Crusader Kings III
 

The Frau decided to "surprise" me with this game.

After my usual battle with Steam to get the stupid thing to work, I decided to fire up the game. As before, Steam Support was not very supportable.

There is not a lot of information on how to play this game. Even the tutorial only covers a few aspects. Of course, these days there are no manuals either.

Perhaps this game assumes that the player has played the previous versions?

I went through the tutorial but after that ended, I literally had no idea what to do next. There are a lot of windows I can open with a ton of confusing data, but no flow of plans.

I got married, got my kid married, invaded a vassal state, and bribed a priest to like me. But these were specific tasks, the tutorial did not cover overall game play.

The tutorial consisted of directions
Open this window
Hit this button
Open this other window
Now hit this other button

Tutorial done! :nope:

But the tutorial seems to drop the player after this. You are on your own sucker!

I think she bought this game because I love the CIV series, but CKIII is not like the CIV games.

I personally don't like video games that "throw" you in kinda cold. Others may like that sort of stuff. But these days, I have very limited time to play games and I don't like using my precious hours trying to figure out how to play a game.

I guess the game developers are thinking "well someone will post something on you tube".

I have a lot of games I already enjoy playing and way too many games that I have and have not played yet.

I play games to have fun and to pass a very few hours. I want to be challenged during game play, not frustrated about how to play.

Based on over an hour with CKIII, unfortunately, the later time just opening up windows of data, being lost, I don't think I will be playing this game.

It's too bad as it was about $50!!! But she had a good intentions and that's what really counts.

Anyone else experiencing this type of frustration with CKIII?

I think you are correct, sounds like the game is aimed to those familiar with the series.

https://youtu.be/AbGDKTBQrHI

Thanks for that video link


It seems like a good video but it still made my brain stem hurted. :doh:


Maybe I need to go back to minesweeper. :O:

I recently took up CKII, if memory serves it was free as long as you didn't want any DLCs. I can't say I ever got good enough to truly "win" a campaign (perhaps because I prefer not to start out as one of the huge empires) but I thought the tutorials were adequate.

The point being, it might be worth your time to start with CKII, especially if it's still free, even if just to play the tutorials to get you up to speed on CKIII.

I played a lot of CKII when it came out, but have not bought CK III. I enjoyed CKII enough that I branched out in to other Paradox games, and EU IV became one of my most played (and expensive) games ever, 3500+ hours since 2014 and counting.

EU IV shares some similarities of course, but lacks the dynastic side, which is where I think it's easy to feel lost. Is it good, or bad, that this bloke is plotting against me? Who knows, right?

In EU IV it's easier to see a valid path forward I think.

Everything you need to know from a mechanical or informational viewpoint is in the tooltips, but what these games do not have is any real structure or framework to guide a wayward noob along. For some the free form sandbox vibe is too loose, and I get it.

For me these games like CKII and EU IV were compelling enough when I was lost that I forged ahead until the strategical side became clearer. I could begin to see what was needed to be done, to identify short and long term goals and have enough knowledge of the finer points in order to have success.

The OP seems to have moved on, nothing wrong with that, but I think folks new to Paradox games would do fine by starting a game and setting a goal, whatever it might be, like expand by a certain size, hit demense limit, win a war, and so on and just figure out how to accomplish that. Then start a new game with a different goal. Each of these mini-runs would add a new arrow to your quiver and sooner or later it would all begin to tie in for a proper run at a long game.

For me, the sandbox style in these games is one of their greatest strengths, the variability I see in outcomes through all those thousands of hours is brilliant really, and is what keeps me coming back. But this also means the structure must be provided by the player. He must set his own goals to be achieved, and this takes time to reach the point where you understand what is possible and how it could be done.

Interestingly the achievements have become my main compass with EU IV. This gives me my long term goal, for example the Baltic Crusader achievement, where I had to take all of Russia and convert it to Catholic, while being Teutonic or Livonian Orders. I mean, that's just nuts right? But with a long term goal in place I can then work backwards, in a sense, to plot the path to reach it.


And the result can be glorious :)


http://simhq.com/forum/files/usergal...utonic1770.png