CK3: The Coronations DLC Has … Issues.
Hello, hello, hello. I am on Proper Varian and Crusader Kings 3 just got its newest DLC and I am personally going to deactivate it in any serious non-mei playthrough that I am doing at least for the time being and I want to tell you why. Coronations is a DLC that I awaited quite actively because it’s really interesting. Coronations on a historical level were crazy cool and the dev diaries look pretty interesting as well. Not to mention, of course, that some fresh wind in the way that it feels when you take over as a new character. Well, it can’t hurt too much, right? I was excited for this. And this now puts me in a position where after everything that I’ve seen, and admittedly I haven’t had that much time with it yet, but I am pretty disappointed. Let me be clear about two things specifically. The first one is that we as content creators for this DLC didn’t get earlier access than well anybody else either. We got this when the game or when the DLC actually released. This, just for the record, is normal for these small DLCs. That is the common policy just because there’s normally not that much to be said about it. In fact, I stopped doing reviews for them. I don’t think I ever even did them because even if it is just a mediocre DLC or something that I don’t dislike, these DLCs are so small, it doesn’t get me worked up enough where I would either want to say something positive or negative about it. The exception here being, and you should pick it up because it’s amazing. Dawn of Wonder for Victoria 3. I love looking at those little towns at night and oh, it’s so good. It enhances my gameplay experience a lot because I see it all the time as I play the game. Now, I’m still making this video, which goes to show, yes, something is kind of off, right? So, I don’t have too many hours in this either. That is normal. But I spent ever since it came out all the time playing coronations. I’ve experienced about 15 of them from different angles as a vassel, as an emperor, and so on and so forth. I have also checked the script. I checked the files. I took a look at them, and I can tell you about them there as well. The other thing that I want to mention is that in this video, I don’t really want to talk about the historicity about this. The historicity is weird. There’s a lot there where I wouldn’t agree with it. For example, with the fact that Kaisahan IV counts as crowned in, you know, the start date in 1066. Technically speaking, yes, he is the king of Germany and Burgundy. However, there’s like this whole gimmick of him not being the crowned emperor, which is the consequence being crowned as an emperor of being anointed in the game. This wasn’t true until 1084 because, you know, the whole like excommunication and investigure crisis thing, but okay, be that as it may. So there’s a shortcut in every started as far as I understand it. All of them are crowned no matter what is going on. He’s already crowned. It is what it is. I will be talking about historicity, history, and all the cool facts that you should know about as you play the game in a separate video. Make sure to be on the lookout for that. But that is not the topic of this video right here. In this video, I want to talk about the mechanical implementation. This DLC adds an activity and it adds oaths. Those are the two major elements, right? the activity of being crowned, getting to be crowned, you need to actually facilitate this by, for example, if you are the emperor or if you are any emperor in Catholicism, if we check it out right here in the tenants, you can see yes indeed imperial anointment. If you are an emperor, you must go on and be anointed by well the pope himself. So the head of faith right there for the case of the HRE that means that you have an interaction with the pope to get him to agree to actually anoint you in the first place. For everybody else, you just click the actual activity and then you go. Currently, I can’t do this. I’m not a king. Don’t worry about it. I want to evaluate those elements and I’m going to start with the events in general. I’m then going to go ahead talk about the activity and the way that it plays out. You know, if we dismiss criticism about the events just on a mechanical level, I mean, and then I want to go on and talk about the oaths because that is the biggest pain point for me and the reason that I decided to make a video about a DLC like this one. Listen, it’s kind of weird when I just literally said 1 minute ago that DLCs like this one don’t get me riled up enough to make a video about them, and I said it in a video about a DLC like this. So, yeah, brace for impact. I want to inform you right here why I’m deactivating the DLC on my end, at least until they patch some stuff. But there are deeper underlying issues that I really take a lot of issue with that I want to talk about. First of all, let’s talk about the events. I turned myself into a king. And you can see right here, there is a cool event. And I really like the way this is because you can go ahead and then have them craft a an actual crown. This connection is really cool. They connect a crown of your title to the coronation activity. This is also where certain elements of the coronation activity are kind of hidden behind. And this means that you will then have an artifact that will accompany you as long as you hold that kingdom or empire. And later on, of course, hergemony title. That is really cool. The fact that they give you an automatic way up right here is neat. If you already have a crown, obviously you don’t need to smith one. You can just go ahead and then assign it to the title as you go through the actual uh kind of experience. So, I think that’s really neat. We get a crown right there. And again, we can kind of designate this crown. Currently, obviously, we cannot wear it, right? But then we can designate this crown to be the crown that has to be used in the coronation if you want to have a good one right here with the kingdom of Bohemia. We can only do coronation. Again, we’re not an empire and in Catholicism that is what you need to be. We’re going to host it right there. This is all very standard if you’ve done activities. Nothing to weed here. Let’s talk about the intents. The intents are very powerful. I can tell you one thing right now that the mechanics that go into the consideration for what you do here and how it works, right? Remember, there will be supporters and there will be detractors. The actual scripted mechanics are neat. The events are very carefully chosen. Making sure that people that aren’t those events like your enemies or people that hate one another, people that are disloyal, all that kind of stuff, people that are in affection or could be an affection that already exists, for example, they are hyperspecifically chosen. This is care that isn’t always put into what is going on in events in CK3. So, that’s the positive stuff that I have to say about this. Now, in the general activity here, you have, of course, a really long waiting time, as you do with these things. That is just the way this works. Your kind of intention is to drive magnificent up. It’s very classic stuff. The problem with this activity and one of the major problems, I say one of them with this DLC that makes it so that I wanted to make this video is the fact that there just aren’t enough events. I want to really put this into context. I have seen a lot of coronations. You’re not going to see that many in such a quick succession. When you have event packs like wards and wardens and whatever the other ones called friends and foes, their events normally are scattered out. You aren’t going to see all of them in one fell swoop. If you saw all of them in one fell swoop, you would go, “It’s not that many and I’m kind of annoyed and there were so many being bombarded at me.” This event pack does not have enough events to put them all into one activity. They are, like I said, mechanically sound. Their script is actually quite nice in which character is selected and when this this and that event pops up. Obviously, we have to choose a priest that’s allowed. This event happens every single time. There’s also another event where the detractors come to you and you can be like, “Shut up or die.” And then they become your rivals or they just become potentially your rivals. These events will pop up every single time because there just aren’t enough to make this work. This means your coronation will look the same every single time. The event flavor budget for this DLC, for a DLC that puts you into one activity, and in that activity, you’re going to see all of those events just one by one, was not big enough. And just for the record, by the way, these give really nice artifacts in this patch. So, the original patch of the release right here, I don’t care whether she’s my soulmate. I don’t care about slight increase of magnificence. Give me the incredibly powerful hammer for free. Thank you very much. Ah, and look, it’s the other one. Silence or death. Yeah, like I told you, this event also comes up every single time. You should be aware of this. I really want to highlight this and I think it is a step down as well as they are scripted. The reality of these events is I would be a ton happier if we didn’t just define what events we get via intent, which by the way, I don’t think they do refined enough here in this particular uh uh set of content. But if we also kind of looked around and said to ourselves, okay, maybe we do it like running a tournament. I get to choose whether I want to see an event altogether by clicking the thing, right? And if I don’t want to see one, I don’t see one. Instead, I just see these events a million times in a very quick row. I’ve seen this one every single time as well. It is a This is a friendly petitioner. You see it every single time. I want to stress there’s something smart to these events. No matter what happens, you will be walking away from this coronation with opinions. You will be looking at people and you will say to yourself, “Oh, I get it. Okay, so these people, I hate them. I will act against them.” If you find yourself after an inheritance, not really knowing where you should go, left or right, who’s your enemy, who’s your foe, this will definitely help you. But the reality is, uh, yeah, you will see these events again and again and again. There won’t be any differentiation. You will never see anything different. It’s always the same. Oh, look. It’s my pleasure to ascend. Aren’t you Aren’t you a detractor, brother? I just praised you for selecting the characters so well. All right, whatever. Let’s skip these events because like I said, the effect of them gameplay mechanically is nice, but this is a chore and it really worries me for the examinations in China and in other admin governments that will be added of course to China and in Asia that you have to do those the same way that you have to do coronations and that they will always be the same. I am worried because this really sucks. Yep. Count daughter always keeps people away from me so that I can be calm and have a good coronation. It’s the same every single time. Here we have an event. Again, I want to mention that this is really cool. I can say that the crown will now be inherited alongside the kingdom itself, which is awesome. I think that’s cool. Being able to assign this, being able to look over to a different kingdom and seeing that they have a crown that goes with the kingdom as well, that is really, really neat. They crown you and every time you could say, “I must get rid of this woman to your wife.” I don’t know why you would do it, but that as it may, let’s talk about ambitions. I I think they’re technically not called ambitions. They are called what are they called? Uh oaths. Let’s talk about oaths because I am mad at oaths. There are two sections here that I very quickly want to talk about. Most of which will be detrimental for you whether you are the player that is experiencing the coronation or somebody that is experiencing an AI taking an oath. First of all, let’s start with the player. Some of these have not been thought through. Take a look at greatest hunter and I will do a save here so that I can also show you the actual decision. If you choose that your oath for your crown is the greatest hunter, you will have 20 years to host and finish successfully either three legendary hunts or 10 regular hunts. You also get an increased chance of legendary sightings while this oath is active 20 years. If you succeed, you get greatest hunter. I want to be straightforward with you. I’m going to click this right now. This is complete nonsense. When I actually check check the requirements of the decision for finishing this actual oath, check this out. At least two of the following, so two of the following must be true. The first one being host a successful legendary hunt three times, which is deranged. This has never happened in the history of CK3. You need to get insanely lucky within 20 years. Also, all of these, this is the second thing. So, both of these need to be true according to what is written here in script. Post a successful legendary hunt once. post a successful hunt 10 times. It’s impossible. You cannot succeed with this. It’s impossible. You also need a bow type artifact. None of this is mentioned when you take the oath. And even if they nerf this, which they will, they will make it much more feasible. What they are saying here is if you want to be the greatest hunter, we need you to sit through the same hunt events for 20 years because you need to have so many hunts, you will know them by heart. And all of your hunts need to be successful. Even if they say it’s only like five hunts that you need to do. Okay, fine. Five hunts. Let’s say five hunts. That is five post hunt activities within 20 years. You spend all that money. You need to save all that money because you need to be successful at it so that you can get this modifier right here. This is completely deranged. What we have right here in oaths was what I was hoping would be ambitions. I liked ambitions in CK2 as well. If you haven’t played CK2, ambitions could be very short-term, midterm, or long-term. They could be, for example, I want to get married. I want to have a son. I want to h have peace in the realm. Those were the ambitions. Then you also had very long-term stuff. You had stuff that unlocked something. For example, I believe that if you wanted to become the king of a not yet created crown, it would give you a CB that you can use. If you want to become a saint, that would keep you busy your entire life, right? So ambitions were also short, mid, and long-term, but they very clearly communicated what they were, how you would use them, and they gave you short-term direction. Not to mention the AI, but more on that in a second. This stuff right here only works for minmaxers. only works for massochists that are saying yes, please give me the same hunt events 15 times in a row. Thank you very much. Now, let’s take a look at these others. Again, from the player perspective, right, support my knights. This right here, also kind of lying to you, just for the record, will thieft is not the first level of the Marshall Grands building. It is the third level. You need to build the third level three times, which means per third level, it will cost you around 1,700 and it will take 3 years to build each level. And there are additional requirements such as you need to have knights that have a certain skill set. Meaning this oath right here seems pretty straightforward, but you need the moment that you take the oath, you need to start building and you need to have the knights at the ready that are capable enough. You need to have four minute arms that uh are at level four. Yeah. So we currently couldn’t do it and you need to have the money to build these buildings because if you cannot do it three levels, right? So that is 9 years total. If you miss even one year, you will fail the oath. This is incredibly powerful, by the way. More on why that is bad in just a second. You’re going to see that in just a bit. Okay. Greatest hunter. We already talked about expand the realm can be super easy. Like 19. We are already at 14 counties. They want you to have 19, right? If I was the HRE, it spoke of like 40 or 50 counties that I needed to add. Shape the realm can be incredibly simple. You just need to build 10 buildings. Install claimments can be difficult as hell and you can’t really do that much about it, but interesting. Secure alliances. um five alliances with all these conditions list. I’ll be honest with you, you need to be very dedicated to this. Uh there are a couple missing here. For example, getting all the Dejour territories. That can be a very easy one. It can be a very hard one depending on how things go. You also got provide for the faithful which also requires you to build a lot. Basically, same tea as support my knights. Provide for the poor. Same story. These ambitions are so all over the place. They don’t communicate it properly and you run the risk that the actual requirements of the decision to finish them are different from the requirements given to you during selection process. and also just swear no oath, but at that point you forgo one of the most interesting elements of this DLC, which is the variability of what your ruler wants to do. Now, let me be clear here. If you lose, if you don’t finish one of these oaths, which is quite possible because again, you need about 6,000 bucks to finish the support my knights thing, and you need to have your knights in order, and you need to have your minute arms in order. That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of pre-planning. Should you fail this, you will take a massive, massive hit to your everything. The moment I saw this, I was like, “Oh my god, the AI is going to suffer so much.” And they do suffer, but not nearly as much as they should because they took the easy way out. Let’s talk about how the AI relates to the oaths because this this is what made me do this video. When we have a mechanic in a grand strategy game, grand strategy games are not turnbased. They are not Forex. They are not in a position where you can just give random modifiers to the AI and you will be happy about this. There will be stories told and you can trace where AI succeeded and failed as they engage with the mechanics. Bad mechanical design in any grand strategy game as far as I am concerned is one where you do not get a story out of a mechanic because the AI cannot interact with it. And so failure or success is completely random. It gets worse design-wise when this is apparent and so you neuter the success and the failure because AI failing or succeeding is an entirely random thing. The AI doesn’t actually pursue it. Tell me, how should the AI pursue support my knights? They do not have the money. They will always fail this oath. And that’s the reality. I checked the script. I will probably have it on screen right now. The way the AI interacts with oaths really, really sucks. Let’s say I am not a king. I can at least interact with Mad if they have indeed, you know, anything going on related to their coronation. When I look around at rulers, I would love it if I could say, “Hey, this guy made an oath. I can sabotage it. I can support it.” They are going to do their best to pursue this oath. They aren’t going to do their best to pursue this oath. First of all, let’s take a look at this right here in this list. Since we are in debug mode, we can see the AI weight. This has an AI weight of 10. The AI will not be changing any of the behavior. It’s just that this can accidentally happen quite frequently. Shape the realm. Building 10 buildings is a pipe dream for the AI. This will basically never happen unless they get very lucky. The luck playing a big role there. Install claimments zero because the AI isn’t consciously acting on this ambition on this oath even if they had it. Provide for the faithful. AI weight two way lower than shape the realm. Expand the realm zero because that is a crazy goal. Like I said, if you are the HRE, there can be 50 60 counties that you need to conquer just in the baseline borders of the HRE with how this is scaling. Greatest hunter. It’s impossible, but it gets AI weight 10. What do you mean? Support my knights. AI weight three. This right here is the most powerful building arguably in the game when it comes to stacking it. The AI will rarely ever choose it and they will never ever complete this because they will never ever have enough money lying around to fulfill this oath in 10 years. This building is insanely strong and it will virtually only be in the hands of the player. You will never see that a good king had an oath and then really hunted it down and all of a sudden his realm will benefit for it for generations because they physically will not be building this with that purpose. Maybe they build build a couple of them but they won’t pursue it the way that any player would provide for the poor. Same exact circumstance. I want to highlight this because what we have here is the idea of ambitions that gives life to the AI that gives life to the world that lets me trace when they had a great king they had a bad king but the AI doesn’t really pursue it. The consequence of this is obviously I told you about this. If you as a player fail your oath, you become you get the oath breaker nickname and you get a massive malice. This malice, check the script, is largely neuted for the AI, which means there is no real story emerging from the coronation for the AI. They might pick up enemies, they might pick up friends. Fundamentally, they lose money on hosting the coronation and then they’re going to lose some legitimacy, some prestige when they fail the actual oath. The reason for this is that again they get neuted a much much weaker penalty compared to the player. As the player, well, it would be great if I could have ambitions, if I could do great stuff, but there are no partial successes. There is no partial kind of a trying to achieve something here. Unless you know you can get something done, the penalties are so severe. Just swear no oath, meaning there’s no story. They have a mechanic that the AI does not properly interact with. And when it does, when it happens to interact with it, they have neutered the benefits and the uh drawbacks. There are such powerful buildings in here. They are accidentally uh kind of impossible oaths in there. Those will be fixed. Sure, they will be nerfed. They will be brought in line, whatever. But instead of pursuing a story and adding to what is going on here in CK2, I could look at a character and I could see, oh, this character wants to form this kingdom. This character wants to get married, yada yada yada, I can’t see whether they’re crowned in the law interface. You can see it right here. This is me. This is not him. Just for the record, I cannot see what is going on in my leisure realm where he is crowned other than looking at his crown and the oaths essentially do not matter. I have checked it a number of times. Let me zoom into it. Check him out right here. This is King Skean I Castim of Croatia. He just got crowned and he has this decision right here like a player would secure alliances 20 years. He’s not going to make he doesn’t have enough children. He won’t even get enough alliances because we get the malice in there. He would have to get lucky with people just randomly. Yeah, this DLC should be a story generator. And on a mechanical level, it can do this for the player. It will give you rivals, although the events that give you the rivals are always the same. It will give you friends, although the friends come through events that are always the same. But mechanically, you will be walking out from a different kind of angle than you entered the coronation. But the AI isn’t writing any stories with this. The AI isn’t doing anything to write home about. And because of this, much of the drawbacks have been disabled. But simultaneously, the benefits that you can get from the oaths are also not accessible to the AI unless they get so incredibly lucky. I would give it a chance of maybe 1 in 1 million that they actually build 10 buildings, that they actually go ahead and get five alliances. The easiest one is simply being at peace for 5 years. Check this out. 10 buildings. He’s he’s never going to build 10 buildings in Estonia. He’s tribal. How would he do that? Um, I think this DLC is really, really repetitive and it means that the AI has to spend a lot of money on stuff and derives none of the benefits that are accessible to the player. I’m going to deactivate it. I’m going to probably do a meme run where I’m like, “Wow, look at my Minute Arms and Knights being incredibly powerful, but mechanically and and flavor-wise, there’s just not enough here.” And the fact that an event heck got me to make a video about it is really weird. I hope that you understand that. If you’re having fun with the DLC, keep having fun. This is a video game. If you have fun, you have fun. I personally uh yeah, I was really hoping for something else. I’m going to be doing a video when it comes later this week. I’m going to do a video on the question of historical coronations. We’re going to talk about the history, and I’m super excited for this. But yeah, the DLC itself, um, it’s a miss as far as I’m concerned. Let me know what you think. I will see you later alligator.
Let’s talk about what I think about the Coronation DLC.
CK3: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1158310/Crusader_Kings_III/
Your legacy awaits. Choose your noble house and lead your dynasty to greatness in a Middle Ages epic that spans generations. War is but one of many tools to establish your reign, as real strategy requires expert diplomatic skill, mastery of your realm, and true cunning. Crusader Kings III continues the popular series made by Paradox Development Studio, featuring the widely acclaimed marriage of immersive grand strategy and deep, dramatic medieval roleplaying.
00:00 Intro
00:40 Two Caveats
02:38 General Overview
04:01 Events – The Good & The Bad
09:55 Oaths – The Bad
20:02 Conclusion.
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