General war strategies that I apply across most of my saves:

• Allowing the enemy to roam and siege uninterrupted in my kingdom so that they lose levies fast. Don't allow them to siege your personal counties however, as you will be risking them capturing your children. If they siege a vassal down, be prepared to handle that in whatever way you see fit.
  
  
• Attacking (when defending in home territory) multiple times with the same army despite losing with the same troops; you apply this method if you employ a ton of light infantry as it's probably one of those situations where you are losing with a 10k levy against a 6k levy (unannounced to you that those are heavy cav units) Generally you will come out on top, but use your judgement. If you are recovering faster than they are, you likely are fine.
  
  
• You can win engagements with better troops even if you are outnumbered by a few thousand men or more. See below.

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• Know when to accept a defeat before the defeat becomes a massacre. Surrender is an option when continuing the fight simply means more of your people have died.
  
• I genuinely suggest reading Sun Tzu's Art of War[classics.mit.edu] as many of the teachings in this book are clearly applied in this game.
  
• 
  

Don't worry so much about your player character controlling a ton of titles by themself. Chances are your dynasty would be much better off as independent kings allowing them to expand at their own pace while you then focus elsewhere on the map. In the end tho, if you control the dynasty you control far more than your empire alone. It'll get to a point where your dynasty owns Europe, warring each other and whatnot while you sit on your throne calling them to war, stopping wars, just generally being in charge of much more of the playing field without any penalty to your economy. Very under rated early game, especially for tribal players whom might just be learning.

However, if you're facing an issue where it could be a game over circumstance, you can either just kill them (I don't super suggest this method) or press your claim on their kingdom. You might end up needing some alliances but I've found more often than not if I do it right away I tend to be far stronger than they are. Try not to wait too long if you need the titles back or they very well will be stronger than you.

Beware the factions to revolt against you that your sibling will surely start against you.

I would like to reference a CK2 guidebook, it contains useful information that (much of it) still applies in CK3, almost 1:1 in a few instances. While obviously not everything applies, clearly written for CK2 a while back, I think you should read this guide over.
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=510171661

Originally posted by Satanic Doge (OP of above linked guide):

Gavelkind succession means that when a ruler dies, his or her titles are divided as equally as possible among their heirs. Gavelkind is the default succession law for most cultures and religions in the game. If you’re tribal, Gavelkind succession is the only succession law that you can have (unless you’re Mongolian, which has ultimogeniture, or Irish, which has Tanistry).

“But wait, what do you mean “primary title?” Good question. It can mean one of two things:

• The highest title you hold - if you have only one Count/Duke/King/Emperor title, this is your primary title
  
• If you hold more than one King/Duke/Count title, you can designate which one is your Primary title on the title screen. Click “Make Primary Title” for the highest level title that you want to be your primary. For example, if you’re the Duke of Leinster and the Duke of Meath, you’ll have to choose which one you want to make your primary title and the one that your primary heir will get.

If I was allowed to just straight up plagiarize his work I would.

You ever play rimworld? You as the person behind the keyboard are co-authoring basically a soap opera. It's the same concept. Let the tragic demise of your empire and your entire family line be fun and memorable! I always suggest playing ironman where possible to have the most authentic experience (at least once you know the game, but do it as early as possible!) even if you are a mod person (which I really am not for paradox titles) you will find the experience much more rewarding!

If you've seen some of the other images on this guide, you'd assume even my main save doesn't ever have issues. I played earlier today (8/28/2021) and basically rage quit as I was starting to lose. Three major wars declared on me despite my side being seemingly stronger, when my forces get split three, four, or five ways there's just not much you can do. I will be accepting some losses when I play next.

Multiplayer seems unfair and cheesy because it is. Before going into the game you should discuss rules before you go into the game. I would of course suggest preventing all player family murders and be very clear if you will be warring the people you play with or not. People tend to default to murder hobos in this game, so if that is the end game (to conquer each other) then make sure you agree to not have multiple players gang up on one person, it simply becomes far too difficult to keep up. One person in pvp is hard enough, two feels unfair. Generally what I do is I tell the person "out of character" that I'll probably war them in the next 5-10 years simply to give him a vibe of the ingame relations.

If you expect your vassals to serve you, make sure it's clear before going into the game. I've played with people whom i've defeated and then they refused for the rest of the match until the awkward tension was too much. He sat there and refused to help me in anything despite multiple generations going through, and me giving him titles and helping win his wars. This game can end friendships, especially if the person you are playing against isnt the best at the game.

I'll edit this at some point with suggested ingame rulings and ideas that I have in regards to this in the future.

~Edit~
2024 no longer allows this save to function! Q_Q I'd have to figure out which version the game was running back then and downgrade to it. Maybe I'll just have to try and make another save like this but it wasn't easy to make!
~

This is my ongoing save that I've played for quite some time now off and on. It is ironman and achievement enabled. I absolutely have made mistakes on this save that I thought I'd never recover from, but here I am. I didn't really plan on recording this journey so you guys will be late to the story I suppose. If people are interested in this maybe I'll do more of these.

I hope by explaining my thought process and by showing functional examples of mid-late game content maybe people will be able to pick up some of my techniques or figure out your own ideas and concepts by looking at that I've done. This save is nearing it's end, and if I feel like it i'll continue this concept after that save is complete (using this section or another separate one at the bottom maybe)

Below, you can see my current ruler along with his dynasty. The biggest mistake people make when approaching this game is thinking it's HOI or EU4 but it's not. It's a family sim. You're playing the Sims 4 but it's dukes and duchesses. You need to make sure your family line is strong, even if it means giving up your entire empire. I would sooner grant empire titles away than let them be lost in a revolt.


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From my rule in Jerusalem, I now shift my eyes to the farthest edges of the world. I started this game in Navara and have held my capital in Rome, Constantinople and now Jerusalem. Next, I will be attacking the Mansurid Empire, but they could be called an equal to me, despite the supposed edge my empire would have.
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I wait to war them as I know when I do despite my current advantage, it'd take a very long time to bring all my troops to my rival's land, or I risk a ton of attrition. The only solution to this that I find practical is to raise all units as close as possible then manually assign them one by one to go to different places, then micromanage their assault and move them along your war path systematically keeping troops near by to support other armies if they are ambushed.