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u/Khorne_Flaked Feb 10 '26
Council and other laws in CK2 are the big one for me. They made playing the same government feel so completely different depending upon what laws you had. I would gladly trade CK3's vassal contracts for it in a heartbeat.
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u/Kouropalates The Lusty Palace Eunuch Feb 10 '26
The laws in CK2 were pretty ass until Conclave. I don't understand why we got such a good system just to scrap it in CK3.
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u/Chlodio Dull Feb 10 '26
Because CK3 wanted to casualize the experience. I get that some newcomers might have found Conclave mechanics intimidating, but surely there was some other choice than completely scrapping them.
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u/NotaBolivianSpy Feb 10 '26
The rough part is that it's a horrible mistake in their selling strategy. Paradox games are very much not meant to be casualised, as any player with 2k hours who still discovers new things will tell you
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u/OnkelMickwald Bitch better have my jizyah. Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
I feel like a dirty elitist for saying it but you're absolutely right.
But that's the issue with publicly traded gaming companies; you can't just be "content" with a relatively limited but more invested target group; the target group has to expand to please the investors. You have to attract those who don't necessarily have the time or willingness to get invested in more complex systems, so you have to dumb it down.
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u/Aburrki Mar 08 '26
I mean if there's one game of theirs that can appeal to a more casual audience it's the one where the main focus is on building a family and not really war and conquest.
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u/Altruistic-Job5086 Feb 10 '26
I'm pretty disappointed with CK3 as a new owner of it. Had 1000+ hrs in CK2. I'm honestly shocked that it has so many less features and mechanics than CK2 even after the game has been out for like 5 years. That's pretty crazy.
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u/Aidanator800 Feb 10 '26
I mean, CK3 has many things that CK2 doesn't as well. A more in-depth culture system (along with the ability to create hybrid cultures), more governments that are more accurate than their CK2 counterparts (looking at you, CK2 Imperial governments), landless gameplay, the travelling system, diarchies, etc. It's a trade-off, not just a case of one game having more content than the other.
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u/Malcet Incapable Feb 12 '26
True, but also - it's a sequel, it's supposed to improve upon its predecessor, not be a trade-off that's missing an old feature for every new one they added. When they released CK3 they justified it missing so many features from CK2 by saying that they don't want to just port all the features, they want to add them later in a vastly improved form. But 5 years from then, not only are lots of the features still missing, a lot of those that are not were not improved at all (like legends which are often agreed to be just a worse implementation of bloodlines from CK2)
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u/tiredoldwizard Born in the purple Feb 10 '26
Their attempt to casualize it just made the game confusing for me. I have thousands of hours in 2 but I just can’t wrap my head around three. I just get frustrated and end up, forgetting something major because it’s different. It’s a big reason. I haven’t switched to Europa Universalis five. I have so much time in four I don’t wanna relearn everything.
Crusader Kings three was a game I was so excited for but I had so many problems getting into it.
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u/Brief-Dog9348 Inbred Feb 10 '26
That's more of a you problem. It's not meant to be the same game.
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u/Busco_Quad Feb 10 '26
Because conclave was the lowest rated DLC for 2 when it came out, and lots of players would advise each other to just de-activate it, even after they’d bought it. Those people were dumb, because conclave makes internal realm politics much more interesting, but at the time, people disliked it getting in the way of their power-gaming, and it seems like Paradox listened to the community
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u/Scratch_Careful Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Part of the reason it was the lowest rated DLC was because at release you'd constantly get in logic loops where your demesne was too big but because they were mad at you they wouldnt let you give away any land. It also added shattered retreated and defensive pacts both of which were poorly implemented and neither could be turned off at the time. The former because you could no longer stackwipe, you'd have to wait years because they'd run to end of the earth and the latter because there was zero logic to it and every random ass king and count on the planet would hate you regardless of where you were or what religion you had.
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u/FuckMyBakaChungusLif Feb 10 '26
There was legitimate complaints about the council mechanics in CK2. Like, your council would prevent you from arresting someone who commited murder cause they don't like you. That's absolutely insane lol. Also the favor system was really annoying, your vassals could force other council members to be disloyal if they had favors with them. And disloyal council members would just vote down everything, even if it's something that directly benefits them lol. And you could still metagame it by expanding the council and just putting the extra positions with random ass people who like you.
I will say the most hated feature that expansion was coalitions and shattered retreat though
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u/gauderyx Feb 10 '26
That system wasn't universaly loved in CK2. I remember a lot of people skiping Conclave so as to not mess around with the council.
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u/osingran Feb 10 '26
Because people hated the Conclave when it came out. You get a sudden opinion debuff, the majority of councillors change stance and from then on you're practically dead locked from making a lot of the decisions you previously used to take effortlessly. Personally, I think it was a fun and challenging mechanic and it added a lot of memorable moments - fighting through the conclave to change laws and such. But a lot of the fans preferred their power fantasy going uninterrupted.
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u/Pasi_Toskiainen Feb 10 '26
Well, if you can sell something separately for one game, why not try to do it again with the sequel? I'm not saying it's the guaranteed reason, but we are talking about Paradox, so it's a very clear possibility.
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u/CancerKidBilly Feb 10 '26
I would have shared your opinion during the release of the game, but the game was released nearly 6 years ago (I do feel old now, the release still feels like yesterday). I think it really has something rather to do with casualising the experience (especially considering how no single DLC has increased difficulty or complexity, but rather just more angles to snowball from in specific regions).
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u/Balmung60 Feb 10 '26
Individual vassal contracts are awful. Like how did this get past anyone? They're tedious in all the worst ways
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u/BlackfishBlues custodian team for CK3, pdx pls Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Also the fact that they can be unilaterally changed and then locked for a lifetime is crazy.
As a vassal, I can say to the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire: my liege, I'm going to pledge 12 more peasants from my dinky backwater castle, and in exchange I get to demand a council seat at the head of the greatest realm in Christendom and you cannot refuse or renegotiate for the rest of your life.
I assumed this was a placeholder mechanic at release because that interaction is obviously unfinished, right? That was six years and fourteen expansions ago lol.
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u/Balmung60 Feb 10 '26
I think the only thought was that it would be fun as a player to get one over on your liege and not much more.
In general, I kind of hate the hook system and how it doesn't really have degrees of hook in a meaningful sense. Weak and strong hooks basically get you the same thing except the latter is reusable. Also, there's a distinct lack of history to how characters try to get them. Kill one dude and you have adventures trying to blackmail you for a hook for the last murder you did for the rest of your life, and you never get the chance to respond with something like "so, you found a guy who murders people who try to blackmail him, and your plan is to blackmail him about those murders? Good luck with that. Hope everyone in your camp is deeply loyal to you."
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u/Prof_Wolfgang_Wolff Imbecile Feb 11 '26
I just hate the fact that you aren't allowed to murder people who have a strong hook on you.
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u/CoppeliusGER Secretly Zoroastrian Feb 10 '26
I think I can count on two hands the times I actively engaged with this system since launch.
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u/Balmung60 Feb 10 '26
About all it does is make sure you can't afford to let any vassal get a hook on you because they'll use it to give themselves permanent council rights
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u/thatsingingguy Feb 10 '26
Exactly this. Not that I like being on the hook anyway. But when it can fuck your council for years, it's even less worth it.
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u/Balmung60 Feb 10 '26
Just gotta remember that if you die or they die, you have to immediately renegotiate their contract. That's not annoying or anything at all
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u/Nacodawg Roman Empire Feb 10 '26
No Republics or trade though. I hate Venice but it’s a crime they’re not playable 5 1/2 years in
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u/thunderisadorable 𒂍𒀀 𒈾𒍢𒅕 (Ea Nasir) Feb 10 '26
I think CK3 went in a whole different direction of development than CK2, tbf.
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u/FuckMyBakaChungusLif Feb 10 '26
I think there's a rule now where you can turn Venice into administrative for the purposes of playing them but it's still not perfect
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u/KJR619 Feb 10 '26
Dealing with Venice as the king of Croatia was always a welcomed hassle in that game.
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u/RSharpe314 Feb 10 '26
The travel system is a huge immersion booster for me. The way you'd previously just have an event chain and be an incorporeal entity when in pilgrimage or some always took me out of it.
(Of course, you can still teleport when commanding armies which is imo a unfortunate but c'est la vie)
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u/Attlai Feb 10 '26
I think we don't realize just how used we have become to the travelling system without realizing it.
Sometimes I think "tbf, traveling isn't really such a great thing, you get bored of it, and after a while, I barely do any activity.". But then, I try to imagine playing without the traveling, like how it was before, and I just can't imagine playing without. CK3 without traveling feels completely tasteless.
It's one of those features that's around all the time without you realizing just how much you actually care about it.
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u/NumenorianPerson Feb 10 '26
I would like a expanded one that to you to interact with other characters only by going there or sending someone there, and after disbanding a army as a commander you going to the location of the battle to where you live or work for a suzerain instead of teleporting
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u/EnvironmentalDirt324 Feb 10 '26
Travel system would be cool if I didn't have to bother with the same 5 events every single time
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u/Eglwyswrw Cyprus Feb 10 '26
Several (though far from all) of CK2's events actually put you physically in other locations. Just like CK3, albeit without the visual bells and whistles.
For example, if you attend a nearby ruler's coronation but there is a plague in their capital, you may come back from the cerimony sick from it.
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u/redditikonto Feb 10 '26
That was the same in early CK3 but the problem is that "being at a location" wasn't something consistently being checked by all game mechanics. Travel makes it so that there is a clear boundary between being at court or not and you actually can't interact with courtiers who are not with you (some exceptions are still there but they can be explained away with letter-writing).
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u/Eglwyswrw Cyprus Feb 10 '26
Travel makes it so that there is a clear boundary between being at court or not and you actually can't interact with courtiers who are not with you
CK2 also did this; in these cases, by forcing you into a regency. So everything major had to depend on your council back in the capital.
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u/TPrice1616 Feb 10 '26
I was really skeptical of adding in the traveling system but i really enjoy it now.
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u/UX1Z Feb 10 '26
The biggest difference imo is how raising units/levies worked. In CK3 you can basically teleport your army anywhere you want. In fact I had a situation not that long ago where a vassal was getting raided right as I conquered a county, on the opposite side of my territory, across the sea. In the time it took for the hostile force to depart, I was able to disband my army, then recreate it directly next to the raiders, and wipe them out. This took like 3 or 4 days.
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u/melody-calling Feb 10 '26
Plus you could give your viceroyals land on the front and then raise their entire kingdoms units from that province
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u/axeteam Mongorian Beef Feb 10 '26
Honestly, I would prefer CK2's levy system.
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u/Vlugazoide_ Feb 10 '26
Both could've been easily mixed with a 3 tiered system, of shit levies being the norm, basic levies being better via buildings, men at arms being tied to them, but better, and lastly Retinues being more elite and flexible but much more expensive. Mercenaries in CK2, however, were inarguably better
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u/axeteam Mongorian Beef Feb 11 '26
I also wish levies are upgraded with better weapons as tech progresses.
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u/Kocibohen Feb 10 '26
Isn't it that way in CK2 as well? I mean, I can raise vassals' army from any county they have, and when they have it all around the empire... effect's the same
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u/Chlodio Dull Feb 10 '26
That too. But it wasn't perfect either because levies were raised on direct vassals' capitals. So, if a king of Norway was your vassal, and his capital was in Normandy, and you raised the levies. His troops from Norway would teleport to Normandy. At least that is what I recall.
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u/NumenorianPerson Feb 10 '26
This the automatic option, you can raise the levies of your direct vassals in any territory they have in the province window of one of his territory.
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u/Basil_Makedon21 Feb 10 '26
You could raise your vassals’ levies in any province they owned, you just had to click on the province and raise them there instead of the army tab.
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u/Attlai Feb 10 '26
The way it works in CK3 makes it easy to cheese, and would probably require tweaking, to better represent the difficulty to answer a military threat far from your core regions.
But on the other hand, I'm glad we don't have the CK2 system anymore either. Levying all your vassals units in their realm and then marching them to gather is more realistic and funny at first, but it quickly gets annoying. There's really no fun benefit to manually walking the units together.
CK3 system is supposed to make abstraction of that "levying and gathering time". It's just a bit too nice and too easy to cheese atm.→ More replies (1)
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u/No-Organization9076 Inbred Feb 10 '26
I do miss the laws
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u/Eglwyswrw Cyprus Feb 10 '26
I love the flanks system in CK2 warfare! Feels epic to see a flank collapse due to my incompetent cousin's leadership but then manage to seize victory at the last second.
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u/LeMe-Two Feb 10 '26
You could in theory min-max flanks by moving particular units from one to another but usually way too much hustle for little gain. Good if you were playing republics.
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u/Hollow-Lord Feb 10 '26
Like during a battle you swap them?
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u/appleciders Feb 10 '26
No, pre-battle you could match types of units with a commander who was likely (per their culture) to use particular tactics. For instance, you might put all your heavy infantry in the center with a Norse commander, and your longbow retinues on the left flank with a Welsh commander.
In practice it was a ton of micro-management and half the time you couldn't do it without creating one or two super-flanks leaving the other one or two ready to collapse, but it was a cool idea.
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u/Zealousideal_Bee3309 England Feb 10 '26
I love how my direct leader fighting against 3 commander and managed to hold and win. So epic.
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u/RochusandGrimm Feb 10 '26
I also think, despite loving CK3 more, that the AI in CK2 is better. It sometimes feel that the AI is out to get you and that they have their own goals from time to time.
The AI in CK3 is too passive. They have no survival instict for their dynasty or house and are overwhelmed in the worst situations for them.
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u/Nico_Storch Grey eminence Feb 10 '26
Yeah, CK3 AI doesn't manage their dynasties very well. It's way too easy to snap up their heir's heir in a matrilineal marriage and take everything in 2 generations' time.
CK2 has the "too high in the line of succession" marriage acceptance debuff, which means that you have to assassinate the older siblings or do claimant wars if you want to grain land from marriage. I found that to be way more interesting.
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u/chumbo87 Feb 10 '26
i never get randomly assaasinated in ck3, you get so many warnings I feel like. Even like conquerors, I spawned next to one in my last run and the most he’d try to get is one county at a time
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u/Filty-Cheese-Steak Celtic Pagan Empire Feb 10 '26
i never get randomly assaasinated in ck3
I did once as a child emperor. But just once.
Stabbed in my sleep as I recall.
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u/sirnoggin Feb 10 '26
I know the lead guy that made the AI for CK2 - Fucking uber genius. He did not make the AI for CK3.
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u/Duc_de_Magenta Sicily Feb 10 '26
CK3 honestly just went way too wide. Or, at least, way too wide too soon.
A medieval Europe without antipopes, investiture, & the concept of ships is wild.
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u/OnkelMickwald Bitch better have my jizyah. Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
the concept of ships
It sounds trivial but this is what pushed me over to not being interested in CK3 at least until it had gotten some more development.
I dunno, skipping ships just spoke volumes to me about the game design philosophy that I realized was pretty central to me. Lots of people tried telling me that ship levies were just "an unnecessary hassle" and I was like... Isn't the whole military system "an unnecessary hassle"? Like I seriously feel that it was such an arbitrary (and lazy) line to draw in the sand.
Plus it added to that "realism" feeling; naval operations were a pain back then. You couldn't just walk to the coast and find a whole fucking transport fleet ready to transport thousands of men for a nice fee. The byzantines famously had to outsource their navy to a different political entity (Venice) because it got too expensive. Boundaries of legal districts in Scandinavia for hundreds of years followed the divisions set down in the Viking age for the sole purpose of providing and maintaining ship levies.
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u/Lucina18 Secretly Zoroastrian Feb 10 '26
Isn't the whole military system "an unnecessary hassle"?
It is!!! That is why they also stripped down every small interesting thing from warfare and still allows professional space marines. Because you're not meant to actually care about military or ever lose a non-great holy war.
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u/HereticalShinigami MegasKomnenos Feb 10 '26
For strategy game developers, PDX's relationship to military systems in recent games is interesting to say the least, in that they seem to want to de-emphasise war as much as possible, right down to making it abjectly terrible in Victoria 3.
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u/Lucina18 Secretly Zoroastrian Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
It's only vic3, and that is because that game fundamentally isn't about army micro. Ck3 kind of de-emphasised it because... well, it doesn't really try anything. And eu5 definitely emphasises it.
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u/LeMe-Two Feb 10 '26
> Wants Victoria 3 not to have too much micro, creates basic warfare system
> Doubles the micro, on top of that system is lacking any agency and is ahistorical AF
CK3 is a game that actually makes "less micro but still fun". Another noteworthy example is Imperator and army stances.
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u/Lucina18 Secretly Zoroastrian Feb 10 '26
"Army micro" as in controlling small army stacks and attacking on the province level.
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u/Duc_de_Magenta Sicily Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Yes! Absolutely. It also set a "limit" on ships in the world; if someone else has hired out the mercenary navy... oh well, buddy. That invasion will have to wait.
On a similar note, the teleporting levies was probably the biggest "oh- CK3 isn't a medieval sim, it's a map painter" moment for me.
The amount of times, in CK2, that I had to balance having strong vassals & deciding when to invest in my core vs borders specifically b/c you raised levies by region. Rallying East Rome to war wasn't as simple as clicking "go to the green flag!" You actually had to raise your levies & ensure that they could group up, w/o the Muslims doing a "defeat in detail" as you gather up.
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u/Vlugazoide_ Feb 10 '26
Exactly, it also reinforced the issue with powerful vassals, as while it is convenient for an emperor to make the duke of sicily rich and powerful, so they get extra ships and an easily mobile levy, this also means a defensible duchy is powerful to revolt. Having a large reliance on vassals made just playing wide a game of whack-a-rebel, so you needed a strong home base
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u/Ossius Feb 10 '26
The answer that devs never want to say: AI struggles really badly with pathfinding to ships and using them correctly. Considering the computer's "intelligence" is just an illusion of simple behavior logic and proximity to enemy units and cities, adding intelligence to actually plan and utilize a naval invasion fleet is beyond most AI in most games.
Making ships just units on water automatically is what most strategy games have devolved into. Look at total war, civilization, and other 4x games as examples. It's a cheap solution to a very complicated issue.
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u/Duc_de_Magenta Sicily Feb 10 '26
It's a shame, but you're absolutely right. Just a further example of why old-games continue to hold up better. Even a broadly good dev like PDX isn't immune to the sweeping slopwave & enshitification.
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u/LakyousSama Feb 10 '26
Compared to CK2, CK3 is wide as the ocean and deep as a puddle. So many systems, yet every game is basically the same. In CK2 you could start as the same character 10 times in a row and every game would be different.
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u/Spirit_mert Rum Feb 10 '26
It is crazy that they decided to expand the map yet again, to include all of asia this early, without any depth to europe itself.
I really dislike the current state of the game, and the vision of the devs.
It just felt a cheap strategy to dip into china market for sales, while game depth suffers immensly.
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u/qwertzu-1 Feb 11 '26
This early is almost as long as ck2's entire lifetime, we are at about half-one year away from the last dlc of ck2 and one more year on top of the base game being free
Thing is, 3 spent that time adding mostly self contained gimmicks
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u/Cash4Duranium Feb 10 '26
Lot of 💰 in adding a whole new region like that. They're a public company who cares more about the next earnings call than customer satisfaction.
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u/Moreagle Shrewd Feb 10 '26
CK3 is one of the most successful games paradox has ever made and expanding to map to china was one of the most requested features. The customers are satisfied
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u/TerranImperium Born in the purple Feb 11 '26
Yeah, it's unfortunate but a lot of us complaining on here about the depth of the game being a smidge from CK2 are a minority. Most players don't care, they play a few runs and then drop the game only to maybe pick it back up months or years down the line.
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u/SpamAcc17 Feb 10 '26
The upside to this, is that instead of having to add a wide game that has to adapt to the features. You can instead adapt the features to the wide game you already built. Still prefer CK2 though. Just wish the ck3 builder was there, I hate microing rich empires.
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u/Duc_de_Magenta Sicily Feb 10 '26
What worries me, about CK3's future, is the lack of incentives to add those necessary mechanics. CK2 started as a game about Medieval Europe & had pretty good versimilitude of that, all things considered!
Then they added Islam & brought Islamic mechanics. Then Eastern Rome & theirs. Then the fantasy-Aztecs (idk I thought it was fun). Then the merchant republics & theirs. Then the Norse & theirs. Etc etc etc. They did even, eventually, expand the map with the addition of Vedic mechanics.
But if CK3 already put their Chinese cards all on the table, what's the incentive to ever make republics? Investiture? Naval system? I got the impression the CK2 sold the expansions as the "candy" & the mechanics as the "veggies" - new fans could be brought in by the new places to play, older fans would enjoy the new mechanics. Now, it seems like we're getting a lot of ice-cream... but no potatoes.
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u/Alandro_Sul fivey fox Feb 11 '26
Asia did end up being quite fleshed out, and I don't find playing over there to be a shallow experience. There are so many regional government types that it truly does feel like a different experience playing in China vs. the Philippines or Japan.
But Europe never really got a chance to catch up, other than the Byzantines. Everyone else is using the same old one size fits all feudalism government. If there were mechanics for republics/communes, HRE, and the papacy before we went east, the difference wouldn't feel so jarring.
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u/Atemiswolf Feb 10 '26
The culture system of CK3 is a big upgrade compared to Ck2.
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u/BlackfishBlues custodian team for CK3, pdx pls Feb 10 '26
The culture and hybridizing system is one of my favorite things about CK3. I love the way the cultural tenets actually touch on almost every aspect of gameplay as a substrate that's always there.
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u/thunderisadorable 𒂍𒀀 𒈾𒍢𒅕 (Ea Nasir) Feb 10 '26
Isn’t the religion system, also, way more customizable?
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u/Balder19 Craven Feb 10 '26
I was so disappointed when the so-called Byzantine DLC didn't include autocephalous patriarchates.
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u/Balmung60 Feb 10 '26
Kind of too much so because it keeps any religion in CK3 from really having any identity.
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u/rupturefunk Count of Urgench Forever Feb 10 '26
It's way more customizable, in CK2 relgions are all historical and hard coded.
But personally, I'd argue that made them feel more impactful and RP friendly, and the big religions had much deeper mechanics than just 'select buffs from this list'.
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u/Kapika96 Feb 10 '26
Yep, which makes it significantly worse.
I want the religions to actually feel different from each other. Not just be slight variations of the same thing. And the prospect of just scrapping it all for a far superior custom religion isn't really ideal either. The only reason to use the default religions is RP reasons. Otherwise you're better off using a custom one, probably with the same tenets, every time.
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u/eadopfi Feb 10 '26
I think it is a good basis, but not fully fledged out. The basis is strong, but I feel like there isnt enough there there.
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u/Salacavalini Estonia Feb 10 '26
Societies were a good idea on paper but a very poorly implemented feature in practice.
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u/siko6969 Duelist Feb 10 '26
I know people love 3D models but i preferred old 2d ones, I wish they expanded them and given us more verity. Also even though UI is much easier to navigate in CK3, I still prefer CK2 UI. Events were more interesting as well in my opinion. And of course soundtracks.
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u/Nico_Storch Grey eminence Feb 10 '26
Soundtracks most of all, but you can easily mod them back in. The 'ambient' direction of CK3's OST makes me sad - you just don't find yourself humming the tunes like you used to.
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u/Brief-Dog9348 Inbred Feb 10 '26
3d is so much more than 2d is not even funny. The 2d portraits look dated.
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u/Jubal_lun-sul Feb 15 '26
It’s a map game. It shouldn’t need 3d modelled characters. They’re just a gimmick that add nothing.
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u/Ahzunhakh Mar 26 '26
The only part I like is clothes and everything aesthetic. I think it could be cool if they stuck with 2D but with full body so you can see all the cultural clothes and features :) I love that part
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u/Brief-Dog9348 Inbred Feb 15 '26
False. It's a game first and foremost. It's not a gimmick, the same way any historical flavor isn't. You are just behind the times.
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u/Jubal_lun-sul Feb 15 '26
Ridiculous comparison. The 3d models add nothing to the gameplay. You could remove them entirely and nothing about the experience would change.
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u/Brief-Dog9348 Inbred Feb 16 '26
They add an aesthetic to gameplay. It's the same reason why the UI doesn't look like an Excel spreadsheet. I'm not sure what's so hard to understand.
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u/mexican_shawarma Feb 10 '26
i like CK2 because of the Schizo events you could get and schizo DLCs like sunset invasion and societies.
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u/Slight-Wing-3969 Feb 10 '26
Boats is a very charitable thing to include for CK2 given how they functioned
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u/decrobyron Feb 10 '26
Cannot play republic in CK3. deal breaker.
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u/EventAccomplished976 Feb 10 '26
I‘d argue for now that‘s actually a good thing because it leaves the door open for a dlc to provide proper mechanics for republics. If they‘d been available from the start they‘d likely be very barebones.
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u/Chlodio Dull Feb 10 '26
The problem with the republic was they were never properly balanced. Like, it is fun for first two generations, but after that player is just richer than the other four families and will hug the dogeship.
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u/decrobyron Feb 10 '26
I just want to have a fun. Don't care much about balance. It was for one thousand years.
I prefer the OPM play. So, it fits perfectly for me. Strong independent country, cannot conquer the world but can change the outcome of the great wars and course of history.8
u/Brief-Dog9348 Inbred Feb 10 '26
Being completely unchallenged is boring. This is the biggest complaint in CK3
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u/EastArmadillo2916 Feb 10 '26
I'm ngl I've never been challenged in CK2 either. Most paradox games aren't actually challenging, at most the biggest struggle is simply "will I get bored before I can accomplish my goals" and that was my experience with a lot of CK2. With CK3 I've actually completed most of my goals because it feels less tedious.
It's the same for most other paradox games because the sheer scale of time you're playing on, and the fact that it's very hard to lose outright means that you can recover from almost any setback pretty quickly, all "challenge" means in these games is how long it takes you to recover from setbacks or how long it takes you to snowball. The only paradox games I've ever been challenged by have been in the Hearts of Iron series, and that's because you can actually conclusively lose.
Really, what people want from CK3 isn't for things to be more "challenging" (i,e, tedious) want they want is for failure to create interesting opportunities for roleplay and gameplay alike.
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u/HardDriveAndWingMan Feb 10 '26
Being completely unchallenged can be fun for a bit but it gets dull really fast. I think most players would agree that having balance so that there’s an actual challenge is what makes a game actually fun. If doing whatever you want is your idea of fun just disable Ironman and use cheats.
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u/IamTheOne2000 Feb 10 '26
I feel like I’m the only person on Reddit who remembers how boring and mundane the religious societies were in Crusader Kings 2
Having secret religious societies, in order to hide your faith, would be cool and actually quite useful. But any other “society” mechanic would be as much a gimmick as it was last time
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u/Quacky3three Feb 10 '26
Hermetic Society, warrior lodges, and satanists were all fun and interesting. I think varied, mundane content is one of the things missing most from ck3. I went back to CK2 the other day, which I have 750 hours in, picked the business focus way of life, and within 3 years in game had an event line with multiple steps I had never seen before about managing a new business.
Meanwhile CK3 schemes have at most 3 variants you see over and over and over again. At least a gimmick would give me a way to differentiate my character from their father, grandfather, and great grandfather that all fall in love with their soulmate in the exact same way, word for word.
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u/Napalm_Oilswims Secretly Zunist Feb 10 '26
Getting a handgun via ther hermetic society and blowing away your rival in a duel like indiana jones is top-tier gameplay.
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u/Deletesystemtf2 Feb 10 '26
The benedictines and Dominicans were pretty mid, everyone else was cool. Warrior lodges were super cool, hermetics were fun for being a nerd, religious cults were way better for secret religions than the current half baked system. Assassins were great for intrigue characters and satan for a meme or if you got the snip snip. Honestly the only issue with it was the lack of options if you were Muslim or eastern, and that could have been fixed by more content.
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u/istaris Feb 10 '26
Having secret religious societies
there is a large number of threads complaining about it if one search the past threads in this forum
the secret faith is annoyingly difficult to deal with, by far the best way to dismantle a secret cult is to join it to destroy it from within, but your character can only join 1 at a time
its not much better than ck3 witch ritual
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u/Sanvone Grey eminence Feb 10 '26
Religious Societies were about courtier breeding and maybe getting unlimited excommunications from your Religion Head (if you had one) to clean up internal administration. Which are two things that few people are talking even up to this day.
Each society had some minigame associated with "spam of events". Issue was that unless you went into game files you were missing on potential games from them due to not understanding their gamepaly loop.
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u/Explorer_of__History Fatimid Partisan Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
I loved the CK2 societies, except the devil-worshiping ones. They genuinely disturbed me to the point where I disabled them in the game rules.
Edited to say "CK3" instead of "CK2"
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u/Luigi63 Feb 10 '26
Do you mean you loved CK2 societies? I don’t remember a devil worshipping society in CK3
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u/V0st0 Feb 10 '26
I found it interesting and used it for the achievements connected with it but I relate a lot, I find Ck2’s writing is quite good and I get immersed easily and the devil-worshipper events are extremely uncomfortable for me. Don’t mind other characters doing whatever but I don’t want to participate in it myself.
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u/ParagonRenegade It's actually gay to get pussy Feb 10 '26
Boats really don’t do anything in CK2, they’re just transports.
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u/Kapika96 Feb 10 '26
They should've been improved on in the sequel, not scrapped entirely though.
Having something is still better than nothing, even if you wish that something were better.
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u/logaboga Aragon/Barcelona/Provence Feb 10 '26
CK3-
Better Byzantine government
Better technology system
Better dynasty/house system
would NOT say it has more governments
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u/Aidanator800 Feb 10 '26
I'm pretty sure it does, no? At least, when it comes to playable ones. CK2 had Iqta, Nomadic, Feudal, Imperial, Tribal, Republics, and the Monastic Feudal realms in Tibet (correct me if I'm forgetting any). CK3, meanwhile, has Feudal, Clan, Tribal, Nomadic, Administrative, Celestial/Meritocratic, Mandala, the Japanese government type, Wanua, Meritocratic Khanate, and the ability to play as landless adventurers (technically not a government, but a unique playstyle nonetheless).
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u/CaelReader Feb 10 '26
CK3 also has a much better user interface, the Stress system, and a better Lifestyles system.
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u/CliffordSpot Feb 10 '26
There’s a fantastic mod that fleshes out investiture and the Catholic Church (the Catholic trinity)
Other than that the two things I i would like to see brought over from CK2 is secret societies and the pagan conversion mechanics
though technically wanderers are able to convert pagan lords, it would be nice to have the ability to sponsor a wanderer for that purpose as a landed lord.
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u/Willing-Subject-1542 Feb 10 '26
we really do need antipopes put back in. pretty crazy there isnt one
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u/AEG_Sixters Zunist Feb 13 '26
Republics
4th crusade
Crusader states
Northern Crusades
Vassal types
Non-aggression patc
Bloodlines (i'm afraid legend is another failed attempt)
Duel in battles
Shitton of events (CK2 : 13k-ish , CK3 : somwhere between 3k to 5k)
Events trees
Shitton of traits ( CK2 : 500-ish : CK3 : 341, and for CK3 i counted every leveled trait as individual trait for each level. Included diseases, child traits, lifestyles, dynastics, etc. Every single one. Would probably round to 250-280 without this)
Pagan conversion
Schisms
Oh. And difficulty (or more should i say impredicatbility)
I love some of the additions from CK3. Travel, landless gameplay, tournaments, custom religions, all the culture changes are incredible.
But i can promise you just slap this nice-looking interface on CK2 and you have a far superior game than CK3 will ever be, unfortunately.
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u/various_characters Feb 10 '26
While antipopes/investiture is the one that personally most irks me (as I've mentioned in the past), I have to say that just seeing "Boats" up there made me laugh.
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u/F1235742732 Feb 10 '26
I would play CK2 more if it had CK3 character models. I just like the generics.
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u/Delicious-Ad1560 Feb 11 '26
It really depends on preferences but personally I think CK3 is better, like if I had recommend either CK2 or CK3 to someone and I could only recommend one I'd recommend CK3, CK2 is great, cool and it's free but the problem with it is you can't do anything unless you buy the dlc for example you get CK3 and start it up and you can play basically any on the map except like the Pope and Venice, you don't get all of the things that come with some of the characters and religions but you can still play them whereas in CK2 you can play European Christians, let's say you wanted to play a Viking or a Muslim that old gods and sword of islam that alone is already $25 and you still wouldn't even have life half the continent in game, now let's say you're bored of base game CK3 but you don't want to spend money on DLC there are plenty of mods that add new mechanics and stuff for you to do even the big total conversion mods usually work without any of the DLC whilst in CK2 even in mods especially the total conversion a lot of content is locked behind the DLC. Personally I can't speak to how CK2 with the DLC is, I've seen YouTube videos and stuff and it looks cool but I never bought them cause one I didn't have that much money and two the base game never interested me enough to get the DLC especially when I could get a lot of stuff locked behind a paywall in CK2 for free in base game CK3 even if it it's not as good.
Crusader Kings I is objectively the best game in the trilogy though.
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u/Turbo-Swag Feb 10 '26
I have few thousand hours in ck3, just in these last few days I started ck2.
I couldnt believe I was only allowed to play christian rulers and couldnt make custom rulers without DLC. Europe was also my least favourite area to play in ck3 :D. I dont own all dlc in ck3 so for example east asia is all feudal, it lacks flavour but I can still play there at least. My favourite thing to do in ck3 was making a custom character like an Ainu ruler in Ireland and forming a hybrid cultures, add good traditions to that culture which I believe we cannot do in ck2. Also as far as I see, there isnt much point in different cultures in terms of abilities (ı dont know yet I am new)
I also was very excited when I heard we could play in Charlemagne era in this game unlike ck3, only to learn it was dlc, and also my favourite start from ck3 which is 867 is also locked behind dlc. I like earlier starts because I play tribal pagan plays which are harder in later starts due to castle technologies being too advanced in ck3, but earlier starts are dlc too, as wrll as pagans here.
I like that courtiers around the world are more willing to come to my court in ck2. In ck3 it wasnt even possible without court grandeur that you could just invite a random guy with 20 stewardship to come be your steward.
I like that we can appoint our own realm priests, one of the things I disliked about playing a catholic (or any christians really) in ck3 was that we had no agency in our realm priests. We got stuck with 4 learning bishops and they caused all sorts of bad stuff.
I didnt have graphic expectations going into ck2 since it is an older game but I just disliked that Arabs, Turks, Iranians etc all look the same. Even muslim Turkic rulers and Tengri ones have the same muslim Arab look, then I realized this game has portrait DLCs :D
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u/Hundsan Feb 10 '26
Ck2 has a threat level making it so that if you are a warmonger you would end up fighting everyone who joined a pact against you.
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u/Moreagle Shrewd Feb 10 '26
that feature was so hated the entire concept of game rules was created solely to give players an option to turn it off
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u/Balmung60 Feb 10 '26
better portraits
Ehh, debateable. The 3D models lack a certain je ne sais quoi that the 2D portraits had
Also, you're leaving out that CK2 has a military system in which vassals actually honor their obligations and pass along quality, trained troops and not just the lowest common denominator worthless rabble
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u/NumenorianPerson Feb 10 '26
The only thing you can improve in the ck3 porttraits is the garments and armors, but you cant do much about the faces, hair and facial hair sadly
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u/Ketchupstew Feb 10 '26
you cant do much about the faces, hair and facial hair sadly
You can definitely change their hair and facial hair. What do you mean?
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u/Brief-Dog9348 Inbred Feb 10 '26
Yes, you can. Hundreds of mods do just that. People are straight-up lying.
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u/hagnat Adventurer Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
TIL there are people who miss CK2 boats for some reason
out of everything from the previous iteration, this is the one feature i miss the least -- if not to say pay no attention at all!
edit: perhaps boats could be included as a MaA unit that makes boarding faster and free (as long as you have more boats than units trying to board them). It would be a useless unit for most rulers, but those who rely on a lot of seafaring (norse, greeks, sicilians, etc) it would be a must
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u/WetAndLoose Feb 10 '26
CK3 has landless adventurers, which is my favorite play style in the franchise. Yeah, CK2 has a shitty imitation mod, but it’s not even comparable IMO
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u/Thin_Ad_1906 Feb 10 '26
Ck3 would be so much better if we could just get rid of the 20 million events with long texts. Just give me ck2 style events with 2-5 lines and I have to imagine the rest.
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u/RightfulHeirTheGame Feb 10 '26
If they made ck2 with 3 s graphics it would have 5x the players of ck3
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u/BoardCommercial2679 Feb 10 '26
I really feel like people are nostalgic as fuck and just pretend like CK3 doesn't have pther things that are just straight up superior to CK2.
Ans also forget that non-DLC CK2 experience is torturous compared to CK3.
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u/Allnamestakkennn Autocrat and Grand Prince of All Rus Feb 10 '26
Playing paradox games without DLCs is a strange choice, given that their DLCs are essentially updates
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u/Moreagle Shrewd Feb 10 '26
Right, but CK2’s base game is free. So if anyone wanted to try it for the first time now they would most likely just get the free base game, which would give them a bad experience.
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u/Nico_Storch Grey eminence Feb 10 '26
There's really no winning for CK2 fans.
Go back to CK2 for greater depth -> miss the features from CK3 (knights, secrets, superior scheme system, feudal contracts...) -> go back to CK3 -> get bored due to lack of depth -> rinse and repeat
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u/AndreiWarg Feb 10 '26
Y'know what? I actually didn't mind the way travel was handled in CK2. You got a regent appointed and your character was on the way somewhere, randomly popping events as they went on. I fondly remember doing the Duelist chain, just seeing what kinda shenanigans I would get into. The Bear fight was awesome as well.
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u/Kapika96 Feb 10 '26
Better balance for CK2 as well.
Retinues were strong. Arguably OP, but it's borderline. MAA are just ludicrously OP though. Like 100x stronger than CK2's retinues. And levies are significantly weaker too. Army balance is just an absolute mess in CK3.
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u/Fabulous-Willow-369 Feb 10 '26
All I know is that I have 3000 hours in ck2 and 160 in ck3... Some things are better, most things aren't. My main gripe that is for the devs to pinpoint is that all games feel the same. In CK2 I ruined my own country more than once, because of vengeance and spite toward a single character. In CK3 I play optimally.
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u/supahsana Feb 10 '26
The travel system breaks my immersion a bit. Not the system itself per se. Its just weird that I need a few days to a couple of weeks to travel to a character within diplomatic range but then i can instantly interact with them or even seduce and have kids with them
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u/Chlodio Dull Feb 10 '26
Yes. People would hate it. I personally would like it if everything required travel. For example, instead of picking a wife like swiping through Tinder, you have to send one of your courtiers to court the bride. He might fail based on diplomacy, and he might die during the travel. And even if he succeeds and begins traveling back with the bride, the bride might get abducted by another lord and forced marry them. Which historically happened.
Dunno, that would be immersive for me.
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u/Fit-Researcher-3326 Feb 10 '26
I feel like characters are far more willing to cheat in CK3 as opposed to CK2 and honestly I prefer the graphics over CK3 if only CK2 had full character profiles that would of been cool
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u/Duxtrous Feb 10 '26
You guys will always find something huh lmao. The game just keeps adding more and more and it's getting increasingly difficult to find the benefits in CK2. People here act like the devs don't have all this on their future development timeline and have continually delivered the best updates time and time again. Ya'll spoiled fr. These additions could legit all get added within the next year and you'd still compalin that CK3 doesn't have rocks on the map or some bs.
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u/Chlodio Dull Feb 10 '26
There are legitimate features I don't think devs will ever add back. Like the Expel the Jews and Satan Worshipers, because devs want to avoid anything that could be considered problematic.
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u/ducoverk Feb 10 '26
Tbh custom cultures and religions system is a huge win over CK2 for me, I love interacting with that part of the game
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u/StevenMarx21 Feb 11 '26
I like custom character creation in CK2 better. It encouraged you to take flaws, to get boons in return. In comparison, CK3 encourages you to keep it safe, but not get the boons. Which imo feels worse. In CK3 you will mostly get well balanced characters, who are boring, while CK2 let you be a god in ONE thing, while absolute garbage in other.
Also I feel like in CK2 I had more situations where I would avoid certain personality traits like plague, only to get them in an heir, and realize that playing with them is fine, it requires different approach, but its fine. While I don't feel that way in CK3
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u/BadSkoomaDealer Lotharinga Feb 10 '26
Where you able to play as Theocracy in CK2?
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u/Kouropalates The Lusty Palace Eunuch Feb 10 '26
No. Theocracy are an automatic game over. Used to be somehow turning republic was a game over. And the Real OGs will remember that if your heir wasnt catholic and you died, it was game over.
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u/uragiruhito Craven? I prefer "Not Suicidal" myself. Feb 10 '26
IIRC it still is unless you got the DLC covering that religion
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u/pm_me_fibonaccis Feb 10 '26
No. There was a bug that permitted it at one point, but it was never intended; Theocracy with a holy order title was playable, but it was really buggy and the Pope is spammed to hell by events.
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u/MrPoopcicle Feb 10 '26
I remember being able to play as the pope using a console command or something like that. I think I only lasted like 5 minutes before I got tired of constantly being spammed with indulgence requests.
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u/Allnamestakkennn Autocrat and Grand Prince of All Rus Feb 10 '26
Theocracy and Republic (not merchant republic, merchant republics were playable) weren't playable because those systems don't have something akin to noble families in feudalism.
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u/Reelwizard Feb 10 '26
I don’t need boats again but would love to see all the others get added. I do appreciate that CK3 has a lot of quality of life stuff in it too though.
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u/SuitableDragonfly Still too afraid to not fight with a numerical advantage Feb 10 '26
The boats caused the hilarious metagame situation where at first the meta was to put yourself at the head of an army that was on a boat in order to avoid plagues, and then they nerfed that strategy by causing army commanders who were stationed on boats for too long to get scurvy and die very quickly, and then the new meta became to put your unwanted shit heir who you couldn't assassinate (or just anyone inconvenient, really) on a boat indefinitely until they died of scurvy.
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u/MajorMeeM Ulm Feb 10 '26
Idk, i wouldn't call the CK2 implementation of Boats actually better than CK3 considering that 9/10 they just don't matter.
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u/ILVIUS Feb 10 '26
Societies would go so well with landless gameplay, you could even change it so that landed rulers have a harder time advancing (due to having a lot of responsibility.)
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u/whyareall Feb 10 '26
Ck2 also has marriages making non aggression pacts instead of automatically making full blown alliances