My Tawdry Crusader Kings

 I bought some new games on Steam to try out on the new 'puter one of which is Crusader Kings 3. Before I begin this cry baby tale, I want to say that I've never played a Crusader Kings title before and I am very impressed with this one. I am also impressed with the nvme ssd that I installed. It's not necessary but definitely a benefit for this challenging game.

I left CK3 still trying to master the tutorial. I tip my hat to this title's brutal learning curve. It should be called "The Curse of Unanticipated Consequences" or in my specific case, "Medieval Wedding Planner".

I wasted a lot of time making my very first player character become soul mates with his wife. What does a girl do when her liege is her soul mate? She does an incest with the primary heir that's what. I tried to cover it up because the other options seemed kind of bad and who needs piety anyway? Well yeah I eventually learned that in Christian kingdoms piety counts for a lot. When the liege died the second son knew all about it and immediately challenged the new petty king. The new player character held on but struggled mightily to overcome his sinful reputation. He had relationship troubles and an appropiate male heir didn't appear until late in his reign. The heir was just a boy when he inherited the duchy and his ambitious uncle destroyed him immediately. So that was the end of that dynasty.

Then I thought that I had learned enough to start another realm so I tried to be the king of Scotland. (Ha ha...ha ha ha ha) That title didn't make it through one generation. I also thought I could head off succession problems by marrying the player character off to a fertile lady. That union kept producing girls and I forgot completely about matrilineal marriage so I had no playable character by the second generation.

Better go back to the tutorial, I thought. I noticed that the court's overall lack of intellect caused a lot of setbacks so I married the entire court off to intelligent people and got all the children educated. I made sure to tick off the matrilineal box for females and I only made alliances if they led to title claims local to Ireland. I tried to appease vassals some other way if they were too dumb for a council position. This strategy worked better but I was still struggling to create revenue and build an effective military. Even worse, heirs began to produce sickly geniuses that didn't last long. I can't even remember how long this one lasted or what caused it's downfall. 

I was a little upset because there are many features and aspects of the game I wasn't getting to because I couldn't learn the basics. Just because I understood the succession rules did not mean I understood the implications. Finally then I looked at the settings and discovered the very easy option. I spent much of this dynasty on pause poring over the many menus and the in game dictionary. One generation created the title of King of Ireland but another sinful primary lost it to a secondary heir. I considered disinheriting the primary at one point and I should have. The dynasty struggled with that and a female primary no one completely accepted. However the dynasty did last into the high medieval era and had built up a profitable duchy. It unravelled on the back of two decisons. The duchy was being attacked and joined the liege's war. The duchy was saved but at a military cost and the player character died before the liege's war was over. The primary had to finish the conflict with reduced numbers and revenue. I had also made the mistake of marrying the primary to a vassal's primary heir. As soon as she inherited her territory she ran off with the secondary heir, allied with another vassal and declared war which they won due to the duchy's weakened condition. I had very unchristian things to say about this woman. I tried to build back fast and declared war on her but the player character died just about immediately. This time it was game over, no playable realm. Ooof.

These few paragraphs represent a lot of freaking time. It was like sitting in front of a video slot machine obsessively pushing the button. There was no bus waiting to rescue me from myself  and take me to the home because I am home. So as much as I love this game it has been added to the "not allowed to play" list along with No Limit Holdem cash tables and real money casino games.

Don't let that stop you though. I'm not your mother.