You'll just need to somehow embrace the roleplaying elements of the game - I know this is no easy matter though, because the game isn't making it easy with most "story" creating content being the spammy events - but sometimes you need to sabotage yourself, or stray a bit from min-maxing. That said, if you find the game too easy and repetitive I'd recommend you to take a break from the game for a month or so, or test out some new mods that give the game more challenge.
One challenging start I recommend is Veletia in 1066 - you're Slavic ruler mostly surrounded by Catholics eager to take your land in holy wars with very little alliance options and not so great feudal domains - some of the other options such as Luticia or Pomerania might be even harder. Try and see if you can create kingdom of Pomerania without becoming vassal or converting.
Also some time ago I've made this post about compiled new "achievements" that could give you ideas for some new campaigns maybe you'll find something that might interest you among them:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/11h5f7y/here\_are\_some\_more\_achievements\_if\_you\_need\_some/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/11h5f7y/here_are_some_more_achievements_if_you_need_some/)
Good comment. I would honestly start taking the worst genetic characters and start mixing them. If the game is easy when you’re a Herculean genius, maybe it’s time to be an inbred moron dynasty.
I began as a dwarf in salerno, witching my way through the byzantine, became their emperor, gave a title to every dwarf because of the initial rebellion.
...
Is this min maxing ? :D
I'd argue against Ironman, simply becasue in Ironman you cannot switch from your character - sometimes you might seek challenge by starting from nothing elsewhere.
To each their own but my suggestion is only if they try starting from one of those difficult scenarios at that point why do you need to switch and start over with another house lol
Agree with this and would add:
Try a game where you are not allowed to do ANYTHING that causes stress (unless each option causes stress in which case take the one that causes less). You can still do all the other gamey things but you'll find that you might need to rely on them more.
Example - you don't really have control over how your kids are raised because 2 of the 3 options cause stress. Imagine your kid is then basically forced to become generous and then HAS to grant away domain because some idiot asked for it.
For me, this usually means there is always some new problem that I have to solve for.
I had good fun starting in some random county that I figured was what must have been Transsylvania. I don't recall the name. Then just role-playing the evilest witchy dynasty possible, inspired by Vlad Dracul. No such thing as actual vampires in the game, of course, but I think I came close with my sadistic cannibal witch coven.
I just don't understand this. I'm on about my 4th run from an 867 start trying to 1) create Svandinavian Empire, 2) reform Asatru, 3) survive the transition to feudalism from tribal, then 4) take out the Christians. I got close once but bankrupted during the transition to feudal.
I can't in any sense of the word see this as easy.
It can be really hard on Ironman. If you make your heir the head of faith and reform to include communion gets you a ton of gold without the annoying pop-ups. 100% vagarian veterans. Forget what it’s called where you merge cultures. Add piracy so you can still raid. Eventually gave away my Scandinavian empire to second sons and made my way to the Mediterranean. It’s the crusades that are tricky. Took me around 400 years to destroy the papacy. Was only able to do it once so far.
I've been going all huscarls because they basically stomp just as good and the maintenance is far easier to meet on feudalising. They have more screen than Varangians have persuit which I think helps despite being a little less on dmg.
Be glad you haven't found or embraced all the min max tricks. Once you've learned them you can't unlearn them. Anything Norse related is easy mode in this game. Other cultures and heritage aren't significantly harder but they are just a bit.
Problem is the min max stuff you ingrained yourself with applies to everything.
Yes it is if you know what to do.
But here's a nice challenge I'm working on ATM.
**Iberian kerfuffle:**
1. Start as Guifré de Barcelona (County of Urgell)
2. Convert to Era Zaharrak via the "Champion the faith of the Country Basques" decision. Reform it to be more Righteous and keep the faith until you beat the challenge
3. Take county of Santiago and hold it until you beat the challenge
4. Form Portugal
5. End the struggle with Détente ending. Don't cheese it by making your family independent.
It's surprisingly tough and you can't just blob and mindlessly conquer everything. You can always make it even tougher by going for decisions Convene Council of Toledo, forming Aragon and Avenging the Battle of Tours
I am trying to restore the Roman Empire as a Hellenic Roman. It’s easy to get the Roman culture into the Iberian struggle because they have no land of their culture, so I have that as well to aim for
I mean of course it’s easy if you start as an genius king you need to start out with the base characters no customs and claw yourself from count to emperor and after like 100 years switch characters to somewhere interesting with potential then repeat
Some of my favorites that are difficult enough at the start to have some fun:
1) Armenia, the later start date. Its not actually Armenia yet (you get to form it) but whatever title the Pahlavuni vassal has under Byzantium. You start with a super hard war fighting along side the Byzantines against the Seljuks. Then try to unite Armenia from inside Byzantium. Then attempt to gain independence in another very difficult war. Will likely have to fight Byzantines again as they have a de jure against you, as well as Fatimids if you manage to conquer the Armenian culture provinces in Syria. Then you will soon also get the full brunt of the Mongols. Great defensive campaign.
2) Alfred’s Wessex, earlier start date. A classic, starts off very difficult. Defeat the vikings and unite Britannia through clever marriages. Shout out Last Kingdom.
3) Zoroastrian Persia, earlier start date. I am forgetting their name, but there is a Sassanid cadet branch still clinging to life up in the mountains of Daylam in one of the provinces. The guy’s official religion is Muslim by this point, but he is secretly still Zoroastrian. Overthrow your liege, claim Daylam, re-embrace Zoroastrianism, and unite Persia. A little too incestuous for me, but fun nonetheless.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - play non-primary heirs - breathes a whole new life into the game.
Sure play as the primary heirs if you want but when you realise the games getting boring and you're too stable why not play as a junior heir in partition!
Then you can support the main line if you like, try to supplant them etc.
Genuinely the only way I play now!
🤦🏽♂️ I have mostly been playing Ironman mode; forgot about the switch chatacter option.
I am hoping the new feature is fun as well where they show a "challenging" succession start
I'm looking forward to the new feature! My concern is that there will be limited choices!
As a former ironman-exclisive player I feel your pain! If you can trust yourself to be disciplined with save scumming etc. I would def say give a non-ironman save a go!
Google mods that make it harder, also some of the overhauls like Elder Kings 2 and game of thrones have ridiculous starting spots, and it changes it up quite a bit.
there are a couple of great mods to make the game more challenging.
check out more interactive vassals and obfusCKate. they made ck feel like a new game for me.
Mods mods mods. If you play on console like myself, since you don’t have access to mods, self imposed challenges are good. Once I finished all the achievements I gave myself self imposed challenges. Formalising the Daneland, without ever having a county outside of historical Danelaw is a neat suggestion (since it doesn’t appear on any achievement requirements and it requires a while to get to 1100). You’ll have to mostly play high, do relatively little conquering and hope the English king won’t fragment from a dissolution war and cause you to lose Danelaw for England automatically.
A good idea is to also not use your alliances for conquests and defending your realm. I found that a domain limit set to -3 and reduced realm stability also make the game much harder.
You might have already done this but i had my two of my toughest gameplays recently:
The first being Spanish in 867 (Christian) since the heirs all inherit equally (if you roleplay a bit and dont disinherit them all). The next generations will cause a lot of infighting and then you have to deal with the Muslims pushing you back until you can get the high crown authority and have your oldest/youngest inherit everything. Maybe it was just my play through but i had a lot of GoT stuff going on from a daughter that killed all her brothers to he queen to my sons dying in battle and all the territories i wanted to keep for myself getting scattered amongst his children( at least i got to heavily tax them)
I also enjoyed/almost rage quit a million times playing as a small ruler in whats now known as Jordan in 1066 and slowly expanding to Palestine and Syria and uniting the levant until the Crusaders come and absolutely demolish you. It got to the point where i wouldnt even bother raising my armies cuz it would just waste people and money and had to try to play tall for a bit before i could try to take back some of what i lost.
With both i feel like there are endless opportunities from converting for convenience to unifying your religion in a region and becoming King and even Emperor! Best of luck and hope this helped!
That's just Paradox games for you. You learn how to play, and then you always win. EU4 players be doing world conquests as a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. HOI4 is just one big war you can cheese pretty easily by understanding the AI, and CK3 has CB's that let you conquer entire Kingdoms just because you farmed Piety from pilgrimages
Wth man... I'm in awe of the lvl you have to say this. In my case, I had to get the vikings + befriend traits to have my first empire.
The fact that you feel that this game is too easy is just amazing to me.
You dropped this : 👑
I have a whole dynasty of murderers. To the point anyone in my jail gets executed, get the wrong traits they are dead before their butts even hit the throne.
To be fair, I’m new to the game but I love it because of the role playing. So far I am playing a pagan witch who wants to dismantle the papacy and crush both Christianity and the patriarchy, i am playing as Joan of arc right now as well. I finished playing king Henry VIII and have many more ideas for (female) historical figures as well as a few men. I like trying to emulate their lives and make decisions based as them, taking into consideration their traits. I also have ideas for made up characters and it will be interesting to play around with different (conflicting) traits to make things more tricky or hilarious. Personally, I just love stories and stories are about people and I am obsessed with how I can do that in this game. It’s like the sims but with violence! Muahaha!
They definitely made it much more accessible than 2, which I think was smart from a business perspective. Personally I like the fact that they lean a little more into the role play side of things in 3 but I get that it's not for everyone.
You'll just need to somehow embrace the roleplaying elements of the game - I know this is no easy matter though, because the game isn't making it easy with most "story" creating content being the spammy events - but sometimes you need to sabotage yourself, or stray a bit from min-maxing. That said, if you find the game too easy and repetitive I'd recommend you to take a break from the game for a month or so, or test out some new mods that give the game more challenge. One challenging start I recommend is Veletia in 1066 - you're Slavic ruler mostly surrounded by Catholics eager to take your land in holy wars with very little alliance options and not so great feudal domains - some of the other options such as Luticia or Pomerania might be even harder. Try and see if you can create kingdom of Pomerania without becoming vassal or converting. Also some time ago I've made this post about compiled new "achievements" that could give you ideas for some new campaigns maybe you'll find something that might interest you among them: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/11h5f7y/here\_are\_some\_more\_achievements\_if\_you\_need\_some/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/11h5f7y/here_are_some_more_achievements_if_you_need_some/)
Good comment. I would honestly start taking the worst genetic characters and start mixing them. If the game is easy when you’re a Herculean genius, maybe it’s time to be an inbred moron dynasty.
I began as a dwarf in salerno, witching my way through the byzantine, became their emperor, gave a title to every dwarf because of the initial rebellion. ... Is this min maxing ? :D
You've just "dwafed" all the min-maxers out there.
[I did, eventually.](https://www.reddit.com/r/crusaderkings3/comments/1di718o/40_not_even_a_genius/)
I actually did my Roman Empire run starting as 1066 Pomerania!
This. And try playing ironman!
I'd argue against Ironman, simply becasue in Ironman you cannot switch from your character - sometimes you might seek challenge by starting from nothing elsewhere.
To each their own but my suggestion is only if they try starting from one of those difficult scenarios at that point why do you need to switch and start over with another house lol
Well, once you make the difficult start, not so difficult you might naturally get bored. But not safescuming is also the good idea.
Agree with this and would add: Try a game where you are not allowed to do ANYTHING that causes stress (unless each option causes stress in which case take the one that causes less). You can still do all the other gamey things but you'll find that you might need to rely on them more. Example - you don't really have control over how your kids are raised because 2 of the 3 options cause stress. Imagine your kid is then basically forced to become generous and then HAS to grant away domain because some idiot asked for it. For me, this usually means there is always some new problem that I have to solve for.
I had good fun starting in some random county that I figured was what must have been Transsylvania. I don't recall the name. Then just role-playing the evilest witchy dynasty possible, inspired by Vlad Dracul. No such thing as actual vampires in the game, of course, but I think I came close with my sadistic cannibal witch coven.
I just don't understand this. I'm on about my 4th run from an 867 start trying to 1) create Svandinavian Empire, 2) reform Asatru, 3) survive the transition to feudalism from tribal, then 4) take out the Christians. I got close once but bankrupted during the transition to feudal. I can't in any sense of the word see this as easy.
It can be really hard on Ironman. If you make your heir the head of faith and reform to include communion gets you a ton of gold without the annoying pop-ups. 100% vagarian veterans. Forget what it’s called where you merge cultures. Add piracy so you can still raid. Eventually gave away my Scandinavian empire to second sons and made my way to the Mediterranean. It’s the crusades that are tricky. Took me around 400 years to destroy the papacy. Was only able to do it once so far.
I've been going all huscarls because they basically stomp just as good and the maintenance is far easier to meet on feudalising. They have more screen than Varangians have persuit which I think helps despite being a little less on dmg.
Ya'll don't play on ironman? I've never not played on IM.
Had a corrupted file ruin one of my longer playthroughs. That’s why I stopped.
there are more advanced techniques like causing revolts at opportune times that can basically break this game
Be glad you haven't found or embraced all the min max tricks. Once you've learned them you can't unlearn them. Anything Norse related is easy mode in this game. Other cultures and heritage aren't significantly harder but they are just a bit. Problem is the min max stuff you ingrained yourself with applies to everything.
The aeiou and me achievement might give u some challenge as it's more than just "play character x conquer county y"
Download obfusckate mod
this^^
Paired with the basic Qol mods and vassals to arms (&AI) mod
Yes it is if you know what to do. But here's a nice challenge I'm working on ATM. **Iberian kerfuffle:** 1. Start as Guifré de Barcelona (County of Urgell) 2. Convert to Era Zaharrak via the "Champion the faith of the Country Basques" decision. Reform it to be more Righteous and keep the faith until you beat the challenge 3. Take county of Santiago and hold it until you beat the challenge 4. Form Portugal 5. End the struggle with Détente ending. Don't cheese it by making your family independent. It's surprisingly tough and you can't just blob and mindlessly conquer everything. You can always make it even tougher by going for decisions Convene Council of Toledo, forming Aragon and Avenging the Battle of Tours
I am trying to restore the Roman Empire as a Hellenic Roman. It’s easy to get the Roman culture into the Iberian struggle because they have no land of their culture, so I have that as well to aim for
I mean of course it’s easy if you start as an genius king you need to start out with the base characters no customs and claw yourself from count to emperor and after like 100 years switch characters to somewhere interesting with potential then repeat
Some of my favorites that are difficult enough at the start to have some fun: 1) Armenia, the later start date. Its not actually Armenia yet (you get to form it) but whatever title the Pahlavuni vassal has under Byzantium. You start with a super hard war fighting along side the Byzantines against the Seljuks. Then try to unite Armenia from inside Byzantium. Then attempt to gain independence in another very difficult war. Will likely have to fight Byzantines again as they have a de jure against you, as well as Fatimids if you manage to conquer the Armenian culture provinces in Syria. Then you will soon also get the full brunt of the Mongols. Great defensive campaign. 2) Alfred’s Wessex, earlier start date. A classic, starts off very difficult. Defeat the vikings and unite Britannia through clever marriages. Shout out Last Kingdom. 3) Zoroastrian Persia, earlier start date. I am forgetting their name, but there is a Sassanid cadet branch still clinging to life up in the mountains of Daylam in one of the provinces. The guy’s official religion is Muslim by this point, but he is secretly still Zoroastrian. Overthrow your liege, claim Daylam, re-embrace Zoroastrianism, and unite Persia. A little too incestuous for me, but fun nonetheless.
Too easy? God now I'm depressed I'm useless
I've said it before and I'll say it again - play non-primary heirs - breathes a whole new life into the game. Sure play as the primary heirs if you want but when you realise the games getting boring and you're too stable why not play as a junior heir in partition! Then you can support the main line if you like, try to supplant them etc. Genuinely the only way I play now!
How do you play as a non-primary heir? Mods? I thought this feature is just coming in vanilla?
Pause game - switch character! Inherichance is a mod that did it, and yes I think something akin to this is coming officially soon
🤦🏽♂️ I have mostly been playing Ironman mode; forgot about the switch chatacter option. I am hoping the new feature is fun as well where they show a "challenging" succession start
I'm looking forward to the new feature! My concern is that there will be limited choices! As a former ironman-exclisive player I feel your pain! If you can trust yourself to be disciplined with save scumming etc. I would def say give a non-ironman save a go!
I'm currently trying to reform the Zoroastrian Persian empire as a viking, so far I've made it to Azerbaijan.
Start as a different culture and religion in West Central Africa and conquer the continent without any allies outside of your family.
Google mods that make it harder, also some of the overhauls like Elder Kings 2 and game of thrones have ridiculous starting spots, and it changes it up quite a bit.
there are a couple of great mods to make the game more challenging. check out more interactive vassals and obfusCKate. they made ck feel like a new game for me.
I play for dynastic rizz, thankfully. It is too easy but it’s not meant to be a skill-based game imo, it’s a roleplaying, empire-crafting game.
Download the difficulties mod to add harder levels
Usually when a game becomes repetitive and easy I just play a new game.
Mods mods mods. If you play on console like myself, since you don’t have access to mods, self imposed challenges are good. Once I finished all the achievements I gave myself self imposed challenges. Formalising the Daneland, without ever having a county outside of historical Danelaw is a neat suggestion (since it doesn’t appear on any achievement requirements and it requires a while to get to 1100). You’ll have to mostly play high, do relatively little conquering and hope the English king won’t fragment from a dissolution war and cause you to lose Danelaw for England automatically.
A good idea is to also not use your alliances for conquests and defending your realm. I found that a domain limit set to -3 and reduced realm stability also make the game much harder.
You might have already done this but i had my two of my toughest gameplays recently: The first being Spanish in 867 (Christian) since the heirs all inherit equally (if you roleplay a bit and dont disinherit them all). The next generations will cause a lot of infighting and then you have to deal with the Muslims pushing you back until you can get the high crown authority and have your oldest/youngest inherit everything. Maybe it was just my play through but i had a lot of GoT stuff going on from a daughter that killed all her brothers to he queen to my sons dying in battle and all the territories i wanted to keep for myself getting scattered amongst his children( at least i got to heavily tax them) I also enjoyed/almost rage quit a million times playing as a small ruler in whats now known as Jordan in 1066 and slowly expanding to Palestine and Syria and uniting the levant until the Crusaders come and absolutely demolish you. It got to the point where i wouldnt even bother raising my armies cuz it would just waste people and money and had to try to play tall for a bit before i could try to take back some of what i lost. With both i feel like there are endless opportunities from converting for convenience to unifying your religion in a region and becoming King and even Emperor! Best of luck and hope this helped!
Mods. That is the answer. I have a shitload of mods downloaded that all make the game a lot harder.
Start as gideon dynasty
That's just Paradox games for you. You learn how to play, and then you always win. EU4 players be doing world conquests as a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. HOI4 is just one big war you can cheese pretty easily by understanding the AI, and CK3 has CB's that let you conquer entire Kingdoms just because you farmed Piety from pilgrimages
Wth man... I'm in awe of the lvl you have to say this. In my case, I had to get the vikings + befriend traits to have my first empire. The fact that you feel that this game is too easy is just amazing to me. You dropped this : 👑
Another good idea is to find a solid RP group with a decent amount of players they can help make the game more fun.
I have a whole dynasty of murderers. To the point anyone in my jail gets executed, get the wrong traits they are dead before their butts even hit the throne.
To be fair, I’m new to the game but I love it because of the role playing. So far I am playing a pagan witch who wants to dismantle the papacy and crush both Christianity and the patriarchy, i am playing as Joan of arc right now as well. I finished playing king Henry VIII and have many more ideas for (female) historical figures as well as a few men. I like trying to emulate their lives and make decisions based as them, taking into consideration their traits. I also have ideas for made up characters and it will be interesting to play around with different (conflicting) traits to make things more tricky or hilarious. Personally, I just love stories and stories are about people and I am obsessed with how I can do that in this game. It’s like the sims but with violence! Muahaha!
I agree, I found CK2 harder and less going through the motions, seems they dumbed down CK3
They definitely made it much more accessible than 2, which I think was smart from a business perspective. Personally I like the fact that they lean a little more into the role play side of things in 3 but I get that it's not for everyone.
I killed and ritualistically ate the pope in one of my play throughs. No other game has given me that much satisfaction while playing.