5 simple steps to succeed and dominate in Crusader Kings 3

The introduction to Crusader Kings 3 is difficult for many players. The strategy game is complex. Our author Schuhmann shows the first hours in the game as an aggressive chieftain in Ireland and reveals tips on marriage, pillaging, conquering, and how to raise an army in Crusader Kings 3. By the end, you will be like in the tutorial, only better and 200 years earlier. An ideal start for dominance.

Crusader Kings 3 is currently a hit on Steam and a major topic in gaming. The strategy game also features a multiplayer mode, but many players are already struggling with the game’s start: it is too complex and while the tutorial is mandatory, it is rather dull.

We provide you with the guide for the first steps towards world domination and give you a step-by-step guide to achieving a strong start in Crusader Kings 3 in about 30 minutes.

Step 1: Choose the right scenario

Crusader Kings 3 offers a rich selection of predefined scenarios. However, I recommend starting differently. Begin at the earliest point, in the year 867, by choosing “Select a different ruler” and click on Ireland in the northwest of the map. There you want to play as the Count of Ormond, a likable 24-year-old guy with 2 sisters, an older brother, and a bunch of landless, hunchbacked relatives who are a burden to him and are just waiting to be sacrificed in a war.

And we will give them war!

May I introduce: Chief Dúnchad mac Dub-dá Baire. The young man with the impressive beard will be our player character. He has 3 random traits with each new generation and is assigned a job in which he is sometimes extremely good and sometimes terrible. This can make the start easier or harder, but it is not crucial.

In principle, this start is the same scenario as in the tutorial of Crusader Kings 3, but 200 years earlier. Here, Ireland was still wild and trapped in the tribal age.

The nice thing: You can declare war and engage with enemies as you please. In the first few hundred years, you don’t have to worry about reasons for war, claims, and all that stuff, but can pillage, conquer, and burn. What makes Crusader Kings 3 so opaque and complex mostly disappears.

But watch out for the damn Vikings and Scots. They are treacherous and cunning, as every Irishman knows.

Update March 14, 2024: Instead of playing the predefined Irish, you can also create your own ruler and settle him in Ormond. You create your own ruler in the screen where you select your starting land, via the button “Create your own ruler.”

An “ideal” ruler has the traits “Midas Touched, Genius, and Lunatic” and costs exactly 400 points, so you can still achieve successes when you have the “Iron Man” mode activated. Here’s what “your count” might look like:

You can use this hero as a blueprint and play with him for 60, 70 years if all goes well.

Step 2: Marry properly

We will get to fighting later; for now, let’s get married. Because the game revolves around people and characters: marriage is the ideal way to acquire strong leaders and ensure that we still have strong leaders in the future.

Press space right away to pause Crusader Kings 3. You want to spend some time in the menus first. Right from the start, we have several characters we can marry. The game informs us of this.

• Our player character can have up to 4 wives: Here we need a clever main wife as an important advisor and 3 women for a magnificent lineage of heirs.
• We have 2 sisters who will snag our main advisors: one man for the rough tasks and one for finances.
• We also need to get the brother married off; he can marry a spy – we want to know what is really happening at our court.
• Additionally, we can marry off relatives who are just hanging around at court and are not good for much. The men will be used as champions, who can easily die in battle. The women can at least help us secure better knights through marriage. We do not expect any offspring from them.

Click on the ring icon at the top, and you will go to the marriage menu; here CK3 first offers us the neighbor’s daughter to form an alliance with a nearby count. We will not do that. Click on the magnifying glass and set the traits to “Hereditable” so we can see the best options the gene pool of 867 AD offers.

If we sort the brides by “Management,” we see a pretty woman named “Beorhtflaed,” who is a lowborn but clever and beautiful. She will be our first wife.

Update March 14, 2024: Now, Beo is out. The hottest bride in Ireland right now is Ingibjörg – a 22-year-old Nordic Christian with 18 management and the “smart” gene.

The marriage proposal has to go through first. To ensure that Beo-baby becomes our main wife, we will wait with further marriage proposals…

As soon as Beo has agreed, we will marry 3 other women. For the second wives, the values do not matter, only the genetic traits are important: “Kriemhild” is a good option, she is not that clever, but has the traits “Fertile” and “Robust.”

The other ladies should ideally be “Intelligent” or even a “Genius.” “Beautiful” or “Amazon” are also fine, or the weaker versions of the positive traits: perfectly healthy, pretty, robust, whatever we can get.

Both sisters get “Genius” traits assigned. It’s important to marry “matrilinearly,” as this brings men to us. One marries Ekkehard, a genius with 21 points in combat skill. The 2nd sister marries Enguerrand, who will be our steward or diplomat.

Our brother should then get us a court spy, look for a woman with high values in “Intrigue,” you can also go for “Learning,” which will make her the court doctor. Make sure he marries normally and not matrilinearly.

If you’ve done everything right, you should now receive messages that a bunch of geniuses and brides are on their way to you.

Assign the people as council members. Make your courtier with the highest value in “Learning” the court doctor. You already have a strong start.

Women can only become court spies or court doctors at the beginning of Crusader Kings 3; the other jobs are reserved for men. The main wife plays a special role, as here you can choose whether all her abilities help a little or one specific trait helps a lot.

At your court, you have several related women: they are not very good matches. You can still get additional champions from the neighborhood through “matrilineal” marriage with them, sorted by “Combat Skill.” Perhaps you will also get a good diplomat. Here, the “hereditable traits” are not so important.

To avoid overpopulation, Crusader Kings 3 only allows children from “important characters.” If it gets too crowded, people will also disappear from the court and go wandering.

Step 4: Make stress

In the military window, you want to raise 3 regiments of “warriors”: a double unit of “Light Infantry” and a single unit of “Armored Infantry.”

Make sure that your marshal and steward do not fight, and prohibit them from doing so.

A word on champions: You should generally keep an eye on them. Every champion is a melee machine that is important in battle. But every champion risks their life in a fight.

You generally always need as many strong professional fighters as you have open positions. However, this is not guaranteed: So your “non-fighters” will step in, your adult children, vassals, and stewards. Exactly the people you do not want to die constantly.

They will have very low stats and are likely to be killed instantly by a berserker in the first battle. And this is not an exaggeration: that is exactly what happens.

Consistently prohibit “important” figures from fighting.

Make sure to check out who your champions/knights are before every war and before raising armies, and who you do not want to sacrifice. It is really frustrating if your administrative genius heir, who should only be pushing books and numbers, gets decapitated by a 7-foot Viking. And this will happen.

Back to tyrannizing Ireland: Wait until the armies are at full combat strength or until an enemy troop starts raiding, then click on “Raise All as Raiders.”

Since Ireland is still organized into clans, you can plunder neighbors at will. Just make sure not to get caught by stronger armies. You can loot your direct neighbors: Leinster, Ossory, Thormond, and Desmond. But be careful if you go north.

It is important to beat your neighbors to the punch. Because whoever pillages first will become your first victim.

In the run we’re using as an example, Thormond wanted to loot with 350 people when we had just 515 soldiers. That doesn’t work: So we loot Thormond, which makes us seen as enemies by the AI and they attack us. Now comes the first battle: We have more professional soldiers and a better marshal. This should go well.

If you loot or fight, ideally, you can kidnap relatives of your victims and sell them for a high price: this is how you make the most money in the early game. While you earn just over 1 gold per month, a chief’s wife can easily fetch 25 gold. The same amount you would otherwise earn in 2 years. It’s worth it!

As Ireland, you should always make stress whenever you have a full army and nothing to do: loot, kidnap people, and extort ransom – just live the good old life.

It is also possible to recruit enemy fighters for yourself. Ideally, you get those hefty warrior 15+-berserkers for free. Otherwise, you have to look for “Champions” every 10 years and hire anyone who can hold a sword.

After plundering 2 villages, defeating an enemy army, and earning about 30 gold and prestige, you should bring the money to safety. You can do this simply by leading the looting army back into your territory.

Step 5: Expand

Now we look for the first victim: To do this, we look at the neighbors. With “Thormond,” their looting went wrong, and they only have 98 soldiers left, but still a proud 70 gold. An ideal target. We declare war on them and go after them. The reason for war “Conquer County” only costs belief.

The opponent should offer little resistance. Depending on whether you make prisoners and how much money you can get, you should already be able to either appoint yourself as “Duke of Munster” or build the first building in Ormond: the markets.

This is what you should have after 30 minutes: If everything goes according to plan, you will have about 2 years after the game starts:

• A good council along with some top advisors
• A powerful army with decent champions
• A bunch of brides who will soon be giving birth like crazy
• A duchy with 2 provinces in southern Ireland and a hunger for more.

You essentially have the situation you play in the tutorial of Crusader Kings 3, just 200 years earlier and probably somewhat better.

This is how it will continue:

With these methods, you will continue just as you did. You grow, expand, strengthen your economy and gene pool. Usually, it is relatively easy to conquer the south of Ireland. It becomes harder when going to the north.

It is important that you become king of Ireland in the first generation. You have about 40 years until the count dies. Because only if you are king can you hold your empire together and keep the dukes under you.

When your sons turn 16, you can start giving them counties (one each). Then you can choose 4 wives for them and continue your little breeding program. If you do it right, you will eventually have the “Kwisatz Haderach,” a genius as strong as Hercules and beautiful as Adonis, who will lead you into a golden age.

Later, it is important not to hold too much land “of one kingdom” without ensuring that your player heir inherits it: If you have too many counties in Wales, one of your heirs may simply declare themselves king of Wales after your death and break away from the empire. The inheritance rules are quite strict there – you can only change them much later. So it’s important to be careful here.

The transition from one ruler to the next monarch is always delicate: Set aside money to hire mercenaries and quickly make the most important vassals your friends through the first diplomacy perk.

In the feudal age, it will then be important to create your own religion that has the “Will to Power,” so you can continue to conquer opponents without a major reason for war, just as you did as a tribe.

In any case, after the first 2 years with our starter guide, you have now reached a point where you know the “basics” of Crusader Kings 3 and can write your own stories.

If played correctly, Crusader Kings 3 breeds the “Overman”