The most significant mistake I made with Crusader Kings II was attempting to understand every single operationalization that it presented me with straight away. It is what makes it a fantastic history generator and one of the purest expressions of emergent gameplay in the medium, but it’s also what makes it so intimidatingly dense. Indeed, Crusader Kings III operationalizes everything I associate with medieval history, from inbreeding and the pox to spousal murder. Meanwhile, being impatient gives a penalty to learning, which affects how much piety is generated, essentially a form of currency to spend on religious decisions. Being temperate gives a bonus to stewardship, where stewardship is in turn defined by its effect on things like the level of taxation. These traits have some nice flavor text, but the key is how they affect, and are affected by, other parts of the game. In the Crusader Kings III tutorial you play as Murchad mac Donnchad of Ireland, a petty king who is temperate and impatient.

Operationalization is the characterization of something by its interaction with something else.

This helped me to see how I could learn to play it. To begin with, I noticed that Crusader Kings III seems to be designed through two basic principles: operationalization and abstraction. This removed some of the immediate anxieties from the game for me, and it gave me breathing room to learn at my own pace. Granted, they aren’t very satisfying, but the point is that there is no need to stress if you are not doing “standard strategy game stuff”: conquering, expanding, growing culture, and whatnot. Losing land and being reduced to a petty vassal of some moronic lordling or never rising out of being a moronic lordling yourself are both perfectly acceptable ways to play the game. The only game over condition is that whoever you are currently playing as dies without leaving an heir. This time I’m determined to persevere, and also see if there are some things a complete beginner like me might understand quickly to break into this grandest of the grand strategy games.Īt its core, Crusader Kings III is about maintaining your dynasty. Crusader Kings III is an excuse to try again. It was an easy sell, but after several hours of staring at tutorial screens and no closer to staring at goats, I gave up and was too intimidated to return to it. About five years ago my friend tried to get me into Crusader Kings II, Paradox Interactive’s famously complex medieval history generator, by telling me it has the option to marry one’s offspring off to a goat.

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