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Crusader Kings 3is a game with a lot of moving parts. You have several global resources to gather, relationships with families, neighbors, vassals, and courtiers that need juggling, and all kinds of schemes and wars to worry about.
All of this can be hard for players ofCrusader Kings 3to deal with,especially ifCK3is your first grand strategy game. Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do that will make your game easier (especially if you don’t mind locking out achievements).
Game Rules
Before you begin a new game ofCrusader Kings 3, you have an opportunity to modify the game rules. When you select your starting character, you should see both a “Difficulty” bar below the character’s portrait and information, and a “Game Rules” button just beneath it.
You can set the Difficulty setting to “Very Easy,” “Easy,” and “Normal.” Normal has no bonuses or penalties, while the other settings provide a variety of bonuses.
Easy:
Very Easy:
Aside from these basic bonuses, several of the other game rules can make your life as a medieval ruler much easier. Most of them also disable achievements, but enabling them has no other penalties. Here are some of the most useful game rules to modify:
Ruler Designer
Once you select a starting ruler, you may replace them with your own created character. You can modify their appearance and stats however you want, and this includes giving them a load of positive traits and maxing all their skills. You can only give them a bonus score of 400if you want to enable achievements, but there’s no other limit to how high you can go.
You can also use the Ruler Designerto modify your future vassals, and make them amazing at being your chancellor, marshal, spymaster, and so on. You can even do this for an achievement-enabled game, since only your actual ruler needs to meet the point limit. Just make sure to give your super-vassals “Loyal,” and avoid making them angry…
The only problem with this approach is that the Ruler Designer only works when you start a new game. Your ruler’s childrencan inherit congenital traits like Herculean and Genius, but not other traits or your ruler’s skill bonuses. If you want to grant these bonuses to your ruler’s children, you’ll need to use the next method of makingCK3easy.
Console Commands
Just about every Paradox grand strategy game has a console you can bring up and commands you can type in to alter the game state. Here’s how to get access to it inCrusader Kings 3:
Once debug mode is active, you can hit the ` key to bring up the console. As a debugging tool,the console has a lot of commandsyou don’t need if all you want to do is cheat. Here are some of the most useful commands to remember:
For most of these commands, you may skip adding the character ID if you want it to target your active ruler. To learn what a character’s ID number is, hover your cursor over their portrait. It should be one of the stats that appeared when you turned debug mode on. You can also see county IDs by hovering over them.
One way to discover new commands is with the Tab button. If you type in “add_” and press Tab, the console will show you all the things you may add. If you type in “change_” and press Tab, you can see all the stats you can change, and so on.
Character Switching
One of the more creative ways you may makeCrusader Kings 3easier is by using the “Switch Character” option in the main menu. You can use this option to switch at any point between your primary character and any other ruler or vassal in the game. And unlike the Ruler Designer, you can switch characters at any point during the game. Some of the ways you can abuse this feature include:
However, this method of cheating comes with an important warning:don’t unpause the game while you control a different character. The AI will make decisions on your character’s behalf while you aren’t controlling them, and you might not like all their ideas. If you want your rivals to make several decisions that can’t all happen at once, be sure to switch back to your main ruler between each decision.
