Help keeping the game interesting!

[Krillo]

I just feel that I keep doing the same thing.
starting as count and growing until emperor with my culture the strongest and same for the dynasty.

It feels like there’s not so much happening except me taking over some new land, fixing some vassal land issues and searching for good knights
I know there’s probably gonna come some DLC that adds stuff but right now it just feels fancy looking and empty.


How do you guys keep the game interesting? Help me

 

[Nevars]

I usually tried chasing some archivement or setting up personal goal if I don't want to play ironman/vanilla like tried to breed good looking character with all the good congenital traits, whether to be heir or wife lol

 

[Writewolf]

Well, if you focus only on the emperor's goal, things will get boring easily.

I once read that the producers suggested to play it like the sims, trying to tell a story
personally that's what I am up to: My three AARs all go about trying to reach a "story" goal.

 

[Krillo]

Well, if you focus only on the emperor's goal, things will get boring easily.

I once read that the producers suggested to play it like the sims, trying to tell a story
personally that's what I am up to: My three AARs all go about trying to reach a "story" goal.

Any examples on how you do this ?

 

[Sword of Glass]

Any examples on how you do this ?

For my first campaign as the Di Canossas in 1066, I tried to put myself in the shoes of my characters. If something happened that would fit into its own little self-contained narrative, I'd imagine how my character would react to it based on their traits, as well as how the people close to them (council and family) would react in a play or film-like manner. It helps keep the world alive in your own mind the same way a book does, but it certainly requires more effort than reading a book.

 

[Writewolf]

Any examples on how you do this ?

@Sword of Glass showed you the methodic, I'll go with the challenge or structures.

• I create or choose a maniac character and use dices to randomize his/her decisions.
• I create a couple of chars and try to settle each offspring around Europe
• I settle some specific traits and try to reach them through generation
• I decide to create a super seductive character and make him/her fool around

Something like that

 

[oakshield]

I just feel that I keep doing the same thing.
starting as count and growing until emperor with my culture the strongest and same for the dynasty.

It feels like there’s not so much happening except me taking over some new land, fixing some vassal land issues and searching for good knights
I know there’s probably gonna come some DLC that adds stuff but right now it just feels fancy looking and empty.


How do you guys keep the game interesting? Help me

You gotta invent stuff to do. Remain a count. Try to take the dynasty of many crowns decision through marriage and diplomacy. Be a small kingdom who actively tries to keep your neighbors from blobbing. Take over duchies and give them freedom under one of your bastards so you can found new houses. Play an incestuous game while keeping your secret. Restore the Roman empire. Have only land where you can build universities. Go to war with heathens just to capture their families and force convert them, causing religious conversions on their countries. Look for interesting mods.

Get creative, there's not much else to say since there isn't a lot to go on with. The game is simply barebones right now.-

 

[Trunting]

The best experience is usually to mix the Emperor goal with the aforementioned roleplay aspects.

 

[CrazyMe]

Travel through the map as a king, but changing your kingdoms.
First grow as a count to a king, then to two kingdoms, leave the first one to a family/dinasty member, e.g. a younger son (he would get independence). So you can a sort of travel across the map by conquering new kingdoms, but leaving previous ones to dinasty members. And your custom faith can be spread as you move around. You can start and finish the game in absolutely different places!

You would just have to accept the fact that you would be losing some power when giving away kingdoms, which actually helps to keep the game a bit more challenging.

Renown is accumulated faster in this scenario. You may use the mod that boosts dinasty renown perks, which makes the game more interesting.

 

[Torredebelem]

How do you guys keep the game interesting? Help me

Starting as a Count, with a ton of good mods, modding yourself the issues that were not modded before, role play and implement some "house rules". Avoid min/maxing. It just leads to a dead end in terms of what you can experience.

 

[oakshield]

Travel through the map as a king, but changing your kingdoms.
First grow as a count to a king, then to two kingdoms, leave the first one to a family/dinasty member, e.g. a younger son (he would get independence). So you can a sort of travel across the map by conquering new kingdoms, but leaving previous ones to dinasty members. And your custom faith can be spread as you move around. You can start and finish the game in absolutely different places!

You would just have to accept the fact that you would be losing some power when giving away kingdoms, which actually helps to keep the game a bit more challenging.

Renown is accumulated faster in this scenario. You may use the mod that boosts dinasty renown perks, which makes the game more interesting.

I like that idea, and I like that it came from a person with the handle "CrazyMe" hehehehe. I'll do this after I'm done with my current small kingdom game.

Edit: Do you mean the mod "Better Dynasty Perks" by PRICEless?, seems quite OP.

 

[CrazyMe]

Edit: Do you mean the mod "Better Dynasty Perks" by PRICEless?, seems quite OP.

No, I mean “Improved Dynasty Legacies” mod ( by soggy cheerious) that gives reasonable boosts. Besides AI gets them too.

 

[Secuter]

I just feel that I keep doing the same thing.
starting as count and growing until emperor with my culture the strongest and same for the dynasty.

It feels like there’s not so much happening except me taking over some new land, fixing some vassal land issues and searching for good knights
I know there’s probably gonna come some DLC that adds stuff but right now it just feels fancy looking and empty.


How do you guys keep the game interesting? Help me

It depends on what you like in this game. For, there aren't a lot to it. I guess, somebody said, if you like to play it like a medieval sims then perhaps that is fun. That isn't my kind of thing. I'd like politics and realm management. There's currently little to do in peace time and war time grows boring after the 100th war.

I'm just going to wait until significant updates has been added - like the winter update that they're working on.

 

[Adam363]

It depends on what you like in this game. For, there aren't a lot to it. I guess, somebody said, if you like to play it like a medieval sims then perhaps that is fun. That isn't my kind of thing. I'd like politics and realm management. There's currently little to do in peace time and war time grows boring after the 100th war.

I'm just going to wait until significant updates has been added - like the winter update that they're working on.

The winter stuff only effects war, so I wouldn't be waiting for that. What you describe is why the game seems so shallow. The game doesn't support anything other than painting the map - and if you don't paint the map, you'll probably get swallowed up by some norse viking army with a 10k army of special troops.

 

[luxfelix]

I'll add that it's helpful to play the short and the long arcs of characters.

What I mean is that, in addition to the role-playing aspects of a character in the context of a single event, conflict, or short-term goal, there are also the the seasons of a characters life and how that may influence which lifestyles to prioritize, shift goals, or otherwise.

For example, I played a character obsessed with chasing the action and foreign adventures abroad in their youth (starting with joining William the Conqueror in exchange for a profitable marriage). As time went on, and injuries began to stack up, and a near death experience turned their attention to the church. This lead to a lifestyle change as well as the granting of lands to theocratic characters to the point where they became the greatest power in the realm (a problem for the next generation); unable to crusade directly in later years, their driving goal was to then support the founding of a holy order which came to equal the prior theocratic holdings. Of their two sons, the older was raised by the leading clergymen of the realm, while the younger was trained by the grand master and returning crusaders; they became, in essence, the two sides of the starting character's opposing nature, to be concluded by the fraternal rivalry fueled by the two great political factions of the realm...


If you're not playing an ironman game, try swapping characters within your family, realm, or region to pick up on the more interesting story threads.

For example, if your character loses a war to a character, you could arrange to have the character you lost to (or someone in their court/realm) act as your heir's guardian and then swap to play that new guardian character. This way you can still follow your primary dynasty's story from a different perspective. In the same vein as CrazyMe suggested, this would work great for travelling with characters (crusade, marriage, etc.) to other parts of the world as well.

If you zoom out and see something particularly interesting going on in the world, you can always tie your story into that or not; maybe take a break from your primary dynasty characters a while to play as the Mongol invasion for a time as they creep closer to the Crusader kingdom one of your relatives reigns over?


Lastly, leaving the game to read about the time period or do something completely unrelated can help keep the game feeling fresh when returning to it.


Of course, it's ultimately up to you and your imagination to make the most of the sandbox.

 

[Elinarii]

I have to say, some of these suggestions on different ways to play the game are awesome! I personally like the idea of treating it like 'historical Sims'; just like there are a lot of playthrough challenges for the Sims games, there are lots of weird or quirky rules and restrictions you could impose on yourself to mix up the gameplay.

A recent example; I am trying to breed albinism in to my dynasty. As it's not a super common trait, it's actually proven to be quite a bit of a challenge. If you want a tougher version of this, try in a female-led culture. If you want a potentially quicker attempt, start with a ruler designer character that has albinism. I have a playthrough going like that right now, and despite starting with an albino ruler, so far I'm 2 generations in and no other albinos in the family!

 

[Niall9]

One thing I have enjoyed doing is doing a Napoleon: rather than taking over a bunch of territory for myself, I conquer it then place family members on the throne and let them become independent. It is then a challenge of seeing how many kingdoms I can have controlled by my dynasty.

 

[NexusSix]

I always assumed CK was meant to be played in this way rather than a count to emperor map painter?!

I hope one of the upcoming expansions will contain more events because this is hindering story telling majorly for me.

 

[Rackenhammer]

One thing I did in my Sapmi campaign was focus on Religion as opposed to politics per se. I reformed Ukkonusko with a Temporal HoF, and then aimed to enture that:
a) All Holy Sites are controlled by dynasty members of my faith
b) Catholicism is wiped from the map
c) Make my Faith the One True Paganism

As a side goal, I set a lot of Kingdoms free to get the "Dynasty of Ten Thrones" Achievement.

I was more or less successful in that, managing to conquer all the way down to Benin from the Kola Peninsula, keeping some European Kingdoms free for renown generation. Spend the Last 100 years reconsolidating my dynastic lands while finishing up conversions. Just having that large a task kept me going for that long.

 

[johnty5]

Achievement-hungting is great for this.