It's good to be back playing Crusader Kings 3 after a long break! So many new mechanics added that it feels like a new game, so feel free to drop some pointers or correct my mistakes in the comments below! And remember, episode 2 gets dropped tomorrow instead of next Wednesday if this episode hits 100 likes!

Nice to see another CK3 Let's Play again! 😀 After all it was your first Sardinia campaign that introduced the game to me and made me buy it (and put over 500 hours into it, yikes).

A couple of notes as I am going through the video (not backseatgaming or anything, just wanted to share things that took me a while to figure out by myself. :D):

– The Duty Focus in the Stewardship lifestyle is an enemy agent acceptance penalty, meaning that your own people are less likely to join schemes that target you (e.g. when someone wants you murdered). The acceptance of your own agents in schemes you are doing is in the Intrigue lifestyle.
– I would recommend going for the Plenary Assemblies innovation first, because it allows you to go up to Limited Crown Authority, which means you can revoke titles. Not being able to revoke titles (to get rid of a bad vassal, clean up/streamline your realm or take a county you want for its bonuses) is a pain in the early-game.
– Powerful vassals always exist, if you are a count it's just barons and mayors. They can't really do anything but they "technically" are among the most powerful of your vassals (that is, your only vassals…)
– Demonstrating submission during Paying Homage is usually enough, even without giving your liege hooks or money your liege gets a better opinion of you (in extremely rare cases your liege might mock you if his personality is being a bully but it gains him tyranny and is not the standard option) and most usefully: Both the liege's and your dynasty get a decent amount of renown. Same goes for Petitioning your liege: If the liege accepts you usually get a renown boost among the effect you wanted with the petition. So if you have no option available other than Fortify Borders (which strengthens your garrison for a while and is only marginally useful if you expect to get sieged) you can still go for it to rack up your renown and get those sweet dynasty legacies faster. 😛

– One feature I find extremely powerful are the "Contract Alliances" or whatever they are called (it is listed near the top when you right click on a ruler). It is similar to a mercenary contract in TW:TK: You join the war on one side and if you have at least somewhat participated in the war the ruler will pay you 100 gold when it is over (only on a won war I think). This means two things:
Firstly, smartly choosing wars and sides where you can win easily can get you a lot of money really fast (taking prisoners in sieges and battles and ransoming or recruiting the good ones is a bonus on top of that). And secondly it allows you to interfere in the realms around you! You see your friendly small neighbour and buffer state is about to get stomped by a way larger realm (comparable to or slightly smaller than your own) which would make it even more powerful and a threat to you, so you offer to help your neighbour without needing a formal alliance first. You defeat the larger realm, earn a decent amount of money and stabilize the area near your realm.
It's also important to note that every ruler in the struggle region can offer his help to any other rules in Iberia (though they won't always accept), meaning as a Catholic, theoretically you can even help a muslim to hurt your Catholic rival. Just check the realms around you from time to time and take a look at who fights who and for what goal and so on.
(You will also notice that AI rulers will absolutly spam you to hell with offering those contracts when you are fighting a war, which can be pretty annoying. It is situationally cheaper than hiring mercanaries though, because instead of paying 100 gold for a 800 unit sized mercenary band you could for example pay those 100 gold to get a 2000 strong ally to help you (with the disadvantage of not being able to control him directly)

Sorry for the wall of text. :/

👍🏻

Glad seeing you back at this game. Definitely would be more interesting if you don't mind editing out the bits when nothing much happens.

Some tips:
– getting that knight is a better choice indeed, but I believe 15 is a threshold for council positions and you start getting better results and less bad results.

– not sure how raids would work alongside with the war your liege has with the umayyads, but you should try raid/siege some capital counties for the juicy ransom money which can be very profitable in the beginning.

I'm interested how you plan to deal with confed partition succession law. Do you want to minmax it with disinheriting so you don't lose direct domain counties, or you don't mind going war with your siblings after a succession?

i'm from the iberian peninsula so i'm eager to see you play this ! and don't worry abou butchering names, we have some strange ones hahahaha

Your wife's name is somewhat correct, first, the name has 2 ways of spelling it, Ermesinda and Ermesenda, the latter one is derived to Catalan so in the 9th century Galicia they would use Ermesinda so in that sense it's correct.
The problem comes with the letter 'H', which has a pretty complicated history in Spain because H was not really used as a 'mute' letter until the 16th century, nowadays if we want to say 'flour' in Spanish we'll say 'Harina'. In that word, the H is completely silent and it's not pronounced but before the 16th century we'd actually write 'Farina' because it's the meaning of the Latin word for 'food'. There are a lot more examples of this transformation from words that started with 'F' and now start with 'H' ('hacer' instead of 'facer', 'herir' instead of 'ferir'…) So historically speaking the letter H should not be included in Ermesinda's name by medieval Spanish standards.
The name Hermesinda is actually germanic and was brought to the Peninsula by the Visigoths and adapted to Ermesinda probably in the Basque country.
That's when things get extremely complicated because Ermesinda's father Gatón was likely the son of Ramiro the 1st who is a descendant of King don Pelayo, the first monarch of the Kingdom of Asturias and Ermesinda was probably named after don Pelayo's daughter and sister of the former King of Asturias Favila.
The origin of don Pelayo is extremely discussed but the two strongest theories are that he was either an 'Astur' (natural from Asturias) or he was a Visigoth conqueror, while the first theory is somewhat more accepted nowadays it can't really be proven at a 100% so the Visigoth theory is still viable.

So, if you consider that don Pelayo was a Visigoth conqueror all the Hermesindas in the family would be spelled like that, with an 'H'. On the other hand, if you consider that don Pelayo was an Astur, then probably the name came from the Basque Country and therefore would be spelled as Ermesinda without the 'H'

Well, sorry for the Ted talk, thought you might like this pretty unknown fact about a really underrated part of Spain's history.

Great video as always, keep it up!

Now I can bully ST back for my chinese pronounciation!

let the reconquista commence

Literally everytime I watch you video, I am blown away with your knowledge on history. its kinda crazy.

2:34 Yeah, the Kingdom of Portugal was established in 1139 by Afonso I Henriques, who is the son of Henri de Bourgogne, so it was interesting to know that a French noble and from a cadet branch of the Capet dynasty established another cadet branch family there, which is the Portuguese House of Burgundy/de Bourgogne, or the Afonsine dynasty, after the first King of Portugal.

One day and goal that I want to achieve is establishing the Afonsine dynasty in Portugal.

I am part Portuguese despite my german last name, I got to play ck3 and eu4 I recently bought these games along with a bunch of other games but since they are bit harder to get into I haven't played much.

petition to name your next child Ah Dou

Alright let's go! Your early strat is sound,build up your strength and gobble up that county that is part of Galicia is the correct move. While also remain vigilant since the land contested by the war of your liege is nearby. theres a possibility of enemy army spilled into your land.

since you already snoop around for hook,aside from getting gold from blackmail you could also use it for more nefarious need i.e. exhausting the lineage of your father in law through murder scheme and left only your wife alive so your son could inherit her mother's county,its a tedious and long play i know just for a single county but i kinda like doing that esp. In early play because the family trees out there are still small. middle to late game dynastic extermination become harder lol.

Anyhoo,beside the war for the southern county you currently tried to get claim on,best to just observe what happen with the umayyad-asturian war. Usually there's two outcome:

one it weaken the umayyad and render it splinter into multiple pieces where you can snatch some Portuguese county. (Also keep an eye out for some possible claimants that you could capture during the war. They could expediate your expansion by gobbling Dukedom chunk of land without having to face entire nearby muslim ruler through ducal holy war. Convert them first to catholic too if you prefer)

Two,it weaken your liege so much. made it easier to be independent from him,just asking without inciting civil war.

If the nrg god smile upon you both of these happen. So yea,looking forward to the next ep. 😆

Too bad there are no unique buildings or anything in Portugal.(unless I'm mistaken)

Happy to see you back on CK, I just recently ended the struggle in my own achievement run (Camperador, Vacation, and the conquest one).

My best tip for you would be to focus on prestige and get large armies and allies. Being involved in the struggle means that forging claims used prestige instead of gold, and all casus belli have a steep prestige cost (averaging around 500). Additionally the AI Iberian countries tend to field much larger armies compared to everywhere else.

Edit: I forgot to add, you might want to change your feudal contract with your king to ensure council positions. You get a cut off his income if you’re the steward.

100 likes let's gooooo

If you want to speak a bit more correctly spanish… "Caballeros" is mostly pronounced "Cabayeros", although, being old iberian spanish I think it is "Cabalieros" (I'm not gonna kill you for not pronouncing it as a native spanish talking person).
As for the video… I would play CK series, but my poor brain can't take all the things that you have to keep in mind to play, also I would like for the game to have a Total War-like battle system (I think that there is a mod out there for one of these Paradox games) so, for now, I will conform by watching you, for me you make interesting playing other cultures that are not yours

You can print tons of money by getting Golden Obligation and It is my domain. It is my domain is pretty much free money when you have vassal. But be careful because your character is Trusting, so they gain stress when using any kind of hooks. After that get the building cost reduction perk and you can start building everywhere.
Also always keep your bishop’s opinion at +50 or above to get all the tax and levies from temple grounds.

Who would’ve guessed run to the hills would be so relevant in so many places. Have you been invaded by muslims in medieval Spain and Portugal? Run to the hills! Do you wanna dodge taxes in ancient china? Run to the hills! Wanna make a banger song about the woes of the Native Americans? Name it Run to the hills!

That's quite interesting image you are using for a video thumbnail, what is it?

At 22:00 where you said your way out of vassalage is to form Portugal won't work because the game won't let you form a title equal to your liege. So essentially you would have to rebel or at the very least ask for independence.

Happy to see a ck let’s play. I feel so intimidated by this game, I’m afraid to start it and it’ll be nice to see how this game flows.

Thanks for this! Really looking forward to it. I picked Santiago for my play through as well.

A nice beginning I think. I briefly played CK3 when it came out but I tired of it pretty quick. I am looking forward to your approach to all the new mechanics. A count in Portugal as a Christian should be a challenge for sure.

I would highly suggest building the unique building they can really get the treasury rolling also thanks for the videos hope you have good day

Woohoo! A new Ck 3 playthrough! Can't wait to see you play around with the new content, everyone is checking it out right but I still haven't seen a lot of stuff with the artifacts. Good luck trivia, make a better Portugal way ahead of it's time.

Would you ever do a stream of one of your playthroughs? Would like to see a couple of them actually. Either way great work man, keep it up!