FAQ

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Crusader Kings III is our newest generation of beloved medieval role-playing grand strategy game. Expand and improve your realm, whether a mighty kingdom or modest county. Use marriage, diplomacy and war to increase your power and prestige in a meticulously detailed map that stretches from Spain to India, Scandinavia to Central Africa.

But uneasy lies the head that wears a crown! Your cunning is your greatest weapon, and intelligence is the key to all successful strategy. Guard your life and the future of your dynasty, because enemies foreign and domestic envy your status. Engage in espionage, join political factions, punish heretics or use assassins to make sure your throne passes safely to the next generation.

Here, we will add the recurrent Questions from the Community, and the Answers from our devs. Keep your eyes peeled, this article will be regularly updated with our Q/A and other communications!

General questions

What is the release date for CKIII?

• Crusader Kings III was first announced during PDXCon19, in October 2019, and took the throne on September 1, 2020. PURCHASE NOW!

How many editions of Crusader Kings III are available to pre-order?

• You can currently pre-order Crusader Kings III at major online retailers including the Paradox Store.
• On all platforms you will be greeted with by two editions:

1. The Standard Edition - SRP (Suggested Retail Price) of $49.99 USD

• The Base Game

1. The Royal Edition - SRP of $74.99 USD

• The Base Game
• The Expansion Pass, comprising 3 upcoming DLCs and an Expansion Pass Bonus: Fashion of the Abbasid Court.

• Both editions will contain the Pre-order Bonus: Garments of the Holy Roman Empire.
• Pre-order Bonus: Garments of the Holy Roman Empire has a SRP of $2.99 USD.

When will the Expansion Pass be available on its own?

• The Expansion Pass is available for purchase on September 1st, 2020 - SRP $34.99 USD.

What is the benefit of getting the Royal Edition? It’s good to be the King!

• Buying the Base Game and the Expansion Pass separately will be at $84.98 USD, you would save $9.99 USD by getting the Royal Edition.
• Buying the Base Game and each DLC included in the Expansion Pass separately will be at $93.96 USD, against $74.99 USD for the Royal Edition. You would save $18.97 USD by getting the Royal Edition.

What kind of DLCs does the Expansion Pass include and what is included in the Pre-order Bonus?

• Expansion Pass:
  • Expansion Pass Bonus: Fashion of the Abbasid Court, a set of additional outfits and cosmetic clothing options for the Middle East and North Africa.
  • 1st Flavor Pack: Unannounced.
  • 1st Major Expansion: Unannounced.
  • 2nd Flavor Pack: Unannounced.
• Pre-order Bonus: Garments of the Holy Roman Empire
  • Collection of additional outfits and headgears for both commoners, warriors and rulers of Central Europe.

When will the Pre-order and Expansion Pass Bonuses be unlocked?

• These two bonuses will be unlocked at the release of Crusader Kings III on September 1, 2020.
• For the time being, these bonuses will only be available by:
  • Pre-ordering the Standard or Royal Edition, in the case of the Pre-Order Bonus;
  • By pre-ordering/buying the Royal Edition or by purchasing the Expansion Pass, in the case of the Expansion Pass Bonus.

The preorder and expansion pass bonuses are additional clothes? Does that mean all characters will have the same outfits throughout the world if we do not pre-order either the Standard or Royal Edition?

• No. Characters will have different clothes throughout the world in the Base Game. These two bonuses add more variety.

What kind of content can we expect post-launch?

• Our DLCs will be split between Flavor Packs and Major Expansions:
  • Flavor Packs - SRP $6.99 USD: in-game content focused on a theme or a region.
  • Major Expansions - SRP $29.99 USD: larger, meatier expansions with content and mechanics to expand and enrich your experience.
  • Free Updates: As usual, each Major Expansion will be accompanied by a free update that will provide new features, fixes and changes to improve our players’ experience.
• If you are familiar with Paradox Development Studio games, you surely have realized that we will start with a Major Expansion for CK3 at a slightly higher price point than those of our previous titles. This is due to the fact that we want to spend more time on our CK3 expansions and deliver bigger DLCs with better, more exciting content and well-enhanced mechanics. In-between the Major Expansions, smaller Flavor Packs will be released to add some spice to themes and specific regions of the world and give everyone something to spend your time with.

In what languages will CKIII be translated?

• At launch, Crusader Kings 3 will be localized in English, French, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Korean.
• While Polish, Italian, Turkish, Portugueze-Brazilian and more languages are requested, we aren't planning on adding more languages to our list at the moment. If this changes, rest assured that we will let you know.

Do you have a Crusader Kings 3 Discord server?

• Yep! CK3 Discord

When can I start playing Crusader Kings III if I bought it?

• Get ready, you will be able to play CK3 starting Tuesday the 1st of September 2020, from 6pm CEST.

If I have the Xbox game pass for PC, which version will I be getting? Will I be able to buy expansions etc in the future?

• Crusader Kings 3 on Xbox PC Game Pass will only include the base game and DLCs will have to be bought separately. Xbox PC Game Pass subscribers will benefit from a 10% discount on any CK3 DLC during its participation in Game Pass.

Can I preload the game already?

• There will be no pre-loading of the game. CK3 launches on Tuesday Sept. 1st at 6pm CEST.

Ruler Designer?

• The Ruler Designer feature for Crusader Kings 3 will be available in a future Free Update.

Cross Platform between Steam, Paradox Plaza and PC Gamepass?

• Yes!

Is GeForce Now available for CK3?

• GeForce Now will be available Day 1 for Crusader Kings III.

How many players maximum can you have in a Multiplayer game?

• 64 players can simultaneously join a Multiplayer game.

What are the starting and ending dates?

• The time period of CK3 is chosen based upon what players enjoyed playing in CK2.
• As it turns out, players prefer to start in 1066 or as a pagan in 867, so we decided to focus upon those dates for the release. Ending date is 1453.

Will we be able to continue playing after the "official" end date like in Europa Universalis?

• There is a game rule for it, yes.

Will albinos make an appearance in CK3?

• Yes! Have a look at our Dev Diary #34: Portraits system

Will the 3D models reflect everything that happens to a character like deformities, missing limbs and so on?

• We're doing some things like scars and burns, missing limbs, diseases, ...

Are you using a new engine?

• We are using the most up to date version of the Clausewitz engine.

Will there be an extended tutorial in the game for those who have not had any contact with the CK series before?

• Yes, we don't assume that players have played CK2 (or the first one) before playing CK3. Read our Dev Diary Tutorial & Encyclopedia.

Will the game automatically add roman numerals when you name a child the same as their forebearer? James → James II.

• For sure. These are the Regnal numbers, it is not tied to family but it is based on title. If a ruler is James, and 200 years later there is another ruler named James, he will be named James II.

Will there be cultural specific titles? Say Kaiser Basileus Jarl etc.

• Yes! Spawned nobles will also have names relating to where they originate from: "Of York" or "De Tottenham" for example.

Will there be Custom Empires in the game?

• Affirmative.

Will the character finder make a return or are you going for a more organic gameplay loop when finding potential councillors or spouses?

• Oh yes, we have a new and improved character finder!

Are you planning on including societies or a similar system in CK3

• Societies are not planned for CK3 at release.

Will there still be a command prompt or a debug mode?

• There's a console, so you can do this with console commands.

Will the Characters have their own voices?

• Characters don't have voices.

Will nomads and pagans be added in the future

• Pagans will exist at start. Nomads will be Tribes.

Would be there any mod developing tool provided by Pdx? Because now we have to stick to using Notepad++, IntelliJ IDEA or even PHPStorm (lol), not to mention lack of map editor

• There's a map editor, like in Imperator.
• For script, text editors are what we use internally as well. Mostly Sublime rather than Notepad++.

Will religious approved human experimentation (with the appropriate lifestyle) be an option if a pagan religion practices human sacrifice?

• Not exactly in the way you’re asking, but we do have both human experimentation and human sacrifice in other contexts.

Will CK3 have a new unique OST or will most of the songs be reused/updated from CK2?

• Completely new.

Will there still be gameplay mechanics tied to different cultures, such as Norse being able to raid or Irish having tanistry succession?

• Yes.

Will the game speed options be similar to CkII's?

• Yes, speed ranges from 1 to 5. These roughly match the CK2 speeds.

How many different pets are currently planned to be in the game?

• Cats and dogs, depending on how lonely you get in prison you get you can get a lot more, a pet rock for example.

What playable religions will we get at launch with no expansions?

• All of them.

Will there be multiplayer available on release?

• Yes.

Will it be possible for modders to add other variables that affect character appearance and clothes (such as fantasy races)?

• Yes, you can even model your own 3D character if you want. Portraits are fully moddable.

How are disabilities, be it mental or physical, represented?

• As respectfully as possible. While they do have character penalties associated with them, we strove to ensure the penalties were as medically accurate and took care to avoid falling back on stereotypes.

Slightly off topic, will random Coat of Arms generation follow heraldic rules ?

• They will actually, our Artists and CoA designers have been very diligent!

Will pets exist? Will they give us piety in some faiths that worship them?

• They will exist! And you can even name your dogs and cats yourself.

What will the rating of Ck3 be? Just how graphic will the game be with nudity/gore/all the wonderful sicknesses Nurgle can give me?

• Around Age 16 or so.

Will there be an option to disable nude portraits?

• Yes.

How will you guys handle the fact that boat travel could not be very long concerning fresh water?

• Troops that remain at sea for too long will eventually start taking attrition.

Can we rename provinces?

• All titles can be renamed.

Will children have a higher risk of dying just like back in the day?

• Child mortality is not as high for nobles as it was for peasantry, that said children can be born sickly or develop sickly in their infancy.

Will ck3 have navigable rivers like imperator has?

• There are navigable rivers in CK3, like in CK2.

In what different ways can we kill our character?

• Murder, stabbing, killed in war, succumbing to disease, suicide and more. You should find your options... Satisfactory.

What is the maximum age of a ruler? and could we become immortal?

• Maximum age of a ruler is based on their health (modified by various health traits etc.) so it's hard to say. We've had people live past 100 years old, but they are quite rare. And you can't be immortal (but you can be immortalized. :wink: )

Dynasties, Houses

Can we transfer baron level vassals to other vassals?

• You cannot transfer barony vassals out of a given county, and the county holder will always be that baron's liege.

Can we inherit baronies from other counties and detach them as our direct vassals?

• No. You can still inherit baronies from your own counties, but not from a county belonging to someone else. If such a situation would happen, it will be inherited by the county holder instead.
• As stated already, baronies will always be considered to be a part of a county. However, we do have a concept of leasing baronies to other rulers, such as Holy Orders. This effectively gives them control of the holding along with the income it generates, without it "leaving" your realm.

Are the Barons characters or do they work as a community or "building"?

• They are still very much held by actual characters. We just put less emphasis on them.

How do Legacies work in terms of mixing-and-matching? That is, when I accumulate enough Renown for a Legacy pick, can I take any that's available for me, or when I start down a track am I locked in until I finish it?

• You can take any, but you're going to want to progress down an entire track before starting a new one. The Legacies at the end are much more powerful than the ones at the start.

Are AI characters motivated to create houses of their own so we get to see some glorious sprawling dynasties?

• Oh, very much so.

If I found a house, can I choose the name and motto?

• Of course!

Will cadet branches shields have representation of the founding houses coat of arms like the cadet branches of House bourbon?

• Cadet branch coat of arms are partially based on the house they split off from.

Will all known dynastic/heraldic shields be in the game from the start.

• Not all of them, no. But we are actively working to make as many of them as historically accurate and immersive as possible. I think that heraldry nerds will really like what we are doing.

Is it possible for you to lose the status of the head of the dynasty by family conflict for example, like a younger brother fighting you for it?

• Technically yes, if that brother forms their own house and becomes more powerful than you.

Can a marriage between two cadet dynasties create a new independent dynasty?

• No it won’t, the children will be of the dynasty from the primary partner in the marriage

Is there a possibility that the position of "Dynast" could be renamed, e.g. to "Head Dynast" or "Senior Dynast", given that a "dynast" is normally any (eligible/male) member of the dynasty?

• We've changed 'Dynast' to 'Dynasty Head' for clarity.

I understand that the head of the most powerful house head becomes the head of the dynasty, but what determines who is the most powerful house head? Which factors are the most relevant?

• Military strength is the main factor

Medieval Map

Will we be able to change the terrain through scripts, as results of events or whatnot?

• No

Do the bridges on the Thames indicate major rivers will no longer be crossed at any point in ck3? And will there be more rivers traversable by boat?

• That is indeed the case. Major rivers have designated fords that allow for crossing. The Thames for example.

Am I correct in thinking I see empty baronies where we will be able to construct additional cities/temples/castles? Same as empty holding slots in CK2?

• Correct. Not all holdings will be constructed at game start, so you'll have to build them later on in the game.

What will be the size of the map? Is it a globe or is it flat?

• The map (flat) will roughly match that of CK2. China won't be on the map.
• We will however, have a few new additions:
  • the entirety of Tibet will be present, unlike CK2 where the most eastern parts were excluded
  • and sub-Saharan Africa is also extended, where we’ve gone all the way to the Nigerian coast.
  • We are also extending the map to include more of Mongolia and Bengal as well!

Can I zoom in enough to display barony names on the maps?

• No, but County names are shown as you zoom in. There are three zoom levels.

Map certainly is bigger, how does it affect performance?

• The size of the map, the number of provinces, titles and characters all obviously affect performance, but remember that CK3 is a new game and has been built with this in mind from the start.

Regarding impassable terrain and choke points will AI actually attack you if the war depends on it? Will there be only certain mountain passes that troops can go through?

• The AI will try to not attack into extremely unfavorable terrain, it will prefer to do other things if you're camping in a choke-point, such as siege your secondary holdings.
• Major mountain chains will only have passes you can go through, yes.

Roughly how many baronies are in the game compared to cities in Imperator or provinces in EUIV?

• More than EU4. Unsure how it will compare to Imperator.
• Empty baronies are considered owned by the county holder.

What is probably the projection of the CK3 map?

• It's a bespoke projection that we developed in-house to fulfill requirements specific to CK3, and so it doesn't correspond to any standard projection or previous PDS title.

Will the map extend itself to European Atlantic islands or will we only have a few of the canaries again?

• The map ends just west of the Canaries. The whole Western African coast is in.

Will the map go any further south in Africa?

• The map includes the entire Western African coast; it goes almost to the equator.

How far east will the map go? Will it be the same as CK2?

• The game goes as far East as Burma, so slightly further than CK2.

Will the Aztecs show up on the shores of Europe in CK3?

• No

How moddable is the map? Is it easier to make a map than in ck2?

• You can fully mod the map and we, like Imperator, have tools built into the game for doing so.

In the terrain mapmode, will there be some sort of coloured glow around the edges of your borders like in Imperator Rome, so we can more easily distinguish our borders?

• We have the gradient borders with the glow on zoom to show the nations yes.

Historically speaking, some terrain elements such as Caucasus mountains have prevented massive invasions throughout centuries (from north to east) by granting defending party a massive advantage to fight in choke points. Will these kind of choke points grant any additional bonus in combat, other than limiting the path from which enemy can enter your territory?

• Geographical bottle necks mostly limits the enemies movement, but that also allows you to easier know where they'll be coming.
• You can easily position your army to block their path, and if you happen to be standing in mountains, you'll get a significant advantage bonus in combat.
• Remember also that you are able to build defensive building, further increasing the advantage bonus you can get in combat.

War

Will there be set Cultural bonuses to men at arms like in CK2 with retinues, or are we able to customize them if they appear at all?

• Not as such, but as mentioned in the DD, there are plenty of different Men-at-Arms that are unique to different cultures.
• Steppe cultures will for example, have access to Horse Archers, while Greeks have access to superior Heavy Cavalry in the form of Cataphracts.
• Men at arms are not constantly raised, unlike in CK2. They're also very different from levies, while in CK2 they were pretty similar. They're costly to change, but not prohibitively so.

Any chance castle holdings can exert a ZOC?

• Not in the sense as in EU4. The hostile county attrition can be thought of as a "soft ZOC" that doesn't hinder movement, but do have penalties for moving armies without consideration.

Does it mean that, if you siege down fortified Baronies, you are immediately given control of other Baronies in the County, without the need to enter them?

• You are essentially vying for control of the county. Occupying all fortified holdings within a county will make you automatically occupy everything else as well.

Will religions/cultures that allowed Shield-maidens in CK2 (e.g. Norse Germanic) be allowed to have female Knights and/or Commanders?

• Yes

I read before that 20 knights or so equal 200 levies. TBH, I'd think this makes knights, aside from role-play purposes, rather useless. There's a few things to take into account here: firstly I would assume that I, as the ruler, am the one responsible for knighting and knighthood? I don't want to micro manage 30-40 minor titles and then these knights only have the power of 300-400 levies.

• Knight isn't a title as such that you hand out. They default to the most capable characters within your realm (based on Prowess), which you then can adjust if you want to. The game is still in the process of being balanced. I can't say how powerful a single Knight will be, but rest assured, we want Knights to be powerful and a force to be reckoned with.
• Knights fight alongside your normal troops, but are much more powerful than any single Levy or Men-at-Arm, dealing and taking damage much like they would. They can be wounded, captured or worse: killed... so be careful who you send to war! ... Or maybe do it on purpose in an unfair fight.

How well does the AI take the new attrition in foreign territory mechanic? Does this stop them from rushing your capital like in ck2?

• Rushing into your enemies territory will cause your armies to take very heavy attrition, and the AI knows this. They will try to siege their way to the war goal area.

Will the presence of commanders be abstracted in the same way it was done in CK2? With battle events triggering independently of how the battle is going or will they have a more tangible presence on the battlefield, perhaps acting as an extra knight?

• Battle events are influenced to some extent by the state of the battle. The commander is involved in some, knights in others.

Will capturing opponents in battle still be as random as ck2 and will capturing the enemy king still give you 100% war score? Will battles be overall more deadly and risky? Like will you see more characters die/be captured.

• It is based on their presence in the battle as a commander or knight. Overwhelming victory is more likely to result in capture. Capturing the enemy ruler will win the war.
• Since we have characters fighting directly in the combats (Knights), more characters are exposed to the dangers of combat than in CK2. It's dangerous to be a knight.

In warfare does CK2 uses shattered retreat, or is there again a rule to switching between shattered retreat, and direct retreat to the next province?

• We do have shattered retreat.

Will we see any limit on how many knights there will be and can non-knight and non-commander characters still also fight in battle?

• You have a limit on how many knights you can have based on a number of factors (E.G., tier, government). Only knights and commanders are present in battle.

Naval Combat, yay or nay?

• There will be no Naval Combat at Launch, however we aren't closed to that specific feature in a far future.

How different are the peace negotiations going to be? Like CK2 will you only be able to use the casus belli you started the war for?

• Same as in CK2.

Will we get armour for characters portraits?

• Yes

What defines the unit model of a troop on map?

• Currently the model depends on the quality of the troops and the culture.

Will ck3 at launch have Holy Fury style crusades or base ck2 style crusades?

• CK3 crusade mechanics are heavily inspired by Holy Fury crusades.

Will there be different semi-random tactics that will be used during a battle like in CK2?

• The combat system has been completely reworked for CK3.

Will it still be possible to take prisoners as consorts

• Yes

Will Jihads have a Jihad Screen, like the new Crusade screen?

• Yes

Is the army quality determined purely on the ratio of men at arms, or cam you actually increase the quality of your realm’s levies?

• Army quality is an indicator for how good the average soldier is in an army compared to the number of soldiers. It's based on the amount of Men-at-Arms and Knights, along with how good they are. Having a few powerful Knights may increase quality more than having a bunch of really bad ones for example.

When you have units embark does the cost also take into account where you are traveling to and the distance. For example if i'm in Ireland will embarking my troops to Jerusalem cost me more than if I were to embark them to Santiago?

• In a way, yes. The intial embarkment cost remains the same, regardless of where you put your movement order. Your army will however, have an increased troop maintenance while at sea.

Development, Buildings

Is the capital of each duchy fixed as a specific barony? And if not, if you move the capital then will duchy buildings be destroyed?

• The duchy buildings will all be constructed in a specific barony. For example, the buildings for the duchy of Essex will have to be constructed in London.

Great Works now essentially exist as these special buildings?

• They won't be as involved as in the CK2 Great Works system, and we'll only represent historical special buildings.

So what makes up the minority of holdings?

• Tribes and empty holdings.

Since baronies are on the map now I'm guessing a county can't get new holding slots any longer, correct?

• Counties cannot get slots that don't exist at the start, but many counties do start with empty slots that you can fill, especially in 867.

Can development of a county rapidly decrease perhaps by raiding or devastation?

• There are ways for development to go down

Will there be unique cultural buildings?

• No. The main factor for which building you are able to build in a barony will depend on the terrain.
• For example, the difference between Farmland and Desert is quite significant. Farmland will have a higher economy output, while Desert allow for more hardy warriors.

With regards to stewards and development, is there more to keep track of economics-wise to keep your kingdom strong, like food and population, or is all of that abstracted into gold again?

• Buildings, development, control, vassal taxes. Probably some more. But it all boils down to gold, yes.

Will it be possible to make improvements that affect multiple counties? Like building roads or primitive irrigation?

• There are Duchy Capital buildings that affect all Counties in a Duchy

Schemes, Secrets, Hooks

Can anyone attempt to seduce anyone, or do you have to be a homo/hetero match with the target?

• The target has to have the possibility of being attracted to the Seducer for there being any chance of success.
• By default you can also only Seduce characters you could be attracted to.

Can you go public with a secret you have willingly, so other people loose their hook on you?

• You can refuse Blackmail, at which point your secret will be exposed.

Will secrets have reduced chances of being discovered if they were undiscovered for a long time after their origin/most of the original agents are dead or abroad?

• There's no difference to discovery at the moment, but it's possible for certain secrets to "get lost" if the people involved in them dies. Of course, to speed that up you'd have to get an entirely *new* murder secret. There's just no rest for the wicked.

Does this mean that if an agent if found the others are still secret?

• Yes! The target will know that someone is scheming, but they won't know who else is involved. Makes the Agent's best friend look vaguely suspicious though, doesn't it?

Do the plotters get secret on all people that participated in the murder plot?

• Not at the moment. We've tried it out, and it led to a lot of "loose" secrets lying around, where discovering them could be helpful, but it didn't really tell you anything about what had been going on. So at the moment, agents are only at risk while the Scheme is going on.

Some questions though: how is the "closeness" of Agents assessed?

• In various ways by looking at the relationship between the target and the agent. So being family, a councillor, etc. all increases the Scheme Power they grant.

You said that a plot discovered before its execution won't be traced back at you. Is this a hard "won't in every case", or is there a loyalty factor related to your relation with the agent?

• Right now this is a hard limit, but having your scheme discovered at all significantly increases the chance that you will be discovered when you try to execute it.

Will agents hold a secret against you?

• Not at the moment, no. We don't want every agent to immediately turn around and Blackmail you

Something you guys could do to really help with this often tedious process would be to add a little check button to give a non-feudal title (i.e. not a barony) to a random courtier that the game generates specifically for handing out that title.

• All I can say about this is that we are very aware of which parts of CK2 feel a little more tedious than they really should. This is not a promise of one thing or another, but we're aware of this!

Can you be an Agent? Say, from your liege's plot? If so, with its own series of events and decisions to choose from?

• No, so far we've limited it to AI only, since it can be such a huge risk that you don't really have any control over... There will be a lot of ways to affect Scheme Defense and discovery chances, not only through your Spymaster!

Can we hook people into accepting seduction?

• No

What about Claim Titles plots?

• We'll talk about getting claims another time ;)

What about slandering?

• Nothing to talk about with this right now

Can we finally plot to seduce our wife and use a hook we acquired on her (has a mysterious lover) on her?

• You cannot Blackmail someone over a Secret that you are a part of!

Can steps be accelerated and skipped by some events?

• Progress (and success chance and everything else) can be affected by events

Can we, as a child, plot to murder our siblings/friends? Of course without buying favors of all vassals, but unsuccessfully playing William Tell for example.

• Right now children cannot run murder schemes. You're giving me ideas, though…

Would it be possible to add a bisexual trait? Seems silly to make attraction so binary, especially when we have evidence that all 3 existed before modern times.

• There are bisexual characters in the game, yes. We've been talking about it various places. Sexuality is modeled outside of the trait system now, with slightly more nuance

Is there any sort of cultural variation to what is considered a secret or blackmail-worthy?

• There is indeed something handling this that we'll get back to in the future!

Is there a way for me to find out what secrets other people know. Say I'm planning on blackmailing the King and someone else fonds out the fact that he's having relations with his sister, I'd quite like to bump off that chap so as to keep sole power over the king.

• Not an easy way of knowing, no. Since Secrets are, well, secret, we would have to not only knows the Secret, but also who knows about who knows about the Secret, and then it becomes an entire new layer on top!

Are the chances of an assassination attempt success just a plain 50/50, or will there be other factors that modify the probabilities?

• The chances of success depend on a variety of factors, including your agents.

Will we be able to do murder plots on our kids (when they're adults, of course)?

• Yes, but only if you are playing a Sadistic character!

How challenging has it been/is it to make the AI use the more complex plot system of ck3? Will the AI act on impulse or pursue goals in a somewhat reasonable manner?

• Unlike CK2 characters will generally pursue more reasonable schemes in CK3, they will for example try to murder their way up the succession (depending on their current position), take vengeance on rivals, etc.

Council, Powerful Vassals, Spouse Councillor

Are bishops exclusively councillors now, rather than landed holders of temples? In the sense that a count would have a single bishop for his temples, and duke for his, and the king for his?

• Yes and no. That is the system for your religious councillor, but ecclesiastic characters can absolutely hold land in their own right too. So you can have, say, an archbishop who is refusing to give you taxes, while the Prince-Bishop of York (who directly holds the Duchy of York and its vassals) is factioning against you. Or the Church may be your biggest supporter. Depends on you, really. Every ruler has their own bishops.

With powerful vassals now being the only ones you need to change succession laws, how do you plan to offset that major power loss for "normal" vassals? Or should we care (even) less about them now?

• That's a little bit more tied into some sub-systems that I don't believe I'm allowed to talk about right now, but essentially there's a combination of factors that make you more likely to have fewer, more powerful vassals, as well as somewhat buffing the potential threat of factions (since multiple characters means more potential knights and men-at-arms).

If half of realm is in one religion and half is in other religion does each of those religions have they own political head? Or just 1 for realm. If there is one for realm does it collect revenues from priest from other religions or it's opinion based but still they are under control of main religion head.

• Well, your bishop, if you have one, is the theological councillor for your realm. They collect taxes from any bishops under them who have the same religion (e.g., a Catholic bishop wouldn't collect from an Orthodox one), and from the temple holdings in your personal domain, regardless of the religion in the counties of those temple holdings. They're in charge of the land, even if they don't own it, and common-folk still pay rent to a lease-holder even if that lease-holder is of a different religion and very preachy about it.

Can you please explain how bishops differ in CK III?

• If we ignore bishops who hold land in their own right ("I am Bishop Mark, and I directly own the County of Tolouse, so I am Bishop of Tolouse"), a bishop is a variant of the court chaplain position which some religions have, and some do not.
• If you have a bishop, they get all of the taxes and levies from every temple holding in your direct domain, as well as a portion of taxes from your vassals' same-religion bishops (if they have 'em). You will, mainly, be dealing with that bishop, and they're intended to be more troublesome, fractious individuals than single bishops in CK2 were.
• The "archbishop" title in the dev diary is flavour text; the exact type of bishop you get depends on your religion and tier. A count might only have a bishop, whilst a duke has an archbishop, and so on. Since it's flavour, that's all pretty subject to change, and we're still getting our unlanded bishop ranks sorted.

Have you considered having the “spouse” councillor position be extended to allow your heir to co-rule if you are widowed?

• That might be interesting in the future, but not at release. No promises.

It seems that your spouse will have a more important role in running the realm. Will how high your relationship is influence how well she/he does that job and will there be more events associated with getting along with your spouse? Will your spouse actively try and murder you if you cheat on them?

• Yes! A spouse who has a high opinion of you will actively seek out new ways to help you and your realm, and may even unlock unique opportunities not available otherwise // If they have a certain type of personality... yes, definitely.

With secret and hooks being a thing could someone be revealed to be a bastard after birth in ck3, possibly making them lose their claims?

• Yes and no. If new evidence comes to light after a character’s birth which calls their parentage into question, they will suffer substantial diplomacy and prestige penalties. However, they will not lose access to their claims. Uncovering evidence of disputed heritage is, of course, an excellent thing to blackmail people over ;)

Will you be able to take just any lowborn schmuck off of the streets to make them your steward if they have good enough stats?

• As long as they are in your court or a guest, yes. However, your noble vassals won’t be happy about it...

Do council actions still work by having a percent chance per year event firing?

• Asks like "convert county" have a progress bar, so you know roughly when it will complete. There's still also associated random event that might happen while the councillor is undertaking the task.

How is vassal interaction with the liege compared to CK2? Is there still a favor system and with laws and council power?

• The favor system will be replaced by the more involved hooks system. There will be laws that govern your vassals and succession laws.

Characters & Portraits

Will we be able to customize character outfits? Haircuts and stuff?

• There will exist a barbershop where you can customize hair, facial hair, clothes and to a limited degree hair color (no outlandish colors though).

What is the "should_be_naked_trigger" thing that showed up a few weeks ago supposed to be for?

• Its primary use is for certain religious sects.

It seems like stats can go pretty high though; Emir Djafir has a skill at 24, though most seem to have their high skill in the teens. I think anything above 20 really should be an outlier, not as common as it was in CK2.

• Skill values are still subject to change; don't pay too much attention to their current values, they are more than likely going to change.

How easily will one gain or lose personality traits? If these traits are now so definitive of the characters, I hope a random event will not see us change personality drastically.

• It's *very* hard to change your personality, and random events will never do it. There are a few ways you can alter your personality slowly over time, and depending on how you play your character stress might also have an impact.

Could you tell us what represent the small heart beside the age and name ? yellow or green?

• Its the character's overall health. It's fairly abstracted (you will never be able to tell exactly when a character is going to die) but it will give you an indication - a very ill character might have a black shriveled heart for example.

Are genetic traits invisible or visible?

• Visible, though characters can also carry recessive traits... those are not visible, but can be inherited by their offspring!

Will there be any kind of animations for events? The character models moving around, briefly interacting etc.

• There will be animations relevant to the context of the event. Like a character being shocked when his spouse is caught cheating

Will the adult age remain at 16 as in CK2 or will it be different and or more dynamic to reflect the values of the middle ages.

• The adult age is the same, but character portraits now age gradually rather than at hard boundaries. No more giant beards at 16!

Do ethnicities blend well in CK3? For example let's say a black African Moor and a white Spaniard had a child, would they look like a mixed person does in real life or would it lean strongly towards one of the parent's race?

• There is some randomness in it to mimic real life but yes children look like a blend of their parents' appearances.

As homosexuality will be part of the development, is there a possibility of adoption of child?

• Adoption is not planned for release.

Are clothes of characters strictly tied to their title like count and duke, and can we change their clothes and stuff?

• Yes the rank of a character decides how fancy clothes and headgear they have access to and yes you can change the clothing and hairstyles/beards in the barbershop

Can my characters lead troops in Jerusalem, and in a single moment teleport to England for a game of charades, and then again in a moment teleport back to Jerusalem?

• Most events require you to pass an ‘is_available_for_events’ trigger, which will fail if you are actively leading an army.

Can/will members of your family leave your court and seek out titles on their own?

• Yes, if they are not close in line to inherit something, they can become wanderers.

Will there be any way to disown children, without resorting to murder?

• Yes, there's a Dynasty Head interaction to Disinherit members of your dynasty

Will characters look like their parents even if their culture is changed?

• Yes, the DNA and ethnicity are separate from the culture the character has, you can integrate into a culture and change that whilst ethnicity and DNA remain the same and those are what determines the genetic look of children

Courts, Guests, and Wanderers

Is there a mechanism for culling excess courtiers globally, or slowing their creation as the game runs long?

• One of the goals with wanderers is to make use of those excess courtiers. They will leave their court and try to go someplace where they're more needed.
• We generally only generate new characters when there are no wanderers available. Some wanderers are eventually killed off if they find no place to go.

Will married characters and characters with children travel alone, or with their family? Or both, according to their backstory?

• Characters tend to travel with their spouse and underage children, unless they are separated by some unfortunate incident.

Only 7 courtiers?

• You will usually have more than 7 courtiers and guests. The fewer courtiers you have, the more guests come to visit.
• If you want to recruit every guest that comes along, you are free to do so - you can create quite a big court if you want to. The biggest challenge in keeping a really big court is giving everyone a good reason to stay!

Will wanderers move through adjacent realms or teleport randomly? I'm saying that it would be easier for central European realms to attract wanderers than fringe realms in Scandinavia. Could be an interesting aspect of the game

• Most of the time, they will move to an adjacent area. However, in certain situations they magically teleport across the map!

Can we invite specific people to our court?

• You can invite specific people to court, but they will be a lot more hesitant to say yes than in CK2. However, you can use hooks (as mentioned by Voffvoffhunden in a previous DD) to "convince" characters to become your courtier, even if they'd rather stay where they are.

Will we be able to press a courtier's claim and have them be our vassal without having to give them a barony or something first to make them our vassal?

• Pressing a courtier's claim will make them your vassal (if possible).

How long will they stay "without a reason" after being recruited this way?

• This might be rebalanced before release, but currently courtiers who can leave will leave after 3 years on average. However, this number can vary a lot.
• For examples, claimants who think you might be able to press their claims will be more patient. Courtiers who really like you or are related to you will also generally stay for a longer time

Will courtiers play a greater focus in Roleplay?

• Yes they will, through appearance as agents and characters in events

Lifestyles

How moddable is the lifestyle system?

• Very, you can add new perks, change which perks lead to the next ones in the trees, add new per trees, focuses and lifestyles entirely!

Are these going to interact with legacies at all? Can an Architect patriarch declare that all family members must study architecture, causing every new child to start with a free perk in the architecture tree, for instance?

• There are legacies which gives the entire Dynasty a % boost in experience gain

Once you complete a tree, can you keep focusing on it to have the passive bonus?

• You focus on Lifestyles and gain XP within it, not trees. You can always have any focus selected.

Can traits affect learning experience when you chose a lifestyle?

• Some do, like the tiered Intelligence genetic traits.

Immortality?

• No, but it is moddable. You will be able to choose the "effective age" and "real age" as you mod it.

This mechanism can give us "XP" in others lifestyles?

• Not this particular mechanic, as you will still only receive events in the same Lifestyle.
• For example, if you focus is 'Stewardship - Domain', you might also receive 'Stewardship - Duty' and 'Stewardship - Wealth' events.
• However, in rare circumstances it is possible to earn progress towards a Perk, or even a full Perk, from a Lifestyle you are not currently leading.

It doesn't look different from CK2 events.

• CK3 events and the choices you make in them tend to have a much more noticeable impact than they did in CK2. A central design goal has been to reduce the amount of 'noise' and make each event you receive actually matter.

During a ruler's life are they locked entirely into a single lifestyle (other than the one time perk reset)? Is switching to a different lifestyle, while retaining perks gained by the last lifestyle impossible?

• When you change your Focus you can pick a new Focus from any the 5 different Lifestyles. You also keep all perks you earned from any Lifestyle active, even when practicing a different Lifestyle.
• Apart from a short cool-down after picking a new Focus, you can change your character's Focus (and thus Lifestyle) whenever you please.

With addition of stress, will personality traits be more interesting?

• That's one of the major reasons for the stress system. Traits that give good boosts might in some causes encourage you to take different actions to avoid stress.

What gameplay aspects will affect the personality of the character, is it possible change it with depression or something?

• Personality is mostly fixed after childhood. The main cause of change after childhood is a Stress-induced mid life crisis.

Will we be able to see the other side of lifestyle events that our vassals or liege have picked?

• Yes, you may occasionally be involved in the lifestyle events of your liege or vassals, and will have some influence in how they play out.

There will be supernatural events?

• There will not be any explicitly supernatural events at launch.

Can events change your Lifestyle, like a lunatic character maybe for some reason completely change their Lifestyle from like chivalry to torture.

• No, changing lifestyle is a player choice.

How will alchemy and witchcraft be handled?

• There will be no supernatural content in the base game. However, the knowledge you gain pursuing alchemy or witchcraft may have other uses...

Will there be any lifestyle events specific to your ruler's religion too, e.g. specific Sunni events and specific Catholic events?

• Lifestyle events have been designed to work with many different cultures and religions, so we won’t have religion-specific lifestyle events at launch.

It looks like as you get older you unlock better and better traits, but in real life this is usually not the case. What is your vision on this topic?

• People do generally get better at what they do in real life as well.

Will education traits be more important now when they also increase gained xp and presumably also give a major boost to attributes?

• Yes, education is much more important in CK3. Heavily a well-educated heir can make a noticeable difference in what they can achieve during their rule.

How long does it take to complete a Focus tree?

• It takes approximately 25 years to complete 1 focus tree without any experience bonuses or lifestyle events.

How would perks work if your heir was unlanded before your previous character's death?

• If they are unlanded you get XP scaled with age and skills to spend yourself, if they are landed then they will already have some but you can re-spec as normal, for the stress cost.

Will the Learning focus trees have some impact on your ability to create custom reformations/heresies.

• Yes, in a major way

How varied are the Romance / Elope / Seduce events? They were a little repetitive in CK2, do they vary more in CK3?

• The events are very varied between the different schemes. I also like to think that the internal variety is quite significant. You'll definitely feel the difference depending on who you're romancing or seducing!

Will the tribal government that used to be nomadic in ck2 have any difference from other tribals? will the game represent some difference between them?

• Nomads will not exist on release; realms that were nomadic in CK2 will be tribal.

Will more lifestyles be able to be created with mods?

• It is very easy to mod in more lifestyles, focuses, and trees.

You mentioned one ability which would notify you when your ruler is one year away from death. Does this mean that there will be a hard-coded lifespan?

• No it’s not a hard coded life span, it’s still random but the alert just is us being sneaky and delaying the outcome of death instead of having hard coded timings

With the Learning Lifestyle with a Medicine Focus can you discover herb based contraceptives, (spermicide) to have lovers with a lower chance of bastards?

• We have something similar to that, but it's not specifically tied to the Medicine Focus

Do the Lifestyle focuses generally play out the same way for every character ala CK2?

• The traits are unlocked by the perk trees themselves, rather than events. That also means you don't have the semi-linear progress Lifestyle events had in CK2. Instead there's a huge pool of possible events for all Lifestyles

Is it possible to nudge your children towards a specific lifestyle or is the AI completely autonomous in choosing one?

• Your children will heavily tend to go for the Lifestyle corresponding to their education, which you have full control over as their guardian.

Since only rulers use the lifestyles system, what happens when a ruler loses his land?

• They will stop progressing in their lifestyle until landed again.

Is there going to be some kind of hunting options to compensate that it's not a Lifestyle?

• You will be able to take a decision to go on a hunt like in CK2, it’s primarily a stress outlet for your character. And there's no gender lock on it in CK3.

Can a Chivalry focused man acquire their homosexual Soulmate via the tree?

• Yes

If your character lives long enough (beit through immortality or some other means), can you collect multiple lifestyle traits (such as both seducer and scholar) or are you stuck with one lifestyle trait per character at any given time?

• You can have multiple lifestyle traits; that's common even without immortality. Immortality can be modded in, but is not in the vanilla game.

Will there be any way to see what lifestyles and perks another character has chosen?

• Yes, you can inspect anyone's lifestyle trees.

Will Scotland have clan or tribal government?

• Scotland is Feudal in 1066, Tribal in 867.

If you receive a nickname like "the drunkard" and then conquer the entirety of Europe, will your nickname change to, say "the conqueror" , or will your vassals still remember you as the guy who passed out drunk that one time?

• Nicknames can get replaced, and we've got priorities for more "significant" nicknames. "Conqueror" would take priority over "Drunkard"

Seduction, Torture and the Intrigue Perk Trees

Roughly how long does it take to fill up one perk tree?

• Depends on a few things (particularly whether your Lifestyle matches your Education), but a long-lived character will typically be able to fill out between 2 and 3 trees.
• That might change for release, of course, but that's what we have it at right now.

Can you choose to seduce someone even if your character's sexual orientation doesn't match their gender?

• Yes. Without the perk you'll have some significant penalties, but the perk removes those.

Just to clarify, does this mean that e.g. a homosexual woman can seduce a straight man but that the reverse wouldn't work? If so, does the AI still prefer to seduce based on their preferences?

• Yes, you can act against your own sexual orientation, but you cannot make others do the same.

What penalties are there if you get caught seducing e.g. the heir apparent's wife?

• There will be consequences. Exactly what kind depends on how your faith views adulterous behavior, so keep your eyes open for a future dev diary on religions

Can you start more than one lifestyle trees from specific category? Like could I start Seducer and then start Schemer mixing both, but mastering none?

• Yes, you can mix and match perks from different trees, and even from different Lifestyles as you please.
• It is the entire Lifestyle (Intrigue, in this case) which gets a perk unlock, and then you can choose to spend it on any one of the three trees.
• So you can for example pick the first Torturer perk even though you've so far gone halfway down the Seducer tree.

Is the Romance scheme available for same-sex targets with the right orientation?

• Yes, you can use romantic schemes on people whose orientation matches your gender. You can try and romance anyone but the Success Chance factors will vary greatly depending on their personality

Will I be able to seduce the Pope?

• Yes, and there's a special event for it

How realistic is your character's seduction ability? As some random Countess, can I secude the Pope, or the Byzantine Emperor?

• Tier differences affect success chances for succession, so it's harder to seduce above your station. You can definitely seduce the Pope or Emperor if you're good enough, though, no matter how lowly a Countess you are.
• Whether that's "realistic" or not really comes down to your real-life seduction abilities, I guess

Are you able to seduce your wife/husband with seduction?

• Yes, you can make them your lover or soulmate.

Tutorial & Encyclopedia

Does the Encyclopedia only works while only or you can download it with game and even if you play offline you can get access on it?

• It doesn't require any online connection or download, it just runs as part of the game.

What is Edge scrolling? And what makes it either good or bad?

• Edge scrolling is the behavior of panning the camera around the map when the mouse cursor is close to the edge of the game window. If disabled, the camera will no longer pan when the cursor hits or is close to the edge.
• Some players wish to disable edge scrolling when playing in windowed mode or when using multiple monitors, as they often tend to move the mouse cursor outside the game window yet do not want the camera to pan when doing so.

Governments, Vassal Management, Laws, and Raiding

Is it possible for a third party to intercept a raiding army and steal their hard-earned gold, or is it only the invaded realm that can benefit from this?

• If your realm hasn't been raided, you won't be hostile, and thus won't be able to do that.

If an army defeating raiders earns the gold, then can this be exploited to take gold from your vassals? That is, you wait until raiders have looted your vassals' land and then crush them to gain your vassals' gold?

• You can do that, yes. Your vassals won't lose gold, but they will have the Recently Looted modifier on the affected baronies.
• Which does indirectly affect you, but will definitely be worse for your vassals than you personally.

Can you build buildings from the Domain tab? That would be very convenient.

• Currently not *directly* from there, but the holding view can be shown while the Domain tab is shown, and clicking on a holding in the Domain tab will open it.
• So you can get there pretty quickly, though it certainly would be neat to be able to do it directly.

Are the governments moddable? Can we mod it to be Republics and Theocracies?

• Yes, modding will be easy
• I don't think we've decided yet how moddable that will be. Republics and theocracies don't work well with the dynastic gameplay of CK3 though.

What happens when the vassal dies and their heir inherits? What if their heir was already a vassal duke under you (so they're now, say, a double duke)? Is the contract inherited or does it default to normal?

• If I remember correctly, inheritance will override an existing contract if it causes a change in liege or an increase in tier.
• So a duke dying and giving his stuff to his count or unlanded son will cause the contract to still apply. But if the son was a duke or king, the son would keep his own contract.

Why did you change the name Gavelkind?

• The name "gavelkind" was inaccurate outside the British Isles. We'd rather have a clear, unambiguous, and easily understood name than one which is highly regional.

No succession type for the Byzantine and Germanic Empires?

• Byzantium is its own beast, and requires a lot of thought to do right. The CK2 solution was not optimal, and we didn't want to repeat what we did there.
• Just slapping an elective variant on it and renaming its government to 'Imperial' doesn't do it justice, we would want actual mechanics to represent the intricacies of byzantine politics.
• All I can say at this point is that whenever in the future we choose to deal with Byzantium we will make sure that we do it well.

Do we get at least viceroyalties in the base game?

• Viceroyalties was one of the main examples of a feature from CK2 that we absolutely did not want to carry over to CK3.
• Not only was it way too micromanagement heavy and spammy, but you also had to constantly interact with the system to play optimally - even during stressful times such as during wars.
• Again, if we choose to make a Viceroyalty feature post-release, we're going to start from scratch and do it properly.

Powerful vassals still needing to occupy important seats on the council instead of honourary roles, even if they're completely incompetent, why?

• This is a conscious choice as it creates drama and interesting choice. Do you want to have an actually competent Steward, or bite the bullet and put your angry but powerful vassal in the position to placate them? Also, the Council roles come with very powerful bonuses to the holder, so there's no surprise that they want to hold them!

Clan invasion potentially being OP depending on requirements to use it (unsure how difficult reaching high levels of fame will be)

• It's very hard to get to that point, much harder than the Invasion requirements in CK2. Essentially, not every ruler will reach that level of fame, and those who do probably get to work for it!
• Another omission about the Clan government form is that vassals will insist on having an alliance with their liege, which will most likely have to be arranged through marriage.
• The power of Clans rises and wanes as the years pass - at their peak, they can challenge very powerful Feudal realms where the contracts are negotiated favorably, but at their lows, they are more than susceptible to both factions and being picked apart from the outside. In that sense, Clans are somewhat similar to how Feudal realms played in CK2.
• Note that we have overhauled the Feudal Contract.

Since we won't have to raise fleets, how will raiding work. In ck2 fleet has its own wealth storage and you get event increasing province's output after arriving there with raid fleet.

• The raid loot is stored on the army, and you get it when the army returns to your lands.

Men at Arms, Mercenaries and CB

Are troops power hidden now?

• No, this type of view in this given DD hid it, but the troops numbers are visible elsewhere.

How is the maximum number of Men-at-arms and knights determined?

• They are determined by your tier and various modifiers. The number of Men-at-Arms slots and the number of Knights are calculated separately, although they have some of the same inputs, so that a bigger realm will generally have more of both.

Will it be possible to raise the levies, knights and the man-at-arms separately from each other?

• It is possible to divide your troops between different armies so that you don't have to raise all of them at once, yes.

When we raise vassal troops do we get some of their men at arms or just levies?

• Vassals do not provide Men-at-Arms.

If we upgrade MoA Size do they still use one MoA Slot or take more. So theoretically it would be possible to go full professional army.

• They still only take up one MaA slot, so if you have the gold, it's possible to field a lot of them, even with a limited number of slots.

Can we upgrade MoA expertise level or do they get bonuses from combat experience?

• No, their performance is primarily tied to their size.

Do terrain bonuses still only apply to defensive armies or do you get them regardless of if you attacked or not now?

• Terrain bonuses for Men-at-Arms will apply even if you're the attacker.
• As for the overall impact on the two sides' Advantage, it mostly favours the defender.

Factions & Civil Wars

Can a Duke or Count join a peasant revolt against their liege? To use it to their own advantage?

• Landed vassals who share a Faith with a Populist Faction may join it. If the Populist Revolt succeeds, they will become part of the new realm which is split off of their former leige's realm.
• Landed characters can never join the Peasant Rabble faction.

Are populist/peasant faction's military power based on province development or something else?

• County military power is based off of how many levies it provides to its holder, which is indirectly influenced by development.

Do you have to deal only with counties you have directly ? Meaning counties ruled by vassals can't join a faction against you? If no, do vassal who rules counties which have joined a faction will automatically join this faction too ? If no what happen if the faction win and your vassal didn't joined this faction, does he lose his counties?

• Populist Factions always target the top liege in a realm, regardless of who personally holds the county. Peasant Rabble always target the actual holder of the county.
• Vassals join and leave factions independent of counties. It is possible for 100% of a vassal's holdings to be part of a Populist Faction without the vassal themselves being in the Faction, and visa versa.
• Indeed, this is likely if the vassal and the counties have differing cultures/religions.

Do vassals who didn't pledge the faction will join you to defeat a civil war or just lurking at you like in CK2?

• Non-faction vassals will not help you directly in civil wars, but will continue providing levies and taxes to you as normal.

More about Factions management.

• Claimant Factions and Liberty Factions are primarily governed by opinion, but keeping your vassals even moderately happy (around +30 opinion currently, numbers subject to change) will keep them out of both of those factions.
• If you don't want to play a benevolent ruler, a high dread value is just as effective at keeping them in line.
• By contrast, opinion and dread have only a minor impact on Independence Factions and Populist Factions. Those two are more concerned about structural problems with your realm, and can generally be fixed by re-arranging your liege <-> vassal hierarchy to achieve the following objectives:
  • Ensure you are the Rightful Liege of all of your direct vassals (by creating or usurping the appropriate Duchy/Kingdom/Empire title, or transferring them to someone who holds it).
  • Ensure your direct vassals share your religion and culture. This is less important if your religion is more tolerant, such as when playing in India.
  • Ensure the holders of individual counties share a culture and/or faith with those counties.
• Discontent is mostly out of your control, but it won't be ticking up all of the time; only Factions whose military power rivals your own can gain Discontent, and if you manage to reduce the power of the faction back below 80% discontent will start going down instead.
• In addition, several events you can receive (especially within the Stewardship - Duty Focus) give you the option to reduce discontent in active Factions, or 'persuade' Faction members to leave them for a minimum of 10 years.

What is the stance of populist factions against other realms, and would it possible to interact with them if you are ruler of their religion and culture?

• The realities of our warfare system require all parties in competing wars to be hostile to each other.
• Otherwise you can end up in the extremely frustrating situation where as Asturias you have occupied half of the Umayyad's territory, the Catholic rebellion has occupied the other half, and neither of you can earn enough war score to actually win the war.

Can I use a hook to persuade a fellow vassal to join my faction?

• Absolutely!

Will there be some kind of "exhaustion" in counties to prevent endless rebellions?

• Crushing a Peasant or Populist Revolt will give all counties in the faction a substantial opinion boost of their holder for 10 years (subject to change, balance, and of course modding) which heavily disincentives them from creating or joining new factions.
• This gives you time to address whatever problems were making the counties unhappy in the first place (including converting their culture or religion to yours, if that is how you want to solve it).

So, successful populist can create always not existed or random realm, or also currently established for example king of France hold Duchy of Normandy as secondary and Normandy populist want his own, local ruler?

• Populist Factions prefer to usurp an appropriate existing title if possible.
• For example, if the Umayyads conquers all of Spain and then lose to a Castillian Catholic Revolt, the new King will take the title of the King of Castille, either usurping it from the Umayyads (if they hold it) or creating it (if it has been destroyed).
• Only if that is not possible will they generate a new dynamic revolt title, which will be named after the most powerful county in the faction.

Will foreign powers have the ability to influence a faction or civil war?

• Not currently, but that is an excellent idea. Probably won't make it in for release, but hopefully we can add it in a future patch.

So how does a vassal or vassals leaving a faction with over 80% military affect growing discontent?

• If a vassal leaving a faction drops it below 80% military power, discontent will stop growing and begin shrinking instead.

If a claimant is placed on the throne, will members of the faction that placed them there like the ruler more and be liked by them more?

• Claimants and the faction members who put them on the throne gain mutual opinion bonuses of each other.
• In addition, all of the faction members will gain a favor hook on their new liege, which the AI often uses to reduce their feudal obligations if possible.

Can people not of the populist faction's religion/ethnicity join it and then become part of the new realm?

• As the ruler of a realm, you are ultimately responsible for the actions of your vassals.
• If one of your vassals abuses their power and greatly upsets the populace, you face the decision of either being forced to revoke their titles to place someone more competent in charge, or dealing with the inevitable fallout when the populace revolts.
• Imprisonment as a way to force an early revolt can be a powerful tool, absolutely. Unjust imprisonments will cause you to gain Tyranny however, so make sure the trade-off is worth it before you do!

Can you join rebellions that are ongoing in your realm?

• You can not join a faction after the rebellion has already begun.

Lets say I am a vassal and my liege has a hook on me for some reason or the other. If he tries to use it to stop me from supporting a faction can I choose to ignore the hook under great penalty?

• Currently no, you can not ignore the hook just because you really don't want to have it. In general, you really want to avoid people getting hooks on you, especially if they are your liege.
• It would be pretty simple to mod in a decision that lets you remove a hook in exchange for substantial prestige penalties or something, though.

Will there be Varangian Guard still as mercenaries or as something else?

• Yes they exist as mercs!

Can you have mercenaries hired, but not raised? Can they raid?

• Yes. No.

Religion & Faith

How will this affect events? Will there be events which require 'catholism' or will there be events that require a faith that does have all of catholism's tenets?

• We have both kinds of events. Doctrinal or tenet events are more about specific practices, while catholic-specific ones would go beyond the tenets and doctrines into more nuanced stuff.
• Due the the massive scope of the religion system, there are only a handful of the later.

The interface says something about "clerical appointment: spiritual, for life". So there is some kind of investiture system? How are they appointed?

• Investiture mechanics are fixed for each faith.
• Dynamic investiture, along with the addition of anti-papacies, is something we really want to add in a future patch.
• Sacred lies is only for custom religions.

What is fervor?

• The religious hierarchy only consists of those 3 'levels'. There are no sub-Faiths; Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Cathar, and Paulicianism are all co-equal Faiths under Christianity.
• What each Faith considers to be heretical is based on the religious hostility system, which will be discussed in a future Dev Diary (along with fervor).
• Just because all 4 are Christian Faiths doesn't mean Catholics will view Cathars the same way they view an Orthodox!

Can the number of Tenets for a Faith be modded?

• Technically yes. However the game's GUI only supports 3. With 4 it looks really janky and with 5 important information starts going off the screen.

Let's say we're interested in a different religion. From the Learning Lifestyles Diary we learned about a tenet in the Scholar tree (Apostate) that made faith conversion cost -75%. Is any person able to convert to any faith as long as they have the piety for it? Or do you need a spouse/concubine/consort/ to convert like in CK2?

• You can convert to any Faith at any time, but the cost to change your faith is dynamic which makes your situation have a large impact on how easy (or even how possible!) it is to convert.
  • Switching to another Faith within the same Religion is cheapest/easiest. Switching to another Religion is harder, and switching to another Religion Family is the hardest.
  • Being married to (or having a concubine of) your target Faith provides a significant discount to the above cost.
  • The Apostate perk, as mentioned, also provides a significant discount.
  • Converting from an organized/reformed Faith to an unreformed pagan Faith carries a hefty penalty.
  • Non-tribal rulers trying to convert to an unreformed pagan Faith also suffer an additional penalty.
  • Converting to a 'dead' Religion (no living followers) carries an absolutely massive penalty, making it impossible for all but the most learned and determined rulers.

Will be Hellenism playable like in CKII Holy Fury?

• The Hellenistic period may be seen to end either with the final conquest of the Greek heartlands by Rome in 146BC following the Achaean War, with the final defeat of the Ptolemaic Kingdom at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, or even the move by Roman emperor Constantine the Great of the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in AD 330.
• 867 is the earlier date you can start in Crusader Kings 3 so it doesn't make a lot of sense for it to be playable within the game's time frame.
• Technically, you could play it. It's there so you can potentially play as it. It's not really meant to be playable though.

Is Celtic Paganism in the game?

• Celtic paganism is not in.

And Egyptian paganism?

• Egyptian paganism is... kind of in? Kushitism (shown in the DD's screenshot) draws many elements and influences from it, including the inclusion of various Egyptian gods as part of its pantheon. However, it is not immediately recognizable as the Egyptian paganism that was popularized after Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, since it focuses more on Upper Egypt/Nubia than Lower Egypt.

And Gnostic Christianity?

• Gnostic Christianity is in. Several varieties, in fact. They all have special relationships with each other (and manicheanism). Pantheons are also represented for all polytheistic Faiths, as well.
• Not all of them have the 'pick a god' mechanics that existed in CK2, but when a character goes to war they'll pray to their Faith's war deity, when they pray for a bountiful harvest they'll pray to their harvest/wealth deity, when lamenting a misfortune your character might curse their Faith's fate deity, etc.

And Zorastrianism?

• Zoroastrianism is part of the Oriental family. It's quite different from the other Oriental religions though, so we gave it some unique mechanics to separate it from them. It will be in the base game.

Magyar and Tengrism?

• Yes, Magyar and Tengrism are separate religions.

Hinduism?

• No, the Hinduism Religion is comprised of many different Faiths.

Will you be able to make a same sex positive religion?

• You can make same-sex relations acceptable, but marriage will still only be opposite due to historical constraints.

Will there be polyandry in doctrines?

• Yes, if you set Polygamous Marriage along with Female Dominated. Female Rulers will then be able to have up to 4 husbands.

Will the sympathy for others religion work same as in CK2?

• Not like in CK2 but there are some tenants that effect how faiths view each other.

How are faiths where people choose one of multiple gods in a pantheon to follow represented? Will it be possible to create such custom faiths?

• Some Hindu Faiths have a 'Bhakti' Tenet which allow followers to devote themselves to a single god.
• Custom Hindu Faiths keep this feature, but allowing other Faiths to do this will require mods.

Is Slavic paganism a single Faith, or is divided into multiple ones?

• Single Faith.

how many Muslim faiths are there in total?

• Around 20.

Custom Faith & Pagan Reformation

Where would the holy sites be located for newly created faiths?

• Holy sites will be inherited from the parent Faith.

Can the AI create heresies and custom faiths?

• The AI does not use this feature, and will only spawn historical heresies like Lollardy and Waldensianism.
• Only players can form historically inaccurate heresies.

What will be the benefits of non-temporal head, considering its created only after controlling 2 holy sites it should bring nice things.

• As a temporal head you can direct your faith's Great Holy Wars, choosing both the target and personally keeping all of the land after the war.
• Spiritual heads cannot be played by players, but will launch undirected Great Holy Wars (similar to crusades) and can grant gold and claims to pious followers.

Can pagan religions be reformed multiple times? (Someone reforms it first, but I did not convert and later create my own reformed version?)

• No, but if you convert to the reformed pagan faith you can schism off your own branch as normal.

Can you choose the Icon and the Name? Can you name the reformed pagan faith?

• Yes and yes.

Can the tenets be changed through a religious council dynamically?

• The codebase can support this, but there will not be any in-game content for this on release. We plan on adding events/mechanics around this in the future (mods, of course, will also have free reign to do whatever they want with this.)

Is human sacrifice going to be something Pagan faiths start with, looking at the Norse, or are they going to have to reform into it?

• Two pagan faiths start with Human Sacrifice. You've guessed one of them.

Will female-dominated, enatic faiths have the ai focus on matrilineal marriage properly this time around?

• Female rulers should always try to arrange matrilineal marriages, yes. This is especially true in female-preference succession realms.

Will the AI reform pagan faiths like in CK2?

• Yes, but they will not modify their Faith's Tenets/Doctrines. The only thing they will do is remove the Unreformed Doctrine and create a Head of Faith, if possible.

Will reformed pagan faiths have any heresies the AI can adopt?

• Reformed Paganism can occasionally have heresy outbreaks of 'Old Paganism'.
• Additional custom heresies do not currently exist (but could potentially be modded in).

Can multiple faiths have the exact same set of tennants/etc. and how will those faiths treat each other?

• You cannot form a Faith that has identical Tenets/Doctrines to an already existing one.

Is the prophet lifestyle trait still being hidden for a future dev diary?

• The prophet perk reduces the Piety cost of creating a new Faith or reforming a pagan Faith by 50%.

Will you be able to reform the Roman empire?

• Yes the Roman Empire exists as a title that can be created.

Which dead faiths can be brought back to life besides hellenism and zunism?

• Any dead faith.

Can you make your own descriptions to custom faiths?

• yes.

A Medieval Tapestry

I presume in default settings in Catholic realms for example homosexual characters will still be expected to marry someone of the opposite gender, but will it be just the same small reduction to fertility it was in CK2?

• Concubines/Consorts will always be of the opposing gender. It's more a relationship of convenience rather than an actual loving relationship.
• Your sexuality will not affect the way your culture and religion expects you to live your life, so in default Catholic realms a man will be expected to marry a woman no matter his sexuality!
• People will still get married to the opposite sex even if they're not attracted to them, yes. Lack of attraction mainly affects things like seduction, romance, becoming a lover, and such. Being your spouse's lover boosts fertility, so that's something a homosexual character would not be likely to obtain.

And to clarify, you mention how characters determine their sexuality & gender - does this have bearing on what they are allowed to do, too? e.g. as an edge-case, if a woman wanted to identify as a man, could she secretly enter knightly training?

• The granularity of the View on Gender doctrine will be limited on release, but things such as who is allowed to be a knight is decided in script, so it will be easy to mod if you want to tweak it! Currently, we do not support changing gender identification.

Can we start as a homo/bi/a/sexual character?

• You can start as a character that's not heterosexual, yes! There are some on game-start.

Once the game has launched, how to become homo/bi/a/sexual?

• The only way you can affect a character's sexuality is if you're playing a child as they discover theirs and you get a specific event that lets you "chose".
• This event is pretty rare, and you can not change your sexuality once it is set. We don't want to portray sexuality as a choice.

What about claim inheritance?

• Women do not get implicit claims if the Male Dominated tenet is active, and vice versa, but they will still inherit claims just like anyone would.
• An implicit claim is a new type of claim in CK3 where a child has the claim even while their parent is alive. The tooltip is unclear on this, and it has been clarified!

What are the proportions of heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals and asexuals in the default setting ?

• Currently 89%, 5%, 5%, 1%.

Will there be in-game rules for altering the percentages of how prevalent sexualities are?

• Yes!

Will character traits affect/be affected by the sexuality of the characters? Because if not, It would be hilarious but also a bit depressing to try to imagine the mindset/sexual frustration of an asexual character who also happened to be lustful.

• No, you can still be lustful and asexual (in real life too).

Holy Orders

Will we be able to tell whether a character would be going to join a holy order or the clergy before the character is asked to take the vows?

• Yes, it will be shown in the interaction preview window before you send the request!

Every faith has it's own Holy Orders, though the amount of can vary from 0 to around 1 per king/emperor?

• Every faith can have their own Holy Orders, yes.
• Most Kings/Emperors will not found one since it will be fairly costly, but a faith can hypothetically end up with a bunch!

When creating a new Holy Order, how is the name decided? Can you customize the name as founder or patron?

• We pre-script the names for faiths and religions (Christian Holy Orders have, among others: Knights of the Chalice, Guardians of the Shroud, and Knights Hospitaller), and if they run out the order will be named after the barony you lease to them.

Can we pick our Holy Orders' names?

• You cannot choose their names, it is picked from a pool of historical ones, and if they run out one is generated.

Can custom faiths create Holy Orders too?

• Custom faith can absolutely create their own Holy orders!

Can holy orders still control holdings in multiple realms? If yes, what's in it for kings/emperors who don't control their headquarters and are therefore not their patron?

• Yes, they can be spread out across multiple lands. I don't recall exactly, but you do get a bonus for giving them a Holding.

What stop everyone to have dozens of Holy Orders?

• A Patron of a Holy Order cannot create a new one.

How is custom faiths named? Will it be based on the ruler, the title, or can you choose yourself?

• You name them yourself.

Fervor, Religious Hostility & Doctrine

Is there any way to change the religious hostility value in game without changing tenets? Could you in some fashion manage to make Catholics and Orthodox consider each other "Righteous", and thus co-valid paths to salvation?

• You need to use either a Tenet or a Doctrine to change religious hostility. Either option works just as well; Ecumenism is a Doctrine for example, while Christian Syncretism is a Tenet.
• Currently only Gnostics are able to achieve a Righteous view of other Faiths, but mods can change or expand upon this to enable schism reformations and the like without too much trouble.

Will fervor be a map encompassing thing for that entire faith? Or is there any chance we might have more localized fervor / moral authority?

• Fervor is global for the entire Faith.
• However, the more dynamic nature of the Fervor system means that Faiths simply won't end up in the 'heresy death-spiral' that CK2 had, since Fervor will jump back up after an outbreak and give the original Faith some breathing room to recover and deal with the heretics.

How many custom faiths can we create in one game?

• Only one per lifetime, but there's no campaign limit.

Are basic and fundamental religion doctrines moddable?

• Yes! All the doctrines and tenants are very moddable!

Will Magyar paganism have the same holy sites as Tengrism?

• No they have their own.

Will all these new features concerning Holy Orders be already in the base game, or will there features left out for future DLCs?

• Everything we presented in the DD will be available for release!

Does the Nestorian faith appear on the map in the default start date?

• Yes, in Socotra and parts of Mongolia.

Can multiple pagan faiths exist under a wider Religion and be reformed independently?

• Yep!

Will different Muslim faiths have their own caliphs? Or will every Sunni and Shia faith have one caliph representing them?

• Each Faith has its own Head of Faith.

Can holy orders do banking?

• Yes, and you generally do not want to default on your loans...

If i owe a lot of money to holy orders and im really poor can i just pull a Philip the IV and destroy them to fix my debt?

• If you are their patron, you can revoke their lease and there isn't much they can do about it. Otherwise you can just refuse to pay, but the Pope will not be happy...

Will CK3 address the issue of rulers hating heretics more than infidels?

• Yes with the faith hostility setup, someone who is a hostile faith compared to just somewhat astray from yours will be disliked more.

Will ck3 have a way to 'mend a schism' between 2 related faith similar to th decision in ck2? Maybe even a way to mend the sunni/shia split?

• There is a Decision to mend the Catholic/Orthodox split on launch. Other schisms may be mend-able in future patches.

Map Features & Map Modes and Map Scope

Will we still be able to break down realms into sub-realms by holding Ctrl and left clicking on them? That was a very cool CK2 feature.

• Yes. CTRL-Left and Right clicking is still available in Realm map mode.

Will there be hot keys for these map modes?

• Indeed! All map modes have hot keys.

What does development do? And how does CK3 treat supply limit?

• Development is a value representing the infrastructure and technological advancements of a county, increasing taxes, levies, and supply limit.
• Supply limit is very similar to our other games. If you army is large enough to go above the supply limit, the army will lose supply. When the supply of the army is low, it will start to take attrition.

The Notre Dame building states it is Level 1 Notre Dame: does that mean like Great Works in CK2, these special buildings would have levels?

• Some special buildings do. Such as the mentioned Alhambra. Notre-Dame doesn't however. The "Level 1" is always displayed by default. We'll look into that though.

Special building will only be constructable in specific counties ? Like Notre-dame only in Paris?

• Correct. Special buildings are located in specific locations only.

Can you build more Great Works/Special buildings?

• We have a number of pre-defined special buildings. Some of these exist at game start, while other will have to be constructed.
• They are spread out across the map fairly evenly, though certainly not everywhere. They are intended to be something of a contested hotspot that you'll want to conquer.

Are holdings within the province fixed? Like do you have a fixed amount of construable holdings like CK2?

• A barony may only have a single holding, and the amount of baronies are fixed.
• Not all will be constructed from game start however, leaving room for new holdings to be built as you make progress.

Will buildings like the Pyramids and the Hagia Sophia get graphical models on the map like they have in CK2?

• Some special buildings will be visible on the map. Both the Pyramids and the Hagia Sophia are examples of those. We haven't added them all of them to the map just yet.

Is there a graphical distinction between buildings of different cultures on the map? I honestly can't really see any.

• There is a difference, yes. It might be difficult to tell from the zoom level I used for most of the screenshots though. They won't look the same in India as in Europe for example.

Cultures & Cultural Innovations

Is there a Briton culture? Icelandic?

• We have three Brythonic cultures (Cornish, Welsh, & Breton), but Briton in the Roman sense is long-dead by 867, and British in the modern sense is almost a thousand years away.
• Icelandic, as in CK2, is represented by Iceland alone retaining Norse culture in 1066.

Does the technology you have access to, say succession laws, depend on the characters culture or the province culture of the capital?

• Character culture! And, well, sure! I don't think your vassals are likely to necessarily take that well, and the peasants will resent some uppity foreigner coming in and telling them that their traditions are bunkum (at least until you educate them till they think they're Greek too). Selling your local traditions down the line for technological advancement is, sadly, a bit of a human tradition, I'm afraid.

Does this imply that cultural heads don't have to be independent? some of the earlier screenshots seem to imply they had to be independent?

• Cultural heads do not have to be independent.
• Indeed, many won't be, since we have more than a few mighty empires scattered around that totally subsume cultures within their borders.

Also how hard a requirement is there on the system for there to always be a cultural head?

• It is actually technically possible not to have a head (you'd need to have absolutely _no_ landed rulers of that culture), but you're not disadvantaged for it.
• Such cultures just get a random fascination and innovate as though they had a cultural head with poor (but not terrible) learning.

How will new, but historical cultures (e.g. Portuguese) emerge in CK3?

• Depends on the culture: some come about via decision, some via event, so it's fairly case-by-case.
• Typically, a new culture takes all non-special innovations from its predecessor(s): for instance, Norman takes all of the non-special innovations from both French and Norse.

Are there still cultural specific features like Basque/Zhangzhung equality and Tanistry?

• With some exceptions, those are mostly special innovations now (or decided by faith doctrine, if appropriate), but yes, they're still around!
• To be clear: special innovations are restricted in where/who can develop them, but not where they can be used. Irish characters could still use tanistry in India, if they ended up there.

Since technology is related to culture; if I’m a Celtic ruler and own a lot of Norse provinces; will I be able to have Viking Longships?

• Actually, yes! Per the dev diary, if either a certain percentage of counties within Scandinavia were to become Irish, or if a certain total percentage of Irish counties were in Scandinavia, you'd be able to start unlocking the longships innovation, as your culture would have effectively become a part of the Scandinavian cultural sphere.

Will spouses' culture have an effect on culture opinion?

• At launch, no, but we really want to do more with spouses in the game over-time, emphasizing the important role they often tended to play in administering to the realm and as a figurehead for popular (and unpopular) policies.

Will Dutch be in the German culture group? Will French in the finished game be more culturally divided? Lastly, as a Belgian, I'm bothered by the cultural division in what's modern day Belgium...

• Dutch is in the Central Germanic culture group, I'm afraid. Not that it didn't have close links to the Scandinavian cultures, just not as close as to Franconian (and, to a much lesser extent, sorta-Saxon).
• Culture is also not always based on language, even if the judgement is a bit arbitrary and that's the usual baseline: see the Vlachs chumming it up with the South Slavs despite speaking Romance languages which would very determinedly not be mutually-intelligible with Bulgarians, Serbians, and so on.
• French will just be Occitan and French at release. :) A little unfair, I know, but polishing the culture map is one of those tasks that we can keep going at on and on and on forever. Aaaaaaaand, to be honest, probably will. So, as with most other culture fractalising suggestions so far, never say never!
• On Brabant & Flanders: I'll have a discussion with some people internally and see if we've got a specific reason for why they are the way they are. ;) Won't promise you anything back, but if it's an oversight, we'll look into it!

Let's say I'm Finnish and embraced Greek culture, will my Finnish provinces be able to train cataphracts?

• Cataphracts, and all cultural MaA, are men-at-arms, so they're not trained directly by a county.
• In your scenario, you'd purchase them as normal, and they'd effectively be imports from Greece coming to serve at your court in exchange for their pay. Sort of a reverse-Varangian thing, which is kinda a cool AAR concept.

How will empires thrive/decay?

• Similarly to CK2 - it is all up to the top liege and their vassals on how they decide to work.
• The larger the realm, the harder it's to control as a single person. With added personal schemes, factions, vassal contracts and factions there is a lot more granularity as to how an empire can be controlled, or how it can be destroyed from the inside.

Will we be able to create our own/custom Kingom and Empire titles?

• Yes, forming Custom Kingdoms and Empires is a thing

Will "In Taberna" be available in the game as a background song?

• Fan favourite La Taberna will make a return.

What are some ways that a character can change his or her culture?

• Through Education or a Decision is the most common, events can change it too

If a culture acquires a region-specific innovation, will it keep it if it moves to a different region?

• Innovations are never lost once they are unlocked, the knowledge has been gained by your culture

City sprawl will be a thing?

• It will not be something we have for release.

Approximately how many cultures have unique innovations?

• Every cultures will have access to a special Innovation that is only available to a select group of cultures.
• Sometimes it is completely unique to them (Scottish Schiltron, for example) while in other instances it is shared among several related cultures (such as Horse Archers).

Art Focus

Do characters portraits change if they become fat or malnourished, or if ladies become pregnant?

• Yes, yes and yes.

I would love to see buildings sprawling around holdings!

• When making the holdings for the base game our main focus was on making sure that they were easily readable and a clear sense of progression could be seen over time.
• For release we aren't including a building sprawls system, but we have heard the feedback and we have people in the project that are keen to see the sprawl make a return. So while it wont make it in for release, we may see it come back in the future to help show the growth of provinces.

What about cavalry unit models?

• There are no cavalry unit models at release, but we don't rule it out that might be something we add in the future.

Coat of arms seems off-centered and cutting off animal parts on the shields.

• Those cantons obscuring the charges are actually based directly on some historical references, mostly English and Norman. Here's a real example of the Sharingbourne arms from the Powell Roll (c. 1348).
• Good spot with the frame being off-centre, we're checking this.

How flexible is the heraldic system going to be? Will it change my coat of arms when I manage to unite the Kingdoms of England and Bohemia? Will this be represented in the coat of arms when I form the Anglobohemian empire?

• We do have dynamic quartering for cadet dynasties, but for realms/titles we played it safe and only made a handful of historical examples ready for release.
• It's entirely possible that it's something we could expand on in the future though.

Will there be an ingame CoA editor at launch, like with the ck2 ruler designer DLC?

• No fancy editor at launch, unfortunately. The script that drives our CoA is really powerful though, and it's what we use in-house, so it will be possible to make some really nice stuff if you take the time to learn it.

Can we mod the Coat of Arms?

• Very editable! The textures are simply raw elements (e.g. a lion or a cross) and then we position and colour them in script.

Will the hair colors for the barber be locked based on your ethnicity?

• Barber will be unlocked for hairstyles, hair types, hair colors and any mixture of clothing.
• You can be an European Duke wearing Indian Armor, or a Mongolian raider wearing crusader armor if you wish.

What is the pixel size of the dynastic emblems?

• 128x128.

Is there an option to make the interface a smaller or bigger?

• There is an option available to change the GUI scaling.

Is there support for vector graphics for heraldry and CoA?

• CoA are puzzled together with .dds file elements that are up to 256x256.

What is the resolution of the map files? (asking for modding purposes)

• 8192x4096.

Decisions

What is the "butterfly" logo under the character portrait?

• An indicator of which lifestyle you've chosen! In this case it's a pair of hands for Theology.

For pilgrimages are you allowed to take your spouse and/or your children along?

• It is a journey you must undertake without your family, but you might bump into other characters of your faith on the journey!

Do religion specific festivals exist? Things like Ramadan, Easter, and so on?

• No system for such festivals are going to be in the game on release, but it would be great if we could add it further down the line

Events Scripting

If you would like to utilize one "minor inline trigger" for another seperate script. Would it be best to referense to that file, create an identical inline trigger or edit it out from the original and move the trigger to an shared file?

• Assuming the new use case is in a separate file, you'd move the trigger to a shared scripted trigger database (for maximum Script Hygiene).

Do we have variables in ck3 to work with?

• Yes! We have a set_variable function with a fairly broad amount of utility, which can act as an ordinary variable (taking value from a number of places), a boolean, a flag, or a few other sundry options.

These ordered_lists and the math will be quite nice. And the first_valid trigger is neat as well. Is there something similar for the scene background?

• There isn't currently a first_valid system for anything but triggered copy, as far as I know, I'm afraid.
• As for lists, certainly! We've got scripted lists (per the diary), temporary lists (existing for a single block of script), & global lists (as you're wanting here).

Is there an "overwrite/update" functionality for events? And speaking of all those fancy new triggers, commands and on_actions: What are your favourite new additions when compared to CK2?

• Currently, we do not have an overwrite/update function.
• As for which is my favourite, gosh, difficult. I didn't get a chance to show it off this dev diary, but I think I'd have to say random_in_list is the one that I personally get the most use out of! Filter through a load of appropriate characters for an event, add them to a list, then pick a random character from that list according to a set of weights I tweak to my preference for interest. Lots of flexibility, and let's you put in just so much drama tailored to your personal preference.
• Want to grab all your vassals, courtiers, close family, then pick out the one with the most and largest claims? Boom, simple, easy, robust. Want to do the same but instead find the one that has the best murder/attempted murder secret against someone important to you? Same list, different weights, only marginally more difficult. Want to find the character in that list with the most missing body-parts and infectious diseases? Easy, doable. :D

Does that mean that they can have more than 4 options (or that the "more" option to cycle through is automatically generated)?

• Although the "more" option is not automatically generated, we do not have a hard limit of four options, though the base title certainly prefers to remain at four options or less without a more cycle.

Do you use a GUI of some kind to manage all these, and visualize the relationships?

• Hand-crafted in the editor, m'friend. Which editor varies according to personal taste (as long as it works), but the most common ones by far are Sublime & Notepad++.

Are the ai_values the same ones as in CK2? And what's their value range?

• I believe we have a couple of new ones, though I think it's outside my purview to discuss which ones. The range is -100 to +100.

Is event_target still around and has there been any important changes to how it works?

• They are called saved scopes these days, mainly cause event target got conflated with what that means in code and script documentation, they function pretty much the same you do save_scope_as = name to save them and then scope:name to find them.

Are pre-triggers still in?

• No, they proved to be fairly unnecessary when you don't use mean time to happen for everything so aren't checking lots of things regularly all the time to the point that going into the script system to evaluate triggers becomes a noticeable overhead.

in CK2 a common scripting sleight of hand was to have the Pope trigger certain maintenance or narrative events since he's always around - will CK3 use a similar system or is there something in-built to take care of those kinds of situations?

• There is a yearly_global_pulse which is fired one on Jan 1st every year and has no scope set as root or any saved scopes, that can be used as a master caller to run maintenance effects and trigger events reliably instead of needing to use a character as a dummy stand in like the Pope.

Does the code for creating characters differ in CK3 from CK2 significantly, and/or has any new functionalities been added to it?

• There are a fair few more bells and whistles on it, mainly to make it generate better random characters in an entire culture group or inheriting a dynasty into a new house and being able to be given random traits from a list of valid ones.
• To make it a bit easier to generate nicer random characters more easily there is also a new database of scripted character templates so you can make something like new_warrior_character as a template and give them a list of things you want them to be able to get for example always giving them a martial education and a lifestyle trait that is military or fighting based as well as being able to specify some min-max bounds for martial skill and prowess.
• The rest of the character's info will be determined via defaulting to whoever employs them for things like faith or specified/overridden in the create_character invocation in script.

So if I understand it there won't be the CK2 system where it's create_character and then five different types of create_character for every attribute/education type (i.e. create priest, create soldier, etc.), and instead I can make a custom create_character like, for example, "new_hot_character" which will make a character that always as a minimum has traits to make them attractive?

• Exactly! There is a line in the effect where you would do template = new_hot_character and that will then be the base for them

When you say there's a database of scripted character templates, do you mean there's a unique file or folder that is focused purely on scripting new character creation templates, or this is more just a standard scripted effect?

• Its a unique database folder, common/scripted_character_templates, where the entries made in files there have a key and then all the various values you want and can use it in the effect like I mentioned above by doing template = key_of_entry.

Stress

Will pets alleviate stress?

• Yes!

Will AI consider stress when making decisions?

• The AI will naturally take decisions that are in-line with their own personality, which should limit the stress that they acquire in general.
• However, we're looking into ways to further disincentive them from picking options which give them Stress when they are already at a high Stress Level.

Is there a chance that the characters could inadvertently kill themselves while trying to de-stress?

• Yes, that is possible. Be careful!

will there be a 0 stress level, or the stress levels start from 1? And will there be some event linked to achieving a lower stress level?

• Yes, all characters start at Stress Level 0 which has no penalties.
• Right now we don't have degrees of coping mechanism traits; however, the game would support this for mods and/or if we decide to revisit things at a later point.

Is suicide one of the options for some level 3 stressed characters?

• Suicide is an option for characters in some situations, including when they have high Stress Levels.
• It's not a decision to be made lightly though, as the act can have notable repercussions for your successor...

Are all the coping mechanisms based on addictive forms of 'debauchery'?

• There are more innocent forms as well! While not every ruler will find themselves predisposed to them, other Coping Mechanisms include journaling and exercise.

Will there be any downsides to coping mechanisms, and counter to that, will there be any upsides to not having any coping mechanisms?

• There's downsides to almost all coping mechanisms, with the exceptions of Athletic and Journaller, and those are very rare. In fact, I think Journaller might have downsides too, if someone finds your journal.
• Anyway, some examples: going to brothels frequently can result in STD's, being Irritable and choosing to 'Lash Out' can damage your vassal's opinions of you, etc.

Can you die from stress?

• Stress can lead to your death, either by making your health worse or giving you a heart attack, though it has to be at extreme levels for that to happen

Audio

CK2 had a lot of problems with audio. The sound you hear when most events trigger is 4 seconds wrong and quickly becomes an irritation. The soundtrack is nice to listen to for the first 100 hours with the game but it can't provide a good experience over countless game session you're supposed to have. Glad developers seem to realize those problems.

• Soundtrack getting tiresome after 100hrs is one of the reasons we made a different music system this time around. Hopefully it will be more contextual now. :)
• Also there is more music then in any of our other titles.

Will medievalized music made in our day and age be used? Or just music created during the age of the game?

• Music for CK3 is now dynamic, reacting to player's actions. (e.g. if you begin a war, the music will change to reflect being at war). There are a lot of context cues that modify the ambient sound as well as music.
• Music was made to keep the immersive feeling of ruling medieval time realms.

Is the ambiance sound on the map tied to geographical location or tied to terrain type?

• Well, not to get nerdy it's a mix of different systems. Some are based on the terrain type and other ambiances are spawned based on the location.

Feudal Contracts

When a vassal dies, does their same contract get passed to their heir?

• If the person dying is a higher tier than the heir then the heir gets the person's dying's contract.
• If they are the same tier or below then the heir if already landed will keep their current contract.

What does coinage rights do? Also, in one of the preview videos of the game we could see something called fortification rights that you could also grant to your vassals. Is that still a thing? How does it work?

• Coinage rights give the vassal 0.3 monthly development growth in their capital county and costs the liege 0.02 in development growth.
• Fortification rights is still in, the character I was playing just did not have that innovation unlocked in their culture. If they do then it appears and can give the vassal cheaper castle holding and build costs and a fort level whilst making the liege pay more for their castle build costs.

How does the Council Right work? The vassal is automatically added to council in Advisor role? Or just that when a vassal asks for a position on the council, refusing would incur tyranny/bad rep?

• They get free use of the demand council position interaction, which the liege cannot refuse, allowing them to pick a council position and get it. Hooks can also be used for that interaction if you do not have the council rights.
• Of course, this means the council rights position is limited to only as many council positions you have that your vassals can occupy.

Will we be able to negotiate with a group of vassals at once, or copy-paste contracts? For example, it might be interesting for a King of England and Scotland to have a different set of obligations for his English and Scottish vassals, but it would be quite a hassle to have to change half a dozen contracts in the same fashion if, say, one wants their English vassals to provide more taxes and less levies.

• Currently they are handled individually, which to a degree self mitigates it by virtue of encouraging you to make dukes to control the counts and kings to manage the dukes etc.
• But it is something we are keeping in mind for the future to see if the management of them becomes too annoying and how we can ease that.
• I would argue that if we need a copy and paste button then the system has become too micro and that is in itself another issue.

When taking over a vassal from someone else, or vassalizing an independent ruler, what will the contract be set to? Will we immediately start negotiating?

• I answered this at the top of this post, but its basically you keep yours unless you had none of the person you are inheriting from is better.
• If you are a brand new vassal then its default tax and levies and no fine print options.

When granting an unlanded courtier a title, will we be able to freely set the contract? I mean, i they don't like it, sure, we can find someone else...

• It will be the default as above.

How does it look on the other side when the liege (or vassal) presses the magic button?

• You will be informed of the change to your contract and deal with it ;)
• The AI won't do too many changes at once though and of course if you really dislike it you can rebel to be free of it all.

How will the contract work for non-feudal realms (e.g. Clans)? Do they have similar feature?

• Only Feudal characters use the contract with individual obligations, the Clans have a static contract which scales based on opinion.

Is is moddable? If a mod adds new government types, can they be set to use the Feudal contracts mechanic?

• Yep it is fully moddable, the government definitions have a list of the contract options they have available to them so you can add different contract options there to new or existing governments.

Poor Duke Otto is being forced to pay higher taxes against his will and wishes, but he still likes his king even more? as seen by the +5 opinion modifier, despite this being an act of tyranny by his liege.

• That value is the opinion modifiers directly from the contract options, so the +5 there is coming from the fact he still has low levies which gives a +5.
• The tyranny is then separate from the contract's obligations but because you gave an unfair one.
• Could probably clear up that is not Duke Otto's opinion of you overall but the modifier sum from the obligations picked. Will note that down.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have feudal contracts tied to titles rather than people?

• I'd disagree it offers more technical flexibility, it'd offer more technical confusion and nightmarish rule managing scenarios.
• And what you really are asking for here is multiple lieges and independent people partially being vassals, which is a whole other can of worms that would be a technical, user experience, and design nightmare for, in my opinion, pretty limited gain.

Is the opinion penalty from high obligations permanent?

• As far as I remember yes, the penalty is permanent for the passive opinion from obligation levels.

If a liege and a vassal have different cultures, and therefore access to different fine print options through different innovations, which ruler's culture determines what options are available?

• They are taken from the liege.

Can vassals force their liege to change their contracts via factions or rebellions?

• They can force them to change crown authority levels, but factions cannot change individual contracts.
• That can be done through trading points (e.g. lower taxes for more troops) or risk gaining tyranny if you do this unjustly.
• Hooks will let you change them without having to trade off points!

Can you suggest contracts as a vassal to your liege?

• Vassals can negotiate a different contract with their liege yes, they have the added requirement of proposing a fair trade unlike the liege who can make unfair ones and gain tyranny.

will you be able to use stress as a weapon against your rivals?

• Well, in a way. Murdering their close family if they're compassionate will definitely stress them out.
• Keeping them in your dungeon/torturing them will also induce a lot of stress. There are ways.

If a liege and a vassal have different cultures, and therefore access to different fine print options through different innovations, which ruler's culture determines what options are available?

• They are taken from the liege.

Are vassal levy/tax contributions also dependant on their relations with you in addition to the feudal contract?

• Feudal Contracts are just that - a contract. Opinion/relations do not play into it, but a pissed-off vassal will be likely to go for the Liberty faction in order to lower their obligations. The more extortionate the contract, the less they will like you. Opinion is still a thing in Clan realms though, so there you have to make sure all your vassals love you!

Portraits system

Will all physical traits (aside from the obvious ones like dwarfism and gigantism) of characters be decided by genetics, and not just facial ones? Like height, length of arms, etc?

• There are giant, dwarf, hunchbacked, clubfoot and spindly traits that affect your physique aside from face.
• You can genetically inherit height or type of body build as well, but you can't genetically engineer yourself a family with naturally long arms if that's what you are asking for.

In this Dev Diary, what disease do they all have, respectively?

• Respectively: Typhus, Smallpox, Leprosy, Great Pox (Syphilis), Bubonic plague, Bubonic plague

What about Attractive or Ugly traits?

• we have tiered traits for beauty and ugliness. Characters with pretty traits will also visually age slower.

Is there any Inbred trait?

• Yes, there is an Inbred trait, though we don't have genetics for inbreeding.
• Characters with "pretty" traits will look (on average) "prettier", while "ugly ones" will look "uglier".

How will the characters look once they are dead?

• They will be grayed out, but you can click on them to see how they were before they died.

Will there be an option for lepers to hide their faces behind masks?

• The masks are used by disfigured characters by default.
• If you're using the option to hide graphical looking diseases they would be worn by lepers as well.
• It's a good idea to make them selectable in the barbershop though, I'll note that down.

Will all characters age with the same speed, or could you have grey hair already in your twenites in CK3? Same with balding or wrinkles?

• There is some randomness (and inheritance) in the way people age.
• Also, as Nicou pointed out, beautiful people age more slowly in the game.

It is perfectly possible to mod DNAs as well as adding new ones? Should I interpret this as a sign that entirely new sets of body parts could technically be modded in?

• Yes it should technically be possible to mod in new types of attachments to the body.

What is it that prevents the drift towards averages on the inter-regional scale? Are environmental factors accounted for in any way? It seems to me that over numerous generations nobles from different regions will start to look similar.

• Newly generated characters should reduce this effect as they will use one of the preset ethnicities.

Do characters instantly grow a huge beard when they reach a certain age or do they start with more subtle ones?

• Beards are one of the few things that we couldn't make gradual, unfortunately. So they will appear from age 18. Stubble, however, does fade in gradually. I would love to add growing beards at a later point though.

What do the less nightmarish versions of diseased characters look like?

• They use either the "common illness" effect (pale and hollow eyed) or a face mask for the very severe ones.

Do we inherit our parents body types?

• There is some inherited variation in body types making characters genetically more skinny, chubby or muscular. Those are all sliders of course. But the greatest variation comes from in-game factors.
• Height will vary quite greatly even when not affected by a trait. The height distribution is based roughly on medieval peoples' heights (meaning averages are shorter than today but tall people - even by modern standards - will still appear occasionally)

Why is some of the clothing so extremely shiny? Even for silk I think this is somewhat overdone and could be scaled back. It also seems like way too many characters wear silk if that's what it's supposed to be.

• The selection of characters in the diary are heavily skewed towards more high ranking characters, simply because they are more important in the game and also have a bit more of the cool stuff when it comes to clothes and headgear.
• In hindsight, I probably could have included more low ranking characters for a better representation in the screenshots. But there's a lot of characters wearing clothes of simpler fabrics as well.

Can characters that spend time in the south or north get tan/pale temporary modifiers?

• That's a very nice idea but unfortunately not something we have implemented. Characters of Mediterranean ethnicity do have more tanned skin though, of course.

Is it possible for you to see if your spouse has cheated on you? For example if you are both french in CK2 and she cheated on you with a German, you could sometimes see a German child.

• It will usually not be super obvious when the spouse and the real father are of similar ethnicities but there might be giveaway signs such as hair colour or an unusual feature.
• Of course, in the case of less closely related ethnicities, it would be more apparent.

Is there an option to turn of the 3D animations specifically? Or is performance impacted greatly by the 3D animations/portraits?

• Yes there is an option to turn off portrait animations.

Do we inherit our parents hair colour?

• It is a simplified system compared to real genetics so it will have roughly the same chance to pick either parents' hair colour.

You have probably researched it but pretty faces are mostly symmetrical faces. It should therefore be possible to create pretty faces. Is this the solution you chose?

• Pretty and beautiful faces will generally be closer to the average (less extreme features) as well as have smoother and more youthful looking skin.
• And the opposite is the case for ugly characters.

I think I spotted a little case of incomplete beheading, or possibly a neckseam?

• Well spotted. It's a known issue and I'm hoping we can get a fix in.

I know we have giant and dwarf traits for height, but will there be varying heights for normal characters without those traits as well??

• Yes "normal height" characters will have heights that vary quite a bit, and it is inherited like other genes

Performance & AI

Will we as modder able to start our own thread?

• No, but significant parts of the script system is handled in parallel.

How much does the GPU have to say for the performance? I have a i5 6600 CPU, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, so slightly better CPU than your old rig and sameish RAM I guess, but my current GPU is an AMD RX460, which I believe is somewhat lower than your old GPU.

• GPU performance can be a bit odd. Usually the impact is pretty minimal as long as it is powerful enough to maintain 60 FPS, and then gets a bigger and bigger impact on tick speed as it gets worse than that.
• Going beyond what's needed for 60 FPS does tend to speed the game up a bit, but it's less of a difference than a CPU makes.
• Your CPU is a bit worse than my old CPU (15% or so weaker), and your GPU significantly worse (4x weaker), so chances are your performance will be worse than in my video.
• Your GPU is worse than our recommended GPU (40% or so worse), but significantly better than our min spec GPU. So you might need to turn down some graphical settings.
• My best guess is that with lower settings your framerate will be fine but less stable than mine, while your tick rate will probably be a decent amount lower but still pretty fast.

Will big scripts affect the performance? I know you guys used the same scripting system in development, so did you run any tests to see the extend of say an immersion mod will slow the game down? Any optimization done to this?

• Definitely. Script is a major performance cost. The main optimization is the parallelization. In some cases we also provide triggers or list builders that have more constraints but are more performant.

Will there be an AI difficulty setting?

• There's no AI difficulty setting. There's an overall difficulty setting, but that has no effect on the AI code.
• You almost never see AI settings in strategy games that actually make the AI smarter at higher levels, because strategy games are usually so complicated that it's usually not feasible to make an AI that corresponds to more than "normal" difficulty. Which is why they tend to get boosts instead. Only going down in difficulty tends to make the AI less smart.

What would've been the disadvantages of having the rendering done on the main thread and the gamestate management on a sub-thread?

• The thread that handles all the UI updating tells the render thread to talk to the GPU, so we haven't run into any issues there.

What I take away from this dev diary is, that CK3 will most likely run even faster than CK2 on most systems, is that correct?

• On my machine (before upgrading) the tick rate is the same, but the frame rate significantly better and more stable.
• So the main difference I expect most people (with good enough GPUs to run CK3 well) is improved frame rate.
• Machines beyond 4 physical cores likely do a bit better than CK2 on the tick rate thanks to improved threading.

I have Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU and Nvidia Geforce GT 745M laptop, can I play this game at all?

• That GPU is less than half as powerful as the Intel one we currently have listed in the min spec, so your chances probably aren't great I'm afraid.
• The CPU would do fine though.

What's the horizontal axis of that graph? Seconds, minutes, in-game years?

• Years

How many types of graphical settings are there in CK 3?

• The standard 3D graphics settings, plus some CK-specific stuff.

Do you have SSAO option for people with high-end gpu ?

• We've got SSAO (Screen space ambient occlusion) for the character portraits.

Did you experiment with double buffering game state, or at least parts of it?

• While double buffering definitely has some advantages, it also massively complicates a lot of things, and essentially means having to rework a lot of systems from the ground up.
• The time spent locking is low enough at this point that it seems unlikely for double buffering to be worth it.

Max speed seems to be a lot faster than in CK2 depending on your specs, are the other speeds similarly effected?

• Speed 5 is uncapped, speeds 1 through 4 have a target tick rate, so don't depend on the speed of your PC (unless your PC isn't fast enough to achieve that speed).
• The target tick rates don't match exactly to CK2; they've been tweaked a bit.

Sometimes in CK2 the AI does stupid stuff like wasting piety and gold when it really should be saving them to become a king

• The AI does have some systems specifically for this. The AI prioritizes atm keeping the counties in its capital duchy.
• All money the AI earns is divided between a few different pools:

   Short term: Vast majority of expenses
   Long term: Creating titles, buildings, a few other things
   Warchest: Savings in case of war; needs to be full in order for it to declare
   Special: Things like the Pope trying to always keep some money around in case people ask for money

Does AI see the whole map? Or are they properly constrained by the fog of war?

• The AI simulates fog of war to some extent, so it'll stop chasing you once you're in fog of war.
• It's still vaguely aware of how many troops you have and such though

Does CK3 still disappear unimportant characters (no titles, not married, no children, etc...) or were you able to get rid of that optimization from CK2?

• That's no longer a thing.
• People with no reason to stay in your court might go wandering however.
• And once a character has been stuck wandering a while (due to there being no relevant court for them to go to, and them not matching the criteria for any of the many things that pull from the wandering character pool), their health slowly gets worse.
• So the lifespan of wanderers with nowhere to go is shorter, but they don't simply get disappeared.

Will the AI have their own gameplay style procedurally generated based on existing traits, or can you set the AI personality before the game starts? ex. Setting ALL rulers to warmongering conquerors, peaceful and defensive rulers, etc.

• It's a tricky one. AI will have a personality based on their traits and will try to act accordingly, but you can't set all AI in the world to be the same, since every character is so unique.

Modding

Will there be a documentation of all the available conditions, commands, scopes etc. on release?

• There is a script_docs console command which outputs all triggers, effects, scope types, event target links, modifiers, and on actions to log files.

What about mods changing localisation files (like improved localisations for other languages)? Will they affect checksum?

• Localization and gui still effects the checksum yes as both need to be checked otherwise using the new more powerful gui and localization system mods could cause cheating and out of sync issues.

In terms of modding, is it possible to create non-human characters, such as the dragons in AGOT?

• It should be possible but with some limitations. Humanoids like orcs and elves should be easier to achieve

Where else can we add new UI elements? Will we be able to create new interfaces like Empire of China's?

• You can add new elements under any existing interface, so it should be entirely possible to create your own interfaces for mod only features

Will it be possible to mod higher tiers than Emperors?

• No, the tiers are not moddable, its too core a part of the game code to be changeable in mods easily

Can we add new holding types via modding?

• Yes, that's pretty easy to do

Will we be able to add new levels to traits?

• Yes

How will map modding work? One of my biggest gripes with Imperator Rome modding was that the map, country, and history setup was all in a single massive setup file.

• We have a similar split of files like CK2 did with various map, province and history folders containing the files to change. Not a handful of massive csv files like Imperator has.

Has the character id system been changed?

• Historical Character IDs can be any string now.

How moddable are succession laws?

• You can mod in new ones but they will need to pick a specific rule to use which does have a hardcoded number, you can make your own partition law with extra requirements or fancy names but you cannot make a new type of succession as that is in code.

Legacies

How many of these should one dynasty reasonably expect to fill out over the course of any given game?

• That varies wildly depending on your playstyle. If you're the type of player that want to consolidate everything in the same realm (classic map-painter) you're gonna accrue less renown than if you're just planting your dynasty all over the place, constantly making sure your children are married to powerful external rulers, etc. I'd say between 1-2.5 is 'normal'. You could probably unlock all of them if you spread your dynasty all over the world, but no matter how you do it it won't be a speedy affair.

Do legacies have 'history', e.g. Seljuks get some of Warfare legacies at 1066 start?

• We considered it, and it'd be possible to do, but was decided against because we didn't really want to railroad you down a specific path if you choose to play as any of those. Regardless, prominent royal families like the Seljuks are going to gain their first Legacies wayyyy faster than most Dynasties.

How does AI Dynast head chooses the legacy? Based on his personality traits?

• They'll stick to one path, so they won't waste your hard-earned renown if they usurp your position as Dynasty Head

Is there a cap on how much fertility you can get?

• Fun thing is that as we developed the game, I progressively lowered the fertility bonus from the Kin Legacy, as I underestimated how effective it would be. Its first iteration has 25%, and literally overpopulated the world. 10% is much more reasonable, but still significant. Fecund actually uses a Rabbit icon!

Does Legacy automatically build up as we progress in the game or do we have to do something about those , say like setting a Lifestyle for a Chosen Ruler or Leader in the game ?

• As long as you have at least one landed ruler somewhere you'll get a small trickle of Renown, but to actually unlock anything you have to spread your dynasty far & wide. You don't have to select a focus or anything, that's for Lifestyles.

Does this stack when multiple tiers of vassalship are filled with dynasty members or does it only apply to the direct domain/ just once per county?

• Control modifiers are always only applied to your own Domain, otherwise stacking would be insane.

Achievements

I assume Ironman-Mode is once more necessary for the achievements?

• It is indeed!

The Achievement "Sibling Rivalry" has to be done with one of the siblings? Or just the start?

• With one of the Jimena siblings: Urraca, Sancho, Alfonso, or Garcia. We actually do allow the achievement for Elvira also, but she starts unlanded, so she's not playable.

I'm curious about the "Endgame Tags" that we finished out CKII with, like formable India, Outremer, Slavic Union, and so on - any confirmation whether there'll be similar ones in CKIII? If not, I might have an idea for my first mod.

• India, Outremer, & Slavia are all in the title as formable via decision, though we don't have an endgame tags system like EUIV does.

The battle of tours was at Poitiers, far away from Iberia. What does this mean for the given Achievement?

• Both sides of the Pyrenees, Tours was symbolic of the end of Islamic expansion into Western Europe. Honestly, how true that actually is is probably up for some debate (after all, the Umayyad Caliphate was only about twenty years out from the Abbasid Revolution at the time), but it holds a certain emotional & cultural significance nonetheless. :) Poitiers itself isn't particularly relevant beyond being the site of the battle.

Videos

Announcements

• Game Vision
• Story Trailer
• Gameplay Teaser

News, Video Update

• November
• December
• January
• February
• March
• April & May
• June
• July
• The World in 867
• The World in 1066
• August

Introducing CK3

• Characters
• Dynasty
• Succession
• Schemes
• Vassals
• Domains
• Money
• Technology
• War
• Battles
• Religion

Press & Reviews

Reviews

• Long Live the New King of Historical Strategy - 10/10
• There's a New Crusader King on the Throne - 94/100
• I Heard you Like to Murder your own Children - A renaissance for strategy gaming
• Rewriting history is unsurpisingly a whole lot of fun - 4.5/5
• CK3 is everything fans of the series could have hoped for, and more - 10/10
• CK3 is full of infinite possibilities! - 5/5
• A game you can play for hundreds of hours without getting tired of it - 4.5/5
• Crusader Kings III is my Game Of The Year so far - 5/5
• Crusader Kings 3 is PDX's return to vast grand strategy! - 9/10
• CK3 is a worthy heir to the throne - 9/10
• Crusader Kings 3, a compelling strategy game! - 9/10
• The new gold standard for the genre - 9/10
• Spazio Games - Italian - 9/10
• Gamestar - Deutsch
• CanardPC - Français
• Игромания - Pусский

Articles

• Rock Paper Shotgun
• PCGamesN
• PCWorld
• Gamespot
• Gamesreactor
• USGamer
• Vice
• GameWatcher
• IGN: Crusader Kings 3 Preview: Get Medieval With It
• PC Gamer: Crusader Kings 3 sticks to what it does best
• PC Gamer: I'm obsessed with Crusader Kings 3's character models
• Polygon: Crusader Kings 3 is more fun when you play it like The Sims
• Kotaku: Crusader Kings III Is A Kinder, Gentler Crusader Kings
• RPS: Hands-on preview: Crusader Kings 3 is the RPG that will suck you into grand strategy
• Vice: 'Crusader Kings III' Wants to Be a Medieval Soap Opera for Everyone
• PCGamesN: I played Crusader Kings 3 for an hour before I actually started playing
• The Sixth Axis: Hands On Crusader Kings III – a new era of intrigue, religious wars and grand strategy
• Twinfinite: Crusader Kings 3 Preview: Playing Cutthroat Medieval Sims Is Awesome
• Gamereactor: Crusader Kings III - Hands-On Impressions
• The Gamer: Crusader Kings III Preview: A Rich, Immersive Game Of Prestige
• CGM: Crusader Kings 3 Hands-On Preview
• CanardPC - Français
• GameStar - Deutsch
• Gry-online - Polskie
• Dtf - Pусский

Videos

• IGN: 6 Minutes of Crusader Kings 3 Gameplay [6:29]
• IGN: Crusader Kings 3 - Map Overview [3:21]
• GameSpot: Crusader Kings 3 Made Me Feel Stupid But I Loved It Anyway [7:49]
• PC Gamer: Five BIG improvements in Crusader Kings 3 [7:02]
• PC Games: Crusader Kings 3 | PREVIEW | Mittelalter-Strategiespiel angespielt [7:27 - German]
• GameStar: Crusader Kings 3 ist ein geniales Mittelalter-RPG - aber der Strategie-Teil hat noch Probleme [11:18 - German]
• GamersGlobal: Crusader Kings 3 in der Preview: Immer Ärger mit der Dynastie (GERMAN) [7:52 - German]
• Навигатор игрового мира: Впечатления от закрытой превью-версии Crusader Kings 3 (превью - обзор) [9:48 - Russian]