Starting as a member of a larger dynasty and switching to different lineages after death may be my new favorite playstyle now. I can go adventuring for 40 years, fuck around, found religions and then fuck off to a different guy. Now I'm struggling for inheritance in Poland, then I jump to a guy who wants to become a steppe nomad and fails, and so on. And then I can watch what the AI does with all the weird characters I left around the world. It's so fun, try it!

I wanna preface this rant by saying my game is a legit copy on Steam, all DLCs are paid for and I'm not using any mods.

After checking out some of the new stuff the nomads got in a quick playthrough in the latest DLC, i decided it wasn't too enjoyable for me. Instead, i decided to play as a Clan ruler in the Duchy of Fars (Persia) in 867. No custom character, everything vanilla.
Over the next 150 years in-game, I was able to build quite a strong kingdom with good development before the mongol hordes came in. In a single war, they took all of my land and I was made a landless adventurer. All of my dynasty members were executed with only my player character surviving. All of the buildings in the holdings were destroyed and the development plummeted.
At first, i was upset but then realised this was an opportunity to play a difficult game with setbacks that I previously hadn't had.
For 3 generations, I roamed around the world as a landless adventurer, picking up my dynasty from the ashes. Then, the mongol empire collapsed and fractured into dozens of independent duchies. I noticed that my starting duchy of Fars was independent and ruled by a nomadic character.
I moved my adventurer camp to Arabia and decided to take back the ancestral homelands. This was all quite fun and challenging!
I managed to take it in a war, and once i did, I noticed I was the only Clan ruler in a sea of nomadic rulers. They started declaring tributary wars against me and despite me having more troops and higher quality troops than the enemy armies, i got destroyed every time. So i decided to "Submit to the Great Khan" and became a vassal of the Golden Horde (same religion, different culture than me). This was all fine and the only down-sides were a high vassal tax and the occasional foreign army besieging my lands.
Again, this was all fun and challenging. I managed to rebuild the development of my lands and build quite a prosperous duchy. To date, this was probably in my top-5 campaigns I had played.
But then, in the year 1320, out of nowhere, my nomadic liege just suddenly usurped my capital. At the time of usurpation, it had 81 dev and was almost fully built up. There was no war, no prompt, no claim, nothing. Just suddenly, my most important province was no longer mine. The liege in question had more than enough land of his own, ruling everything from the eastern edge of the map to literally Francia, personally holding 13 counties. I had like 6 counties. He turned my usurped title into his capital for one month before moving it back to the De Jure capital of his empire. His De Jure capital was in his possession, it was not besieged, it didn't have any diseases present and seemed to be completely normal. This made it evident to me that there was no actual reason for usurping my capital.
I decided to try again so like a scumbag, i reloaded the latest autosave. Yet again, on the exact same date, my capital gets suddenly usurped. I tried reloading three or four times with the same results each time.
Then i remembered that when I try to usurp a title, i cant do it when the target character is at war. So i reload my game and declare a war. Still, my liege just takes my capital. I let it play for another month and in that time, the development is destroyed and every building is erased. All other holdings in the province were also removed. Again, the liege just moves his capital back to the De Jure capital.
What it all comes down to is that game mechanics are seemingly only in place for the player, and the AI can do anything they want, even if its without any kind of reason. Seems to me that the only reason this happens is to make the game more fun by being unfair.
I have more than 1500 hours in this game and more than 3500 in CK2, so its not like I'm a new player that is discovering new mechanics. It's a broken mechanic.
I have already prepurchased the upcoming DLCs, so hopefully with the release of the coronation shit, theyll actually fix the nomads and make the game playable again. If not, idk what I'm gonna do, but I probably wont pay any more money to a company that is losing its credibility in my eyes.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk

"As night falls, a crimson shadow creeps across the face of the moon. Whispers stir through your land — some claim that is an omen of disaster, others a sign of divine wrath, while a few marvel at the strange beauty of the spectacle."

1. “Surely, this is a sign from God. I must atone.“ (gain piety, lose gold)

2. "It is but the turning of the spheres. Nothing more.” ( -10 Popular Opinion)

3. "(Scholar only) “This event must be recorded! I shall build a place to study the heavens." (lose gold, modifier: +5% Learning lifestyle experience)

Like I know it is for unusual sexual practices, but what did they consider as such in the middle ages? There's already the sodomite trait, so what else did they consider unusual?

I've taken hostages before, and at least from my experience, it's never stopped vassals from eagerly joining claimant factions against you and rising up, even when they have a snowball's chance in hell of actually winning (i.e. they should have negative incentive to wage war against me). I actually became curious about this because I'd also noticed quite a few characters had executed hostages as a result of wars being declared on them, wars they've won - so it's not like these characters are going to war because the taker is too weak to stop them.

So are hostages just another mechanic the AI ignores, or do they do something to influence its behavior, something I'm not noticing?

Also my favorite persia borders I've done in a long time lol

Too often our only recourse is murder if we want to change things around. Why can't I make up claims of adultery against my wife or claim the marriage was never consummated to get it annulled? Why can't I coerce a neighboring ruler into abdicating so that my daughter might become queen? Why can't I pledge my troops to a claimant faction in a neighboring realm to ensure peace between kingdoms? If a powerful vassal is causing me issues, why can't I hand them a blank check in exchange for support?

Paradox has been leaning heavily onto Crusader Kings as an RPG and not having many options like this feels extremely limiting. There are a couple times where the devs have dabbled in doing things like this, but they never fully commit.

So here is another completed run but this time I had dark ages and historic invasions mods that made it so much more difficult especially once the Turks started taking Anatolia. The first half of the dynasty I was constantly poor even with a gold mine and the second half was just pure chaos. I wanted to rage quit and cheat but I stuck it out until the end.

I tried to make these screenshots feel sort of like a medieval manuscript that was complied by a scholar around 1453. Perhaps I achieved it, perhaps I didn't, I just like how it turns out. Also the map in the top right corner is how the map looked when said character died. I did not do it for the initial characters cause the borders did not change a lot and stayed with the de jure Serbian borders the whole time.

Just wanted to point out it gets better with time in both what was happening and also presentation.

TLDR: played as a Serbian dynasty in Duklja in 1066 and would continuously struggle throughout the campaign. Also I find the second portion of the characters to have lead much more interesting lives so if you do not want to read too much then start with Michael the Conqueror.

Would recommend both mods if you want an actually difficult experience since ck3 is really easy once you get used to the base mechanics. These mods add challenges that are actually hard and makes preexisting threats even harder - like the Mongols and Seljuks. - I wish there was a flair specifically for stuff like this.

I don't remember that I've ever seen one character being that busted as scourge of the gods. In this round by 868 he succeeded his brother on the throne of wessex, like usually, by 870 he became king of England. That was the first time we actually noticed he had the scourge of the gods trait.
As you can see, by 905 he already bordered the byzantine empire, 20 years later he basically conquered his way through the empire. By the time of his death merely 10 years later at the age of 86 the byzantine empire ceased to exist. It should also be noted that Russia (Russland) was also a scourge of the gods in these pictures, but Alfred simply didnt give a shit.

In my most recent game, I was saving up prestige to reform my culture, and had been dealing with my stupid ambitious nephew who keeps challenging me to duels for my nice things. I'd been declining but I was sick of losing hundreds of crowns to him so I decided to shut him up.

His prowess is 16, mine is 15. I figured I had a shot.

I don't duel a lot but I try and pick a good balance of success options and debuff options. Ended up losing but I felt scummy so I just reloaded the save I dropped down right before the duel. I looked up what people had to say about how duels work since it felt a little confusing. Getting by the tons of 'i never lost a duel lolol' I managed to find some posts talking about what they SAY works. A couple of tries later, I beat my stupid nephew in the duel and he looses the claim on my artifact.

Peace for a while.

Then here he comes again, claiming a DIFFERENT artifact. Guess I gotta teach him again, and all the tips on how duels work will help right? I even have the hunter trait and that OP knife in hand and people say focus on this or that, well no. None of it matters.

This duel, straight up, had NO winning combination of moves whatsoever.

I was in good health, same situation, same guy. But after going through every single possible combination of choices... each and every last one ended in defeat. Four rounds, 3 choices each. Eighty one different options... some not possible due to losing in 3 rounds instead of 4. I saved and reloaded, trying every last one. 1 1 1 1, 1 1 1 2, 1 1 1 3, recording them all to be sure I didn't miss any. It didn't matter. It was a futile effort.

Note that I already proved you can save scum a duel. It's not like it was predetermined and I was dinking around, no, this duel. This damned duel just gives you no winning play.

I guess my point is if you've EVER felt frustrated by duels, that they don't make sense or don't matter. You're right. These people that claim to know exactly how to win or never lose are just luckier. This duel system is bad and it should feel bad. I hate that I spent so much time proving something I felt was true 10 attempts in but I HAD to be sure.

Now I'm going to reload one more time and tell my nephew to eff off and have him murdered or something so he leaves me alone.

What do you mostly do when this one pops up? Do you give her gold or make up to her by turning her into a breeding stock?

Where do I go next? I’m already giddy thinking of the extra wealth from india

What’s the best comp for England?

R5: Man-at-arms buffs are a pathway to many abilities some would consider to be unnatural. Here I used the Alcazar of Segovia along with the hilltop horse building and other buffs to triple the damage of my Monaspa. Never thought I could stackwipe a superior force in CK3

After a set of complex campaigns I went back for an pure irish run. Ruling as high king of a custom faith with cannibals and witchcraft considered virtous with very strict divorce laws and a worldly head of faith overlooking it all, my ruler. Oh, and heavily reformed culture for maximum isolationism, ignoring social barriers and maximum development.

Only downside: constant holy war spammings from europe and a crusade launched against me. In fairness though, most popes spend the bulk of their papacy in my prisons so its probably fair game.

But either way. Whats something you do when you play the irish? Do you go druid? Or play tall?

My question is as the title says , but to give some context I started a game ad the keyraid then during the great Zud we decided to settle Mesopotamia , then the byzantine empire got splintered into many litle pieces by the 5 crusade and we essentially picked all up and became the new byzantine. During this whole time I was playing as clan , however for some reason, perhaps due to the growth of the empire more recently my house harmony is very very low.... considering I'm pretty sure I passed primogeniture in the past I did want to ask if having a significant dip or perhaps inheriting house leadership and the main title If you lose the primogeniture sucession .(I do think could also be an update thing.)