Crusader Kings III: Early Start, Progress, and Conquest Tips & Tricks

Europeans, Arabian kingdoms, or Byzantine Empire (the strongest start in 680), for example. This way your Empire doesn’t fall apart every time your ruler dies and kids inherit.

When I see here guys recommending murdering all sons after first one, etc my hair just stands up. Literally chopping down your dynasty tree. If you cannot handle Partition, don’t play it lol. It’s actually very easy to handle as Vikings. Got a new son? Go and carve out new kingdom for him. All kids inherit their respective stuff leaving your main holdings intact. Ofc not always goes as planned, especially if you are like 60 yo and got a fresh son, and literally no time to go to war lol. Just start Primogeniture and avoid the stress.

Now you can revoke titles – from castle barons, vassals who break law, criminals, or if they refuse to convert to your faith, or if they rose against you and got defeated, or infidels if your faith permits.

You can revoke almost all titles in one go with rare exceptions, and you should do so to replace them with more loyal ones, or your bloodline. If the titles are not too important you can ransom then, or if titles are huge and numerous, release them with forcing to drop all claims. This way you won’t have some idiots declaring war on vassals you just landed there for the claimant.

You want to eventually reach High crown authority to stop vassals fighting each other, which they constantly do, and focus their attention outwards – this is where you start acquiring serious swathes of land into your Empire, when your vassals start poking everyone around you without you having to lift a finger.

I don’t recommend picking highest crown authority 4th level ever, since vassals cannot declare anymore outside wars, which seriously stops your expansion.

If you don’t do this at the start, the cost to change crown authority law will increase with your domain size, so best is to immediately slap it up as soon as you start.

When you start the game usually first thing I check is if there is a better wife around. You want Genius, Amazonian, or at least Intelligent or Robust one.

Press “C” on PC to open Character finder. You can save presets for most popular people types you look for (e..g. Genius unmarried ladies, Content vassals, etc.)

For reference: https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Traits

Find and secure a good wife for your immediate heir too if you start with one. It’s okay if he has like up to 10 years age difference and not a big deal.

Always Romance your awesome Genius wife unless she is lesbian as soon as you come to power.

its massive prestige gain and also to ensure your kids are actually yours and not from some hunchbacked count who knocked up your wife in secret. Usually first thing I do with every new heir.

Happy wife also tends to give random buffs here and there.

More family/court tips:

• Give your heir all possible court titles. Kick other guys out if you have to. Normally my heir is my Marshal/Steward/Diplomat, also Master of the Hunt, Master of The Horse, Personal Champ, and Bodyguard. This way they accumulate tons of prestige and cash, and when they take over they come with significant renown and warchest.
• Educate good traits and pass them over if you have Wardens DLC. I consider Brave, Temperate, and Dilligent to be the absolute best. They have great dialogue picks, best outcomes, and least stress. Zealous is also amazing on Christians because you get stress reduction when executing infidels in your dungeon, free stress relief. Ambitious is horrible with terrible dialogues and insane stress gain. Stubborn is okay for Stewardship points. Everything else is meh.
• You can educate both your heir AND his future wife for best traits. If you are powerful ruler, everyone will be happy to send their daughter to you for training.
• Wife normally should be in Patronage to help improve children education. If you cannot hold your current domain, put her into Mange Domain. This is why normally I educate both my heir AND his wife for perfect traits.
• If your wife got pregnant and you have content fire up to investigate who the father is, DON’T do it. The game considers all kids to be yours as long as you didn’t bother to investigate. There are no good outcomes in investigating it ever, unless you are hellbent on divorcing this wife and your religion is tough to do it.
• After Romancing your wife, next best is to Sway your Chaplain//Cleric/whatever into positive relation. They can seriously damage your early rule if they have negative opinion of you. Also they don’t pass on to you any church taxes if they are negative opinion. Normally, these are my first Court Physician + High Almoner + Antiquarian until we have very good relation and I found a better substitute. After that next best to Sway is your Head of Faith (Pope/Patriarch/whatever).

On that regard, when you inherit Empire, check your secrets. Your heir might have done something you want to keep under wraps. Kick out lovers without good congenital traits, etc trash.

Learning’s “Learn on the Job” is still ridiculously powerful. 20% of councilors stats added to yours is just nuts. Opening with Pedagogy is awesome, more free points for the kids. Always my opener until I get Scholar, then switch to Stewardship.

Stewardship “It is MY Domain” and “At any cost” for decisions to “Extort Subjects” and “Sell trivial Titles” are insanely good and provide ridiculous amount of cash, which will allow you to quickly build up your domain and armies. After finishing Avaricious I tend to grab Architect if I still got stuff to build, or move on to Martial/Diplomacy.

I usually pivot into Gallant after that just for the Knight boost and Prowess. Anything else is irrelevant and flavor with some exceptions, for example if you have to reorganize your faith or create new one, you got to open with Theology, and so on.

For reference: https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Lifestyle

So basically pray for an heir with Curious/Pensive to go Education focus
Rowdy kids go Martial, it’s not the worst
Bossy go Stewardship, it’s great.
Charming kids are meh, they go Diplomacy, which is not amazing opener, but still okay for Befried and Groomed to Rule, but tbh these you can pick up just from traveling around +Diplomacy XP locations.

For reference: https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Traits#Childhood_traits

You don’t care about tiny bit of extra prestige or opinion of other rulers, or bestowing honor, whatever. All you care about is your vassals opinion of you so they don’t create factions with an added bonus of forced partition on your vassals so they don’t grab too much land to become strong enough to challenge you.

Watch the factions closely. Independence faction raised up? Start Swaying and bribing. Unless you know for a fact they are weaker than you, and want their lands to land your kids, in that case ofc kick their teeth in and revoke their titles to redistribute.

Yes, Improve Development all the time. Don’t change or merge culture!

Maybe unpopular opinion, but don’t shift your culture, ever. Your culture defines which buildings you can build, and if you shift around you will never, ever be able to build anything pas early buildings, and will be forced to promote new culture in your domain holdings all the time, and it takes AGES to do it, and it takes up your Steward’s time.

E.g. if you started French, stay French and develop your capital to the Moon.

It doesn’t matter where you started. Pick your capital and conquer it, or start in good one. The most obscenely overpowered county in the game will be the one where you left your Steward on “Improve Development” for 600 years. It will raise overall gains to ridiculous level and push your technology. Your armies will be literally Space Marines against unwashed savages around.

In feudal system, the crap flows downstairs: Emperor -> King -> Duke -> Count -> Baron//Mayor.

It is not always necessary to create titles for your vassals, they tend to create them overtime themself if they hold enough required lands, but in general it is much easier to handle 1 King than 5 Dukes and 15 Counts. Their external conquest power is also much stronger.

Pissed someone off? Revoked their title? Slept with their wife? Pull up a higher title and slap him under his liege – now he is not your direct vassal and not your problem anymore.

I tend to land vassals by duchies – give all counties in a duchy to a guy, he gets kids, they all inherit a bunch of counties, then fight each other to consolidate again, only to die again and fall apart to the next batch of kids. This is a normal and healthy cycle, that ensures your vassal stays in check and under your power level. Partition inheritance is a curse for you, but a blessing on your vassals.

Barons and Mayors are the most kickovers, because you can just revoke their title at a whim. Got spare domain limit? Kick your baron out and use it for more levies an cash. No spare domain limit? Land a baron into an extra castle holding to hold it for a bit.

Pro tip: Can’t hold the county for now, but want it later? Find Eunuchs without family and land them, they will hold it until they die, they cannot marry or have kids, and you will inherit both the holding and their cash. Juicy!

Your priority on spending cash should be

• Your domain economy buildings
• Your Men-at-Arms (MAA)
• Necessary activities (Hunt/Pilgrimage/Tournament) to drop stress and get unique traits.
• Anything else. Don’t waste cash on any crafters below legendary/master, they only produce trash.

Why? Because when you fall off a horse, and your 5 y.o. kid inherits, and suddenly all realm rises against you, it is only your cash warchest, Men at Arms, and mercenaries who will stand in their way.

Don’t try to build MAA before you upgraded all your domain cash buildings. You will flop on cash. Economy first, army next, fun last.

TL;DR Always economy buildings first.

They bring in the cash to fuel everything else. Build and upgrade best cash-producing buildings you can. Until then don’t spend on anything else. These investments will take time to return, but 50 years later when you tick serious cash per month you will see the light.

Don’t bother to build MAA, or unit buffing building in early game (like Barracks) until you discover more building slots. Early on they are weak and don’t produce cash which you badly need always. Instead invest cash to make more serious cash, it all rolls from there.

As a rule of thumb, in a 3-slot county I build 2 best economy buildings and 1 fort defense building.

Why? Because when you screw up, and you will, and all the disgruntled vassals or peasants start sieging your stuff, but oops, they cannot, because your forts are too strong. Your capital should be the most fortified holding because AI loves to beeline for your capital as you go for theirs, and if they capture all your kids including castrating your only son and heir its gg.
Don’t neglect upgrading your defenses even if you feel like king of the world at the moment.

The actual buildings will depend on land type (you can hover to see it), but in general pick the ones with the highest yield.

Best are Farmlands and Floodplains with Manor Houses, Field Farms, and Fruit plantations, with Bastions & Curtain Walls as defence.
In hills that would be Hill Farms + Pastures, followed by a Hill Fort.
Counties with access to water will have Ports, which are basically worse Fruit Plantations.
In Desert it would be Desert Agriculture + Camelries, and so on.

Best counties to hold are Constantinople, Rome, Baghdad – massive bonuses to income %.
There are many more good places to hold, for example Flanders is still very strong, and Bohemia is just a massive duchy to hold and improve. You can also find online map with locations of the silver/gold mines and see if you can grab one too, they bring in insane gold.

In general, click around and see if any counties have special buildings to improve income, or Universities to improve development growth and different stats.

Let’s make it clear – after your first few wars, Levies should never ever be raised unless in emergency situation, or you simply need more bodies to overcome the fort level to siege. they are ridiculously expensive when raised. They also count towards your military strength, and act as a nuclear deterrent when someone is considering attacking you.

If you cannot win the war without raising levies, reconsider the war and build more MAA for your army.

Overall, Men-at-Arms and your Knights are your topmost killing force. If you keep investing in their damage and effectiveness, nothing can stop you. They slaughter enemy levies by thousands. You can stack multiple % increase to empower both with buildings, culture traditions, technologies, your ruler skills, and so on.

As in all Paradox games, it works same way – pick something, then stack the sh*t out of it with x10000% multipliers, and it will roll over AI who didn’t do it.

Which MAA to build?

In general, pick one type of MAA and stick to it, buffing it duchy buildings and their respective training ground buildings. Works best with culture unique ones. Vikings have Varangian Veterans, Byzantines have Cataphracts, English ones have Longbows, Arabs got Camels. other cultures got different ones. It doesn’t matter. Pick your unique MAA for your culture and buff the crap out of it, it will rip apart anything AI has to throw at you. Counters don’t matter. I tend to have 2 stacks of siege engines and the rest same unique culture MAA type.

As you progress through the ages, you can start adding special buildings to buff your MAA further, best to start would be Blacksmith line, since it also buffs your income, then their respective training camps.

Game loves to dump some random individuals of questionable nature into your court without a single warning, which is very annoying.

They can be different faith and have -100 opinion of you and your family. Then they start plotting against your courtiers or seducing your wife/daughters.

Weed out this trash and throw them out in a regular cleaning sweep, its worth to spend prestige on. Unless you are super low on prestige, that is.

Unlike dumb unwashed savages, if you pick a ruler with proper inheritance laws of primogeniture, your top kid will inherit it all. Which means you can spam children to your heart’s content.

You heir you usually don’t want to land, because landed lords can get into any sort of trouble, while your heir is safe and sound in your court. Just slap as many court titles as you can on him, put him on the council, and he will be fine on cash and prestige.

Boys who won’t inherit you educate, marry to ladies with good congenital traits (Genious, Amazon, Beautiful), and give them land – preferably eventually growing their duchy into a kingdom. Girls are extra step – marry them matrilineally to dudes with good congenital traits, and when they finally have sons land these guys.

Why? Because the real way to jam massive amounts of house renown is through landed kin. 100 years in all my nobility is of my bloodline. They make cadet houses, live make kids and die and so on. 100 years in I search only for unlanded members of my house and land them, I don’t use random vassals anymore.

Just be careful when landing kids from the same family tree. If they die in process without heir, their brothers inherit, which can seriously border gore your kingdoms. Make sure to land kids from the same family tree branch into same kingdom if possible, like, give them duchies in the same kingdom you just got form holy war, then slap the kingdom on one of them.

This way you will have 1000s of house members not even 200 years in, and insane amount of house renown, and will fill bloodline fast. I usually open with Blood, finish it then move on to Kin to finish for Graceful Aging (no prowess loss with old age), then move on to domain/warfare stuff.

Added bonus is that your can NEVER get game over on you, because you always have someone of your bloodline in power to take over if something terrible happened and your main bloodline branch died off.

Usually first things I do when old fart rules dies and fresh one steps in:

• Feast to raise opinion with everyone
• Hunt to get Hunter trait for +opinion with other hunter vassals
• Pilgrimage to get Pilgrim trait for +opinion with religious vassals and clergy

All of these cost cash, so have it ready.

• Don’t run around with naked butt and no cash in warchest. Always have energency fund.
• Don’t let enemies cool down too much. Strike when they are weak. If they have too many alliances, wait for this dude to die (or help him die), and attack the next in line, they wont have any alliances up most likely.
• Always have spare heirs. This is why you marry your daughters matrilineally. So if your sons died to a plague and OOPSIE a girl inherited, you still got an heir of your bloodline.
• Always use up your once-in-a-lifetime Holy Wars / kingdom invasions for every ruler.
• When you can, empower your religion and make Holy Orders. They are free to hire if fighting anyone not your faith.
• Ask your Pope/whatever Head of Faith for cash when you can.
• If your courtiers who had a court position job break law (normally fornication), imprison and release into Banish. This way you get their cash. One dude managed to accumulate like 500 gold over the years. Juicy! You can only do this with your direct courtiers though, doesn’t work on foreigners, which you can still ransom.

Most importantly, is that while this guide is skewed to obscene powerplaying, the main goal playing any game is to have fun, don’t forget that.

For all means you can RP to your heart’s content.

Have fun and good luck!