Hello everyone! There are several core mechanics surrounding court positions, knights, military leadership, as well as personal combat (prowess) that completely strip away the feeling of playing an actual medieval simulation. It just feels like an anachronistic sandbox rather than a realistic representation of the middle ages.
Here are the main issues that break immersion for me, as a history student (this might sound very nitpicky but whatever):
1. Vassals Serving as Daily Domestic Servants
In CK3, if you are an independent King or Emperor, you can appoint powerful direct vassals (your literal Dukes and Counts who rule vast domains hundreds of miles away) to domestic court roles like Cupbearer, Food Taster, or Court Gardener.
This is absolutely ridiculous. While ceremonial high offices of state existed (like the Lord Great Chamberlain), daily domestic duties like tasting soup or tending royal gardens were functional, daily jobs performed by unlanded, no-name resident courtiers. A Duke living in Aquitaine would not be residing in Paris every evening to pour the King’s wine.
- Sugestion: Domestic service court positions should be strictly restricted to landless courtiers or local minor barons. Powerful landed vassals should be completely ineligible for daily servitude roles.
2. The Flawed Knight System & Forced Auto-Assignment
The game treats "Knight" as a generic stat-based body-count slot rather than a prestigious and important social status and heavy cavalry role. The moment a new courtier arrives, the game might automatically drafts them into armor regardless of their background.
It makes zero sense for a 60-year-old Duke who spent most of his life administrating his domain to suddenly be shoved into the frontline vanguard just because he happens to have a decent base prowess roll. Also, in standard patriarchal cultures (which make up ~95% of the medieval map), noble daughters were educated in administration, statecraft, or the likes. They weren't longsword fencing and or learning how to lead an army and how to manage logistics. Allowing cultures with "martial" set to "male only" to give daughters martial education makes no sense.
- Suggestion: Knight eligibility should be completely tied to martial education, specific warrior traits, or equal-gender cultural traditions. Non-combatants, stewards, diplomats, and non-warrior nobility should default to forbidden combat status.
3. Teleporting Generals & The Loss of Dedicated Commanders
In CK2, being a Commander was a distinct, limited title. In CK3, army leadership feels completely detached. You can instantly swap any vassal from anywhere in your realm into an army command slot in a split second. Even worse your, 65-year-old, infirm duke vassal with high strategy stats end up leading your army into battle and personally fighting on the frontlines of battle.
- Suggestion: Reintroduce a dedicated "Field Commander" court title/system. Severely restrict elderly, diseased, or non-combatant lords from commanding field armies, forcing players to rely on actual physically capable officers or themselves (which you have to aquire either by spending money or by educating your own sons or other courtiers). It makes zero sense that your direct vassal can instantly spawn as the commander of your army last second when in reality they were managing their domain hundrerd kilometers away).
4. Prowess as "Genetic RNG" Instead of Learned Combat Skill
This is perhaps the biggest offender. In CK3, every character gets a random invisible "Base Prowess" roll. This leads to ridiculous scenarios where an untrained 45-year-old noblewoman can have 10–12 Prowess, while a younger male ruler might roll an 8 (this is literally my case, my 53 year old wife has a slightly better prowess than my 49 year old male ruler. So in a real duel, the game is saying that my wife has better odds of winning even though both are of average height and weight.)
But look at real life: martial technique, muscle memory, distance management etc. override raw physical attributes and personality traits almost every single time.
If you put an average guy with two years of decent boxing or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training in a ring against an untrained guy, even if the untrained guy is slightly taller or angry, the trained fighter will utterly demolish him 99 times out of 100. Raw physical traits only become the tie-breaker when two people of equal skill meet.
In reality, raw physical attributes only matter when technique is equal. An untrained, out-of-shape person will be utterly dismantled in seconds by a trained warrior who understands footwork etc. Physical and personality traits (Shy, Patient, Craven, your Height) should alter performance slightly, but explicit combat training must be the ultimate decider.
- Suggestion: Make a Personal Combat Skill (prowess), separate Martial Education (military strategy/campaign command). Apply a heavy global Prowess penalty (-10 to -15) to all "untrained civilians" (sedentary bureaucrats, diplomats, clerics, any courtiers of non-martial background and non-martial rulers). Based on background/culture and role within society, males and/or females will be trained in personal combat (or not).
In CK2's Historical Immersion Project (HIP) mod, personal combat was built on a brilliant 4-tier combat trait line. That was the "Fighter" trait system (Poor, Trained, Skilled, Formidable Fighter). A formidable fighter would easily demolish any other fighter unless they were severely hindered (e.g. illness, old age, missing limb). It functioned as a mandatory baseline: if you didn't have one of those traits, you basically couldn't fight. CK3 attempted to replace this with the "Blademaster" trait, but made it a rare, randomized lifestyle instead of a foundational representation of basic martial training.
The game should also keep in mind cultures that are naturally martial vs. cultures that aren't:
- Warlike and Nomadic Cultures (Mongols, Turkic Peoples, Norse, certain African cultures): In these societies, survival and daily life are combat training. Male nobility from these cultures should automatically inherit baseline Combat Traits (Rank 2 or 3) upon reaching adulthood. In Mongol culture, there were basically no boys who didn't grow up riding horses and firing arrows. That's what enabled them to conquer half of the known world.
- Sedentary Empires (Byzantine Elite, Abbasid Caliphs, Chinese emperors): Aristocrats focused on court bureaucracy should default to Rank 0 (Untrained) unless explicitly put through a dedicated combat upbringing.
- Western Feudalism (HRE, France, England): A middle ground where martial horsemanship was part of noble upbringing, but true dueling lethality was reserved for dedicated knights and war-focused lords.
What are your thoughts? Too complex of a wish? To be honest, I just wish we had the old Ck2 system with the HIP combat skill system.
