This tutorial is a translation of my tutorial. The original was written in the most beautiful language in the galaxy - Polish. I used the goggle translator for translation, so don't be surprised if a sentence is not logical or meaningless.
Nevertheless, this should not be an obstacle to reading this guide.

In the tutorial, I present various issues in the order you would play. This means first the game settings, the character creator, then what to do at the beginning of the game and in peacetime, then I will describe how to command your army well during the war, what decisions to make, etc. they make a lot of work. I assume that if you are reading this tutorial, you already know the basics of this game and I do not need to explain them to you. However, if you are completely new then check out a few tutorials on youtube first, follow the tutorial, play two games (preferably once as a tribal state, once as feudal) and then come back. Otherwise, you risk getting very little out of this guide. Some of the topics may seem unnecessary to you and you may want to skip reading them. However, I advise you against it because the topics are quite mixed up and you may accidentally omit some interesting information.

To make the game enjoyable, and above all to avoid border gore, set the following in the game rules Independence Exclave - Total
Diplomatic Reach - restricted
Regional heresies - strict
If you don't want to face different factions every now and then, set your stability to higher or extreme.

However, since you are reading this guide, I assume that you may not want to go the easy way, so in the further part of this guide you will be able to learn how to counteract factions.













You'll usually play with historical characters, but from time to time it's interesting to play your own. I will show you a few tricks that will allow you to achieve the best character within the limit of 400 points (if you exceed it, you will not be able to get achievements). I will discuss it on the example of a character created for military purposes.
I skip cosmetic issues such as appearance, name, dynasty, etc. You can try to play with the appearance, give your character, for example, some nice stubble.










I'll start the mountains, create a heterosexual man, set your faith as best as it is in the country you want to rule, but that's not a rule.
Set the age to 16 as extra points are required to create older characters. 16 years is the most optimal number because you can designate your character from this age on education + you pay 27 points less compared to if you gave the default age (25). that you will have a few lifestyle points to start with. However, if you choose an older character (> 18) then don't forget to give him a nice mustache. Do not be smart with the weight, set it in the middle, change it slightly only when you give the character the comfort eater or inappetic attribute (comfort eater is better, unless you make a character for management it is not). Then change the weight in the opposite direction to the trait so that the character has a slight reserve before he struggles with health problems.
I will not describe the rest, I will just give you this photo. This is probably one of the best balanced builds possible for the army. The balanced ones are usually better than the hardcore ones where you have 30 points in martail, the best commander qualities, and the rest of 0. With such a character that I showed you, you can easily dominate the entire area, thanks to the legendary blademaster you will enjoy better health, 5 points in management will increase your Domain limit by 1 and instead of -16% from taxes will be -6%.










If you want to increase your character's military skills even more, give them more traits that subtract points. However, choose only those that do not subtract your character's skills
military men, moreover, rather do not choose traits that bring disadvantages to health, and avoid bad traits that are hereditary. if you want to maximize the full potential of the wizard, use the above advice and set your character to be 0 years old. This way you will save 120 compared if you had set 16 and gave a four star education. Look in this photo how I made a character for the army this way.I created a character according to the above principle.
As you can see, it really turned out that the features are the same as in the previous build, only that I added those features that subtract points and gave the genius and zeaolus feature, and also took the berserker feature. Thanks to the genius trait, when our character is 16 years old, even if he receives a one-star education, he will be zero, just as if he had a four-star one right away, but he was not a genius. In fact, you will get a two or three star education and it will be a plus compared to what you would normally do. You will probably notice that I gave my character zero skill points at the bottom, this is because if you give these skill points in such a young character, she won't get them anyway. The points that you clicked there count as base points (if you hover over the character, you would see such a list and it would say base: e.g. 15). Characters with age 0 have zero slots, so that would be useless. Once I was scared of zero-year-old characters in 100 points for everything, when she was an adult, she had maybe 30 of them at the maximum. Perhaps it is due to the fact that she would have to have a brilliant tutor with points at a similar level. Either way, I think you shouldn't be giving yourself a zero year old character in the skill point creator (assuming you're sticking to that cap of 400, of course), it's just a waste to invest in some cool traits.





At the end, in general, I will just add that if you know that you will fight a lot with countries that are hostile to yours, be sure to give it the holy warrior trait.
In addition, if you are playing a tribal state, make sure your character is arrogant and impatient, they will significantly increase your character's prestige. You can also give her other stats that increase prestige, and you can also give her a few more diplomacy points. Besides, never let the character have a wife in the wizard, because they always give a weak one.

In this section and the next few, I will present issues that you will engage in right after the game starts, and which you will come back to later during the game.


Lifestyle
If we play for the army, our main source will be perks from lifestyle trees. Therefore, you need to know in what order to choose them, and what focus to choose. Below I have numbered the order in which I think they should be selected.
The first four perks are very good, after them your knights will be more than twice as strong (+ 75% efficiency and + 4 knights), and you will get a very nice command bonus +5 advantage which translates into +10% damage to your entire army. commanded and - 20% friendly deaths, up to +4 valor and reduced risk of commanding an army.
These bonuses are powerful, so it's best to choose them first
then Serve the crown so that your lands and areas you conquer have high control, and since you play under the military, you will have a lot of such newly conquered areas with low control.
However, if you do not intend to do great conquests, and you have a stable country, you can easily skip this one perk and return to it as soon as you do the whole strategist tree.
Later in my order there is a whole strategic tree where 7/9 means you can choose this or that depending on your men-at-arms. The left side is more for cavalry and the other side is for foot, choose what you have more. When you are done with the whole tree on the left, continue
overseer tree, start from the left side as it's just better. You probably won't live long enough to finish the middle tree, but if you did, you would end up with the worst perks. Perk 23,24,25 concerns relations with women. On the other hand, perk 26 without combining with other bonuses for making a room is a bit usseless (later in the topic of dealing with factions, we will return to this perk, because it can have a very interesting use). As for perk 27, it is especially good for tribal lords, but its biggest downside is that in order to dig at it, you need to unlock 3 useless perks. In total, it is also a perk of 25 that gives + 25% to skills from wife is nice (this may translate into 2 or 3 points, but for the other 2 it is difficult to find a meaningful use.

One of the first things you do after starting a game is to set up the best board members. I will describe to you which tasks are best chosen for the marshal, I will start from the top.
Manage Royal Guards - worth setting when you need to reduce the chances of success of a hostile plot against you.
increase control in county - when you need to quickly increase control in a specific province.
Train Commanders - when you have few conscripts and a lot of good knights and men-at-arms, and when you need to find new knights to recruit them.
Organize Army - when you have weak knights and men-at-arms and when you need to reduce the army's maintenance (it only reduces the maintenance of conscripts when they are deployed, because when they are not, you pay nothing for them)
So how do you know what will be more profitable to organize an army or train commanders, or maybe manage royal guards? To find out what will be the best in a given case, we will compare these 3 tasks based on the total damage and stamina they will give our army. This can be calculated from the formulas below,




MRG is Manage royal guards
TC is a train commander
OA this is the oragnize army
m = marshal's military skill divided by 100
L = The number of your conscripts
d = BASE damage to all your men-at-arms
t = BASE all men-at-arms stamina
S = sum of the bravery of all our knights. Of course, it is only about those knights who fight in our army, not the entire list of available knights.

Now I will briefly explain to you where it all came from, etc. It will be difficult for you to understand if you do not know the basics of math and the basics of ck3, but it's always worth a try.

as for "m" - individual tasks give bonuses of a certain percentage based on the marshal's skill points, how many military points the marshal has will give a percentage of the bonus. For example, 20 skill points = 20% bonus 1% = 1/100 so we have to divide the skill points by 100 20/100 = 0.2 the result in this form will simplify our later calculations

"d" and "t" these two values ​​are needed because they are what the train commander task applies to. How to calculate them well? Just for each type of men-at-arms you multiply their BASE damage by the number of times there are (if you don't use the base value, and instead of just the one affected by different bonuses, you will get a false result). For example, if you have 500 armoder footman and 400 archers, you multiply the base damage of armored footmen * 500 and the same with archers, ie 32 * 500 + 25 * 400 = 26000. We calculate toughness by the same principle.

"S" bravery sum is needed to calculate the total damage and endurance of your knights. To calculate it, just add the bravery of all your knights. Of course, we only take into account those who serve in our army, and not only those who are available on your list. This means that if you have 12 knights, you can't suddenly count your bravery from e.g. 25 knights, because you have so many on the list to choose from, I hope you understand what's going on. Simply if you have, for example, 10 knights, then the top ten knights from the top set that you make them knights, then you will be sure that you are counting well and that you have the best possible knights in your army.

"L" the number of your conscripts needed for the formula for the "oraganize army" quest


MGR = 2 * m * 110 * S 2m because the bonus percentages in MRG are double the number of marshal skill points. 110S, because one point of valor gives 100 damage and 10 stamina, and since we sum up damage and stamina, it comes out 110. 110 is multiplied by the sum of the bravery of all our knights, i.e. by S

TC = m (d + t) + m * 110 * S
Always remember the order of operations in math (generally operations are in parentheses first, then exponentiation and square root, then multiplication and division, then addition and subtraction). Lest you accidentally add what comes out of m (d + t) to m and then multiplied by 110S, because you will get total stupidity.
m (d + t) because the train commander increases the damage and endurance of your men-at-arms
that is, m * d + m * t can be shortened as m * (d + t) (based on the principle of separateness of multiplication versus addition).

OA = (m + 0.01) * L * 20

(m + 0.01) because this task, unlike the others, gives baseline + 1% 1% = 0.01. So if you have a marshal of 20 points, you will receive 21%.
We multiply this percentage by L because this task increases the number of recruits by a given percentage.
Finally, we multiply that by 20 because each conscript has 10 damage and 10 stamina 10 + 10 = 20. In general, these tasks of the marshal could be considered separately in terms of damage and endurance, but who needs it, it is easier and faster.



Remember that the bonuses from the marshal's tasks increase by 1% every month to the maximum value, and not that it is immediately the maximum (apart from organizing the army, there is also the maximum value there). Therefore, often, e.g. during the war, if you already have the maximum number of percentages from e.g. Manage Royal guards, which would be less profitable for you, it may not pay off to change to train commander. It can be similar with the organize army, although there is always the maximum value in there, it will just have to take some time before the conscripts gather.

Having councilors and knights with high scores is very useful, but also expensive. It is not unknown how expensive, but it does cost a bit nonetheless. Especially since you can have them for free.

1 way: Through marriage. We use the mechanics that if your courtier marries someone, that person will join your court. Of course, you filter spouses according to the specific skill you want. Also remember that you need to choose right-sex spouses. This means that if you need a knight, and your culture only allows a man to be knights, then of course you must seek a man of great valor, not a woman. It is the same with councilors (except for the master of intrigue) if your faith is dominated by men in the doctrine. Note, if you are going to marry a woman, make sure it is a matrilineal marriage, and for men you must always give normal. Otherwise, you would not gain a courtier, but you would lose, because you would have moved to the court of your spouse.

2 way: Giving unnecessary land. We will take advantage of the fact that vassals can also be your councilors and knights (councilors without always regardless of gender, but not knights anymore) If, for example, you conquer a country and got lands that you do not want, because they are weak or exceed your limit domains, then you click on this ground, then press "give title" in the filters you set the character you need and give it a title. She becomes your vassal, so she can be a knight or a councilor.
You can also see if there is someone in prison with high skill points, if there is one, negotiate with him that you will release him in exchange for joining your court.

In general, it is worth striving to have the highest main title possible, except that it gives a lot of dynasty reputation and prestige, but you also have a larger limit of knights
Empire - +8 knights
Kingdom - +7
Principality - +6
County - +5
the increased number of knights will also give you a high level of fame.

In general, you need to take care of the knights, because one knight with the bravery of 30 at 200% efficiency deals as much damage as 600 porborowych (1 point of valor = (100 damage + 10 stamina) *% of knights efficiency) Remember to click that you force them to be knights, but your heir, if he is good, forbid being a knight.

If your country has any temples in its territory, be sure to maintain a very good relationship with your bishop. Give you very substantial bonuses in the form of extra gold and conscripts. Eg starting in 1066 how HRE you can get into
6.5 gold in 1700 conscripts. This is very, very much for the fact that it is enough to set up a "convince" (sway) conspiracy on your bishop and give him some of your children for education (+15 opinions).


skill points from wife 6, 21, 8, 4, 6

Having a good wife is very important, she can give you powerful skill points bonuses. If you set her to "assist ruler", you will receive 1/5 of all her skills, and if you set her to one specific trait, you would receive 50% of her skill points from that specific area. It is a lot, so you can get even a dozen or so points. If you play for the army, I recommend that you find a wife who has very high military and management points. You set your wife to give you management points, so that you have a larger domain limit and higher taxes, and when you command the army, you set your wife to give you military skills before the battle. Alternatively, if you really need a strong army, you can have military skills set throughout the war to increase the number of recruits and the speed of replenishing them.
An interesting fact is that thanks to the perk "loyalyty and respect" (in the martial lifestyle) you can increase the skills received from your wife by 25%
I would also like to add that if your wife's percentage of points were to be a non-integer then she is always rounded down.



Always remember about him to create some artifacts for you. Get him all the equipment, and when you're done, let him do something to the manor.
If you have a military education, make sure you have him write a book on military, it will not always be successful, because you may not even have such an option, but it is worth trying. If you succeed, you will get, among other things, a bonus to a month's experience in the military lifestyle, which is very valuable (5-15% maybe more, depending on the quality.) Actually, if he wrote a book on some other topic, e.g. intrigue or diplomacy, you would also get it. If you manage to get a book on the topic you are interested in, just remember that when a window appears for you to click something there, do not click anything but be sure to read exactly what you are asking about, because it often happens that antiquarian cwaniakuje, because he has inspiration for a book on a different topic, but you disagree. Unless you get just about something you don't need, then agree, he'll make a book about something else, and in addition it will be of higher quality.
Generally, if you don't know, these books are placed in the court (that is, if you have a title lower than the kingdom you won't make a book for yourself), you can have two books in use at the same time.


And if we are talking about the court, it is worth setting exotic food to get a small health bonus. In general, take care of your character's health and stress. If you hover over the heart icon next to your ruler's name, there are things written there that affect his health, if he says there that he is obese or malnourished then
immediately choose the "lose weight" or "gain weight" decision in the decision panel. So what if you'll have a great character when she dies at 50? Especially that with age the character is more valuable, because he already has a lot less in his lifestyle, and he also gets, for example, an increased opinion thanks to long rule.




Also remember that you can change the type of court. A military or administrative court will be the best. There are always two types of court to choose from, depending on the ethos of your culture.




In the graphic below you can see what bonuses each ethos gives you and what types of mansions it allows you to have.





If you are someone's vassal, it will be a very good idea to modify your feudal contract to have a guaranteed position in the council, you can do it even at the cost of fewer conscripts or taxes. Because when you are on the council of your senior, you get very substantial bonuses, see the picture below. Sometimes you won't need to modify the contract because sometimes you will be in the council without it.

The best dynasty legacies if we want to play for the army are as follows
The pillage tree is of course only accessible to the Vikings, to be precise, to dynasties whose head culture has a North Germanic heritage.
It is debatable whether a pillage or warfare tree is better. Pillage is for gaining gold from raids and battles (you get 5 gold for 100 kills when you reach lvl 4). In contrast, warfare is typically military and battlefield. It doesn't really matter what you choose first, but if you are starting the game as a feudal country, don't choose pillage first, as you won't be able to raid anyway, then my advice would be to take warfare first and then pillage.
If you complete these two dynasty trees or one, depending on who you are playing, do the next blood tree, and then kin (on lvl blood I would suggest choosing the "quick" trait). "customs" trees, because they are simply weak. Although you would probably not get that far anyway, because for each progress in the dynasty tree you pay 500 more than for the previous one, where you pay 250 for the first time. one level so best regards.



You have 3 ways

1. marriages with other rulers (one of the simpler and more effective ways).
You just marry a woman from your dynasty to a ruler, or possibly someone's heir, but a ruler is better. The higher the title the better, so filter characters by rank (like below)
Remember that a character must be at least 16 years old to get a reputation for marrying a character, but you can already get them engaged in order to get a given ruler for yourself. If you have a choice of two rulers with equal titles, choose the younger one and / or the stronger one.
If you marry a woman for your vassal, you will not get a reputation.
When you click on a character to find her spouse, don't click arrange marriage but find spouse, when you select arrange marriage it only shows you characters from your court so you have very little choice. And to use the find spouse option the character must belong to your court.

for marriage with:
the emperor is + 1.60 reputation per month
king +0.8
prince +0.4
count +0.2
baron +0.2

You will most often use this method with women, as most rulers are men, but for men you can also see if there is someone cool.
Of course we marry women of our dynasty, not some random low born.

2. Lots of living members of the dynasty. There is no philosophy here. Simply when you marry members of your dynasty, you filter the spouses so that they have some hereditary traits, then you choose a character with a hereditary trait that gives you a fertility bonus, if there is nothing with fertility then with health, if not with health then with science. Even if it doesn't, look for someone with the "lustful" character trait, it gives + 25% fertility. Also, try to choose young people to be fertile for a long time, this applies more to women than men. In short, the point is simply that we are looking for such spouses for members of our dynasty to be as fertile as possible. Remember that when you marry a woman you must point out that it is a matrilineal marriage, without it the children will not belong to your dynasty.

3. Granting titles and independence to members of your dynasty. You simply conquer, for example, a principality and after the war is over you give it to someone from your dynasty. You just need to own this title and at least one county belonging to it. Not that you only have to have a vassal to be able to give it to someone. If you do not have this one county, check if you have imprisoned someone during the war, e.g. a vassal from whom you could take the land. Remember that you must have crown power on level 2 to be able to claim titles.
Only if you give a woman, check if the children from her marriage will belong to your dynasty, that is, if they are
it's a matrilineal marriage, because if you don't, don't give her land, because after her death, someone from a foreign dynasty will take her over and you won't get any reputation.
If you have already given this title and that title belongs to de jure territory for one of your titles, then you will not give this character independence. And independence is necessary, because without it you will not get reputation points. For members of a dynasty who hold a title but are your vassals, your dynasty will not receive reputation.
Dynasty replaced
for the emperor 2 renown per month
for king 1
for the prince 0.5
for the count 0.25
Remember to then take care of the character you gave the title, if you have a lot of gold, send him some gold sometimes, if you can, make an alliance with him, see if he loses the war with someone. Just make sure he doesn't lose this title.


and besides, if you are very rich, you can try to get your court to lvl 9, which gives + 5% to the dynasty reputation. You can also try to get some nice artifacts that will give you a reputation or reputation percentages. A large number of special buildings give a bonus to the dynasty's reputation.

economy and buildings

Economics is very important, because what if you will have the strongest army on the continent, if you are barely breaking out and have no way to develop. Fortunately, ck3 did not come out as much dlc as for example eu4, so everything is still very simple. Especially the economy, if it exists at all in this game, unfortunately it is only about constructing some buildings.

Build some good buildings, but only in your domains, don't build the vassal . The only exception is if you have a very good relationship with your bishop, then you can build in the temple baronies, because the money and the conscripts will go to you anyway.
(For feudal and clan governments) In general, build buildings that give you gold first, choose those that give you the most gold, then you can possibly build a military pair.
The best building of a principality for an army is the military academy, it gives very powerful bonuses to knights


The matter is even simpler for rulers with a tribal government where they have the choice of building 4 buildings, or rather 5, I will write you in what order I would advise you to build them:
(to make it clearer, I will not use their names, but write what they give)
1.this building which gives you prestige
2. a building that gives gold
3. a building that gives knight, conscripts and men-at-arms bonuses
4. a building equivalent to a feudal castle
5. tribal hold, that is, the main building of the county, it is located right above these four.
In general, you can change the order of building individual buildings according to what will happen during the game.

Always try to have reached the domain limit, use your full potential.
You can have a wife set up to give you management points, you will get higher taxes (2% for one point, with 0 points is - 16%), and maybe you will have a higher domain limit (+1 domain to the limit for every 5 management points).

feudal contracts are very simple, so they won't explain how they work, what they're about, instead, they'll show you how to increase taxes (or conscripts, but better taxes) for everyone
vassal.
You have two options

Option 1 You increase the vassal's taxes, but in return you set him not to be able to take his title, or a better option might be to click on war declaration if you are not afraid to fight vassals or if you have set more stability.




Option 2 When your ruler is very old and you know he is about to die, you raise any vassal you can get taxes. You give him nothing in return. Getting a few hundred tyrants is no problem, because you will die anyway.

In general, if you think that some vassal is too strong, you can also set the forced division law as a succession law, then his lands will be divided after death.


if you are not afraid of the factions against you, you can set a higher crown power (click F2 and you have it up there). At lvl 3 + 10% of taxes and conscripts at lvl 4 35% of taxes and conscripts.



if your faith gives you such an opportunity, ask the Pope for gold as often as possible, if you can not see why, often it is enough to just improve your relationship with him a little, e.g. through a conspiracy or obtain the pilgrim trait and have +5 opinions from a person of the same faith. A pilgrim will also be a good option if you lack piety to ask for gold.

Knights - to have knights with high bravery, use the method described in the "council knights and court" section. Remember to set the knights that you are forcing them to be knights. You can also use the 'invite knights' decision to recruit them for gold. Let me remind you that you should take care that you have a high level of fame and that you strive to have the highest possible title, because the higher the more knights you can have, I described it in more detail in the section "councilors and knights and the court". If you skipped the previous sections of this guide, I advise you to come back to them, because, contrary to appearances, you can learn a lot about military in this game. If you play as a tribal ruler and want a lot of good knights and men-at-arms then build a lot (only in your domains of course) war camps.




Commander If your character has a non-military lifestyle then he will be a weak commander, then find some good commander as well as good knights (based on military points). If your character has a military lifestyle, select the perks according to how I presented it in the earlier part of this guide. In general, it will always be easier for you to be a good commander, because as a ruler you get +5 advantage. (If you do not know this 1 advantage to + 2% damage, during a battle, the opponent's advantage is deducted from your side advantage and this way the advantage of the battle is calculated for you, e.g. you have 30, the opposing commander has 20, so 30-20 = 10). You have + 20% damage A commander's advantage is made up of his military skill points 1punkt = 1advantage, lifestyle, and commander traits. all these modifiers later).

men-at-arms - Take care of them. Not everyone knows that men-at-armsi counter each other. Who is countering whom, you can find out exactly by clicking on individual men-at-arms. Counters look more or less like in the picture (the arrow shows who is countering whom, e.g. cavalry countering archers)


Therefore, if you know that you will be at war with someone, recruit such men-at-arms to be a counter to his men-at-arms. This rule also works the other way around, for example you have a lot of heavy infantry, heavy infantry is countered by light infantry (skirmishers), so you should then make yourself some more archers so that archers counter counter on your men-at-arms, which you have the most, I have hope you understand what i mean. Therefore, it may be a good idea to have a variety of men-at-arms so that they are not too vulnerable to counterattacks and bad terrain for them. If your culture allows you to have special units, recruit them, they are usually much better than others (see Nordic culture and their husclars), except for the fighting elephants for the Indians, which at the beginning of the game will not be
the best choice, because they are very expensive to recruit and maintain, moreover, most of your neighbors will have an easy counterattack in the form of special archers (who are also a special unit for this cultural group). If certain special soldiers do not seem to be any better than regular soldiers, look at their modifiers to field and winter bonuses and how many units they counter, some special men-at-arms counter not one, but two types of men-at-arms (of course it's not about something like pikemen who counter 4 types of men-at-arms, but all of them are cavalry so they are nothing special). Basically, you should try to keep men-at-arms counterattacks in your favor
Overall, apart from stats like damage and stamina, some men-at-arms also have things like pursuit and screen. Pursuit: Each point deals 0.17 damage during the retreat phase. screen: Each point blocks 0.33 damage during the retreat phase. The retreat phase takes place after the battle is over, then the losing soldiers flee, but thanks to units such as cavalry, they can still be killed. That is why it is worth having, for example, light horsemans. I will write more about the battle phases later. In general, it is also worth taking care of siege weapons, they are cheap and they make sieges much faster, usually more than twice.


mercenaries I will say about mercenaries that sometimes during a heavy war it may be more profitable to recruit, for example, several hundred archers, if you want to know exactly what would be more profitable, then count it in similar way as in the section on marshal's tasks. However, the undoubted advantage of mercenaries is that they are available right away, and men-at-arms have to wait almost a year to be fully replenished, and you have to pay for their maintenance.


holy order - check if you can create a holy order for your faith, if not then see what you are missing, if you are close to do it and make an order. It comes in very handy during difficult wars with dissenters.



- if you are wondering if you have a chance to win a war with someone, look at how many troops he has, how many knights, men-at-arms do they have, whether they counter you or you, and how much gold they have, because if a lot they will take mercenaries, and if not they will take mercenaries, it will be a plus for them, because they will be able to fight for a long time etc. left from gold there may show you that you can have an alliance with someone, and if nothing is there, you can get an alliance through a marriage), just remember to make an alliance with someone who is strong and close to you and of course do not take an alliance with someone you would like to fight afterwards. There is also an easier option to get rid of someone's alliances, just kill him, then not only will he not have these alliances, but he will also be much weaker militarily and economically compared to the previous ruler. Just be careful that there is no disadvantageous division of their land during the succession, through which, for example, your bale casus would cover a smaller area.
- check if there are any holy places of your faith that she does not control, if there are any then see what bonuses they give (sometimes they give very nice bonuses not only to combat but to everything) if you would like them see if it will be hard to get this county from this place a holy place, if not try to get it. Remember that if this county with a holy place will be ruled by a vassal and not you, then for the followers to get bonuses, he must also be of your faith. You can also apply this advice the other way around, which means that if you are of some faith, but your potential enemy is of a different faith, then you are looking to see if there is any holy place that you could take that faith away so that it does not receive bonuses.
Remember that you can declare several wars at once, it is useful when you want to quickly conquer some lands controlled by several rulers who are militarily weaker than you.

waging a war
Few people know that an army can be deployed anywhere, in any of your unoccupied baronies. You click F3 and at the bottom you have something like rally points, click the plus and choose where you want to put the army, then click this flag and click "raise all here". This way, you can save on supplies and gold, and gain a lot of time, because the soldiers will not have to move around. Only then, when you have a few of these flags down there, when you want to put up an army, put them out only through this interface with the flag, because if you wanted to do it differently, the soldiers would appear scattered, a bit everywhere.
If you were to fight someone much weaker than yourself, you can even field only men-at-arms and knights to save money. Unless you have very weak ones, then it is better to leave the entire army, but for example remove half of the conscripts from it.



there are 4 battle phases
1st maneuvering phase - nothing is happening here
2. early phase of the battle - it lasts 10 days, during its duration you cannot withdraw your troops, if the army is defeated during it, it is completely destroyed, the so-called stackwipe.
Late phase 3 of the battle - you can withdraw your army during the battle.
Chase phase 4 - takes place after the battle is over, then the losing soldiers run away, but thanks to a unit such as cavalry, they can still be killed. Therefore, it is worth having, for example, such light Horsemans, sometimes even several hundred soldiers can die in this way.


there are two main factors that influence a battle: advantage and combat spread.
advantage
each side has a certain number of advantages, which is influenced by such factors as:
- military skill points of the commander , if you are in charge, it is always worth having a wife set up during the battle so that she gives you points (only) military points. Remember that when you are in charge, you also get a +5 advantage because you are the ruler and in charge.
- commanding qualities of the commander
- battlefield, (defender bonus)
- advantage of military lifestyle , in total it can give +10, + to military lifestyle gives bonuses to other things very useful during battle.
- buildings that give the defender's advantage
- roll a die , it is completely random depending on how many times your commander rolls, you get an advantage, the roll is re-rolled every day of the battle. A leader may roll from 0 to 10 unless he has the "reckless" commanding trait then from -4 to 16, and if he has a "cautious leader" it is from 4 to 8.
- -10 advantage if the army is gathering
- -10 advantage if the army has little supplies and -25 if the army has no supplies
- -10 if the country has gold in the red
- -30 advantage for 30 days after the army landing (when attacking directly from the sea, this penalty is also applied)
- attacking through rivers and straits , this also gives a lot of penalties, unless the commander has Forder or strategist trait then there is no penalty.
Therefore, always try to defend across rivers or straits and never attack across them.


combat width - tells how many soldiers on one side will take part in the battle.
It is calculated as half of the initial sum of all troops. Then what comes out is multiplied by the percentage, which depends on the area of ​​the battle. For example, when you are fighting in the mountains, the final combat range will be 50% of the normal range. So e.g. 3000 vs 1000 in the mountains, the combat range will be (3000 + 1000): 2 = 2000 2000 * 50% = 1000.
As you can see, you can pretty much reduce the numerical advantage of our opponent.

Always look at the area on which you will fight, when you are defending yourself against someone stronger than you, it is best to position yourself in some terrain favorable for you, e.g. in the mountains, there you have +12 advantage for the defender and 50% of the combat range. The advantage for the defender is also influenced by various buildings, e.g. outposts, hunting grounds, other buildings at a higher level, or at the palisade tribes.
Interestingly, if your enemy's army is besieging your castle and you attack his army, his army will be recognized as attacking and yours as defending, thanks to which you will get all bonuses associated with the advantage for the defender. During the war, you have to be vigilant if there is an opportunity to attack.


- If you see that your army has very little supplies or they even die because they do not have any, then put them in your or occupied barony and let them stand there until they have enough supplies and they themselves. Divide them into several neighboring baronies if they exceed the supply limit, because if you have little or no supplies at all, you get huge disadvantages. This will replenish your supplies and replenish your conscription and men-at-arms, if you have lost some of them earlier.
-If you have debts during the war then you can try to free some prisoners in order to be positive with the money
- if you have already fought a few battles, see if you can deploy any units, sometimes it shows that you can, because e.g. a knight died during a battle.
- If you are in the war and you have no debts, do not take the ransom for the prisoners yet because there is a chance that they served as knights in the enemy army, thanks to which their army is deprived of the best knights, and perhaps they do not even have others to replace them
- If you are in a difficult war with a country with a different faith than yours, check if you can hire a holy order to help.
- Sometimes it is so that you completely won the war and, in addition, you have a ruler in prison against whom you fought then before the end of the war, free him for money, because after the war he would be freed anyway, but you would not get money for it.
- When the opponent is a bit stronger than you, wait a bit even if he is to take over some counties, thanks to which he will lose a lot of gold, soldiers, and his army's supplies will drop significantly.
And you can arm yourself during this time, e.g. by recruiting new men-at-arms.
- When someone much stronger has declared war on you, you know that you will lose and you want to surrender even without a fight, don't do it. Let him take over these lands. This way, he will lose a lot of gold to maintain the army, and will receive weakened provinces, and you won't lose too much.

If you've played a country with a tribal government at least once, you'll agree that their main resource equal to or even more important than gold is prestige. Therefore, in this section, I will introduce you to different ways to gain prestige.


Normally, when you win a battle in your own war, your character will receive fame and devotion.
But when you win a battle in an ally's war (no matter if it is offensive or defensive), then you get prestige and piety. This way, you can gain up to several thousand prestige in one war.
This is one of the reasons why it is worth having allies.

You can see exactly what it looks like in the graphic below, it's not about numbers, but that you get prestige instead of fame in them.







If you are playing with a country that has raids unlocked, do as many as possible. From ck3 wiki "If a commander has raided at least 20 times, each [subsequent] raid has a chance to grant him the Raider trait equal to the number of raids."
so set you to command an army then you have a chance that you will get the "raider" trait, which will give you +2 to military, +3 to valor and +0.3 prestige per month [/u]


You need to know that when a character gets married, I get prestige or lose it, depending, among other things, on the level of splendor of the family from which your future wife comes and the titles you have. You also need to know about the divorce mechanics that in exchange for 100 piety allows you to get a divorce. Have you already guessed what our kiwka will be like? That's right, we get married and divorce as long as you can until you reset your piety. There is only a small catch. You can only do this with a character whose faith permits divorce. For example, for Christians and Muslims it will not work.
If you want to learn a little more about this method, then read my tutorial dedicated to this trick.

The most effective way to ensure that no faction will even rise against you is to set extreme stability in the game settings before the game. But since you are reading this guide, I assume that you are not interested in such easy solutions. Therefore, now I will share with you some tips that will help you fight the factions.

- If some powerful vassal has high points on something, you can give him advice, it will greatly increase his opinions towards you.
- If you do not need too much prestige, set your chancellor on domestic affairs, you can get up to a dozen + opinions from each vassal.
- If the vassal is your friend, lover, prisoner, ally, is terrified of you or you have a strong hook on him, he will not be able to join the faction against you.
- You can set crown power to the lowest to get +10 feedback.
- Become independent from vassals, it means, for example, that you have a lot of good knights who are not your vassals, then when a faction declares war on you, it will not turn out that you do not have any good knights.
- take care of the ruler's health, because too long rule is a big plus to opinion, and too short is a big minus
- Try to have a high level of fame, because it also gives you increased opinion, precisely increased secular opinion.
- you can increase cultural acceptance, it will also help you with your opinion
- if you have a lot of money, you can send a gift to the vassal, but be careful not to finance someone who will fight with you soon
- the level of the court above the expected level slightly increases the opinion
- try not to have features that are considered bad by your faith, e.g. an adulterer, especially a murderer (-15 to the general opinion).
- Just look at what factors influence what character has an opinion of you and see if you can change or improve something.
"If you think a vassal is too strong, you can make him a law of forced distribution as a succession law and then kill him."
- have a lot of good men-at-arms, because when vassals declare war on you, you won't have so many conscripts.

there is a trick, in short, when someone declares war on you, you quickly gain 30% by e.g. making a lot of siege weapons and quickly conquering a few provinces, and winning a battle (the vassal armies are scattered at the beginning, which makes it very easy In order to achieve this result, some 2 traditions can also help, stalwart defenders i and astute diplomates the former gives +10 peace acceptance to defensive war, and the latter gives +10 white peace acceptance. There is another perk from the military lifestyle that gives you +10 to accept peace - Peacemaker (bottom right tree). Thanks to this, when a faction or a neighboring ruler declares war on you, you will be able to end it through the white room. There are tutorials on steam (in English) about this method, you can then read one to learn a little more about this method.

When it comes to factions, the worst thing is when the new ruler takes the throne, then a lot of factions are formed, e.g. with some pretenders, and you are weaker because, for example, you lost some land or you have fewer knights, because on the new ruler you may have a lower level fame.

So how does succession work and what to do so that you don't want to play when your ruler dies? I will describe it for confederete partition as 99.9% of states have such a succession right.
If you have one heir it's all fine and he gets it all for you. A small problem arises when there are two or more of them. If you only have one title of a given level, it will be given to your main heir, if you have more than one title of a given level, it is shared between the main heir and the rest of the heirs. Therefore, you have to be very careful that if you don't have any empire, have two kingdoms, then you just lose one kingdom. The situation is the same with the lower-tier titles. Interestingly, you can choose which ones to lose. When you choose the main title, your main heir will always get it. To avoid losing this kingdom, you have 3 options.
1. To have one heir. You can simply choose a wife with low fertility to give birth to few children, and you may find that there will be only one son and, for example, two daughters who do not inherit. But if you had inheritance the right of sex for equality, they would inherit too, which is why it is hopeless, better to have a preference for men. If you had, for example, 2 or 3 sons, you can simply disinherit them, unfortunately it costs 150 renown and 300 prestige. However, you have many options to prevent them from inheriting, e.g. putting them in jail and killing them.
It is a bit risky, because when your only son dies, you can wake up with your hand in the potty, because you will not have an heir, so always forbid your heir from being a knight so that he does not die.
2.Destroy that title. It costs a lot of prestige, but it's better than fighting afterwards. Often the result of having such unnecessary titles that you have to destroy is that you create them mindlessly. Therefore, only create titles when necessary.
3 Create a title of a higher rank than these two titles. For example, if you have two principalities, create a kingdom. Sometimes there is a problem as several counties may be missing. For this reason, you need to choose your goals wisely for conquest, not fight whomever you fall into.

If you don't want to play in succession, play as Byzantium, they have primogeniture set since 867. It is such a succession law by which literally all your lands will go to the eldest son, the rest of the children will be left with nothing. They have it from the beginning of 867 and 1066, and normally primogeniture is in late medieval innovation, so you would unlock it sometime after 1200 at the earliest.

It's nice that the country will not completely fall apart, but what if it will then have 1 county, because the children will share them.
In general, you cannot bestow land on your heir, but only if there are other heirs as well, if he is the only one, you can bestow land on him. Therefore, when your heir has no hives, you should give him some lands, they don't have to be your developed lands, they may even be ones that you have just conquered. Then build a few buildings for your heir so that he can earn some money and build something for himself.

In order for your successor to be the best possible, become his teacher, set him or her on what education should focus on (as in the picture below), try to choose those areas in which the child gets bonuses (green arrow) based on childhood trait, i.e. the trait that Every child gets under the age of 3, on this basis the child will develop later in the areas concerned. Later, when you have dialogue options regarding the character traits that your student will receive, always choose the trait that you deem best for him, even at the cost of a critical stress level.
Hardcore advice based on the above information - you can take care of vassal successors (if they are children) and choose the education focus for them, then they will be less dangerous than if they were learned, e.g. for military, if you had to fight him later, thanks to this method it would be for you it is much easier to fight afterwards.

If you play as asatru faith, you can choose your personal deity in the decision panel, choose the one that will give you military bonuses, i.e. ullra.


the best dogmas in turn: unrelenting faith> patron gods> warmonger> sky burials> + all dogmas related to a specific area of ​​which you have a lot.


Doctrines: set everything as you want, but be sure to set the clergy's functions to the draft as shown in the picture



Just remember that if you do create some cool faith then make sure your vassals, family and knights accept it.

Always try to keep your faith controlling as many of its holy places as possible, they give you nice bonuses.

Culture

the best ethos are in turn: militant> stoic> bureaucratic (due to the fact that they provide the possibility of setting up a military court and give good results). I talked a bit more about ethos in the section "councilors and knights and the court".
In the graphic below you can see the effects of each ethos and what types of manor they can have. Generally, the best type of manor is a military manor, but if you can't set one up, then an administrative manor is also a good choice.


If your culture has a tradition that gives disadvantages to military, in its place you should give one of the ones in the front are very good, some even brilliant (e.g. only the strong) and those at the very end are as if you had nothing else to the dish, give them. I have given so many of these traditions so that you can choose the one that will be cheap for you, because sometimes it is the case that a tradition costs 2,000 prestige, and another 7,000, you know what's going on.


the best and universal traditions for military purposes

state traditions: pastorialists> state ransoming (state ransoming only good if you're rich)




military traditions: only the strong> warriors by merit> warrior priests> + any traditions related to the terrain you have a lot of




tradycje społeczne: martial admiration > practiced pirates (dobre tylko jeśli nie masz rządu plemiennego) > warrior culture > dexterous fishermen




tradycje rytualne: by the sword > sorcerous metallurgy




In general, health bonuses in dogmas of faith and traditions are useful because your ruler will live much longer (and at the end of his life he will be the best because he has a lot unlocked in the lifestyle), moreover, your knights, vassals, family
they will live longer + when the knight is injured during the battle, there will be a greater chance that he will not die because of them, but he will heal himself.
Remember that to reform a culture you must be the head of that culture. To be a head of culture, you must be at least 16 years old and control the most land with a culture among all members of that culture.
You can enter / change one tradition at a time and it takes about 30 years.
Remember that if you have a very weak culture, and there is some good culture next to you, sometimes it may be easier to just give your successor to someone from this culture to educate him and change his culture and conquer areas with this culture.

This is the end of this tutorial, it took me over a week to create it. I hope you learned something useful from it. If you want to appreciate my work, you can leave a like, rate it, add it to your favorites and even award it. If you have any questions, doubts or anything else, feel free to leave a comment. If you found a bug or something you would like to add, or you are curious about something, please leave a comment as well. Actually, I wanted to make a tutorial focused solely on the military, but it turned out that I made the tutorial as if it were about the whole game. Maybe that's even better.

When there is some dlc to ck3 I will update this tutorial if necessary.