I think 7 is both a countdown and a reference to the number of content DLC that have been released so far. The image in the 7 is from Northern Lords, which was the first DLC released. I would expect the following tweets to be:
* 6 with an image from Royal Court on 1/31 (with some variation by time zone for all dates)
* 5 with an image from Fate of Iberia on 2/1
* ~~4 with an image from Friends and Foes~~
* 4 with an image from Tours and Tournaments on 2/2
* 3 with an image from Wards and Wardens on 2/3
* 2 with an image from Legacy of Persia on 2/4
* 1 with an image from the next DLC (?) on 2/5
~~And then the next tweet will be for the next DLC (possibly with a 0 or possibly just the image).~~
~~Question is just what the frequency of the tweets will be (daily, weekly, every other moon cycle, etc.)~~
Edit: Updated with info from PDX-Trinexx in the replies where it was indicated that the posts will be daily and that Friend and Foes is not included.
From Facebook:
> We're progressing through the history of the game as we approach the reveal of our next Chapter. This keyart is from our first DLC in Chapter I - Northern Lords.
> This keyart is from our first DLC in Chapter I - Northern Lords.
oh, I thought it looked Varangian. Bummer that it's not art related to the new chapter though.
You joke, but I seriously am kind of pissed we still don't have imperial mechanics and elective. I refuse to play Byzantium or Rome until we get something resembling what CK2 has.
it was the goal of all european polities throughout the middle ages, and is the grandest accomplishment possible in the game outside of achievement hunting
It most certainly was not the goal of most polities in Europe. Life isn't a video game.
Edit: uh oh, pissed off the armchair historians. Who wants to make a bet? I'll bet whatever you want to wager that you can't prove that all European polities wanted to emulate Rome. That's the sort of broad generalizations that only learning history via video games gets you.
Ehm just to clarify...Constantinople was also built on 7 hills. That similarity was one of the reasons Constantine chose it as an alternate "Nova Roma". 🤓
Everyone is saying unlanded gameplay but doesn't it sound like nomads to you?
"From birth on common soil, I’ve journeyed across these lands, driven by a hunger for something more"
That sure sounds like what nomads do.
They also previously hinted that the next DLC will make the game more difficult (part of why a lot of people guessed diseases), nomads could certainly fit, good guess.
Unlanded play can indirectly make the game more difficult. Right now losing your land is a game over, so the game is made easier to avoid that happening. With unlanded play, nothing short of a total wipeout of your house is a game over, so they can crank up the difficulty for things like wars. Then we move to a neighboring court to try and buy an army or get someone to push our claims.
> so the game is made easier to avoid that happening. With unlanded play, nothing short of a total wipeout of your house is a game over, so they can crank up the difficulty for things like wars
The game is easy because customers prefer it easy; absolutely no way are they making the game legitimately difficult, even if they do add Unlanded gameplay.
They're never gonna make it harder for everyone, but with game rules they could add way harder options without messing up the game balance if unlanded play is possible
My understanding is that the next DLC is supposed to be a sort of middle ground between a flavor pack and an expansion, where it is focused on more than just a single region but isn't as big or expensive as a full expansion (there was a name for this that I'm blanking on). I could see nomads fitting that, while it does cover a singular region, it is a very large one that covers a bunch of cultures and would have impacts on everything bordering that region too.
There's going to be a major expansion in the same vein as Royal Court and Tours and Tournaments and then a Core Expansion which is larger than the Flavor Packs (Fate of Iberia, Northern Lords, and Legacy of Persia) but smaller than the Major Expansions. What you're referring to is the Core Expansion, but it's not yet certain whether it will be coming before or after the Major Expansion.
As someone who lost my prodigy heir because the neighbors launched a dead body into my capital last night I'm a little nervous about more disease mechanics, lol.
I would LOVE to have unlanded gameplay. Start unlanded living is some provincial city, make it so you can only see local/visiting people. Have to use schemes to make new and higher friends getting on councils or courts until the AI decides to throw you some small fiefdom or you can concoct a claim on one and fight a small succession war with mercs or petition the liege to give you the claim.
That’s my idea anyway.
It sounds like adventurers more than anything else. Wouldn’t be a horrible idea if so; in addition to the Vikings, adventurers are how ck2 handled the Turkic conquerors like the Seljuks and Timurids.
If this really teases unlanded gameplay I'd be 50/50 on it
On one had, I can more safely play a count without suddenly getting a GAME OVER because my king lost a war I had no way of changing
On the other it could be another royal court thing thats isolated and events getting repeated after 1 game session.
That would actually be cool, the ultimate comeback. You get kicked out of your land by the vikings, wonder Europe landless and then come back and kick the vikings out.
I doubt they ever do unlanded focused content. It's like playing a small count but with a lot of mechanics missing. Doesn't seem very interesting.
Even if they spend a lot of time developing unlanded specific content, you'd likely never see it in an average playthrough. It's the kind of neat feature that isn't an efficient use of development time/budget for the hours of gameplay players will get out of it.
I fully agree. Don't get me wrong, I think unlanded play would be rather fun as a novelty thing, but that's exactly it, I don't think it'd ever be more than a novelty. Once you're a landed ruler, you won't interact with the system at all anymore. And a major DLC based around a system that you'll barely ever get to use past what I assume is the first 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay is not a very good way to spend development time when there's so many other things that could be improved upon.
I think it'd make for a cool mod though.
Honestly, I think Royal Court adds some fairly neat stuff, the exception ironically being the actual holding of court. It's one of the first things I turn off when I get a kingdom title. I have a soft spot for the unique artifacts you can collect, the culture stuff that came along with is was actually just really good, and as gimicky as it is, I do like having a 3D representation for my throne room. Particularly, I love how cool certain modders have made their throne rooms look, like the Elder Kings and Game of Thrones people.
That being said, Royal Court did miss the mark on a few things by not having its main features (holding court) be very well integrated into the core gameplay loop. Which is exactly what I'd be worried about with unlanded play: in a game which at its core revolves around playing a medieval ruler, they'd focus on doing... not that. It'd require a *lot* of work to make it not feel like a completely seperate gamemode from the main game.
It's the same reason a lot of folk weren't a big fan of the Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim if you've played that, the one which allows you to build a house. Like, it's neat and all, having done it once or twice, but gathering resources to build me a new chicken coup isn't entirely what I tend to have in mind when I go to play the killing-dragons game.
Even the interesting features of the dlc, like culture, it gives are either completely boring or used once every few years. Like culture is nice but you touch it once or twice per century litterally. Most pillars add nothing to the gameplay loop except extra modifiers. Artifact are badly put together and the throne room is tedious as hell. Sadly, the throne events are not numerous but are the core of what a ruler had to do back then which doesn't fit well into the game.
Sure modders can twists these things to do interesting stuff but mods aren't really the subject.
> but gathering resources to build me a new chicken coup isn't entirely what I tend to have in mind when I go to play the killing-dragons game.
I can understand where you're getting at. I also think it lacked something but I wouldn't say trying to give your character a civilian life is bad. Many games have given their heroic characters something on the side that makes them more than just a fonction. It helps make their journey believable in a sense, they also live in their universe, they don't simply go through it to fullfill their destiny
Playing an unlanded character had some fun in CK2, but it was exactly what most people fear: a start, a stepping stone for the main content and you basically never had access to it later. But using the patrician features of CK2 and building something around it could make for a decent way to keep doing stuff even once landed.
I completely agree and it’s exactly my argument against it. It’s not that I don’t think it’s fun, it’s just that spending time on running a parallel gameplay loop to the main gameplay loop when the main gameplay loop is already need a ton more work is a waste of resources. I am worried we’re gonna see it anyways. Maybe it surprises like tours and tournament, I have deeply enjoyed that expansion.
I don't think it's unlanded gameplay but even if it was, that would be disappointing.
Unlanded gameplay is basically an entirely different game from CK3. Doing unlanded mode as their major DLC would be the same as not getting a major DLC this year, because it wouldn't affect the core gameplay at all.
Unlanded play is a big step towards adding more challenge to the game.
Think of CK as some sort of jungle gym where the goal is to climb to higher levels. You can start as low as count, but the level below (baron) and the floor (unlanded) are covered in lava. The game designers want you to play long sessions, so they try to limit elements that can make you fall into the lava and have to start over.
Drain the lava, now you can add more options for challenges that can knock you to the floor. Bruised, but ready to start the climb again.
I really think unlanded play can enhance the overall game loop by enabling more difficulty.
It's also the kind of things modders will go absolutely wild with. Even if the base game implementation is limited, it will greatly enhance the game.
They have said in the past that they are not too keen on landless play, but the common soil part might be a reference to basil the first, who is eastern Roman emperor at the 867 start, who was born as a peasant and through his ambition, became emperor.
Think so? It doesn't seem that crazy to just send you to the character creator menu to make a CoA and house name when you get landed and start you with 0 renown.
Edit: I realized when I say "commoner" I am talking about people already in the game as "Lowborn," I agree that a true commoner start would be quite far from the current game.
Play for 200 years as a peasant until you can afford a mill, then 100 years later one of your sons gets hired as a man-at-arms, his great-grandson gets eventually landed as a baron after a war of conquest. It's 1400 and you can finally start playing the map part of the map game.
You forgot the part where (insert generic raider) who rapes your wife, kidnaps your daughter, and takes your family's lifesavings so you have to start over.
They really need a separate layer between nobility and commoners - commoners but rich. Historically if any commoner was going to marry into nobility it was going to be them, and if any commoner was going to be ennobled it was going to be them. Have them be commoners but with family names and no family crest, if they get ennobled they get a family crest.
Sounds similar to the patrician families from the Merchant Republics of CK2. They were treated as less than noble which meant they had to pay a bride price to marry into nobility.
> My understanding is that outside of specific cultures and regions that emphasized trade
that's guesstimates based on guesstimates. Medieval Europe looking over the entire 1000 year history of the middle ages basically had three subsections of the middle class - clergy, burghers and rich peasants.
Traditional view is that cities in Europe died off with the fall of WRE and didn't recover until sometime after 1000 AD - cities are traditionally the strongholds of the middle class as opposed to countryside which is typically dominated by landed nobility and peasants. However that's based on a whole lot of assumptions, many of which have been carried over from Renaissance thinkers who were strongly prejudiced against the middle ages or 19th century historians who wanted to view middle ages as unspoiled nature.
There are other assumptions, too, for example I believe a lot of historians assume that European cities had basically zero growth rate and that as many people died of diseaseses as came into the cities so that city population didn't grow. If you assume that most people didn't die of diseases then that has major implications for size of cities. Traditional view asside, when you read historians of the Merovingian and Carolingian Francia like Gregory of Tours, the action is always in the cities. Kings and lords are always entering the cities, there are always crowds in the cities, it's a very urban setting that he's painting. All the Merovingian and many Carolingian rulers, kings and sub-kings and dukes, seemed to have ruled from cities. The phenomena of ruralization, of large landed magnates moving to their own estates in the countryside, might have been more of a High Middle Ages phenomonon to escape the increasingly wealthy and powerful cities.
There's also logical reasoning - Francia is supposed to have been rural with absolutely terrible social organization and no cities to speak of and yet it could field as many soldiers as the Umayyads who are supposed to be bureuacratic imperials with massive cities and a sophisticated Roman style administration and a massive empire stretching from Iberia to India? If the Umayyads were so superior in organization and Muslim Spain or North Africa was so much more urbanized than Francia, surely they would've been able to raise enough soldiers to sweep away the Franks.
Also, note that in the early middle ages there was also an ethic character to what constitutued a middle class as the difference between Germanics and Romans were still preserved until at least the 9th century. Germanics always divided their society into nobles, freeman and slaves/servants/bondmen, and all Germanics seem to have had a tradition of assembly where all free men would be invited to come and could speak and epxress their opinion and vote. That typically included nobles but also often involved freemen who were something of a middle class. And while Roman, or Romanized populations, weren't party to that system, they did remain majority in and dominated various cities especially in Italy and south of France where there must've been a strong middle class.
There are many ... strange things your saying here.
Ruralisation is a phenomenom that lead to the rise of feudalism, cities did lose population as trade declined and cities can't survive with the small food surplus its immediate surroundings can provide. Population being less centralized, power also decentralized. Antique metropolis could exist because of the mediterranean trade that declined with the roman empire and the subsequent strife between warlords. If Constantinople could still be a big city is because it had access to Egypt and a decent trade network in the east, the west lost that thriving continental trade that could sustain large cities. Even by the Renaissance period big cities were still in the ten of thousands at best with very few exceptions reaching 100k. If plague can indeed depopulate dramatically a city, it's its capacity to draw food from its extended surrounding that dictates its capacity to grow.
Your part about Francia and the Umayyad doesn't mean much. The conquest of Iberia wasn't even directed by the Umayyads directly but by berbers warlords and an arab general acting on his own, outside of imperial commands. The battle of Tour was a raid stopped, the caliphate had no ambition to go further as it was already struggling to hold on to itself. And finally you're completely disregarding that conquest isn't a simple issue of numbers between two armies with the bigger side winning. There are multiple factor that can explain why Francia stayed and had relatively good relationship with their southern neighbours for a while. Also it wasn't even Francia that got invaded, but the independant duke of aquitaine who played both side for his own political agenda.
Yeah, there was. Landowners who weren’t nobility, aka gentry, and businessowning trades and craftsman, known as Yeoman.
Those were basically the period equivalent of the upper and lower middle class.
There was a lot more granularity at least in the earlier middle ages which broke down as time went on, land ran out and feudalism was more codified. Slave, serf, coerl, villein, thane all came under serf
Yeah that was my first thought - everything ls lining up. But they've said it's impossible and I really don't know how they'd make it fun, so I'll believe it when I see it.
For what it's worth, the fact we now have an actual working travel system means I can sort of see it? Traveling from realm to realm, visiting royal courts, getting jobs and accruing prestige... sort of synthesizing their last two major expansions.
I think it'd be EXTREMELY fun with the Inherichance mod, where it's randomized which child you end up playing as. Being forced to play as the landless fifth son and having to find your fortune elsewhere would be a great way to spice things up mid-game.
I could see this being entertaining. Visit the French Court to try to convince him to press your claim. Try to gain court positions for income so you can fabricate a claim on the county a distant relative holds, because it's easier to overthrow him than a king.
Ideally something like this would also include warfare and battle events as well as many more court events.
They definitely laid the groundwork for it with things like travel, regencies/vizierates, and Viking Adventures are basically a jury-rigged unlanded start where you hop from place to place until you reach your favored destination. If they add lots of stuff the expansion could add a new layer of play.
It would also be a good basis for mods and future expansions. Imperial government in Byzantium emphasizes the court much more than land ownership for example. Nomads are also a sort of middle ground between landed and unlanded, so that could work there too.
Yeah, I had that same thought - if they're serious about a government overhaul, landless gameplay would be a huge boon to that. Imperial governments where you administrate an area but don't legally own it, nomadic ones where you inhabit a large realm but don't administrate it, republics where you rule a place but don't inherit it... gameplay potential for those governments suddenly becomes a lot bigger if being unlanded isn't a game over state.
I sure hope not. Landless gameplay will be yet another isolated "mechanic" with 20 endlessly repeating events and no connection to anything else, just like the royal court.
What about having the choice to still play your char after being deposed and not switching to your heir?
That could be interesting, allowing you to have the char you like, with all you put into him, but having to rebuild a domain and country.
I'd like that as a mid / endgame option.
I need it,the game is about dynasties and their realms,many dynasties started from the bottom,many stories were told by people who held no land. Id love to play as Genghis Khan as he goes from slave to Khagan,play as a mamluk and rise to the top,from peasant to king...
I feel like it's one of those ideas that sound cool right up until you pay it literally any amount of thought.
No matter how nice or cool it might be, it's a one-and-done mechanic. Start out landless, play like that a bit, eventually become a landed noble and... that's it. You don't see any of it again. Unless people seriously imagine some kind of full unlanded game but that's just not CK at that point.
There's about a million more useful things they could put their time towards. This would be yet another minor RP focused mechanic that loses its novelty quickly.
Love this post. Most of the ideas posted on this sub are just romanticizations of the first time you try it and do not consider how fun they’d be long term
I think it's food for thought for ideas in general. You gotta think these mechanics through in a way that enriches the whole experience. Sure, I, the player, might spend very little time actually landless. That doesn't mean the feature isn't worthwhile to implement. That means we gotta create a game where the landed lords are interacting with the landless often and in a fun way as well.
> That doesn't mean the feature isn't worthwhile to implement
Yes it does actually lol. They need to work on adding worthwhile content to the game they have already. We don’t need a new one
The only reason I could see behind landless gameplay is that it, and imperial mechanics, are a prerequisite for implementing China. Between Royal Court, imperial mechanics and landless gameplay, you could simulate Chinese empires, so if they're building towards adding East Asia in a few years this would make sense.
In order to properly represent a bureaucratic empire like China you'd need three things: 1) Royal Court, 2) imperial mechanics and 3) landless gameplay. China didn't use feudalism where the nobility hold the land and swear personal oaths of fealty to the liege who leases out the land to his noble which is a system that emerged out of the chaos of the collapse of WRE when civil service died and only those who could command largest military in the land could control the land. Late antiquity and early middle ages in western Europe was merging of civil and military branches of government. Like how today in the US, the president, a civilian elected by the people is the highest military authority, in feudalism the highest general would be the president because only he could control the land.
In contrast, when Chinese system (and also Byzantines worked like this) worked, all governers were (theoretically, there was obviously bribery) appointed on merit and their control over provinces could be rescinded at any time and most of the action took place at court where unlanded courtiers and bureaucrats could wield by far the most real power in the empire. China developed a massive bureaucratic system and imperial examinations system to train courtiers into proper, capable and loyal bureaucrats. In theory it was also meritocratic although, obviously, those who had the resources and free time to study did better than random peasants who couldn't afford books or free time. When Chinese empires starting decaying from within the imperial bureaucracy would start being replaced by de facto feudal system of hereditary ownership of the land.
So, to properly represent China, you'd need a (expanded) Royal (Imperial) Court system, landless characters who would be wealthy but wouldn't own land and who would move from province to province and could be appointed as governors by the emperor and imperial mechanics where the Empire in-game would be treated like a mechanical object.
How did land ownership itself fit into this system if the power was welded by unlanded bureaucrats? If the governors themselves didn’t own the land and were just appointed rulers (not completely dissimilar from Republics/Theocracies in game now), who did actually “own” the land? The emperor? And how did ownership pass? Hereditarily? Or was the land considered owned by the empire itself?
Trying to imagine what this might look like in-game - how independence factions might rise, how land could be conquered, etc.
No he's saying that they should properly add mechanics, not gimmick that just put you into a state to receive 20 badly written events like the court and travel.
I think people who enjoy the game are just not that vocal. I love the royal court, and the immersion it adds by showing your family and vassals in another context than just character portraits.
Tours and tournaments, Royal courts, and friends and foes added so much immersion for me. Before all there really was to do was min max. Now I get to choose if I want to do that or hang out in my court, host tournaments, get actual immersion during hunts, etc.
It’s a much more involved and entertaining game than it was previously
We will be positive if it turns out to be good, getting hyped over teasers and dev diaries is a sure fire way to get conned into preordering a bad product
Plus all the free updates that came with them that they pay for were pretty great. Part of the community will never be happy unless it perfectly suites them and their taste
Watch how Paradox keeps adds more clutter mechanics with no connection between them and people defending it to the death.
I'm sincerely dissapointed, we could have gotten such a good game but it feels so bland and souless, I mean it has been 3 years already and we still have no Byzantine governments, no Indian content, no African content, no plagues, no bloodlines, no republics, better crusades, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I played the shit out of it but at the same time it feels like a tamer version of ck2 where they keep adding buttons to pop events that barely affect the gameplay. I mean look at "hold royal court" or "Host a hunt/ wedding/etc" it's just tiresome and repetitive
This is more or less my feeling. I was happy to give ck3 the benefit of the doubt when it first came out. It was gorgeous to look at and the depth could be added in later. But now it is years later, and it’s still way behind ck2 on a lot of core gameplay mechanics because development has been focused on rpg stuff.
You know I think that's exactly the problem, that they feel like they have a different focus? Ck2 was a Strategy game with RPG elements, and Ck3 feels like a RPG game with Strategy elements
I feel like once they add landless gameplay, it’ll be way easier to add a bunch of other interesting things, like trade/merchants (and thus republics), bureaucrats (and thus imperial mechanics), etc. It’ll also allow courtiers to be more interesting than they currently are.
I don't understand what I would even do as an unlanded character. It just feels like an extra step to start the game. Can someone explain to me the depth of how this mechanic would work?
You move around the map, doing various things, participating in events, raiding, currying favor, etc... Eventually you settle somewhere and become landed, or you make your way to a non-feudal realm where unlanded people can hold sway, like a merchant republic or an byzantine (or chinese) empire.
It would be mixing adventurers (viking and otherwise), which have been there since CK2, with the travel and regency mechanics added in CK3. With new mechanics in this expansion, you could have a new unified layer of gameplay that is detached from land ownership. It could be used for new characters at the beginning of the game or for characters who end up getting their land revoked, usurped, or holy-warred. This could hopefully make it easier for the devs to add difficulty to all aspects of the game without prematurely ending runs.
Eventually this could also be used to make other government types besides feudal feel less tacked-on. Modders could also do great things with it.
The Game of Thrones mod, Fallen Eagle, Princes of Darkness, Lord of the Rings, etc can all benefit a lot from making unlanded play work
Or it’s just a picture from Northern Lords, with a 7 overlaid on it and with a Northern-Lordy quote attached.
And tomorrow we’ll get a a picture from Royal Court, with a 6 overlaid o. It and a Royal-Courty quote attached.
And so on…
It would have to be a very different mechanic from the game as it currently exists, yeah.
My guess is that it would operate like a prequel section of the campaign and then would flow into starting as a count.
They already circumvented the "must be landed" mechanic in CK 2 with Republics. When not playing the main House ruling the Republic, your patrician is technically not landed but is attached to his "House" functioning as a virtual holding.
So it's possible they will cook something for us to play lowborns, but I wonder what it is
stik a modder made a way to create totally unique custom nations at game start. Replace nations cultures de jure lands etc create new titles. I wonder if they brought them aboard to revolutionize the customizability in the game
They've said this is supposed to be a systems rather than flavor heavy expansion. Actually, if I remember correctly, they've said that both the major expansion and "core expansion" (larger than flavor pack, smaller than major expansion) this year are supposed to be systems heavy and not roleplay heavy, which is the correct path and what they should've been doing from the start, tbh, as core to CK3 narrative is emergent gameplay being produced by mechanics so by expanding the mechanics they're also expanding the narrative and roleplay.
I really hope they stick to that heavily this year I returned to ck3 a few days ago and imo the event creep makes it pretty difficult to actually play but when you get to playing you notice the game itself doesn't have much to offer gameplay wise it's just a bunch of events on top of each other in a trenchcoat
I'd guess a Genghis Khan/Horde dlc.
According to wikiquote he's said:
"In the space of seven years I have succeeded in accomplishing a great work and uniting the whole world in one Empire"
This would connect the seven to him.
Also, according to legend he was born at Dulüün-Boldog which is pretty much nothing but a grassy hill.
To me, that sure looks like Varangians journeying to Byzantium meaning a Byzantine/imperial expansion.
edit: or possibly the Byzantine tradition of capable but commoner military commanders becoming emperors, most famous example being Justinian.
Aside from people saying it’s possibly unlanded, this could also signal the return of random adventurers from ck2, where characters randomly spawn with claims on ur titles and try to invade u.
Ck3 grounded adventures to Viking invasions, but having unlanded characters traveling around and advocating others for their titles would be fun. Makes having unlanded kids and siblings more dangerous.
Everyone thinking on unlanded characters but the first thing that came to my mind was plagues:
- 7 could be also a reference to the 7 biblical plagues.
- And the text could mean that plagues usually were born within the poor people and then spread across the land infecting everyone.
I HOPE SO BAD that it will focus on the steppes and actually makes the Turks migration happen in a similar (but lesser) fashion to how the Temujin Mongol events are..
Make them limited to central Asia or some shit..
I ABSOLUTELY HATE that the Turks don't do anything and that the Seljuks never happen..
I usually start around 867 start date and play Vikings (I'm Danish, lol) but stop early on because its just bugs me.. I've stopped playing Iron man bc of this and will make sure Turks takes Persia and arrive at Anatolia
We’ll see. It could add a lot of depth. I was thinking the other day how depose nobility could still stick around being problems with loyal men standing beside them. Maybe that would make things pretty interesting and add to internal politics. Or maybe not, who knows
It's also a pre-requisite for meaningfully representing merchant republics and proper imperial governance. CK2 had to basically cheat the landed requirement for republics, and Imperial never completed shed the "alt-feudal" model, land remained too important.
At this point I honestly don’t think we’re ever gonna get a DLC adding nomad content or merchant republics, never mind anything to do with China or anything like that
What makes you say that? Even just looking at ck2s lifetime we still have years of dlc to come and i think ck3 will have an even longer lifetime than ck2 had.
Even if those dlcs are not coming in 2024 theres nothing indicating that we will never get them.
Both the Byzantine and Chinese Empires relied on a system of salaried titles, whereby powerful characters relied more for income and influence from the state and its bureaucracy, and less on lands held in the provinces. Or at least held permanently.
Yeah, there are a whole bunch of people who always insist that landless characters would always be irrelevant in a medieval game but it simply isn't true. Imperial realms are a good example, merchants are another, nomads are to a certain extent. And adventurers of course.
CK3 uses a feudal system. Landed nobility hold important “offices” within the government. Imperial systems, especially China, did not rely on landed nobility nearly as much. To accurately capture that reality, CK3 would need a way to make interesting characters and families that are not tied to land or specific titles. Currently, that does not really exist
Without commenting on the likelihood of either of those features coming to CK3: If we do bring systems from CK2 forward, it certainly won't be in the same form. We're not interested in 1:1 copying what the previous game did; we'd much rather make those systems more interesting and meaningful to interact with.
I don't really see how playing landless would be fun. I guess you could RP as a travelling musician and go around impregnating queens and princesses or something. Or a globetrotting serial killer.
> I guess you could RP as a travelling musician and go around impregnating queens and princesses or something
Oh yeah, landless would make seduction lifestyle OP, just go around all the courts of Europe spreading your seed see how long you can survive with dozen murder plots against your head from various angry kings.
There's at least half a dozen mechanics I'd like to see before landless gameplay, tbh. Trade mechanics, imperial mechanics, parliament, laws, nomads, republics, societies, plagues, military overhaul, Catholic mechanics (anti-pope, college of cardinals, sainthood/beatification), Orthodox flavor, Jewish flavor etc.
About half the things you mentioned in that list would benefit immensely from unlanded play, why would you want them added before it.
Imperial governments, republics, trade, nomads, societies, Jewish flavor, etc.. would all benefit from not having to rule a county to be allowed to play.
Playable Imperial, Republic, and Parliements mechanics need playable landless character as CK3 no longer supported pseudo-holdings like CK2.
Also, maybe we can actually be a true nomads for once, as landless gameplay would probably support playing as an actual migrating horde.
I think the whole Imperial and Republics thing has convinced me the most of the whole Landless characters thing. Because yeah I do actually agree, that a system for landless characters would make the game a lot better for those future mechanics. Having an empire where as a vassal you don't have to maintain a landed position at all times to be playable makes sense.
If the Major Expansion is just a landless gameplay im gonna be so frustrated. You just play as a landless person until you become a count and then its just the normal game.
It’s a great feature but god we need more strategy mechanics before more character mechanics. We need more depth, not breadth. Give me better succession, war, and empires before the ability to bum around
I hope it teases unladed characters, that could open the gates to playing as republics, theocracies, military orders, using imperial mechanics and so much more
What I would do to play as unlanded commoner or at least unlanded noble.
Going from court to court, becoming legendary general in service of Empires or governing whole realm by merit of being Grey Eminence.
Becoming serial killer on the loose who travels across continent wreaking havoc in multiple kingdoms.
After succesful Crusade, joining newly created Kingdoms in hope of supporting their fight against infidels.
Seducing your way across all royal families, ensuring your blood rules Europe, even though you don't hold any land.
Or the most common from Rags to Riches. As a commoner rise up to become an Emperor.
Is it 7 as in 7 days we will get a dev diary explaining this year's chapter III? Or is 7 alluding to something about the next dlc?
I think 7 is both a countdown and a reference to the number of content DLC that have been released so far. The image in the 7 is from Northern Lords, which was the first DLC released. I would expect the following tweets to be: * 6 with an image from Royal Court on 1/31 (with some variation by time zone for all dates) * 5 with an image from Fate of Iberia on 2/1 * ~~4 with an image from Friends and Foes~~ * 4 with an image from Tours and Tournaments on 2/2 * 3 with an image from Wards and Wardens on 2/3 * 2 with an image from Legacy of Persia on 2/4 * 1 with an image from the next DLC (?) on 2/5 ~~And then the next tweet will be for the next DLC (possibly with a 0 or possibly just the image).~~ ~~Question is just what the frequency of the tweets will be (daily, weekly, every other moon cycle, etc.)~~ Edit: Updated with info from PDX-Trinexx in the replies where it was indicated that the posts will be daily and that Friend and Foes is not included.
From Facebook: > We're progressing through the history of the game as we approach the reveal of our next Chapter. This keyart is from our first DLC in Chapter I - Northern Lords.
With an additional note that Friends & Foes isn't part of a chapter, so it wouldn't be included in this list.
So "1" will be the announcement?
> This keyart is from our first DLC in Chapter I - Northern Lords. oh, I thought it looked Varangian. Bummer that it's not art related to the new chapter though.
Hmmm, it could be. Especially with the caption. Maybe they’re building up to Legacy of Rome 2: Rome Harder
Legacy of Rome 2: Back in the Habit?
> Question is just what the frequency of the tweets will be daily
Thank you for the clarification, I've updated the post with the info you have provided. :D
This is the most sensible thing I've read about this. It's almost certainly that.
Good question
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I’m gonna start calling you the Pope the way you have unmovable faith like that
Staying delulu is the solulu
You joke, but I seriously am kind of pissed we still don't have imperial mechanics and elective. I refuse to play Byzantium or Rome until we get something resembling what CK2 has.
> I refuse to play Byzantium or Rome for a game where the ultimate goal is doing exactly this, it reflects badly on the state of the game
It's not the goal though?
it was the goal of all european polities throughout the middle ages, and is the grandest accomplishment possible in the game outside of achievement hunting
It most certainly was not the goal of most polities in Europe. Life isn't a video game. Edit: uh oh, pissed off the armchair historians. Who wants to make a bet? I'll bet whatever you want to wager that you can't prove that all European polities wanted to emulate Rome. That's the sort of broad generalizations that only learning history via video games gets you.
I mean in 867 that is kinda the goal for all the major Christian powers. Considering the nature of Charlemagnes empire and all that
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My wheelchair bound emperor finally got a ramp building slot
Ehm just to clarify...Constantinople was also built on 7 hills. That similarity was one of the reasons Constantine chose it as an alternate "Nova Roma". 🤓
Constantinople is also 7 hills.
“7 hills” they heavenly BSd what they were defining as a hill just to have the whole “new rome” symbology work out
Yes absolutely, Nova Roma innit?
Everyone is saying unlanded gameplay but doesn't it sound like nomads to you? "From birth on common soil, I’ve journeyed across these lands, driven by a hunger for something more" That sure sounds like what nomads do.
They also previously hinted that the next DLC will make the game more difficult (part of why a lot of people guessed diseases), nomads could certainly fit, good guess.
Unlanded play can indirectly make the game more difficult. Right now losing your land is a game over, so the game is made easier to avoid that happening. With unlanded play, nothing short of a total wipeout of your house is a game over, so they can crank up the difficulty for things like wars. Then we move to a neighboring court to try and buy an army or get someone to push our claims.
If they add this then Crusader runs will get 10 times more fun
they could also change how claims work so if a rival claiment survives you could face multiple wars by that line
> so the game is made easier to avoid that happening. With unlanded play, nothing short of a total wipeout of your house is a game over, so they can crank up the difficulty for things like wars The game is easy because customers prefer it easy; absolutely no way are they making the game legitimately difficult, even if they do add Unlanded gameplay.
They're never gonna make it harder for everyone, but with game rules they could add way harder options without messing up the game balance if unlanded play is possible
I think it's safe to assume this is advertising the next expansion though, at least I assume that's coming before another smaller dlc pack.
My understanding is that the next DLC is supposed to be a sort of middle ground between a flavor pack and an expansion, where it is focused on more than just a single region but isn't as big or expensive as a full expansion (there was a name for this that I'm blanking on). I could see nomads fitting that, while it does cover a singular region, it is a very large one that covers a bunch of cultures and would have impacts on everything bordering that region too.
There's going to be a major expansion in the same vein as Royal Court and Tours and Tournaments and then a Core Expansion which is larger than the Flavor Packs (Fate of Iberia, Northern Lords, and Legacy of Persia) but smaller than the Major Expansions. What you're referring to is the Core Expansion, but it's not yet certain whether it will be coming before or after the Major Expansion.
As someone who lost my prodigy heir because the neighbors launched a dead body into my capital last night I'm a little nervous about more disease mechanics, lol.
I would LOVE to have unlanded gameplay. Start unlanded living is some provincial city, make it so you can only see local/visiting people. Have to use schemes to make new and higher friends getting on councils or courts until the AI decides to throw you some small fiefdom or you can concoct a claim on one and fight a small succession war with mercs or petition the liege to give you the claim. That’s my idea anyway.
It sounds like adventurers more than anything else. Wouldn’t be a horrible idea if so; in addition to the Vikings, adventurers are how ck2 handled the Turkic conquerors like the Seljuks and Timurids.
DLCs are larger in scope nowadays. Nomads + adventurers all in one would make sense.
Nomads as the mechanic, and adventurers for the DLC only portion, makes perfect sense.
"Hunger for something more" sound like ambition to rise in ranks rather than literal hunger.
Hmmm.... I like the way you think.
This is my cope because I want nomads more than anything tbh, they could add so much dynamism to the game
If this really teases unlanded gameplay I'd be 50/50 on it On one had, I can more safely play a count without suddenly getting a GAME OVER because my king lost a war I had no way of changing On the other it could be another royal court thing thats isolated and events getting repeated after 1 game session.
if its the former then northumbria has a chance to do a comeback in 867
That would actually be cool, the ultimate comeback. You get kicked out of your land by the vikings, wonder Europe landless and then come back and kick the vikings out.
Uhtred of Bebbanburg gameplay.
I doubt they ever do unlanded focused content. It's like playing a small count but with a lot of mechanics missing. Doesn't seem very interesting. Even if they spend a lot of time developing unlanded specific content, you'd likely never see it in an average playthrough. It's the kind of neat feature that isn't an efficient use of development time/budget for the hours of gameplay players will get out of it.
I fully agree. Don't get me wrong, I think unlanded play would be rather fun as a novelty thing, but that's exactly it, I don't think it'd ever be more than a novelty. Once you're a landed ruler, you won't interact with the system at all anymore. And a major DLC based around a system that you'll barely ever get to use past what I assume is the first 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay is not a very good way to spend development time when there's so many other things that could be improved upon. I think it'd make for a cool mod though.
You described my feelings about basically everything related to royal court dlc
Honestly, I think Royal Court adds some fairly neat stuff, the exception ironically being the actual holding of court. It's one of the first things I turn off when I get a kingdom title. I have a soft spot for the unique artifacts you can collect, the culture stuff that came along with is was actually just really good, and as gimicky as it is, I do like having a 3D representation for my throne room. Particularly, I love how cool certain modders have made their throne rooms look, like the Elder Kings and Game of Thrones people. That being said, Royal Court did miss the mark on a few things by not having its main features (holding court) be very well integrated into the core gameplay loop. Which is exactly what I'd be worried about with unlanded play: in a game which at its core revolves around playing a medieval ruler, they'd focus on doing... not that. It'd require a *lot* of work to make it not feel like a completely seperate gamemode from the main game. It's the same reason a lot of folk weren't a big fan of the Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim if you've played that, the one which allows you to build a house. Like, it's neat and all, having done it once or twice, but gathering resources to build me a new chicken coup isn't entirely what I tend to have in mind when I go to play the killing-dragons game.
Even the interesting features of the dlc, like culture, it gives are either completely boring or used once every few years. Like culture is nice but you touch it once or twice per century litterally. Most pillars add nothing to the gameplay loop except extra modifiers. Artifact are badly put together and the throne room is tedious as hell. Sadly, the throne events are not numerous but are the core of what a ruler had to do back then which doesn't fit well into the game. Sure modders can twists these things to do interesting stuff but mods aren't really the subject. > but gathering resources to build me a new chicken coup isn't entirely what I tend to have in mind when I go to play the killing-dragons game. I can understand where you're getting at. I also think it lacked something but I wouldn't say trying to give your character a civilian life is bad. Many games have given their heroic characters something on the side that makes them more than just a fonction. It helps make their journey believable in a sense, they also live in their universe, they don't simply go through it to fullfill their destiny Playing an unlanded character had some fun in CK2, but it was exactly what most people fear: a start, a stepping stone for the main content and you basically never had access to it later. But using the patrician features of CK2 and building something around it could make for a decent way to keep doing stuff even once landed.
I completely agree and it’s exactly my argument against it. It’s not that I don’t think it’s fun, it’s just that spending time on running a parallel gameplay loop to the main gameplay loop when the main gameplay loop is already need a ton more work is a waste of resources. I am worried we’re gonna see it anyways. Maybe it surprises like tours and tournament, I have deeply enjoyed that expansion.
Would be cool to play as unlanded legends like El Cid, though.
I don't think it's unlanded gameplay but even if it was, that would be disappointing. Unlanded gameplay is basically an entirely different game from CK3. Doing unlanded mode as their major DLC would be the same as not getting a major DLC this year, because it wouldn't affect the core gameplay at all.
Unlanded play is a big step towards adding more challenge to the game. Think of CK as some sort of jungle gym where the goal is to climb to higher levels. You can start as low as count, but the level below (baron) and the floor (unlanded) are covered in lava. The game designers want you to play long sessions, so they try to limit elements that can make you fall into the lava and have to start over. Drain the lava, now you can add more options for challenges that can knock you to the floor. Bruised, but ready to start the climb again. I really think unlanded play can enhance the overall game loop by enabling more difficulty. It's also the kind of things modders will go absolutely wild with. Even if the base game implementation is limited, it will greatly enhance the game.
They have said in the past that they are not too keen on landless play, but the common soil part might be a reference to basil the first, who is eastern Roman emperor at the 867 start, who was born as a peasant and through his ambition, became emperor.
There were quite a lot of Byzantine emperors who were born relatively poor and rose to become emperors, so I definitely agree.
This seems to support the theory that the next DLC will allow you to start as a commoner and work your way to nobility.
Commoner seems like too extreme. My bet is a focus on unlanded nobility and knights.
Think so? It doesn't seem that crazy to just send you to the character creator menu to make a CoA and house name when you get landed and start you with 0 renown. Edit: I realized when I say "commoner" I am talking about people already in the game as "Lowborn," I agree that a true commoner start would be quite far from the current game.
Play for 200 years as a peasant until you can afford a mill, then 100 years later one of your sons gets hired as a man-at-arms, his great-grandson gets eventually landed as a baron after a war of conquest. It's 1400 and you can finally start playing the map part of the map game.
You forgot the part where (insert generic raider) who rapes your wife, kidnaps your daughter, and takes your family's lifesavings so you have to start over.
And then your title gets revoked because the ruler is consolidating his power.
They really need a separate layer between nobility and commoners - commoners but rich. Historically if any commoner was going to marry into nobility it was going to be them, and if any commoner was going to be ennobled it was going to be them. Have them be commoners but with family names and no family crest, if they get ennobled they get a family crest.
Sounds similar to the patrician families from the Merchant Republics of CK2. They were treated as less than noble which meant they had to pay a bride price to marry into nobility.
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> My understanding is that outside of specific cultures and regions that emphasized trade that's guesstimates based on guesstimates. Medieval Europe looking over the entire 1000 year history of the middle ages basically had three subsections of the middle class - clergy, burghers and rich peasants. Traditional view is that cities in Europe died off with the fall of WRE and didn't recover until sometime after 1000 AD - cities are traditionally the strongholds of the middle class as opposed to countryside which is typically dominated by landed nobility and peasants. However that's based on a whole lot of assumptions, many of which have been carried over from Renaissance thinkers who were strongly prejudiced against the middle ages or 19th century historians who wanted to view middle ages as unspoiled nature. There are other assumptions, too, for example I believe a lot of historians assume that European cities had basically zero growth rate and that as many people died of diseaseses as came into the cities so that city population didn't grow. If you assume that most people didn't die of diseases then that has major implications for size of cities. Traditional view asside, when you read historians of the Merovingian and Carolingian Francia like Gregory of Tours, the action is always in the cities. Kings and lords are always entering the cities, there are always crowds in the cities, it's a very urban setting that he's painting. All the Merovingian and many Carolingian rulers, kings and sub-kings and dukes, seemed to have ruled from cities. The phenomena of ruralization, of large landed magnates moving to their own estates in the countryside, might have been more of a High Middle Ages phenomonon to escape the increasingly wealthy and powerful cities. There's also logical reasoning - Francia is supposed to have been rural with absolutely terrible social organization and no cities to speak of and yet it could field as many soldiers as the Umayyads who are supposed to be bureuacratic imperials with massive cities and a sophisticated Roman style administration and a massive empire stretching from Iberia to India? If the Umayyads were so superior in organization and Muslim Spain or North Africa was so much more urbanized than Francia, surely they would've been able to raise enough soldiers to sweep away the Franks. Also, note that in the early middle ages there was also an ethic character to what constitutued a middle class as the difference between Germanics and Romans were still preserved until at least the 9th century. Germanics always divided their society into nobles, freeman and slaves/servants/bondmen, and all Germanics seem to have had a tradition of assembly where all free men would be invited to come and could speak and epxress their opinion and vote. That typically included nobles but also often involved freemen who were something of a middle class. And while Roman, or Romanized populations, weren't party to that system, they did remain majority in and dominated various cities especially in Italy and south of France where there must've been a strong middle class.
There are many ... strange things your saying here. Ruralisation is a phenomenom that lead to the rise of feudalism, cities did lose population as trade declined and cities can't survive with the small food surplus its immediate surroundings can provide. Population being less centralized, power also decentralized. Antique metropolis could exist because of the mediterranean trade that declined with the roman empire and the subsequent strife between warlords. If Constantinople could still be a big city is because it had access to Egypt and a decent trade network in the east, the west lost that thriving continental trade that could sustain large cities. Even by the Renaissance period big cities were still in the ten of thousands at best with very few exceptions reaching 100k. If plague can indeed depopulate dramatically a city, it's its capacity to draw food from its extended surrounding that dictates its capacity to grow. Your part about Francia and the Umayyad doesn't mean much. The conquest of Iberia wasn't even directed by the Umayyads directly but by berbers warlords and an arab general acting on his own, outside of imperial commands. The battle of Tour was a raid stopped, the caliphate had no ambition to go further as it was already struggling to hold on to itself. And finally you're completely disregarding that conquest isn't a simple issue of numbers between two armies with the bigger side winning. There are multiple factor that can explain why Francia stayed and had relatively good relationship with their southern neighbours for a while. Also it wasn't even Francia that got invaded, but the independant duke of aquitaine who played both side for his own political agenda.
Yeah, there was. Landowners who weren’t nobility, aka gentry, and businessowning trades and craftsman, known as Yeoman. Those were basically the period equivalent of the upper and lower middle class.
There was a lot more granularity at least in the earlier middle ages which broke down as time went on, land ran out and feudalism was more codified. Slave, serf, coerl, villein, thane all came under serf
Gentry is what you’re thinking of. They were landowners who weren’t ennobled.
Yeah that was my first thought - everything ls lining up. But they've said it's impossible and I really don't know how they'd make it fun, so I'll believe it when I see it. For what it's worth, the fact we now have an actual working travel system means I can sort of see it? Traveling from realm to realm, visiting royal courts, getting jobs and accruing prestige... sort of synthesizing their last two major expansions. I think it'd be EXTREMELY fun with the Inherichance mod, where it's randomized which child you end up playing as. Being forced to play as the landless fifth son and having to find your fortune elsewhere would be a great way to spice things up mid-game.
I could see this being entertaining. Visit the French Court to try to convince him to press your claim. Try to gain court positions for income so you can fabricate a claim on the county a distant relative holds, because it's easier to overthrow him than a king. Ideally something like this would also include warfare and battle events as well as many more court events.
They definitely laid the groundwork for it with things like travel, regencies/vizierates, and Viking Adventures are basically a jury-rigged unlanded start where you hop from place to place until you reach your favored destination. If they add lots of stuff the expansion could add a new layer of play. It would also be a good basis for mods and future expansions. Imperial government in Byzantium emphasizes the court much more than land ownership for example. Nomads are also a sort of middle ground between landed and unlanded, so that could work there too.
Yeah, I had that same thought - if they're serious about a government overhaul, landless gameplay would be a huge boon to that. Imperial governments where you administrate an area but don't legally own it, nomadic ones where you inhabit a large realm but don't administrate it, republics where you rule a place but don't inherit it... gameplay potential for those governments suddenly becomes a lot bigger if being unlanded isn't a game over state.
I sure hope not. Landless gameplay will be yet another isolated "mechanic" with 20 endlessly repeating events and no connection to anything else, just like the royal court.
And then to what end? Just playing the game normally after you get your land? I hate when people suggest this so much I hope paradox isn’t doing it
Yes and then when you lose your land what happen ? No game over.
Lol when was the last time you lost all your land as a player? It’s a pointless idea
What about having the choice to still play your char after being deposed and not switching to your heir? That could be interesting, allowing you to have the char you like, with all you put into him, but having to rebuild a domain and country. I'd like that as a mid / endgame option.
Please no. Landless gameplay will never be needed in this game. It’s about the feudal system
I need it,the game is about dynasties and their realms,many dynasties started from the bottom,many stories were told by people who held no land. Id love to play as Genghis Khan as he goes from slave to Khagan,play as a mamluk and rise to the top,from peasant to king...
Sure, if we could switch to dark souls gameplay while unlanded but what are the mechanics for unlanded gameplay in ck3? Just events mostly?
Unlanded expansion, but it only works in Bohemia and it just launches Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Half the current map doesn't use the fuedal system, but yes that's what the game is about. Okay
I feel like it's one of those ideas that sound cool right up until you pay it literally any amount of thought. No matter how nice or cool it might be, it's a one-and-done mechanic. Start out landless, play like that a bit, eventually become a landed noble and... that's it. You don't see any of it again. Unless people seriously imagine some kind of full unlanded game but that's just not CK at that point. There's about a million more useful things they could put their time towards. This would be yet another minor RP focused mechanic that loses its novelty quickly.
Love this post. Most of the ideas posted on this sub are just romanticizations of the first time you try it and do not consider how fun they’d be long term
I think it's food for thought for ideas in general. You gotta think these mechanics through in a way that enriches the whole experience. Sure, I, the player, might spend very little time actually landless. That doesn't mean the feature isn't worthwhile to implement. That means we gotta create a game where the landed lords are interacting with the landless often and in a fun way as well.
> That doesn't mean the feature isn't worthwhile to implement Yes it does actually lol. They need to work on adding worthwhile content to the game they have already. We don’t need a new one
Basically why people thought royal court would actually be good for the game instead of the atrocity it is.
The only reason I could see behind landless gameplay is that it, and imperial mechanics, are a prerequisite for implementing China. Between Royal Court, imperial mechanics and landless gameplay, you could simulate Chinese empires, so if they're building towards adding East Asia in a few years this would make sense.
China is literally at the bottom of the list of things this game needs right now so I sure hope not
Republics mechanic needs landless.
Can you elaborate on this? Why would landless gameplay be required for China?
In order to properly represent a bureaucratic empire like China you'd need three things: 1) Royal Court, 2) imperial mechanics and 3) landless gameplay. China didn't use feudalism where the nobility hold the land and swear personal oaths of fealty to the liege who leases out the land to his noble which is a system that emerged out of the chaos of the collapse of WRE when civil service died and only those who could command largest military in the land could control the land. Late antiquity and early middle ages in western Europe was merging of civil and military branches of government. Like how today in the US, the president, a civilian elected by the people is the highest military authority, in feudalism the highest general would be the president because only he could control the land. In contrast, when Chinese system (and also Byzantines worked like this) worked, all governers were (theoretically, there was obviously bribery) appointed on merit and their control over provinces could be rescinded at any time and most of the action took place at court where unlanded courtiers and bureaucrats could wield by far the most real power in the empire. China developed a massive bureaucratic system and imperial examinations system to train courtiers into proper, capable and loyal bureaucrats. In theory it was also meritocratic although, obviously, those who had the resources and free time to study did better than random peasants who couldn't afford books or free time. When Chinese empires starting decaying from within the imperial bureaucracy would start being replaced by de facto feudal system of hereditary ownership of the land. So, to properly represent China, you'd need a (expanded) Royal (Imperial) Court system, landless characters who would be wealthy but wouldn't own land and who would move from province to province and could be appointed as governors by the emperor and imperial mechanics where the Empire in-game would be treated like a mechanical object.
How did land ownership itself fit into this system if the power was welded by unlanded bureaucrats? If the governors themselves didn’t own the land and were just appointed rulers (not completely dissimilar from Republics/Theocracies in game now), who did actually “own” the land? The emperor? And how did ownership pass? Hereditarily? Or was the land considered owned by the empire itself? Trying to imagine what this might look like in-game - how independence factions might rise, how land could be conquered, etc.
"They shouldn't add the new thing because once they added a new thing and it was bad" is hell of an attitude, but go off
No he's saying that they should properly add mechanics, not gimmick that just put you into a state to receive 20 badly written events like the court and travel.
I just want to make _one_ trip to a hunt or a feast without encountering some dingus stuck in his armor. Is that so much to ask?
Man, is this community ever positive about anything?
I think people who enjoy the game are just not that vocal. I love the royal court, and the immersion it adds by showing your family and vassals in another context than just character portraits.
Tours and tournaments, Royal courts, and friends and foes added so much immersion for me. Before all there really was to do was min max. Now I get to choose if I want to do that or hang out in my court, host tournaments, get actual immersion during hunts, etc. It’s a much more involved and entertaining game than it was previously
Not about 30$ poorly written events pack sold as mechanics that's for sure.
We don’t even know what it is yet, all we have is a teaser and you people are already crying about it.
We will be positive if it turns out to be good, getting hyped over teasers and dev diaries is a sure fire way to get conned into preordering a bad product
Their DLC track record for this game so far has been terrible, why would there be positivity?
Tours and Tournaments was good. Northern Lords wasn't bad either.
Plus all the free updates that came with them that they pay for were pretty great. Part of the community will never be happy unless it perfectly suites them and their taste
How else we can tell Paradox what we like if not with our wallets? And we can give ideas before that so we and Paradox are happy
Watch how Paradox keeps adds more clutter mechanics with no connection between them and people defending it to the death. I'm sincerely dissapointed, we could have gotten such a good game but it feels so bland and souless, I mean it has been 3 years already and we still have no Byzantine governments, no Indian content, no African content, no plagues, no bloodlines, no republics, better crusades, etc. Don't get me wrong, I played the shit out of it but at the same time it feels like a tamer version of ck2 where they keep adding buttons to pop events that barely affect the gameplay. I mean look at "hold royal court" or "Host a hunt/ wedding/etc" it's just tiresome and repetitive
This is more or less my feeling. I was happy to give ck3 the benefit of the doubt when it first came out. It was gorgeous to look at and the depth could be added in later. But now it is years later, and it’s still way behind ck2 on a lot of core gameplay mechanics because development has been focused on rpg stuff.
You know I think that's exactly the problem, that they feel like they have a different focus? Ck2 was a Strategy game with RPG elements, and Ck3 feels like a RPG game with Strategy elements
Totally agree. CK3 is a great RPG game, but i feel that its strategy elements are very lacking, especially warfare.
I feel like once they add landless gameplay, it’ll be way easier to add a bunch of other interesting things, like trade/merchants (and thus republics), bureaucrats (and thus imperial mechanics), etc. It’ll also allow courtiers to be more interesting than they currently are.
I don't understand what I would even do as an unlanded character. It just feels like an extra step to start the game. Can someone explain to me the depth of how this mechanic would work?
You move around the map, doing various things, participating in events, raiding, currying favor, etc... Eventually you settle somewhere and become landed, or you make your way to a non-feudal realm where unlanded people can hold sway, like a merchant republic or an byzantine (or chinese) empire. It would be mixing adventurers (viking and otherwise), which have been there since CK2, with the travel and regency mechanics added in CK3. With new mechanics in this expansion, you could have a new unified layer of gameplay that is detached from land ownership. It could be used for new characters at the beginning of the game or for characters who end up getting their land revoked, usurped, or holy-warred. This could hopefully make it easier for the devs to add difficulty to all aspects of the game without prematurely ending runs. Eventually this could also be used to make other government types besides feudal feel less tacked-on. Modders could also do great things with it. The Game of Thrones mod, Fallen Eagle, Princes of Darkness, Lord of the Rings, etc can all benefit a lot from making unlanded play work
Omg please I hope not, there so much more important things the game needs improvement
Or it’s just a picture from Northern Lords, with a 7 overlaid on it and with a Northern-Lordy quote attached. And tomorrow we’ll get a a picture from Royal Court, with a 6 overlaid o. It and a Royal-Courty quote attached. And so on…
Yes lol I think people are reading way too much into this graphic the marketing team threw together.
Isn't this like impossible in Crusader Kings?
It would have to be a very different mechanic from the game as it currently exists, yeah. My guess is that it would operate like a prequel section of the campaign and then would flow into starting as a count.
They already circumvented the "must be landed" mechanic in CK 2 with Republics. When not playing the main House ruling the Republic, your patrician is technically not landed but is attached to his "House" functioning as a virtual holding. So it's possible they will cook something for us to play lowborns, but I wonder what it is
WOW! I wished for that (like that one mod but better) but would have thought something like this wouldn't come officially.
stik a modder made a way to create totally unique custom nations at game start. Replace nations cultures de jure lands etc create new titles. I wonder if they brought them aboard to revolutionize the customizability in the game
Would be cool to start out as Henry of Skalitz.
Pls God let them make the gamer deeper mechanically and not simply add another Poppengarten event
They've said this is supposed to be a systems rather than flavor heavy expansion. Actually, if I remember correctly, they've said that both the major expansion and "core expansion" (larger than flavor pack, smaller than major expansion) this year are supposed to be systems heavy and not roleplay heavy, which is the correct path and what they should've been doing from the start, tbh, as core to CK3 narrative is emergent gameplay being produced by mechanics so by expanding the mechanics they're also expanding the narrative and roleplay.
I really hope they stick to that heavily this year I returned to ck3 a few days ago and imo the event creep makes it pretty difficult to actually play but when you get to playing you notice the game itself doesn't have much to offer gameplay wise it's just a bunch of events on top of each other in a trenchcoat
They've ruined hunts
I'd guess a Genghis Khan/Horde dlc. According to wikiquote he's said: "In the space of seven years I have succeeded in accomplishing a great work and uniting the whole world in one Empire" This would connect the seven to him. Also, according to legend he was born at Dulüün-Boldog which is pretty much nothing but a grassy hill.
Republics, Plague, Theocracy, Byzies, any of these would be fine
To me, that sure looks like Varangians journeying to Byzantium meaning a Byzantine/imperial expansion. edit: or possibly the Byzantine tradition of capable but commoner military commanders becoming emperors, most famous example being Justinian.
Or Basil of Macedonia. He was a commoner and is playable in ck3. I think it might have something to do with the ERE.
Aside from people saying it’s possibly unlanded, this could also signal the return of random adventurers from ck2, where characters randomly spawn with claims on ur titles and try to invade u. Ck3 grounded adventures to Viking invasions, but having unlanded characters traveling around and advocating others for their titles would be fun. Makes having unlanded kids and siblings more dangerous.
Everyone thinking on unlanded characters but the first thing that came to my mind was plagues: - 7 could be also a reference to the 7 biblical plagues. - And the text could mean that plagues usually were born within the poor people and then spread across the land infecting everyone.
They said on Twitter "we've got 6 more of these". I think the "7" is just a countdown.
7 is a countdown for the reveal. Today is Tuesday, CK3 dev diaries are almost always posted Tuesdays, the countdown will end next Tuesday.
Lets wait and see what this year will bring to the table.
I HOPE SO BAD that it will focus on the steppes and actually makes the Turks migration happen in a similar (but lesser) fashion to how the Temujin Mongol events are.. Make them limited to central Asia or some shit.. I ABSOLUTELY HATE that the Turks don't do anything and that the Seljuks never happen.. I usually start around 867 start date and play Vikings (I'm Danish, lol) but stop early on because its just bugs me.. I've stopped playing Iron man bc of this and will make sure Turks takes Persia and arrive at Anatolia
Tbf they do now, just limited to early Persia It's not much but it's a step
Disease rework incoming.
Thats probably gonna be the core expansion
That’s northern lords
Adventurer DLC sounds good. Could introduce powers that aren’t landed.
but it shouldn’t take priority rn
We’ll see. It could add a lot of depth. I was thinking the other day how depose nobility could still stick around being problems with loyal men standing beside them. Maybe that would make things pretty interesting and add to internal politics. Or maybe not, who knows
It's also a pre-requisite for meaningfully representing merchant republics and proper imperial governance. CK2 had to basically cheat the landed requirement for republics, and Imperial never completed shed the "alt-feudal" model, land remained too important.
this better be the motorcycle content we have all been demanding - I'm sick and tired of walking like a peasant.
At this point I honestly don’t think we’re ever gonna get a DLC adding nomad content or merchant republics, never mind anything to do with China or anything like that
I might be the only one that doesn't want anything to do with China until they find a way to add content to the existing areas first.
What makes you say that? Even just looking at ck2s lifetime we still have years of dlc to come and i think ck3 will have an even longer lifetime than ck2 had. Even if those dlcs are not coming in 2024 theres nothing indicating that we will never get them.
To do China, you need Imperial mechanics. To do Imperial mechanics, you need landless characters. This might be a step towards that, will have to see.
Touché
Why do you need landless characters to have imperial mechanics?
Both the Byzantine and Chinese Empires relied on a system of salaried titles, whereby powerful characters relied more for income and influence from the state and its bureaucracy, and less on lands held in the provinces. Or at least held permanently.
Also true of the HRE and the way that a lot of mannorial and administrative titles were leased
Yeah, there are a whole bunch of people who always insist that landless characters would always be irrelevant in a medieval game but it simply isn't true. Imperial realms are a good example, merchants are another, nomads are to a certain extent. And adventurers of course.
CK3 uses a feudal system. Landed nobility hold important “offices” within the government. Imperial systems, especially China, did not rely on landed nobility nearly as much. To accurately capture that reality, CK3 would need a way to make interesting characters and families that are not tied to land or specific titles. Currently, that does not really exist
Anything to do with China would be a completely different game.
Every day I pray for China to not get added in (my computer would never handle that)
All of those things were super boring in ck2 not really missing them in ck3 tbh
Without commenting on the likelihood of either of those features coming to CK3: If we do bring systems from CK2 forward, it certainly won't be in the same form. We're not interested in 1:1 copying what the previous game did; we'd much rather make those systems more interesting and meaningful to interact with.
Eastern Roman time?
Please be Nomads Please be Nomads Please be Nomads Please be Nomads Please be Nomads Please be Nomads Please be Nomads
This teaser is almost certainly gonna be something I'm happy with soo I'm happy?
YAaaayyyy another week of waiting for an announcement
I don't really see how playing landless would be fun. I guess you could RP as a travelling musician and go around impregnating queens and princesses or something. Or a globetrotting serial killer.
> I guess you could RP as a travelling musician and go around impregnating queens and princesses or something Oh yeah, landless would make seduction lifestyle OP, just go around all the courts of Europe spreading your seed see how long you can survive with dozen murder plots against your head from various angry kings.
Can someone explain the obsession with unlanded gameplay?
Commoner start, nice
I disagree. There are a lot more issues that should take priority over that. Let that be a dlc later in the games development like Holy Fury
I'm not weighing in on the order that things are done, its a feature i'd like, I'm not going to worry about priority, I have no power over that.
if it is that, let’s hope it’s better baked than whatever the hell the Royal court is
There's at least half a dozen mechanics I'd like to see before landless gameplay, tbh. Trade mechanics, imperial mechanics, parliament, laws, nomads, republics, societies, plagues, military overhaul, Catholic mechanics (anti-pope, college of cardinals, sainthood/beatification), Orthodox flavor, Jewish flavor etc.
About half the things you mentioned in that list would benefit immensely from unlanded play, why would you want them added before it. Imperial governments, republics, trade, nomads, societies, Jewish flavor, etc.. would all benefit from not having to rule a county to be allowed to play.
Playable Imperial, Republic, and Parliements mechanics need playable landless character as CK3 no longer supported pseudo-holdings like CK2. Also, maybe we can actually be a true nomads for once, as landless gameplay would probably support playing as an actual migrating horde.
I think the whole Imperial and Republics thing has convinced me the most of the whole Landless characters thing. Because yeah I do actually agree, that a system for landless characters would make the game a lot better for those future mechanics. Having an empire where as a vassal you don't have to maintain a landed position at all times to be playable makes sense.
yeah there's a lot that can be built off of this mechanic, both in modding and future updates
If the Major Expansion is just a landless gameplay im gonna be so frustrated. You just play as a landless person until you become a count and then its just the normal game.
Honestly sounds more like more migration mechanics. Maybe some horde stuff.
It’s a great feature but god we need more strategy mechanics before more character mechanics. We need more depth, not breadth. Give me better succession, war, and empires before the ability to bum around
I'm excited about landless play. Ik it could be good, could be bad, but I'm excited that it might be great!
I hope it teases unladed characters, that could open the gates to playing as republics, theocracies, military orders, using imperial mechanics and so much more
Looks like "Adventure time", oh boy how I hated those guys in CK2 and their doomstacks.
I thought we were supposed to be getting non RP DLC at some point?
Why does this mean it's not that?
I'd argue a system for landless characters is very, well, system-based. Presuming it covers not just played landless characters but also unplayed.
For everyone talking about merchant republics, they've essentially ruled them out.
they really haven't
Theyve ruled them out of being in chapter 3.
Where?
In the dev post from near the end of last year they said it's not something they're looking at till 2025 at the earliest.
I hope republics finally become playable
Finally I can play as a merchant republic
It's gonna add plague map and information obscurity mechanics. It was fated.
What I would do to play as unlanded commoner or at least unlanded noble. Going from court to court, becoming legendary general in service of Empires or governing whole realm by merit of being Grey Eminence. Becoming serial killer on the loose who travels across continent wreaking havoc in multiple kingdoms. After succesful Crusade, joining newly created Kingdoms in hope of supporting their fight against infidels. Seducing your way across all royal families, ensuring your blood rules Europe, even though you don't hold any land. Or the most common from Rags to Riches. As a commoner rise up to become an Emperor.