I'm playing CK3 +dlc for the first time, but I had already played CK2 for about 100 hours, like 7-8 years ago. And at most I was a decent player. It has the same problem as CK2 (and every Paradox game afaik): the game is too easy, and nothing really stops you from snowballing into becoming an empire. And once you get there, it's really boring and you basically have to paint the map.I started with 2 counties as the Count of Urgell (my liege was the Duke of Barcelona), and I declared war against another count within the duchy and easily won with my allies. For some reason, he didn't have any allies. Meanwhile, my liege was at war with a Muslim ruler controlling the Balearic Islands. So I declared war on him soon after, and again, he didn't have any allies, and the mf lost despite controlling more counties than me. I got the Duchy of Barcelona, and I also created the Duchy of Languedoc since I controlled most of its counties.Now I'll just conquer the Balearic Islands for myself.Why didn't they have any allies? Will my new liege (the King of France) even do anything as I keep expanding?
>>2471433An AI liege will only do anything if they want your titles. I was duke of Sicily then my liege, king of Sicily tried to revoke my titles because he wanted the de jure capital of Sicily kingdom. The King of France will leave you alone unless he hates you.
>>2471433>paradox games are too easy>entire post is about the easiest paradox gameonce you're good enough at sikh empire/egypt/USCA in victoria 2 (idk about 3) i think you'll have the right to say paradox games are too easy. without exploits, there are no easy ways to snowball as countries that don't have a naturally high native population (excluding the new world)
>>2471433>the game is too easy, and nothing really stops you from snowballing into becoming an empire.I have been saying this day one.And yet every expansion actually makes the game easier by intruding pay to win mechanics.>easily won with my alliesThat's the thing: in CK2, marriage gave non-aggression pacts, which you had to expand into alliances by being in good terms with them. In CK3, you get a full alliance on marriage. So, strat is just ally the biggest guy, and call them to every war, knowing they will commit all their troops to it and get nothing out of it.The game would be significantly harder if allies could only be called into defensive wars.That being said, I don't think count emerging into emperorship should be impossible, as it did happen. The real issue is how easy the game becomes after you reach the rank of emperor. Emperorship essentially makes you immune to the partition mechanic.Which essentially only leaves the faction system as something to contain empires, and it is a joke.Out of 8/10 times, the faction that fires is the Liberty faction, which will lower your crown authority, and then you can just undo it in 10 years.Separatist factions only show up if vassals have different cultures or religions.Introduction of dissolution fact was an interesting addition, but it's kinda nonsensical and pretty uncommon
>>2471433The game doesn't have proper warfare or logistics and can't model why the king of France shouldn't be able to have his entire army in Hungary.There's no ability for the AI to no CB you if the rewards are good and you're unprepared enough.There's no ability to intervene in succession. All successions always procede according to law and never are interfered with.Fertility goes up as you go up in rank. Once you're an emperor, there's no risk of having no heirs and a succession crisis.Legitimacy isn't calculated per title. So once you get to high legitimacy, you can conquer while everyone likes you.The majority of the AI is passive, with only a few characters having the right combination of personality traits to act. The amount that are well positioned rulers can be counted on one hand.The AI spends a lot of time at activities, where it cannot engage in diplomacy or warfare.The AI will never build and optimize around good MAAs. Regardless of how much money or many threats it has.The AI will almost never declare war on characters they like. Which given how easy it is to get opinion bonuses, a lot of reasonable wars will never happen.Plagues don't kill enough rulers, don't destroy buildings, and fail to destabilize realms. More so if you do the handful of things that together negate plagues. Ditto for natural disasters save that they can't be negated.War score is not balanced against war goals. It takes the same amount of war score to conquer a county as it does an empire. Only scaling by the amount of holdings the defender has.
>>2472476>All successions always procede according to law and never are interfered with.This, there is not even an interregnum mechanic>The AI will almost never declare war on characters they like. Not by experiece. I'd even argue that opinion doesn't even impact AI declaration of war.Like I had 100 opinion with this foreign ruler, but they still holy-warred me>War score is not balanced against war goals. It takes the same amount of war score to conquer a county as it does an empire.Yeah, the system is a joke. It is even easier than that, if you capture ruler war ends early.E.g. one time I declared kingdom holy war for Arabia as christian, captured sultan in first battle, and I suddenly have all of Arabia, something I would probably have failed to occupy realistically.
