As much as I get why people didn't like it, and that this video was not about side content, I will say Monks and Mystics had some phenomenal music tracks.
Monks & Mystics and Horse Lords are easily the two most Jank DLC's in CK2. There was a ton of degenerate combinations between the two in the game that made it possible for a slub like me to conquer the entire map by year 900.
Im impressed that there is people who dislike the DLC! In my experience, Hermetic order is great for erudite and technological superior empires, while the pagan ones give additional immersion on what was the warrior cultures of the tribal or nomadic people of the time. Also, feels like it got a good synergy with Jade Dragon :)
I just love the atmosphere, music, and sound effects of the game. The Kingdom of heaven inspired score starting to play as all the troops of your nation rise up to fight a holy war is magical.
Way of Life was the DLC that changed CK2 from a "great" to "one of my favorite games of all time". Seriously, for me, it might be the best DLC Paradox ever put out. Way of Life changed how I approached the game forever. After this DLC, I started to roleplay these characters so much more. It was CK2, just better. Gold Standard how a DLC should be: Enhancing the experience.
I do completely agree. Rn this is the game I spent the most time in (and I’m a shooter type guy, of my 5 most played games 4 are shooters) This dlc made the game so much more interesting to play, conquering half of Europe wasn’t so boring anymore. In fact, I came back to this game after a year and a half of not playing and I realized what a fucking masterpiece this game is
Maybe this is controversial, but I love the Reaper’s Due specifically because it made characters way more likely to die. When I send my ruler out to lead a battle and they get wounded, and wound gets infected, and I’m shitting myself because my ruler could just drop dead, that endears me to the character more. And if that manage to survive their infection, then I feel genuine relief, because the danger to them was real. I know some people hate the Reaper’s Due because it makes the game more random and more unstable, but to me CK is more interesting when things are unstable. The more easy it is for character’s to die, the more likely it is for interesting inheritance situations to occur. Also, I’ll reiterate that death being a genuine threat make your successes feel more earned. Your first five kids dying, resulting in your crown going to your legitimized, bastard daughter whose 3 years old, is something that rarely happens in CK3 because death is supposed to be more “fair” to the player. However when that did happen in CK2 and that daughter went on to rule to the ripe old age 98 and get sainted after death, that story feels all the sweeter because the through you into a bad situation and you overcame it anyway.
I actually love 769, prolonged timeline, but it'll give you that chaos and unpredictability of that time, I actually love this one, and always play from 769
Reaper's Due gave my one of the most memorable gaming experiences, and it made me play the game and future paradox games differently. Having the Black Death roll through and kill everyone in my family somehow leaving my 72 year old ruler alive with no surviving male heirs and few females left in the family. I replayed that save so many times to try and save it. It felt amazing to finally succeed.
When I bought CK2 back in 2012 (I was in high school!) CK1 had been, alongside Vic1 and EU3, the games of my childhood. Who cared about frickin Pokemons and Zeldas and Calls of Duties when you could conquer Egypt as the Byzantine empire instead? When I bought the game - The last game I purchased in a physical form, though funnily enough it still required a Steam installation - I was super-excited. It didn't live up to the hype, though. Sure, it was more advanced, but it wasn't as big as a step up as I naively expected to be. I thought I was done with the franchise, and then Old Gods came out, and from then onward CK2 steadily became my staple videogame. I think that Old Gods deserves a rank on its own, because thanks to it the whole game started becoming a factory of dreams. It introduced the concept of purpouse and motivation within the game: it was so thrilling leading your viking dude to the conquest of unlikely places or restoring Zoroastrian Persia with the unimpressive Karens (cheating of course, because I was still a teen). It gave a lot of purpose that wasn't just grinding for resources. In a way, I'm still waiting for CK3 to have its own Old Gods, its own revolutionary expansion. Up till now, CK3 it's a fairly ok game, and the developers are betting on storytelling - a good idea - but they are neglecting to enhance that storytelling by giving the player the thrill of having a purpouse. CK2, thanks to Old Gods, and the other fantastic DLCs and mods, developed into a game where you could conquer India as a Viking, bring an the hellenic religion back to life, migrate with your Central Asian tribe to Iberia, place an obscure house on the Iron Throne... You can still do some of those things in CK3, but somehow, it doesn't hold the same magic.
Huge respect just from hearing “I’m not a Romeaboo.” So many history enjoyers make that and WW2 their entire personality that it gets boring. Love it when people diversify their knowledge and what they enjoy.
Grating thing for me is there's a lot of cool things about medieval Byzantine history, lots of things that could be explored, but a lot of the Romaboo content in the game or stuff that Romaboos want to do in CK2/CK3 is just the "muh lorica segmata" and "muh Jupiter" and "muh togas" theme park version of Rome they want to larp
@@TheImperialSenate This. There are some fuckin interesting histories of Rome and the classical world, and the later Byzantine deal, but the parts the (usually quite racist to boot) romaboo crowd want is just ‘cool armour and legions, im totally just like him, gigachadius maximus’
Roman history is so awesome because so many little details have been preserved. I'd probably be interested in other empires of antiquity if more was known about them.
This video made me realize how much money I spent on CK2 (and probably now CK3 ...) DLCs as I started with old gods and I mostly agree with your list. Especially with the societies
I also spent way too much money on ck2. With ck3 i pre-ordered and so I have gotten all the dlc for free. It was the last game I pre-ordered and I only played it for a few hour then didn't touch it for 2 years. A few months ago I downloaded it again and wondered why I had all the dlc that was when I learned I had gotten it with my pre-order.
Charlemagne: no mention of viceroyalties? Reapers Due: no mention of prosperity? Monk&Mystic: mass prisoners actions, offmap councillors Jobs, giving orders to allies in war? I think people didnt like dlc such as Conclave because It didn"t delivered further powercreep and forced people to either pay tax or have less overpowered council. Changes to obligations simply reduced player realm strenght (before that you could have plenty of levies and golf at the same time). Monks and mystics were nerfed into oblivion yet people are still traumatized by it. The threat of devil worshippers is simply overblown - what they gonna do with their troglodyte tier stats? Get themselves killed by inqusition or spies, giving player arrest reason that's why. The only way they poseł more danger than assassins is if you are just running at speed 5 and don't want to do anything to protect yourself. When was the last time we seen people complaining about assassins? I've been playing with both Supernatural and absurd events and satanists are not na issue. The same way AI seduction and Intrigue focuses aren't. People are to accustomed to complaining instead of adapting. That said I wish dlc would do more with societies and interactions towards other dlc. Rajas of India: my poor pet dlc. It could be so much better but due to lack of updates it was powercrept even more. Not only IT related after spoiled rotten vikings, with vanilla like events (20% chance for +1 martial every 20 years...) but also region locked (oh you wanted to hunt tigers in Siberia that we just introduced? Lol nope). The whole sub continent has the same bad retinue, nothing interesting was done with Elephants. Gurus were nerfed due to Conclave education overhaul, and their events reduntant thanks to monastics. Also why Cult of Kali doesn't have unique powers compared to Satanists, when it was unique before M&M? And why no tribal Rulers in India - imo best way to play Hindus for elephants to matters? Don't get me started on Reincarnation being possible non inheretable bloodlines but were... much less interesting...
@@FifinatorKlon Yep and it's not going to change as long as gamers refuse to vote with their wallet. People spend the money knowing it's going to be bad and complain about it anyway. Developers don't care as long as they make money.
Ck3 is missing the authentic medieval feel that CK2 had. The church is toothless, way too many silly incest memes and similar, modern sensibilities are far more tolerated than they would be, and the music/sound effects doesn't feel quite as immersive (although the ambient sound design in 3 is still really good). Still a very good game but I really hope future updates or a mod turn it into what I (and plenty others) want it to be
So many of them just broke the balancing badly - Monks & Mystics with artifacts, Way of Life (to a lesser extent), Jade Dragon with China mana, Rajas of India with the performance hit, etc. Conclave and The Reaper's Due were good for actually making the game harder, even if not perfectly implemented (especially Conclave - there weren't enough ways to get your council members to change their attitude, etc.).
>Unironically, Sword of Islam, which introduced someone besides christians first time in the CK series and gave totaly different gameplay comparing with Western Europe, is in C tier >Unironically, shitty Aztec horde is in B tier That's all you need to know about the "quality" of this tier list
It's a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of people love the aztecs. At the same time, while the Islam DLC was super innovative for adding other religions for once, kinda doesn't compare to the stuff later added which got more and better attention.
Admittedly the main thing I get out of Monks and Mystics is the Secret Religion and Secret Religious Cult society, it added a whole new strategy to the game and a whole new play style for being Jewish or Zoroastrian (or other small/easily vanquished religions) that I don't think should be overlooked. However you have good points about the rest of the societies.
I loved it as well, but with how restless the community is right now with any DLC Content- Imagine the outrage if they do something like Sunset Invasion 😅
Can't agree with the hate, but I can agree with the criticisms of monks and mystics. I really liked the idea, and societies are something I sorely miss, just as Conclave and some Ways of Life stuff. Sons of Abraham too. But yeah, the implementation wasn't good, and the lack of regional boundary was wack. Just as the repetition was tiring. I'm basically wanting more input from the npcs, I want more groups in ck3, besides paralell powers and groups from the feudal structure. But yeah, you be hating, but I don't mind. It matters most on what we agree.
I agree with this objective list but you might of wanted to add the portrait DLCs to the list. I mean the Abbasid and HRE clothes are DLC for CK3 so the minor DLC packs CK2 style are not completely gone.
I highly enjoyed the older model for dlc, giving a little for a lot of regions, compared to a lot for just a region. As a customer it’s a time investment at this point of hoping they’ll add flavor to the place you want. Before you’d at least get multiple new mechanics per dlc even if they where sub par. I can definitely say I interact with monks and mystics more than I do with Fates of Iberia, and I feel that Monks has more engagement and dynamism than Throne Rooms currently.
The current model is alternating between global stuff and regional, so fans of both approaches can be happy. Northern Lords was localized to Scandinavia, then Royal Court was for everyone (even if it wasn't all that good), then Fate of Iberia is, obviously, for Iberia, and next Tours and Tournaments is again for the whole map. Friends and Foes is somewhat tangential, but also was not dependent on a region.
@@HanakoSeishin but so far the “for everyone” content hasn’t added as much interaction and flavor wise as most ck2 ones, instead of new ways to interact with the world and more thing to do it seems to be the addition of a concentrated system rather than a larger overarching mechanic. There’s multiple society’s with many events but there’s only one throne room with a small amount of events. Any one can join a society but only kings can do court rooms. Local flavor old gods Assad new governments and raiding but Iberia mostly just added the struggle to the region.
I feel like this conversation requires talking about CK1. So many players have really negative opinions of CK2 because they don't have any idea where things started. I find the progression through the years to be a very interesting growth, and it's clear the very soul of the game has changed as well. In my opinion becoming something much deeper to others it's changed for the worse
The opposition to Sunset Invasion was not that it was a light DLC, but that it was ahistorical and diverted from playable pagans, which everyone at the time wanted. On the Paradox forum lots of people angry that PDS was allocating resources away from "regularly scheduled" content towards the fantasy Aztec invasion, which couldn't have happened because the Aztecs didn't even exist in any of the CK2 start dates. Could this be a language issue? Was the German-speaking CK2 community saying it was not hefty enough?
I play most 769 and would love to see it come back in CK3. The only thing I don't like is what they not put in. Why I can't play the last Merowinger. Maybe a mission as his liege to put him on the throne and then play him.
Nothing like having a great ruler die of old age and find out that my heir and half my subject are worshipping devil. Always a regret when I forgot to turn it off.
Relatively new to the channel here- what exactly is wrong with the 769 start from Charlemagne? Kind of agreed on Monks and Mystics, though I'd still overall rate it highly purely because modders were able to use its underlying structure for more interesting things. I do however have a set of personal rules (alongside some xml tweaks) which nerf them severely. A little salt in cooking works wonders, but too much will ruin it, and that to me was the issue MaM had.
As someone whose played the 769 start I think that particular time period is just… boring: 1) Playing in France feels scripted, you’ll ALWAYS want to form the Carolingian realm 2) Playing near France can be insufferable because when the AI forms the Carolingian realm they’ll always dominate you 3) MENA is boring because Abbasids and Al-Andalus are so stacked it’s difficult to get any enjoyment out of it unless you’re more professional 4) Eastern and Northern Europe are boring because nothing interesting happens (Vikings start raiding 100 years after the start date) 5) In general, the 700 years of gameplay you get when you start in 769 very quickly get boring Unless you’re doing very specific runs like forming the Carolingian realm, restoring the Sassanids or playing as the Zunbils the world in 769 isn’t very interesting or event rich. This is my perspective at least
A couple points: Seljuk formation area is mostly covered by the SoI map expansion, not RoI I think the framework for Way of Life was too gamey (by which I mean artificial). Also its importance is easy to overstate if you forget that a lot of the events in that system already existed but simply were fed procedurally; what WoL added besides rounding out the set of events was just a way for the player to signal intent. Societies were good in that they added a parallel growth and progression to the game. The equivalent in CK3 is Lifestyles, even though lifestyles were also in CK2. Although I agree with your criticism of the M&M societies I think that the fundamental system was good, as we saw in Holy Fury, so I think a similar system in CK3 would be fine - and I certainly want something that does societies. The thing I'd actually want would be dynamic changes to the state of the society, so that over a playthrough what your local societies means can evolve. One of the biggest things CK3 is missing at this point is things that matter over more than a couple generations and also aren't just low-impact quantitative increase like most techs and buildings. One important thing to remember about Holy Fury is that in addition to main focus, it was a grab bag of things Paradox had promised but not implemented over the whole dev period of CK2, as well as features from CK1 that had never made it back in.
Honestly Conclave is D tier when interacting with your vassals is more of a choice rather than a need, you can easily disregard them or pay them lip service indefinitely. And if they do try something against you just throw them in prison or send the spymaster after them, and by the time in the game you can no longer stop them from revolting you likely have enough money to just spam mercenaries to deal with them. The Council is also not better when you can pay it's members to abolish it's powers within one characthers lifetime, especily if you fill it with lapdogs. The only time you are not in control of all of this is when you play as a young child
Very interesting discussion! I've been (very slowly) reviewing the expansions, but don't have the depth of background on it you have. Anyway, I've come to regard them as roughly sorting into three general types, and hope to rank them on that basis when I finally get to a retrospective post. There's the _scope_ expansions (Islam, Old Gods, etc), _event-driven_ expansions (Legacy of Rome, Sons of Abraham...) and the _personal_ expansions (Conclave, Way of Life...). And what someone should look at getting should start with what they're interested in getting out of it.
I miss all the supernatural stuff from CK2 in CK3 :( I was gonna complain about Monks and Mystics and then it turns out Warrior Lodges were in Holy Fury?.. Damn I forgor. But yes, Warrior Lodges are awesome! Also, about devil worship - it can be a bit cringe, but then sometimes... I remember I had a run where I reformed norse into the female inheritance law (forgot the name), and then used devil impregnation repeatedly to create a stable line of demonic succession. This also reminds me - yes, the council of cardinals was dumb, but I will never forget a run where I pressed a claim on the Byzantine throne for one of my archbishops and Byzantium became a theocracy. Due to the sheer power he had he immediately became a cardinal, and then, obviously, elected pope. I accidentally thus created the most stable succession system for both the Papacy and the Byzantine Empire, by pure accident.
In regards to Reaper's Due, I recently had a wonderful emergent experience with it. As the Latin Empire, I managed to put my child niece on the Nicean throne and then murder her to inherit the Niceans. But during this transfer of power, nearly every Nicean (Greek) vassal revolted in 2 separate pretender revolts. Seeking to purge the vassals, I fought a war with them, intent on enforcing demands and revoking all their lordships. And then the Black Death hit Anatolia. And suddenly all the armies (especially mine) fighting in this messy, drawn out war died to attrition and were unable to siege or accomplish anything. In the end, I agreed to white peace with the exhausted Niceans, and the Latin Empire was left with a confused compromise of Byzantine institutions in Anatolia, all owing to the black death.
Lads, I always play with Sunset invasion. In fact, I white peaced them once when they tried to invade my country lol, it was probably the second biggest challenge, after fighting the HRE to unite my North-Africa holdings to my Great Britain holdings doing a funny Capet rise in 736 ( 1 count thing) It was funny to see my dynasty being elected as emperors
I've had sooo many playthroughs as a learning focused mystic/society member basically becoming a god and doing whatever I want, both good and evil, so I have to disagree with you. That more personal/roleplay aspect has been really fun for me. Sure it's not essential and I've played without it and had a lot of fun so I might've put it in B tier. To me it almost becomes a different game without it.
I was quiet confused about what you where talking about societies here. Because the lodge was so very memorable to me and awesome and whatnot. Societies where great only for this one alone. Turns out it was a different DLC alltogether? I loved the sunset as well.
I quite liked Sunset Invasion. I didn't turn it on all the time but sometimes it's neat to have Aztecs mix things up. I feel like it was cheaper than most DLC when it was released too but I might be misremembering that.
I do agree mostly, the only thing i would change is sword of islam becouse besides playing in the places I’m from (so I’m half polish half French [wallonian] born raised in Poland) the Islamic realms (and most specifically Andalusia and North Africa) were my favorite places to play in. I also thought that expanding to much as Poland or France was kind of ludicrous and way too not realistic so I didn’t enjoy it as much, but I could start as a random Arab count in Andalusia and my son would become the Caliph who rules half of the know world and not only was it fun, it made fucking sense, but Poland extending past Medival Russia and France expanding anywhere besides England was just wierd and thus not very fun. Come to think about it Western Europe was boring ass hell (besides the Iberians and Scandinavians but only when they were Norse). In any case, I still prefer playing in my homeland so this DLC isn’t as good as it would be if I were say American and my only relation to the places in the game would be some ancestors 200 years back than I would just play Islam and not give a single fuck about heritage and identity
honestly i dont like either conclave nor reaper's due. the former makes your council trash at all times, people vote against you for no reason or benefit themselves, just to screw you over. education became a lot more complicated for worse results reaper's due adds to the problem of CK2, which is just how RNG the game can be. it makes the experience extremely random, with the sudden death of your rulers and heirs becoming waaay worse. extremely stupid how people are dropping like flies in the prime of their health to mid 30s new council takes away player control of who they put on the council, what laws you can institute. new education take away control when it comes to raising good heirs. reaper's due and random ass cancer development in early life, smallpox, foodpoisoning takes control away by indiscriminately killing people off
Conclave and reapers due make the game really hard, thats why I only play with reapers and still get frustrated, I remember I had 3 of my male children dying and getting stuck with a female while getting ravaged continiously by plagues(byzantine region is horrible for that)
The Byzantine Empire micro with all of CK2 mods (excluding Conclave and Sunset Invasion) is atrocious. The unchangable succession system. The Reaper's Due killing everyone at 40. Everyone wants to overthrow each other. Literal game torture. I have a love and hate relationship with Way of Life.
While I totally understand where you come from with Monks and Mystics and the College of Cardinals, I also find the "set it and forget it" aspect of the CK3 religion system very dull. I hope they can come up with a new system that can make the religions more dynamic and not just give me a procedurally generated head of faith every time the old one dies.
Monks and Mystics and Holy Fury both broke the game so badly. I don't know if I can stomach Holy Fury being S tier just because of how much easier it made the game. A tier for sure, but it sucks knowing every crusade ever is going to succeed without player intervention.
Ffs,just look at this. Every dlc in this list (including sunset invasion) brought something unique to the game or changed how it is played drastically. Then look at ck3 dlc..... just look at them.... If you think you prefer ck3, just go into ck2, choose 867, play a viking. Conquer until you run out of money, then go raid england, get loot and prisoners and come back to hold grand blot. Then play venice, siwm in gold. Or go Byzantium with it's super unique intrigue game, only to die to dysentery. GO BACK TO CK2 PEOPLE
I liked your Sunset Invasion take before you dared put it in B. Wtf are you smoking? Even with it not being as bad due to us knowing how many DLCs there would end up being it is still an overpriced DLC that does basically nothing.
I do miss the societies in CK3, there is just a whole lot less for your character to do, and even less to spend money on. If you hold constantinople you make so much money even with all court amenities you'l have to much to spend. But maybe with more local and more dynamic societies, it would be a bit more immersive.
semi related but it is still astounding to me that EU4 Leviathan became statistically one of the worst rated product on steam when it came out. seems forever ago now!
If Rajas of India had released nowadays when review bombing is a thing, it would've been treated just like Leviathan given how horribly buggy it was at launch. It was definitely the Leviathan before Leviathan.
You hate the good start date (769)? It's the one where you can totally reshape the world in an interesting way. Meanwhile you love Conclave ... the objectively floater in the toilet bowl of CK2 DLC's. Theres a reason so many people hate Conclave ... it's crap.
Honestly suprised u didn’t start by saying that the greatest game ever made is ck2 and we should have stopped making video games all together after it’s release
I am a certified Monks & Mystics hater!
As much as I get why people didn't like it, and that this video was not about side content, I will say Monks and Mystics had some phenomenal music tracks.
L + Not Lucifers own + Not gigachad lodge pilled + 0 Learning non-hermetic member + 0 piety non-Benedictine + Excommunicated
What haa that one why tho
Monks & Mystics and Horse Lords are easily the two most Jank DLC's in CK2. There was a ton of degenerate combinations between the two in the game that made it possible for a slub like me to conquer the entire map by year 900.
Im impressed that there is people who dislike the DLC! In my experience, Hermetic order is great for erudite and technological superior empires, while the pagan ones give additional immersion on what was the warrior cultures of the tribal or nomadic people of the time. Also, feels like it got a good synergy with Jade Dragon :)
Damn, CK2... All the memories.... All the people I ate, all my children I ate to prolong my life...
Hold up.....
I just love the atmosphere, music, and sound effects of the game. The Kingdom of heaven inspired score starting to play as all the troops of your nation rise up to fight a holy war is magical.
Way of Life was the DLC that changed CK2 from a "great" to "one of my favorite games of all time". Seriously, for me, it might be the best DLC Paradox ever put out. Way of Life changed how I approached the game forever. After this DLC, I started to roleplay these characters so much more. It was CK2, just better. Gold Standard how a DLC should be: Enhancing the experience.
I do completely agree. Rn this is the game I spent the most time in (and I’m a shooter type guy, of my 5 most played games 4 are shooters) This dlc made the game so much more interesting to play, conquering half of Europe wasn’t so boring anymore. In fact, I came back to this game after a year and a half of not playing and I realized what a fucking masterpiece this game is
Yea, I actually totally agree with how you set this up, I truly miss the idea of coronations and legendary bloodlines from Holy Fury
Maybe this is controversial, but I love the Reaper’s Due specifically because it made characters way more likely to die. When I send my ruler out to lead a battle and they get wounded, and wound gets infected, and I’m shitting myself because my ruler could just drop dead, that endears me to the character more. And if that manage to survive their infection, then I feel genuine relief, because the danger to them was real.
I know some people hate the Reaper’s Due because it makes the game more random and more unstable, but to me CK is more interesting when things are unstable. The more easy it is for character’s to die, the more likely it is for interesting inheritance situations to occur. Also, I’ll reiterate that death being a genuine threat make your successes feel more earned.
Your first five kids dying, resulting in your crown going to your legitimized, bastard daughter whose 3 years old, is something that rarely happens in CK3 because death is supposed to be more “fair” to the player. However when that did happen in CK2 and that daughter went on to rule to the ripe old age 98 and get sainted after death, that story feels all the sweeter because the through you into a bad situation and you overcame it anyway.
I actually love 769, prolonged timeline, but it'll give you that chaos and unpredictability of that time, I actually love this one, and always play from 769
Reaper's Due gave my one of the most memorable gaming experiences, and it made me play the game and future paradox games differently. Having the Black Death roll through and kill everyone in my family somehow leaving my 72 year old ruler alive with no surviving male heirs and few females left in the family. I replayed that save so many times to try and save it. It felt amazing to finally succeed.
When I bought CK2 back in 2012 (I was in high school!) CK1 had been, alongside Vic1 and EU3, the games of my childhood. Who cared about frickin Pokemons and Zeldas and Calls of Duties when you could conquer Egypt as the Byzantine empire instead? When I bought the game - The last game I purchased in a physical form, though funnily enough it still required a Steam installation - I was super-excited. It didn't live up to the hype, though. Sure, it was more advanced, but it wasn't as big as a step up as I naively expected to be. I thought I was done with the franchise, and then Old Gods came out, and from then onward CK2 steadily became my staple videogame.
I think that Old Gods deserves a rank on its own, because thanks to it the whole game started becoming a factory of dreams. It introduced the concept of purpouse and motivation within the game: it was so thrilling leading your viking dude to the conquest of unlikely places or restoring Zoroastrian Persia with the unimpressive Karens (cheating of course, because I was still a teen). It gave a lot of purpose that wasn't just grinding for resources.
In a way, I'm still waiting for CK3 to have its own Old Gods, its own revolutionary expansion. Up till now, CK3 it's a fairly ok game, and the developers are betting on storytelling - a good idea - but they are neglecting to enhance that storytelling by giving the player the thrill of having a purpouse. CK2, thanks to Old Gods, and the other fantastic DLCs and mods, developed into a game where you could conquer India as a Viking, bring an the hellenic religion back to life, migrate with your Central Asian tribe to Iberia, place an obscure house on the Iron Throne... You can still do some of those things in CK3, but somehow, it doesn't hold the same magic.
Huge respect just from hearing “I’m not a Romeaboo.” So many history enjoyers make that and WW2 their entire personality that it gets boring. Love it when people diversify their knowledge and what they enjoy.
Grating thing for me is there's a lot of cool things about medieval Byzantine history, lots of things that could be explored, but a lot of the Romaboo content in the game or stuff that Romaboos want to do in CK2/CK3 is just the "muh lorica segmata" and "muh Jupiter" and "muh togas" theme park version of Rome they want to larp
@@TheImperialSenate Man, your comment speaks directly to my soul 😅
Well Roman history is the best history
@@TheImperialSenate This. There are some fuckin interesting histories of Rome and the classical world, and the later Byzantine deal, but the parts the (usually quite racist to boot) romaboo crowd want is just ‘cool armour and legions, im totally just like him, gigachadius maximus’
Roman history is so awesome because so many little details have been preserved. I'd probably be interested in other empires of antiquity if more was known about them.
This video made me realize how much money I spent on CK2 (and probably now CK3 ...) DLCs as I started with old gods and I mostly agree with your list. Especially with the societies
I also spent way too much money on ck2. With ck3 i pre-ordered and so I have gotten all the dlc for free. It was the last game I pre-ordered and I only played it for a few hour then didn't touch it for 2 years. A few months ago I downloaded it again and wondered why I had all the dlc that was when I learned I had gotten it with my pre-order.
Charlemagne: no mention of viceroyalties?
Reapers Due: no mention of prosperity?
Monk&Mystic: mass prisoners actions, offmap councillors Jobs, giving orders to allies in war?
I think people didnt like dlc such as Conclave because It didn"t delivered further powercreep and forced people to either pay tax or have less overpowered council. Changes to obligations simply reduced player realm strenght (before that you could have plenty of levies and golf at the same time). Monks and mystics were nerfed into oblivion yet people are still traumatized by it. The threat of devil worshippers is simply overblown - what they gonna do with their troglodyte tier stats? Get themselves killed by inqusition or spies, giving player arrest reason that's why. The only way they poseł more danger than assassins is if you are just running at speed 5 and don't want to do anything to protect yourself. When was the last time we seen people complaining about assassins? I've been playing with both Supernatural and absurd events and satanists are not na issue. The same way AI seduction and Intrigue focuses aren't. People are to accustomed to complaining instead of adapting. That said I wish dlc would do more with societies and interactions towards other dlc.
Rajas of India: my poor pet dlc. It could be so much better but due to lack of updates it was powercrept even more. Not only IT related after spoiled rotten vikings, with vanilla like events (20% chance for +1 martial every 20 years...) but also region locked (oh you wanted to hunt tigers in Siberia that we just introduced? Lol nope). The whole sub continent has the same bad retinue, nothing interesting was done with Elephants. Gurus were nerfed due to Conclave education overhaul, and their events reduntant thanks to monastics. Also why Cult of Kali doesn't have unique powers compared to Satanists, when it was unique before M&M? And why no tribal Rulers in India - imo best way to play Hindus for elephants to matters? Don't get me started on Reincarnation being possible non inheretable bloodlines but were... much less interesting...
Fully agree on Monks and Mystics.
21:09 Clip of OPB saying "Holy Furry".
This is a weird thing to bring up but CK2 execution sfx hit different lol
Diffrent from what?
@@duckterdoland3881 Ck3 doens't even have sfx for execution :(
@@someonesilence3731 that sucks
@@FifinatorKlon Yep and it's not going to change as long as gamers refuse to vote with their wallet. People spend the money knowing it's going to be bad and complain about it anyway. Developers don't care as long as they make money.
I never understood the hate for Conclave! It was one of the best imo as well, I guess a lot of people just didnt like shattered retreat.
Ck3 is missing the authentic medieval feel that CK2 had. The church is toothless, way too many silly incest memes and similar, modern sensibilities are far more tolerated than they would be, and the music/sound effects doesn't feel quite as immersive (although the ambient sound design in 3 is still really good). Still a very good game but I really hope future updates or a mod turn it into what I (and plenty others) want it to be
So many of them just broke the balancing badly - Monks & Mystics with artifacts, Way of Life (to a lesser extent), Jade Dragon with China mana, Rajas of India with the performance hit, etc.
Conclave and The Reaper's Due were good for actually making the game harder, even if not perfectly implemented (especially Conclave - there weren't enough ways to get your council members to change their attitude, etc.).
>Unironically, Sword of Islam, which introduced someone besides christians first time in the CK series and gave totaly different gameplay comparing with Western Europe, is in C tier
>Unironically, shitty Aztec horde is in B tier
That's all you need to know about the "quality" of this tier list
It's a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of people love the aztecs. At the same time, while the Islam DLC was super innovative for adding other religions for once, kinda doesn't compare to the stuff later added which got more and better attention.
Admittedly the main thing I get out of Monks and Mystics is the Secret Religion and Secret Religious Cult society, it added a whole new strategy to the game and a whole new play style for being Jewish or Zoroastrian (or other small/easily vanquished religions) that I don't think should be overlooked. However you have good points about the rest of the societies.
I'm a weirdo, I loved the idea of Sunset Invasion and I am hoping for something like it in CK3.
I loved it as well, but with how restless the community is right now with any DLC Content- Imagine the outrage if they do something like Sunset Invasion 😅
I believe there is a mod for it, I think you should find it if you search for sunset invasion CK3. But I don't know if it's released updated etc
@@piotrwegrzyniak5798 It is outdated right now, but the creator said they are rewriting and updating it in the future.
Can't agree with the hate, but I can agree with the criticisms of monks and mystics. I really liked the idea, and societies are something I sorely miss, just as Conclave and some Ways of Life stuff. Sons of Abraham too. But yeah, the implementation wasn't good, and the lack of regional boundary was wack. Just as the repetition was tiring.
I'm basically wanting more input from the npcs, I want more groups in ck3, besides paralell powers and groups from the feudal structure.
But yeah, you be hating, but I don't mind. It matters most on what we agree.
I agree with this objective list but you might of wanted to add the portrait DLCs to the list. I mean the Abbasid and HRE clothes are DLC for CK3 so the minor DLC packs CK2 style are not completely gone.
I highly enjoyed the older model for dlc, giving a little for a lot of regions, compared to a lot for just a region. As a customer it’s a time investment at this point of hoping they’ll add flavor to the place you want. Before you’d at least get multiple new mechanics per dlc even if they where sub par. I can definitely say I interact with monks and mystics more than I do with Fates of Iberia, and I feel that Monks has more engagement and dynamism than Throne Rooms currently.
The current model is alternating between global stuff and regional, so fans of both approaches can be happy. Northern Lords was localized to Scandinavia, then Royal Court was for everyone (even if it wasn't all that good), then Fate of Iberia is, obviously, for Iberia, and next Tours and Tournaments is again for the whole map. Friends and Foes is somewhat tangential, but also was not dependent on a region.
@@HanakoSeishin but so far the “for everyone” content hasn’t added as much interaction and flavor wise as most ck2 ones, instead of new ways to interact with the world and more thing to do it seems to be the addition of a concentrated system rather than a larger overarching mechanic. There’s multiple society’s with many events but there’s only one throne room with a small amount of events. Any one can join a society but only kings can do court rooms. Local flavor old gods Assad new governments and raiding but Iberia mostly just added the struggle to the region.
I feel like this conversation requires talking about CK1. So many players have really negative opinions of CK2 because they don't have any idea where things started. I find the progression through the years to be a very interesting growth, and it's clear the very soul of the game has changed as well. In my opinion becoming something much deeper to others it's changed for the worse
Sunset Invasion is actually really fun. Shame people hate on it for no reason
The opposition to Sunset Invasion was not that it was a light DLC, but that it was ahistorical and diverted from playable pagans, which everyone at the time wanted. On the Paradox forum lots of people angry that PDS was allocating resources away from "regularly scheduled" content towards the fantasy Aztec invasion, which couldn't have happened because the Aztecs didn't even exist in any of the CK2 start dates. Could this be a language issue? Was the German-speaking CK2 community saying it was not hefty enough?
For having over 2000 hours in Ck2 I am really looking forward to this video, and I agree, the collections shouldn’t be counted
I play most 769 and would love to see it come back in CK3. The only thing I don't like is what they not put in. Why I can't play the last Merowinger. Maybe a mission as his liege to put him on the throne and then play him.
Nothing like having a great ruler die of old age and find out that my heir and half my subject are worshipping devil. Always a regret when I forgot to turn it off.
Relatively new to the channel here- what exactly is wrong with the 769 start from Charlemagne?
Kind of agreed on Monks and Mystics, though I'd still overall rate it highly purely because modders were able to use its underlying structure for more interesting things. I do however have a set of personal rules (alongside some xml tweaks) which nerf them severely. A little salt in cooking works wonders, but too much will ruin it, and that to me was the issue MaM had.
As someone whose played the 769 start I think that particular time period is just… boring:
1) Playing in France feels scripted, you’ll ALWAYS want to form the Carolingian realm
2) Playing near France can be insufferable because when the AI forms the Carolingian realm they’ll always dominate you
3) MENA is boring because Abbasids and Al-Andalus are so stacked it’s difficult to get any enjoyment out of it unless you’re more professional
4) Eastern and Northern Europe are boring because nothing interesting happens (Vikings start raiding 100 years after the start date)
5) In general, the 700 years of gameplay you get when you start in 769 very quickly get boring
Unless you’re doing very specific runs like forming the Carolingian realm, restoring the Sassanids or playing as the Zunbils the world in 769 isn’t very interesting or event rich. This is my perspective at least
Would love to see some more ck2 related content
I agree for the most part. Though I would switch around Sunset invasion and Charlemagne :)
Please, no. Not Sunset Invasion. We really disagree on this one :)
I can give one reason why I and others hate Conclave: -40 opinion from vassals for not putting some clown on the council
A couple points:
Seljuk formation area is mostly covered by the SoI map expansion, not RoI
I think the framework for Way of Life was too gamey (by which I mean artificial). Also its importance is easy to overstate if you forget that a lot of the events in that system already existed but simply were fed procedurally; what WoL added besides rounding out the set of events was just a way for the player to signal intent.
Societies were good in that they added a parallel growth and progression to the game. The equivalent in CK3 is Lifestyles, even though lifestyles were also in CK2. Although I agree with your criticism of the M&M societies I think that the fundamental system was good, as we saw in Holy Fury, so I think a similar system in CK3 would be fine - and I certainly want something that does societies. The thing I'd actually want would be dynamic changes to the state of the society, so that over a playthrough what your local societies means can evolve. One of the biggest things CK3 is missing at this point is things that matter over more than a couple generations and also aren't just low-impact quantitative increase like most techs and buildings.
One important thing to remember about Holy Fury is that in addition to main focus, it was a grab bag of things Paradox had promised but not implemented over the whole dev period of CK2, as well as features from CK1 that had never made it back in.
Honestly Conclave is D tier when interacting with your vassals is more of a choice rather than a need, you can easily disregard them or pay them lip service indefinitely. And if they do try something against you just throw them in prison or send the spymaster after them, and by the time in the game you can no longer stop them from revolting you likely have enough money to just spam mercenaries to deal with them. The Council is also not better when you can pay it's members to abolish it's powers within one characthers lifetime, especily if you fill it with lapdogs. The only time you are not in control of all of this is when you play as a young child
Very interesting discussion! I've been (very slowly) reviewing the expansions, but don't have the depth of background on it you have.
Anyway, I've come to regard them as roughly sorting into three general types, and hope to rank them on that basis when I finally get to a retrospective post. There's the _scope_ expansions (Islam, Old Gods, etc), _event-driven_ expansions (Legacy of Rome, Sons of Abraham...) and the _personal_ expansions (Conclave, Way of Life...). And what someone should look at getting should start with what they're interested in getting out of it.
Warrior lodges tho?
I miss all the supernatural stuff from CK2 in CK3 :(
I was gonna complain about Monks and Mystics and then it turns out Warrior Lodges were in Holy Fury?.. Damn I forgor. But yes, Warrior Lodges are awesome!
Also, about devil worship - it can be a bit cringe, but then sometimes... I remember I had a run where I reformed norse into the female inheritance law (forgot the name), and then used devil impregnation repeatedly to create a stable line of demonic succession.
This also reminds me - yes, the council of cardinals was dumb, but I will never forget a run where I pressed a claim on the Byzantine throne for one of my archbishops and Byzantium became a theocracy. Due to the sheer power he had he immediately became a cardinal, and then, obviously, elected pope. I accidentally thus created the most stable succession system for both the Papacy and the Byzantine Empire, by pure accident.
In regards to Reaper's Due, I recently had a wonderful emergent experience with it.
As the Latin Empire, I managed to put my child niece on the Nicean throne and then murder her to inherit the Niceans.
But during this transfer of power, nearly every Nicean (Greek) vassal revolted in 2 separate pretender revolts. Seeking to purge the vassals, I fought a war with them, intent on enforcing demands and revoking all their lordships.
And then the Black Death hit Anatolia. And suddenly all the armies (especially mine) fighting in this messy, drawn out war died to attrition and were unable to siege or accomplish anything.
In the end, I agreed to white peace with the exhausted Niceans, and the Latin Empire was left with a confused compromise of Byzantine institutions in Anatolia, all owing to the black death.
Lads, I always play with Sunset invasion. In fact, I white peaced them once when they tried to invade my country lol, it was probably the second biggest challenge, after fighting the HRE to unite my North-Africa holdings to my Great Britain holdings doing a funny Capet rise in 736 ( 1 count thing)
It was funny to see my dynasty being elected as emperors
Now I regret not picking up Way of Life and Conclave during the sale, decided on getting Holy Fury and other small cosmetics insead rip
I've had sooo many playthroughs as a learning focused mystic/society member basically becoming a god and doing whatever I want, both good and evil, so I have to disagree with you. That more personal/roleplay aspect has been really fun for me.
Sure it's not essential and I've played without it and had a lot of fun so I might've put it in B tier. To me it almost becomes a different game without it.
I was quiet confused about what you where talking about societies here. Because the lodge was so very memorable to me and awesome and whatnot. Societies where great only for this one alone. Turns out it was a different DLC alltogether? I loved the sunset as well.
Levi the Liberator with the Chabad society was busted in your playthrough of CK2 ATE.
please do these for the other games. Would be very interesting to hear your opinion on the eu4 dlcs too
I quite liked Sunset Invasion. I didn't turn it on all the time but sometimes it's neat to have Aztecs mix things up. I feel like it was cheaper than most DLC when it was released too but I might be misremembering that.
It does say something that this guy is still making ck2 content while CK3 has almost 3 years
If only there was Sunset Invasion but for EU4, that would be fun
I really hate how bloodlines and artifacts basically made vassal opinion irrelevant.
More like certified Sunset Invasion elite. Dlc was fun
You dropped this a week after i bought monks and mystics ;(
21:10 no way he actually said holy furry. And also the fact that it makes sense concidering it added animal kingdoms
769 introduced me to my Beloved Zunbil Dynasty so easy A tier
I do agree mostly, the only thing i would change is sword of islam becouse besides playing in the places I’m from (so I’m half polish half French [wallonian] born raised in Poland) the Islamic realms (and most specifically Andalusia and North Africa) were my favorite places to play in. I also thought that expanding to much as Poland or France was kind of ludicrous and way too not realistic so I didn’t enjoy it as much, but I could start as a random Arab count in Andalusia and my son would become the Caliph who rules half of the know world and not only was it fun, it made fucking sense, but Poland extending past Medival Russia and France expanding anywhere besides England was just wierd and thus not very fun. Come to think about it Western Europe was boring ass hell (besides the Iberians and Scandinavians but only when they were Norse). In any case, I still prefer playing in my homeland so this DLC isn’t as good as it would be if I were say American and my only relation to the places in the game would be some ancestors 200 years back than I would just play Islam and not give a single fuck about heritage and identity
What dont you like about 769
for some reason I don't think I ever paid for the ruler designer but I have access to it ?
The Charlemagne start date was awful. I used it a single digit number of times. Really wish the later dates received more love.
I think i am quit biased towards Sword of Islam because i only play them but generally i agree with you
CK II. Damn, just makes me want the CKIII GOT mod that much more. That's all I played lol
honestly i dont like either conclave nor reaper's due. the former makes your council trash at all times, people vote against you for no reason or benefit themselves, just to screw you over. education became a lot more complicated for worse results
reaper's due adds to the problem of CK2, which is just how RNG the game can be. it makes the experience extremely random, with the sudden death of your rulers and heirs becoming waaay worse. extremely stupid how people are dropping like flies in the prime of their health to mid 30s
new council takes away player control of who they put on the council, what laws you can institute. new education take away control when it comes to raising good heirs. reaper's due and random ass cancer development in early life, smallpox, foodpoisoning takes control away by indiscriminately killing people off
thank you for the great video.
Thank you OPB!
Not gonna lie, I just think Hermetics are neat
Conclave and reapers due make the game really hard, thats why I only play with reapers and still get frustrated, I remember I had 3 of my male children dying and getting stuck with a female while getting ravaged continiously by plagues(byzantine region is horrible for that)
The Byzantine Empire micro with all of CK2 mods (excluding Conclave and Sunset Invasion) is atrocious. The unchangable succession system. The Reaper's Due killing everyone at 40. Everyone wants to overthrow each other. Literal game torture.
I have a love and hate relationship with Way of Life.
While I totally understand where you come from with Monks and Mystics and the College of Cardinals, I also find the "set it and forget it" aspect of the CK3 religion system very dull. I hope they can come up with a new system that can make the religions more dynamic and not just give me a procedurally generated head of faith every time the old one dies.
…now I’m super curious what EU4 DLC you hate more than Monks and Mystics.
Monks and Mystics and Holy Fury both broke the game so badly. I don't know if I can stomach Holy Fury being S tier just because of how much easier it made the game. A tier for sure, but it sucks knowing every crusade ever is going to succeed without player intervention.
no persia video today ?....:(
Decadence was the worst
Now this is the quality content I like seeing on this channel! Monks and Mystics haters unite!
Way of Life takes it for me!
I hope that you do justice to "Sunset invasion" and place it unapologetically in the S tier.
Ffs,just look at this. Every dlc in this list (including sunset invasion) brought something unique to the game or changed how it is played drastically. Then look at ck3 dlc..... just look at them....
If you think you prefer ck3, just go into ck2, choose 867, play a viking. Conquer until you run out of money, then go raid england, get loot and prisoners and come back to hold grand blot. Then play venice, siwm in gold. Or go Byzantium with it's super unique intrigue game, only to die to dysentery.
GO BACK TO CK2 PEOPLE
thank you based bavarian
Monks and Mystics is one of those unfortunate creatures that has a lot of great, ambitious ideas and bungles the execution of every single one.
glad you had a great lunch. I am coming here for lunch fare too.
Sunset Invasion was S tier, you cannot change my mind
You crazy bruh monks and mystics is easily A tier, warrior societies especially are pure fun . if anything Jade dragon is bottom tier
I liked your Sunset Invasion take before you dared put it in B. Wtf are you smoking? Even with it not being as bad due to us knowing how many DLCs there would end up being it is still an overpriced DLC that does basically nothing.
Gonna sacrifice some folks with the lads, yeeehaw!
I do miss the societies in CK3, there is just a whole lot less for your character to do, and even less to spend money on. If you hold constantinople you make so much money even with all court amenities you'l have to much to spend. But maybe with more local and more dynamic societies, it would be a bit more immersive.
So glad to see another monks and mystics hater
semi related but it is still astounding to me that EU4 Leviathan became statistically one of the worst rated product on steam when it came out. seems forever ago now!
If Rajas of India had released nowadays when review bombing is a thing, it would've been treated just like Leviathan given how horribly buggy it was at launch. It was definitely the Leviathan before Leviathan.
You hate the good start date (769)? It's the one where you can totally reshape the world in an interesting way. Meanwhile you love Conclave ... the objectively floater in the toilet bowl of CK2 DLC's. Theres a reason so many people hate Conclave ... it's crap.
Honestly suprised u didn’t start by saying that the greatest game ever made is ck2 and we should have stopped making video games all together after it’s release
Aztec invasion... B tier? Lmao
First