​

As anyone who remotely cares knows, CK3 is coming and will likely be released in late September/early November.

CK2 is one of my all time favourite games and people who play it pour hundreds if not thousands of hours into it. Do you think it'll live up to the hype?

Paradox being the general good guys that they are have been releasing meticulous Dev Diaries and some of the features look absolutely fantastic.

A playlist of the Dev Diaries can be found here.

Are you looking forward to this game? Based on the diaries, what will be your first playthrough?

 

Not watched much of the diaries, although now you've reminded me, I should probably catch up on them.

I'm probably going to be really boring, and have my first game in Ireland. I don't mind jumping in at the deep end now and then, but I've really enjoyed CK2, and I'm sure part of that is because I was able to figure it out without getting too many game overs. Playing in the British Isles gives you a bit more leeway on that, as you're separate from the rest of the continent, but have a homogenity to the religion and local cultures (ish). Getting to grips with things first might be playing it safe, but it means I won't ragequit.

Second game probably HRE, aiming to either form a country by decision/equivalent, or get a decent place in a crusade; and then reform the religion. It's one of the things I'm actually uite excited to try

Third game, who knows. Maybe become a sun-worshipping horse or something.

 

I'm a little worried Paradox will pull a paradox and lock some of the features behind a dlc, their game tend to be sparse in the beginning.
That being said it does look promising, I just won't be buying it early.

I'm quite exited to play a child ruler as I'd like to shape my ruler from the ground up, maybe one from an unorthodox religion/"heresy", child events and the religion changes they're working on are really interesting to me.

I'm also a fan of playing Poland because that was my most memorable game in ck2.

 

Like @Thaumologist I'll probably go Ireland but for more patriotic reasons. Forming Ireland early, conquering the isles and raising a glorious capital city for the Celtic Empire on the Isle of Mann. That's my jam.

@WierdFoodStuff As someone that's had all the DLC for CK2, a lot of features I'm used to will probably be absent but I don't mind. I mean, this game will likely be supported for another 6/7 years minimum so I'm not above throwing Paradox a bone by paying for DLC.

 

It's shaping up to be a great game, but I'm also worried about the DLC.
I don't mind paying for it, but it will be a while before they are released. Much like Civilization V and VI, I'll probably not invest until the game has some more DLC.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing it, however they are introduce a lot of new mechanics. I'm hoping they don't go overboard. I love CK2, but never got into EU4 because it had far too steep a learning curve for me to enjoy. I don't mind having to play through a tutorial, but I don't enjoy a game where I have to fail repeatedly in order to learn every random quirk that can result in game over at any time.

 

I love the the shit out of CK2. I hope the sequel is just as good! The biggest charm of the series for me is getting to shape your heirs and pursue interesting goals. And, uh, the eugenics metagame, of course.

Haven't been following the diaries. What sort of new features should I be excited about?

 

My understanding is they are adding stronger roleplay elements to the game. I approve.

 

Well for one the lifestyle traits from the WoL DLC are present and expanded. The Dev Diary does a better job of explaining it than I could but each way of life has different branches you can further specialise in and there's a perk tree involved.

Basically it lets you further shape your ruler's personality.

 

I remember there being stuff about individual and dynastic perk trees. So if you focus on War, your character will gain more martial stats, have more martial events, and may be able to gain traits linked to fighting.

Further, if multiple members of your dynasty focus on war, you might (over time) start having a greater chance of being born, gaining through event, or inheritating "Strong" as a trait. I'm pretty sure that the example used was giantism, but the point stands.

 

I love paradox. Especially eu though ck is good too. I’ve loved them since eu1 came out lol. But they do over do it with the dlc. Especially since the game often becomes unplayable without several of them in my experience. I like them enough I’ll probably still throw money at them for ck and eu, but it has cost them my business on some of the titles I’m not as wild about like hoi say.

I appreciate they are always tinkering. But yeah. I can’t help but wish they found a slightly different way to do it. Charge me more up front and then make the extras fewer, freer, or cheaper. It’s not the total dollar amount it, I figure I play it enough to justify, its just the feeling of being nicked and dimed.

 

There's a huge area of new mechanics surrounding Dynasties and Houses. A Dynasty is made up of at least 1 House, but as many more as happen during the game. A House is effectively a Cadet Branch of the Dynasty which has got its own titles and lands.

There's mechanics that come into play if you're either the Head of the Dynasty or the Head of a House. You gain automatic persuasion ability over anyone who born into your Dynasty or House after you become the leader, you can spend something called "renown" (which seems to be a version of Prestige but belongs to the Dynasty or House rather than the individual) to do things like get a strong claim on territories held by someone within your Dynasty (if you head that) or your House (if you head that). You'll also be able to "approve" or "disapprove" of folk in your Dynasty/House which alters the opinions of everyone in the Dynasty/House towards that person, and I think they also said something about being able to force religious conversions of folk in your Dynasty/House.

There's also going to be mechanics around bloodline traits that take hundreds of years to unlock. They can only be developed and unlocked by the Head of a Dynasty I think, so if you aren't that you're at the mercy of the AI.

So lots of strategic, long term thinking there.

Honestly I think its going to make it worthwhile getting your cousins and such married to title holders. They should eventually go on to set up Cadet Branches which will benefit your Dynasty. And even Gavelkind succession won't be a complete waste of time anymore for the same reason!

 

I'm really looking forward to the enhancement of this aspect. One of my biggest problems with CKII currently (and the reason why I haven't played in a while) is that I have resorted to max speed forward, as roleplaying elements were not enough to make me "interested" in my leaders.

The Indian subcontinent is especially bad at this, as there are very few societies to join. That leads to more focus on the expansion of your empire and not as much on the building of your dynasty. If CKIII were to fix this problem that would make it a must-buy for me.

 

That lack of investment in characters is why I love the ASOIAF mod so much.

 

It might be a decent game 8 years later, but honestly, I have no intention of buying this game. I enjoy CK2, but I don't like Paradox's stance on DLC. And if I remember correctly, they will use some kind live service for the DLCs as they come out, where you pay for all the content on a monthly/yearly basis for some specific, rather than buy the game and then have to buy the DLCs separately.

Might pirate it eventually, but honestly doubt it.

 

Based on the dev diaries, CK3 looks amazing. It seems far more dynamic, powerful and are reducing the number of traits your ruler gets so you can properly role play them better. This will also make choices actually matter.

However, let's see what actually happens when the game is out. Paradox games usually are weaker than they show and filled with bugs. I probably won't buy until several months in unless it's getting rave reviews.

The religions! They are going to include 50 or so religions and heresies in the base game. They adopted the last dlc reform mechanic for all religions and over time your rulers can customize the religion they are.

They also decided to change up how realms interact with other religions. Depending on the conditions of your religion, you can love, like, neutral or hate specific other religions.

Crusades have been redone so you won't just keep getting spammed with them when Christianity is doing good.

All in all, it looks like they stopped the blob of religion when it's doing good. This will give the weaker religions a chance to come back.

Uh, I think you are talking about some other game as Paradox has never done subscriptions. It's all been buying the base game and DLC's directly.

 

It's something they're doing for EU4, testing it out with a control group.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...ce-to-play-europa-universalis-iv-and-its-dlc/

It's safe to presume Paradox will push for this kind of thing - possibly optional at first - with their 4X games in the future if this one pans out financially for them. And who's to say it won't?

 

Honestly, I can see the appeal both ways. It would be so much cheaper (short term) to subscribe, especially if they roll it out to all games at once.

I mean, I'm not what I'd call a long-term player of CK2, but I've had it for 26 months (based on my earliest achievement), and probably spent around £170 on all the games (based on current pricing). I wouldn't say that's far out from what I've probably paid. So at £7 per month, it would work out around even (for me).
But the game came out in 2012. Even assuming you didn't get any deals on anything, and paid £300 for everything (because you bought the unit packs, EU4 converter, ebooks, and music), you'd need it to be less than £3.12 p/m

I think it will just entirely depend on how much DLC comes out, and how quickly. If they front-load the releases, then yeah, the subscription will be cheaper... But then you *have* to play each month, because you're paying.

 

I want to come out and vehemently deny that Paradox would do this but that's just because I Stan paradox and don't want it to be true.

 

It's looking like a very promising game, but so did Stellaris, HoI 4 and Imperator, and look how they turned out. When it comes out, it will be revealed, once again, that most of those interesting mechanics are actually very bare bones. It will be a shallow game at start, but perhaps it'll become as good as CK2 down the line. I might buy it at release but I won't be paying for any of the dlc's, that's for sure, haven't done so since Common Sense. Their dlc practise is just so disgusting, good thing that pirating them is so easy.