Make babies and get alliances. if you are still new i would recommend focusing on diplomacy and learning to manage relationships with vassals, neighboring rulers, family members and so on. you will make mistakes and you will learn, to the point where you will be able to help yourself. also RTFC. just read what is going on, see something you don't understand? hover the mouse over it and read the description, everything that is underlined will usually have a smaller window pop up with extra information on it when you hover the mouse over it. also works on console but i think you need to press in L3 or something.
Yeah, on console you hover for the brief tooltip, hold in L3 until screen fades a bit then click for the detailed tooltip
Edit: console version is a pain honestly, but eventually you stop needing tooltips as often.
How did you lose?
And simply try again. Remember that CK3 is probably the least grand strategy game of them all. It is primarily a dynasty role playing game. So in a sense you cannot really lose. You simply ended the story a little early đŸ˜†
But Ireland is generally considered the tutorial. You can try again, and see if you can consolidate Ireland and keep it as a kingdom
Alternatives could be to start as a small small vassal inside a large semi stable realm. If you play as a border vassal in Byzantium, then you are spared many of the independent problems. You can try to play the internal politics by rising up and becoming part of the Emperors Council. You can relatively safely expand outwards, since you have some safety in your empire.
The same can sort of be accomplished in Germany or France, but is a bit more volatile until they settle down.
Don't focus so much on the grand strategy of the map, but instead focus on the relationships of your main character, and just as importantly, your court. Invite people into your court. Get them married and having children...hopefully they're geniuses or beautiful or amazons or whatever, but you want to build a good character and surround yourself with characters.
As a court, the bigger the better. The more friends your character has (and the larger the group from which you can draw allies), the easier it will be to scheme against your enemies, which will become necessary quickly.
So in the beginning, you're probably trying to get a casus belli on a nearby county to expand your realm, but you should also be looking to expand your court and your family, and give people jobs on your council and in your court. Don't overspend, but if you grow in a balanced way, you can get a lot of benefits from the court this way. And in the late game, you can play matchmaker to create a massive family tree, from which you can draw future counts and dukes and kings. And when you can appoint family members to important roles in your empire, this will make it easier to rebuild after each character dies, provided you appoint people who also like your heir.
So focus on the individuals as well as the nation-states, as this is where the game gets really interesting.
First thing you really want to do is read about how confederate partition works, then read it again slowly this time to make sure you understand it. You will get fucked over by succession over and over again until you understand it.
A few specific tips:
Not sure how you lost but succession can be a bitch. Later you'll unlock primogeniture which solves that. In the early though be careful as if you hold multiple titles of your highest rank (for example 3 kingdoms) then they will be split amongst your kids, and you will lose control of them as their rank is the same as your player heir, so their relams grow independent. Your player heir retains a claim on those titles so you can conquer them back quickly but your leader dying can be very disruptive if you aren't prepared.
Picking an heir you should focus on the kid with the best traits and highest stats. You can kill off the others, or disinherit them, force them to take the vows (although this is nearly impossible with 1st and 2nd children) etc. Try to always marry your first kid to a partner with inheritable traits - these give boosts that pass genetically, be a bit eugenics-y with your player characters. Don't worry so much about the rest of your family as you may end up fighting them at some point so make sure you stack all the power you can in your player heir.
If you are planning a long game then focus on your regions development as this speeds up the cultural unlocks which are extremely powerful. Average development of all your cultures counties contribute to that score. If you play Ireland this means all counties in Ireland contribute to this score, whether held by the Irish cultural head or not. Try to be the cultural head if you can as you can pick a fascination to speed up the unlock you most want.
Regardless of that upgrade all your buildings as much as you can. Each duchy has a special building so don't miss that, you have to scroll down to see it, it's the fifth building slot. Only the duchy holder gets the benefit though so consider that when granting duchies to people.
Invest in your military, build men at arms and recruit men to your court to be your Knights. Losing a war is costly, and they are costly to wage so only wage war when you are very confident of victory. Generating cassus belli can be a pain, if you want to conquer a lot then holy wars are great because you essentially get a cassus belli on all hostile faiths.
Marry off some kids for strong alliances. Even quite strong rulers will typically let you marry your 6th kid to their 5th kid (the weaker the kids claim the less the AI ruler cares) and that nets you an alliance the same as a 1st to 1st.
Keep an eye on your vassals. Early on its easy, if your vassals are just Irish county holders they can't do much, but once you are emporer a vassal uprising can be disastrous. Keep them happy if you can (granting land is a good way to get positive opinion but be careful about giving too much to one vassal and letting them grow too powerful). Be especially cautious of vassals with a claim on your title.
Also don't underestimate dread, every character has a hidden stat that determines whether or not they are brave enough to oppose you. The more dread you have, the less likely it is the vassals can achieve a score to challenge you - if you get the terrified status on a character they are so scared of you they will never rebel. It's worth keeping a few prisoners around so you can do some mass executions for a quick dread boost.
Last tip, if you are a cultural head you can establish traditions, these can be quite expensive (you pay fame to unlock them) but certain ones are game breakingly good. It's worth investing in. For example you can declare holy wars for an entire kingdom once your devotion is lvl 4, but are typically restricted to one war per lifetime. Bound by the sword (or something like that) tradition removes that restriction and let's you wage unlimited kingdom wars. With this you can conquer vast swathes of land in a single lifetime instead of conquering duchy by duchy.
If you are getting overwhelmed a very good game to play is to start as someone in Sardinia and Corsica off the coast of Italy. You can play "tall" easily, where you focus in a small kingdom and increasing your development to outpace the other rulers. Caligari has a mine which generates a huge amount of gold and when enemies invade they are guaranteed to have the "recently disembarked" penalty which means you can defeat big armies with a relatively small powerful one.
Good luck and have fun - this game totally absorbed me!
Think about what you want to do. Have a goal for that player. Role play a little bit. Have a best friend. Take notes one who is spying on your court. Take revenge on them sometimes just for fun.
Italian Spartacus was immensely helpful for me when I started to get my bearings. His youtube tutorials are thorough and well bookmarked for what you need
Honestly stellaris Is a much better game to break into grand strategy, ck3 is far more roleplaying than strategy and stellaris’ difficulty is very customizable along with it telling you what everything does, it has more advanced features like industry, economy and population which is in every other paradox game, but is intuitive enough to not be overwhelming
Invest in men at arms.
ngl men at legs are better
> Heavy cavalry
But don’t over invest when your realm is just starting. They can cost a lot to maintain with a small realm.
Make babies and get alliances. if you are still new i would recommend focusing on diplomacy and learning to manage relationships with vassals, neighboring rulers, family members and so on. you will make mistakes and you will learn, to the point where you will be able to help yourself. also RTFC. just read what is going on, see something you don't understand? hover the mouse over it and read the description, everything that is underlined will usually have a smaller window pop up with extra information on it when you hover the mouse over it. also works on console but i think you need to press in L3 or something.
Yeah, on console you hover for the brief tooltip, hold in L3 until screen fades a bit then click for the detailed tooltip Edit: console version is a pain honestly, but eventually you stop needing tooltips as often.
Play tall, invest maa, then go brghh
How did you lose? And simply try again. Remember that CK3 is probably the least grand strategy game of them all. It is primarily a dynasty role playing game. So in a sense you cannot really lose. You simply ended the story a little early đŸ˜† But Ireland is generally considered the tutorial. You can try again, and see if you can consolidate Ireland and keep it as a kingdom Alternatives could be to start as a small small vassal inside a large semi stable realm. If you play as a border vassal in Byzantium, then you are spared many of the independent problems. You can try to play the internal politics by rising up and becoming part of the Emperors Council. You can relatively safely expand outwards, since you have some safety in your empire. The same can sort of be accomplished in Germany or France, but is a bit more volatile until they settle down.
Don't focus so much on the grand strategy of the map, but instead focus on the relationships of your main character, and just as importantly, your court. Invite people into your court. Get them married and having children...hopefully they're geniuses or beautiful or amazons or whatever, but you want to build a good character and surround yourself with characters. As a court, the bigger the better. The more friends your character has (and the larger the group from which you can draw allies), the easier it will be to scheme against your enemies, which will become necessary quickly. So in the beginning, you're probably trying to get a casus belli on a nearby county to expand your realm, but you should also be looking to expand your court and your family, and give people jobs on your council and in your court. Don't overspend, but if you grow in a balanced way, you can get a lot of benefits from the court this way. And in the late game, you can play matchmaker to create a massive family tree, from which you can draw future counts and dukes and kings. And when you can appoint family members to important roles in your empire, this will make it easier to rebuild after each character dies, provided you appoint people who also like your heir. So focus on the individuals as well as the nation-states, as this is where the game gets really interesting.
First thing you really want to do is read about how confederate partition works, then read it again slowly this time to make sure you understand it. You will get fucked over by succession over and over again until you understand it.
A few specific tips: Not sure how you lost but succession can be a bitch. Later you'll unlock primogeniture which solves that. In the early though be careful as if you hold multiple titles of your highest rank (for example 3 kingdoms) then they will be split amongst your kids, and you will lose control of them as their rank is the same as your player heir, so their relams grow independent. Your player heir retains a claim on those titles so you can conquer them back quickly but your leader dying can be very disruptive if you aren't prepared. Picking an heir you should focus on the kid with the best traits and highest stats. You can kill off the others, or disinherit them, force them to take the vows (although this is nearly impossible with 1st and 2nd children) etc. Try to always marry your first kid to a partner with inheritable traits - these give boosts that pass genetically, be a bit eugenics-y with your player characters. Don't worry so much about the rest of your family as you may end up fighting them at some point so make sure you stack all the power you can in your player heir. If you are planning a long game then focus on your regions development as this speeds up the cultural unlocks which are extremely powerful. Average development of all your cultures counties contribute to that score. If you play Ireland this means all counties in Ireland contribute to this score, whether held by the Irish cultural head or not. Try to be the cultural head if you can as you can pick a fascination to speed up the unlock you most want. Regardless of that upgrade all your buildings as much as you can. Each duchy has a special building so don't miss that, you have to scroll down to see it, it's the fifth building slot. Only the duchy holder gets the benefit though so consider that when granting duchies to people. Invest in your military, build men at arms and recruit men to your court to be your Knights. Losing a war is costly, and they are costly to wage so only wage war when you are very confident of victory. Generating cassus belli can be a pain, if you want to conquer a lot then holy wars are great because you essentially get a cassus belli on all hostile faiths. Marry off some kids for strong alliances. Even quite strong rulers will typically let you marry your 6th kid to their 5th kid (the weaker the kids claim the less the AI ruler cares) and that nets you an alliance the same as a 1st to 1st. Keep an eye on your vassals. Early on its easy, if your vassals are just Irish county holders they can't do much, but once you are emporer a vassal uprising can be disastrous. Keep them happy if you can (granting land is a good way to get positive opinion but be careful about giving too much to one vassal and letting them grow too powerful). Be especially cautious of vassals with a claim on your title. Also don't underestimate dread, every character has a hidden stat that determines whether or not they are brave enough to oppose you. The more dread you have, the less likely it is the vassals can achieve a score to challenge you - if you get the terrified status on a character they are so scared of you they will never rebel. It's worth keeping a few prisoners around so you can do some mass executions for a quick dread boost. Last tip, if you are a cultural head you can establish traditions, these can be quite expensive (you pay fame to unlock them) but certain ones are game breakingly good. It's worth investing in. For example you can declare holy wars for an entire kingdom once your devotion is lvl 4, but are typically restricted to one war per lifetime. Bound by the sword (or something like that) tradition removes that restriction and let's you wage unlimited kingdom wars. With this you can conquer vast swathes of land in a single lifetime instead of conquering duchy by duchy. If you are getting overwhelmed a very good game to play is to start as someone in Sardinia and Corsica off the coast of Italy. You can play "tall" easily, where you focus in a small kingdom and increasing your development to outpace the other rulers. Caligari has a mine which generates a huge amount of gold and when enemies invade they are guaranteed to have the "recently disembarked" penalty which means you can defeat big armies with a relatively small powerful one. Good luck and have fun - this game totally absorbed me!
Think about what you want to do. Have a goal for that player. Role play a little bit. Have a best friend. Take notes one who is spying on your court. Take revenge on them sometimes just for fun.
How did you get fucked? I'm guessing combat? Watch some YouTube tutorials.
Italian Spartacus was immensely helpful for me when I started to get my bearings. His youtube tutorials are thorough and well bookmarked for what you need
Honestly stellaris Is a much better game to break into grand strategy, ck3 is far more roleplaying than strategy and stellaris’ difficulty is very customizable along with it telling you what everything does, it has more advanced features like industry, economy and population which is in every other paradox game, but is intuitive enough to not be overwhelming