Crusader Kings 3 - The Ultimate Lifestyle & Character Build Guide

good afternoon ladies shopping i'm john cena trudeau welcome to the crew sadie kings 3 lifestyle guide because to my mind the new lifestyle system with focus xp perks per trees and traits at the end it's the biggest foundational change in crusader kings 3. most things if you've played a bit of crusader kings 2 you'll be able to get your head rounder nice and easily the lifestyle system in 3 however it's possibly the biggest and most in-depth addition to the entire game so today we're going to be going through it talking about how it works where the best perks are which are the best trees conversely which should mostly be avoided and how to plan out a character that's gonna work for you so let's start off with the basics here back in crusader kings 2 you had a choice between 10 lifestyles two for each of the five primary attributes you would pick one of them and thereafter you would have a boost to the relevant attribute together with a chance of encountering thematically appropriate events going forward in some but not all cases you'd also gain some passive bonuses and some unique interactions you can utilize against other characters overall it was a fairly simple system all things considered in crusader kings 3 however yeah it's got a lot more complicated so you've still got a choice of focus but now there's three for each of the five returning attributes for a total of 15. but there's a lot more to it now as well so if you pick for example say a stewardship focus you start gaining a certain amount of xp a month that xp builds up until you can select a perk out of any of these three perc trees where stewardship experience can only be spent on the three stewardship trees however if you've got yourself a matching education you get yourself a boost in the amount of experience you're gaining ten percent for each level of your education between one and four for between ten and forty percent boost in real terms this means by default the most a character is going to be able to earn is 35 experience a month meanwhile they can't actually drop below 25 even if they've not got any experience whatsoever you're still gonna be earning that so this is the first thing you need to get your heads around with the new lifestyle system which is a given you're going to be earning experience at a rate of about 25 to 35 experience a month depending on your education that means that to get up to 1000 xp you need to claim a single perk that's going to take you about two and a half to three and a half years now you might be able to do it a tiny bit faster than that because there will be events showing up that lets you gain a bit of bonus lifestyle xp too but you can't really count on that meanwhile every single tree in the game has got nine perks in it eight that provide you with a perk and a special ninth one at the end that provides you with a special trait so yeah if you just run the numbers there even in the absolute best case scenario where this is completely in line with your extremely good education it's going to take you about two decades to complete a single trailer and more likely if it doesn't match up with your education or your education isn't a four-star education it may well take you closer to three decades to fill out a single tree and you don't get to start from childhood you only get to start gaining lifestyle experience when you hit 16. as a result of that obviously you are not going to be able to take every perk not even close honestly if you're able to completely fill out three trees that's probably quite a flipping accomplishment and that's why it's really important that you plan ahead and make sure you're investing in trees that have got good perks and you're making good decisions so okay now we've got the basics down let's dive into the individual trees and discuss them one by one because some are amazing some are trash and some are very situational so the is a really good place to start because the diplomat tree to my mind is a really good example of a generalist trait this is kind of how i started thinking about the different trees some of them give you a whole bunch of varied passive benefits and actions you can take and they just help you out in lots of different little ways that's the diplomat tray other trees will be getting to a good example of this very very soon indeed basically exist to do one thing they pick one thing they want to make you really good at and they just make you better and better at that the diplomatry as i say very good example of generalist so the first book you'd have to take is thoughtful so opinion gained from sending a gift plus 100 i believe the default is plus 24 decaying over time so that gets doubled to plus 48. that's fine that's nice it's not going to change the world but it's a nice to have but then of course you can see the trees start splitting off into different branches over here on the left you get access to two new couches ballet the best one is the second one down over here forced vassalization does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin you get the calculus belly to vassalize anyone nearby of a certain size by default anyone who's got three or less counties in their realm but that goes up to five seven nine then eleven with various texts you unlock however the thing that's really beautiful about this is you don't need to be the deurie leisure for this to actually kick in so say for example this little territory right over here you may notice that uh yeah i've got no real duchy right to them whatsoever kingdom right empire right no i've got no reason why i ought to be these guys de you're a liege but screw it i can just vassalize them regardless the first one is the duchy conquest calculus bellai this one's really fiddly and doesn't actually trigger anywhere near as much as you'd think it would now it sounds really good allowing you to seize counties that you need to create an as yet uncreated title of dutchy rank yet there's something a bit weird about it because it very often isn't available in fact it may possibly be internal only because that's the only scenario i've ever managed to make it fire so for example nipping over here to viking sweden yeah we've got ourselves a lovely dutch over here no land that is not yet created however i do hold some of the land to create it therefore you'd logically assume and be able to use this lovely lovely council spell eye to attack them in order to actually you know get hold of this uh bit of land but no despite the fact i'd be taking over a county to help me create an as yet uncreated dutchy title it's not available so this one's a bit fiddly one scenario where it can trigger however is yes i found this little guy down over here in carcassonne then this duchy also not yet created i can actually attack you in order to there we go so dutchy conquest i don't know why that's allowed but the previous example wasn't it's a bit of a fiddly perk it's not as useful as you'd think it would be so that's what's over on the left the rest of them are more about you know relations with foreign powers as you might expect from the diplomat tree so adaptive traditions foreign affairs effectiveness plus 25 this is one of the new tasks you can say your council to do it is however kind of trash because yeah you may notice what you're actually getting there is independent ruler opinion up to plus 7.5 but only after he's been doing it for bloody ages right now yeah it's going up by 0.3 a month so it's going to take years to get up to plus 7.5 and 7.5 is absolute trash that is nothing especially as adaptive traditions neighbor right to the right of it is defensive negotiations all independent rulers are plus 15 permanently together with fellow vassals plus 15 so can be very useful if you've got some vassal neighbors and you can propose an alliance without needing a marriage so basically adaptive traditions is utter utter trash next to defensive negotiations so i've just turned the perk on and jet even with the perk on and with this guy's skill of 15 which is not bad not bad at all it's still only going up to plus nine which is completely flipping garbage weirdly the nicest thing about foreign affairs is actually probably the prestige because with that perk you do get base prestige up by almost one with this guy having a skill of 15. so if he was even more skilled you'd be able to nudge that a little bit over one that's probably the only nice thing to say i guess it's a way of getting a tiny bit more prestige but um we'll be getting on to prestige in a second below the utterly awful adaptive traditions you've got flexible truces so yeah truces are shorter that's great thumbs up but no prestige penalty for breaking truces this is completely worthless because the reason we don't break truces is nothing to do with prestige here we go if i was to break a truce right now then yes i would lose 250 prestige which is you know not great but uh on the other hand i would also gain broke truce general opinion minus 50 for three years that's the reason we don't break truces 250 prestige is a drop in the ocean and finally over on the right tier beyond defensive negotiations embassies each alliance grants you plus one to diplomacy now that probably sounds great to you if you've just come from crusader kings 2 because a perk that is giving you permanent increases to your base stats is normally spectacular unfortunately there are a lot more and a lot better ways to boost your primary stats this one's actually a bit on the flimsy side because yeah you're only getting plus one diplomacy for each alliance you can't have that many alliances because one aside from the one alliance you're getting out of defensive negotiations every other alliance needs a marriage you might not necessarily have enough children to have as many alliances as you want and two as you start gaining more and more alliances the game wants you to have further alliances less and less so for example you can see here because i've already got a few too many alliances i have got a minus 45 to marriage acceptance i can still just about push this marriage through but eventually there will come a point where you simply can't have any more alliances for example just as an experiment i managed to get up to seven alliances but yes at that point the negative to too many alliances just became a bit too aggressive and it became very difficult to get anybody else married so on this occasion plus seven to diplomacy that's actually pretty darn solid but yeah most of the time you're not gonna be getting that much out of this perk it's a nice to have but there are definitely yes uh better opportunities for getting more in the way to your primary statistics if that's what you want to do okay so here we move on to accomplish forger here's the second thing i need to stress here which is when you're thinking about what you want to take and what you don't want to take you've got to keep in mind the shape of the tree which is you're not allowed to just get rounder to accomplish forger by going through a branch of your choosing in order to actually take that perk you've got to have filled out all the others so if i just want to rush to force vassalization for example that only needs a three perk investment i can do that in about a decade if i want to get down to accomplish forger however i need to take literally every other perk that's going to take decades and means i need to take trash like adaptive traditions whether i want to or not so yeah you've got to evaluate where perks are in the tree good trees can give you really good perks early on so you can get in grab the ones you need without needing to complete the entire tray as for accomplished forger itself that's fabricate claim on county speeder plus 75 now that probably sounds really good keeping in mind of course that yes fabricating claim has actually moved away from your chancellor and is now on your court priest instead so yes this woman here has a learning skill of 14 we'll just uh slap her down somewhere that's fine really nice new map motor by the way showing yeah what you already hold what you've already got to claim on what's inside your territory where the claim would let you revoke without tyranny nearby territories which are relatively fast to get a claim on because for example yeah they're similar to your territory versus further away territories where it's gonna take a little bit longer to do so yeah getting a little claimed next door that's gonna take 13 months for her right now because this territory is a close by culturally it's very similar it's a nice easy job and if we just take the perk obviously we get to cut most of that straight off the problem is at crusader kings 3 you don't need claims as much as you used to because there's a lot more ways to go to war and seize territory you've already seen over here in this very same tree just to actually get to that perk you've already unlocked yeah false vassalization you've got the duchy conquest right there there's a load more coming in later trees if you're a tribe of course this is literally garbage because why would you ever actually need to claim on a counter you can just move in and take it anyway so yeah not the best not the best at all would have been really good back in crusader kings too but these days there's a lot more ways you can get claims that are a lot better so to my mind it's a bit of a trash one and finally you get the special trait at the end of the trailer so in this case that is obviously your diplomat because this is the end of the diplomat tree and that's how that works so diplomacy plus three independent ruler opinion plus 20 personal scheme power plus 25 that just means your personal schemes like swaying people romancing people etc they'll just happen a little bit faster now that's okay that's fine plus 20 to independent ruler that's probably good enough to consider taking but i do want to stress something in particular here which is a beware sunken cost fallacy just because you've invested say six or so points into a tree already that doesn't mean you have to complete it in fact in some cases the trait at the end of the trio is actually weaker than perks earlier on in the tree itself so just keep in mind just because you know it's fancy and it's got an icon and whatever that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to want to take it diplomatic is okay but bear in mind to get to diplomat you need to spend nine perk points and it's getting you a diplomacy plus three independent ruler opinion plus 20. if you consider up here i've already got 15 independent ruler opinion of defensive negotiations that i could get to with a perk expenditure of only two depending on how many alliances you've got going on you might be able to get more than three off embassies i'm getting seven off emphasis right now and meanwhile to be perfectly honest yeah personal scheme power where it makes schemes just a bit faster but not actually any more likely to succeed it's not the best that's generally not very good at all so there's a very good argument for saying actually don't bother taking diplomat i'd probably recommend if you're going into the diplomat trade take whichever one these branches you want to get hold of don't bother with accomplished forger don't bother with diplomat because if you just complete it because you want the tree to be completed you've just wasted six years of experience so to my mind diplomat is a tree that you might well want to nip into but you probably don't actually want to complete and so we move on to august and this here this is an excellent one for us to discuss immediately after diplomat because a diplomat as i discussed is a really generalist tree this is precisely the opposite this here is possibly the most specialized tree in the game this here is the prestige tree it is all about generating a huge amount of prestige with the exception of this first perk which is about boosting how fast you can sway people this feels really out of place by the way because none of the rest of this does anything like that so unfortunately you're just kind of stuck with that one but uh yeah over here it's just basically nothing but prestige so monthly prestige per dread which goes between zero and a hundred so that one is okay that's huge that is an amazing perk right there because if your dread is at a hundred congratulations you've just doubled your prestige in one go absolutely incredible then you've got over here praetorian guard so monthly prestige for each night that you've got so right now let's actually just uh very quickly check how many nights do i actually have uh in my empire so right now i have got 11 champions that's a knightsburg tribal so as a result of that yes seven from the fact i am a king warner from a holy site that just gives me an extra night two from the fact that i am illustrious so yeah that's actually tied to uh my prestige the more prestigious you get the more knight she gets and then one additional one from domain as well so that there that's another 22 boost to my prestige immediately then we go over here monthly prestige per powerful vassal on the council plus 5 now i can't prove this but it really feels to me having been playing this game quite a lot over the last month or so that yeah the way the game decides who is or isn't a powerful vassal has changed you tend to get more powerful vassals than you used to in my experience so a lot of the time you are going to have multiple powerful vassals on the council your council by the way has changed a little bit these days if we just go over to them so yeah you've still your traditional uh chancellor steward marshall spymaster and realm priest i don't know whether your wife counts if you actually marry one of your own powerful vassals whether she would count so i don't know whether you can get that up to 30 percent or not i'm not sure ah never mind as is traditional powerful vassals won't be roam priests so okay the cap is either 20 or 25 so so far this tree's just knocking it out to the park and it's gonna get better yet so then you move on to true ruler offer vassalization acceptance plus 25 that is ludicrous because the base for accepting vassalization is only -45 so this gets you over halfway there already so yeah you can see here in this example base reluctance of -45 to accept vaselization but if the person in question is de ure your vassal that's plus 15. so if you've got the perk for plus 25 and your deurey you're already 90 of the way there so then you just need something to nudge it over the line in this case hydrate would do the job or you could just make him like you toss him a gift etc etc basically this is an incredibly powerful poke that makes it very easy to just mop up little counties around you in fact honestly it's so good it kind of makes force vassalization relatively trash because this is just so much better and we're not even at the best stuff yet then you get into writing history commission epic decision the epic is oh the epic is wonderful let's just go through this because this one is just ludicrously good value so kick off the decision and for me yes the most i'm allowed to spend in order to get an exceptional epic is only 100 gold so everything you're about to see was for 100 golds and it is the best 100 gold you'll ever spend in this game so this is all random of course you might get different events but yes one of my generals has come to me and now i've got a choice so either i can give myself 10 years of military advantage i you know things are more likely to go well when battle is joined or and this is quite frankly ridiculous 500 martial experience that's half a perk instantly now let's be clear if you gave me a button in this game where i could spend 100 gold to gain 500 lifestyle xp i would never stop pushing that button and that's not even the epic that's just a bonus i'm getting along the way 150 prestige 75 renown for the dynasty or another 300 xp this time for learning and on top of that honesty so 10 years my personal schemes have plus 22 success chance which is way better than scheme power because yeah success chance is just better than doing them faster so okay i've spent 100 gold and i'm up to 800 lifestyle xp another 75 prestige and five years of vassal opinion plus 10 or i can get 50 gold back so at this point i could have just spent 50 gold on 800 xp the story is done another 150 xp up front 50 renown up front and because i paid the 400 gold this is an excellent epic which gives me five prestige a month for 10 bloody years and as soon as that wears off i'm allowed to commission another one honestly this tree is worth taking just so you can keep flipping doing commissioning epic over and over again it's that good and there's more yet so yes level of fame impact plus 100 so your level of fame is basically uh how well known you are in the world so there's five levels and at this exact moment in time i am illustrious working towards exalted among men so yes i just need four thousand prestige total but spending it doesn't actually matter it still counts towards this bar in order to get up to the next level so as you go up you get more and more bonuses ultimately capping out at the living legend secular opinion plus 20 number of knights plus four now secular opinion just means the opinion of everybody who's not a priest and that of course is 99 of the world this is effectively as good as opinion with everybody and i can double that with a life of glory and on top of that diplomacy per level of fame so yes that's going to uh go up from one to five as you go up in the world so i mean not spectacular as i've said kind of like five is not the best but it's not terrible at all then finally the perk itself that gets you diplomacy plus two martial plus one and prestige plus one a month so more base prestige so we're going to be taking that because base prestige is well what you want if you're going down this tree that's what you're going to be wanting bear in mind of course majesty folks over here get you another prestige one a month and extra bear in mind the reason why you want to be you know getting yourself more base prestige a month is don't forget those perks right at the beginning i am doubling my prestige through dread because this character's dread is in fact yes 91 so i need to get that a little bit further up but i'm sure that's all absolutely a-okay and then boosting it to another 25-hole percent due to knights then boosting it another 20 through powerful vassals on the council but wait didn't you hear earlier level of fame impact plus 100 means now i've got more knights available to me meaning more praetorian guards meaning even more flipping prestige so if you stack all of those things together my current prestige for this character is plus 22 a month which is quite frankly slightly ludicrous just just look at that just look at that right there that's just dumb it's so flipping dharma and on top of that once i go up towards exalted among men then yeah the number of knights is going to go up by a further two so that's another four percent on top so basically i'm just earning all the prestige in the world but john how useful is that really well i'll tell you because prestige is bloody useful it's ridiculously useful because big wars cost a lot of prestige you're always going to be needing it to go to war but okay what i'm gonna say about this tree is you should probably be always considering it but there's one thing that pushes it over the line and that's if you're a tribe if you don't take this you're basically playing the game wrong because tribes everything is done with prestige hiring men at arms prestige maintaining your mana arms prestige buildings not entirely prestige but mostly prestige so basically if you're a tribe just about everything is paid for with prestige meaning getting in north of 20 prestige a month by default is it's just ludicrous and this is one of the best poke trees in the game and basically just about any character should consider it but tribes are oh yeah you should definitely take this okay let's move over to the patriarch tree this one this one's a really interesting one because this here this is an example of a tree that's got some really good stuff in it but it's got some trash in it too so yeah a bit of a difficult one here and in particular the problem is a lot of the trash is up here at the top the good stuff's down the bottom so if you want access to the good stuff you're gonna have to spend a lot of time and a lot of xp getting there though i will say befriend is a decent scheme this is a personal scheme that's generally very easy to push through basically if you've got even remotely decent diplomacy you can convert somebody into a friend very good way of keeping people sweet potentially persuading people they want to move to your court it's not a bad thing at all not bad in the slightest also good of course if you want to get someone friendly enough they might be willing to back you in you know a slightly more uh murdery scheme down the line lots you can do with befriend it's basically just sway but a lot better more about friends as you go forward so for every friend you can lose stress faster stress is basically just a bad thing you gain if you play against your character so you know if generous characters act greedy or if peaceful characters go to war too much they'll pick up stress and it's bad for you so you know not bad but honestly you don't really need it because there's often plenty of in-universe ways to get you stressed out no problem whatsoever so for example my character right now does have a little bit of stress however i can see my character enjoys a parting as a result of that i can host a feast that's gonna lose some stress because i enjoy putting on a feast so if you just kind of you know play into your character's nature you're probably not gonna be needing perks that make it easier to lose stress stress is not difficult to get rid of this next one is complete garbage but friends scheme power plus 30 doesn't make it easier to make friends it just means you can make friends faster but it's already pretty fast by default so that one's kind of trash go up this one is fine children receiving extra skill points that's okay it's not the worst thing in the world heart of the family close family opinion plus 15 kind of unnecessary in a way because you know your close family already like you quite a lot by default yeah there we go children just start with a base plus 50 just because they are my children so i kind of feel like that's not really necessary to be honest and then even more confusing perks so thicker than water personal scheme success chance 25 against family members but again i'm just not really sure what the point is personal schemes for the most part are pretty benevolent and easy to take care of so i mean we could sway her but she's my child she already likes me and in particular to access this perk i'd already needed to have taken close family so i've already got father plus 50 i've got close family plus 15. so i've got a base plus 65 already baked in so it's not like i'm ever gonna need to sway her to be honest and then well then we get into yes if i want to like you know seduce or romance my own family members i'm not sure a hundred percent why i'd want or need to but yes unfortunately for most religions even if i did want to yeah because you are family and incest is taboo they're gonna be reluctant even with that plus 25. that plus 25 isn't gonna do enough for you to seduce your own immediate family members but it's kind of pointless for the more benevolent schemes so not really sure what that one's for it just seems kind of pointless but if you can deal with these six perks of trash here's where the good stuff lives and seriously this is why i would recommend considering this tree regardless because this tree just distributes skill points like they are free bloody candy so starting off with a friendly council so every single friend you've got gives you two random skill points as far as i'm aware there's no upper cap on the number of friends you could have so just keep befriending people takes about a year to make a friend if you've got decent diplomacy so you can just be picking up two skill points every year for the rest of your life that's pretty bloody goats and then beyond that sound foundations every child giving you a random skill point it is a shame that these skill points are randomly distributed but uh seriously this can just provide you with a slightly dumb number of skill points so on this occasion yes i actually had quite a few children so uh just watch my points over on the bottom left there yeah so that uh that makes quite a flipping difference the perk however is a very good example of what i was discussing earlier which is just because you've got down to the bottom of the tree it doesn't necessarily mean you want to waste your time taking the final perk patriarch is kind of bad fertility 20 is okay but bear in mind you can get fertility up in a lot of different ways like you could have just been on family focus this entire time and there are much easier perks to get your fertility up over the intrigue trees we'll be getting to those uh in a minute close family opinion plus 15 completely unnecessary to get down this far you've already taken a heart of the family you've already got plus 50 because they are close family you do not need another plus 15. house opinion plus 10 that's everyone in your immediate dynasty but again that's a pretty modest gain then another 20 distress loss but as i've said that's not high priority so yeah really weird tree this tree because uh the top six total trash the perk at the end not very good but there's some amazing stuff down here worth considering just because of the amount of skill points you can gain off it and so we move on to the martial lifestyle and some of these are a lot more simple diplomacy's got some relatively complicated traits strategy just over here however this one's pretty bloody simple it is once again a very specialist trait it's all about making you better at murdering the people next door and here we go the very first perk the cost of kausas belies down by 50 now this here this is very powerful indeed let's say i want to swan in next door and take over a little bit of mercy if i want to take over a county that's going to cost me 150 prestige want to take over an entire flipping duchy 750 this is you know expensive stuff but with that perk and play things are looking a lot more flipping reasonable so that's an absolutely huge saving and bear in mind that's right at the top of the tree so this is another thing to really keep in mind when you're planning your character you don't need to start a new tree and then say okay i'm committed to this tree for the next two decades you absolutely can nip in take a perk or two and then get back out again so keep a really close eye on strong perks that are early in the tree this here is an example of a perk that absolutely you might just want to take and then pretty much move straight on you are however locked to a focus for five years so you might want to stick around in a particular focus get yourself two perks and then move on after about six years or so in the diplomacy tree for example i could absolutely see the advantage of just nipping in very briefly taking the befriend scheme just so you've got access to it it's a powerful useful scheme after that even though this thing actually splits into a three at that point yeah they'll pretty much do the same thing they're all just making your troops better so over here parthian tactics that's just taking your cavalry units and making them stronger and better at pursuing ie you get a bit more murder once the battle's been won then you've got mena arms counter efficiency which just means your troops are performing better if they're going up against the right sort of unit so say if you've got loads of cavalry and your enemies decided to field loads of archers you're gonna be more effective this one's the big one though right in the middle organized march like seriously if i was just kind of nipping in here to get a bellam hustle because it's just so damn good i might just come in here take bellum your stoma move down to organize march because movement speed plus 15 is huge being able to outmaneuver your opponent catch up with them if they're trying to flee that is just absolutely massive so yeah potentially i'd recommend to any character just consider snipping in to marshall even if you don't want to do anything else here just grab these two and then move straight on beyond that yeah take less losses if you happen to be retreating make your infantry a bit on the tougher side nothing too dramatic there navel speed that one's a bit garbage but siege weapon effectiveness oh yeah that's uh that's some fun noise stuff long story short these days when you're doing a siege yet you've got yourself a siege progress bar you make a certain amount of progress a day depending on yes how many troops you've got diddly diddly day however yeah siege weapons i've not got any siege weapons with me right now that means this place has got itself some walls and that means i am not allowed to do an assault action you need siege weapons in order to create a breach before you can actually assault the faults and this poke would make those siege weapons much more effectively so if you just want to get in there smash down some walls stone the place yeah very useful indeed this one over here is a bit of an odd one because yes if you're not actually like you know tribal or otherwise a raider this one's not going to be that useful to you because plenty of societies just don't rage but yeah raid speed up never going to flip and hurt and supply capacity useful because these days armies are carrying supplies with them so you don't start suffering attrition the moment you step into bad territory you just start eating into your supplies instead very useful indeed and speaking of sieges yeah if you do all of that you get down here to sappers so basically if you've got men at arms infantry units they get to contribute to siege progress too meaning you're basically just getting into cities a bit faster and it is a solid amount to my mind because yet 0.1 per infantry unit and most leaders seem to have a cap of about four men arms at the beginning of the game so you have yourself four infantry units immediately so that's adding 0.4 onto siege progress so for this siege i was just showing off a second ago yeah that would be a 33 increase in how fast you're making progress knocking a month off the end of the siege not bad not bad at all and finally at the end the strategist perks so diplomacy plus one marshall plus three enemy faithful casual teaser plus 25 percent and the minor issue that may or may not be relevant to you you could cross water without advantage penalties now this one is i'm not sure whether this is going to be worth it the nice thing about this tree is the murder which is you may notice sometimes that you fight a battle you win but it feels like 80 to the army gets away they nip off into the distance into the fog of war for like a month or something and they come back pretty much full strength soon afterwards it doesn't feel like your victories are really sticking but yeah if you go all the way down this tree enemy fatal casualties are plus 25 don't forget parthian tactics already get you a bonus to the shoot so put those two things together when you actually win a battle it's gonna feel a bit more permanent a lot more of the enemy are gonna end up dead it's fine but it's not the best thing in the world to my mind honestly i think this is a good tree but mainly just it makes your armies more efficient the actual strategist perk at the end is okay if not the best and so we moved to overseeing now this is a really weird one for me i'm not convinced by overseer because it's mostly a specialized tray and what it specializes in is control which basically just represents how effective is your rule over a given area in your court territory most of the time this is just going to be 100 out of 100 but yeah if we go over and find a bit of there we go so this territory is still just uh slowly ticking up for this exact moment in time control is 85 and as a result of it not being a hundred less taxes less levees at zero meanwhile the territory produces basically no taxes and only half its usual levies and the reason control's the problem is because yes naturally it ticks up incredibly slowly only 0.1 a month so 1.2 a year it's gonna take decades to get from zero to a if you just leave it alone and that does probably make serve the crown look pretty good because yes you get yourself control growth plus 0.3 a month for everybody everywhere forever so as a result of that you've just quadrupled the rate at which your territory moves fully under your control the problem is there's other ways to boost control just as much so if you were to go over to the authority focus say you also get 0.3 a month right over there and on top of that your marshall can go in to help out with that business too on this occasion yeah marshall20 marshall doing a pretty good job at 0.66 a month so over double what the perk or the focus does and speaking of that you can also make that 20 more effective by taking strict organization and after that still gets a bit random so a man's home controlled territory defender advantage so yes basically on your home turf you've just got a little bit of a better chance of fights going your way enduring hardship so thought level goes up a tiny amount only plus one not much to be honest and yes control would normally be lowered by an enemy occupation take this it is not so yeah if you're worried about losing a bit of territory temporarily doesn't really matter during war there's not going to be any lasting consequences hard rule yeah this tree is also sort of about dread as well you may remember up at the top here yeah so the crown also gives you natural dreader plus 15. i.e the level between 0 and 100 where your dreads gonna naturally tend towards even if you're not doing anything else so yeah your natural dread is going to go up by 15 and on this occasion you're going to gain dread faster most mostly you gain dread by doing would you believe dreadful things we'll get to that when we get into uh intrigue in a minute on top of that hard drill is also good at dealing with uh vassal so if there's gonna be a revolt then you just get bonuses in the seizures versus them but for the most part yeah that's another thing you need to keep in mind which is uh how often is a trait going to be useful which is what percentage of your time are you fighting revolts from vassals because it's a pretty darn low percentage really so a part that gives you a benefit all the time is arguably more valuable than one that's only giving you a benefit a very small proportion of the time but it's all right it's fine i guess if you're worried about your vassals for some reason prepare conscription down here is pretty nice so army maintenance down 15 percent very very nice indeed and levees in friendly territory reinforcing twice as fast that's okay nothing particularly remarkable there hiring mercenaries 30 faster too very very nice and then finally we get to well what the game started pretending is the big exciting one absolute control because you've hit it at the bottom where to get to it yeah you need to have invested eight perks in this tree absolute control is not very good it's really not very good at all because yeah in order for it to activate control needs to be 100 in a given territory the problem is if that happens the benefit you gain is really really modest so here we go control is absolute and as a result of that levies plus five percent taxes are plus ten percent now to my mind five percent levies and ten percent taxes for eight perk investments is garbage especially as that's not even going to be your entire empire it's just going to be the bit of the empire that's got 100 control in fact i'm going to tell you how to get better than absolute control right now which is if you really really really want to get a five percent more effective military and ten percent more out of your taxes here's what you do you don't spend eight perks getting to absolute control instead you come over here to stewardship and you drop just a handful of perks over here into the money making trees because that's going to get you more than 10 already then you come back over to military and you drop a handful of perks over here into strategist because then you may have slightly less troops but the important troops the men at arms are gonna be much more effective you're gonna spend less perks to get more benefit because absolute control is uh it's just not very good then at the end you get yourself to overseer so marshall plus two stewardship plus two controlled growth factor plus fifty percent so all those control things you've been stacking on top of each other they just go up by another fifty percent ninety nine percent of the time this is going to be overkill you don't need that much control growth unless you're in a period of really rapid expansion in which case it might be worth considering now i can absolutely see the advantage of even if you've got no interest in much in the way of the military lifestyle just come in here spend six years in it take bellum justin take serve the crown then your wars are half price and when you take new territory you're going to be organically converting it to you four times faster than you would do otherwise that's probably pretty good after that maybe consider moving on but just nipping in here to take those two that's worth considering but but you may have noticed we haven't discussed the third tree yet so yeah strategist pretty good overseer kind of garbage gallant oh gallant i love you gallant is amazing you see galen's got an interesting double structure to it where yeah you've got some things down over here on the left some things down over here on the right and it does two very distinct things and they're both amazing it's just kind of a shame the first perk is not spectacular so yes that's just your combat effectiveness in terms of personal hand tank combat being safer when you're commanding armies is fine but it's not spectacular don't let that put you off though because what's beyond it is ridiculously good so let's go on to uh the right first shall we say chivalry dominance so your knight effectiveness plus 75 just a quick introduction in case you're unfamiliar with this by the way the way armies work in this game is now they're made up of three constituent parts you've got yourself levies these are just guys coming out of your barracks or whatever you've got your champions these are unites basically filled by random guests sometimes dedicated knights you invited to gord sometimes you know you nobles themselves then you've got your men at arms you're professionalised troops that are much more effective than your levees you add those numbers together and then the game tells you what the overall quality is which is defined by what the mix is too many levies to not enough meta arms or not enough champions and you'll have a very low quality army that's susceptible to being destroyed by a smaller but more elite army the more mana arms you've got the more champions you've got the more elite the army is the better it will perform and the better it can do at kicking the ass of even bigger armies this means your knights even though there's only a handful of them are really really bloody important because the more nights there are and the more effective those knights are the higher quality your overall arm is going to be so yeah they're really bloody important and a 75 boost is basically yes pretty much doubling at how strong they are which is really really damn good friendly fatal casualties down 20 very very nice indeed and of course if you're going the full military route syncs really nicely with uh hit and run 2. so if you're retreating you're relatively safe during battle you're relatively safe it just means even if something goes a bit wrong it's not the end of the world plus advantage plus 5 means yeah you're less likely to lose battles in the first place and then the big one kingsguard number of knights plus four absolutely spectacular and of course syncs very nicely with the beautiful beautiful prestige tree we discussed uh previously because once you start getting yourself a life of glory and doubling the number of nights you're getting out of prestige add another four nights on out of that too you're getting into slightly dumb numbers of nights and that's just beautiful it's also worth bearing in mind of course you want your knights to be effective and safe because in many cases your nobles are going to be knights you don't want them just dying or being wounded or captured at random you want to keep them safe and on top of that if your knights are super effective it's going to make it more likely they're going to take down wound capture or kill the enemy knights and who are the enemy knights they might be enemy nobles this could be a very effective method of assassinating important people in the realms you're at war with so that's one side and honestly i think those perks are brilliant the other side is something completely different and it's really damn good too so courtship romance scheme power up thirty percent scheme power of a low pop 30 percent and more importantly it's not just scheme power it's the way more important success chance for romance and deload now romance and lope are bloody important and bloody amazing so stop me if you've heard this one before you're looking around for someone to marry your sons to and it turns out there's an amazing princess next door who's potentially set to inherit some really really good land but her dad the king's being a dick about it because the ai is smart enough to realize oh yeah if you just marry her then your firstborn son is going to inherit like you know everything and then i've basically just given away my kingdom a generation from now and he starts getting very fussy about natural in your marriage and diddly diddly day but no no no no no no with romance and elope you just get to bypass that you can romance her and then you can try and do an elope action now elope is a little bit on the uh the difficult to pull off side so you're definitely gonna need this perk to uh pull it off but basically the reason the lope is amazing is it's because you can pretty much just marry who you want just seduce who you want and then get them back to court to marry them even more powerful of course if you're part of a polygamous religion where you can just do this for every single one of your secondary wife slots and you know what's even more fun the game is not fast about you eloping with somebody who's already married so you can just basically romance someone who's already married her to someone else i'm 100 you can just elope with them take them out of their court bring them over to yours so yes basically this opens up a world of opportunities for getting married to people who otherwise would have been very off limits really nice one to have here as well further down that list so marriage acceptance for yourself plus 50 that's a massive increase and your closely extended family also gained plus 25 very very nice indeed for helping your wider dynasty to just you know spread around get good marriages etc etc very very useful very very powerful especially bearing in mind in this game there's now no difference between a marriage and an alliance you don't need to get married then arrange an alliance a marriage fundamentally creates an alliance so being as marriageable as possible very powerful loyalty and respect meanwhile oh this one's just darn nice spouse opinion plus 50 is hardly essential but skills from spouse counselor tasks oh that one's that one's nice you see your wife's got a permanent place on the council where she can do one of two things either she can just generally assist you where she gives you a bit of help in line with all of her stats or she can help you in one particular thing where you get her stat divided in half then rounded down so for example i'm a bit worried about my intrigue being a bit low well that's fine i'll be having yep a big old pile of intrigue right off her thank you and yeah this just helps that be 25 percent better which is uh yeah that's worth an extra what was that two to intrigue it's fine it's not the best one to be perfectly honest but it's pretty darn good then peacemaker peace acceptance plus 10 just helps the wars go by a little bit more smoothly and then finally gallant so marshall plus two combat skill plus four monthly prestige plus 20 nice if i'm spectacular does of course sink really nicely with the prestige tree back in diplomacy so you know might want to consider putting those two together for even more ridiculous big piles of prestige they're honestly spending nine perks just for that probably unnecessary but as i say this is this is a really powerful tree regardless attraction i could take or leave to be honest the perk is not the best bet and peacemakers not really the best bit i think gallant is amazing and i would definitely potentially recommend taking you the bare minimum yeah the right hand branch over here pertaining to knights like that's going to be good for everybody the left matter of personal preference i think courtship and promising prospects are really really damn good the rest of it in the perk at the end not so good you could probably uh leave those bay okay next i'm going to skip over stewardship just for the moment to go straight over to intrigue and there's a good reason for that don't worry there's a bunch of stuff in stewardship that will make a lot more sense after we've discussed intrigue so first thing i want to draw attention to the intrigue focuses there's some really fun stuff here so way back in diplomacy you may recall yes family focus was an option for fertility plus 20 percent over intrigue there is just something straight up better you get the fertility plus twenty percent but you also gain attraction opinion and seduction scheme power plus twenty percent so if you just want to be you know using the focus to gain some fertility as fast as possible you're going to be wanting temptation over family it is just objectively better plus intimidation focus is really really strong we've discussed dreads previously where yes your natural dreader can be at a certain level now if you were to invest heavily into overseer back in marshall that gets you a little bit of tread but yeah literally just take the focus in the intrigue lifestyle of intimidation that's a natural plus 30. that is huge that is absolutely load so if you just desperately want a big pile of dread in a hurry just coming over to intrigue taking intimidation you just get the natural dread immediately your dread will just start ticking up in the right direction which is really really powerful because that means some of your vassals are just going to immediately start being intimidated or terrified meaning they can't join factions they can't plot against you it's just a really nice thing to have so the focusers in intrigue are really really damn nice just by themselves so let's start off with the classic here schema so truth is relative fabricate hook scheme okay let's very quickly explain hooks in case you've not come across this yet this kind of replaces favors if you like so for example over here in the hook screen you see i have got some minor hawks on members of my immediate family that's because i'm the dynasty header they're part of my dynasty so i can just you know gently persuade them to do something like say arranging a marriage they might not otherwise be a hundred percent keen on i'm more able to imprison them like i don't know maybe i can lure them into an ambush or something because they trust me i can revoke their titles more reliably hooks are really really really darn good so you get hooks automatically on your own family members but elsewhere in the world normally the way you get hooks is by discovering secrets every time someone does something bad illegal immoral against the rules of a religion or whatever they have a secret against their name if you discover that secret you've got a choice you can expose them at which point everybody in the world will know about the secret that might be very very bad for them or you can blackmail them to convert that secret into a hook so on this occasion she is 90 willing to accept that absolutely spectacular we'll see if she just says yes and i have now got a strong hook on her meaning basically yes i can now pretty much force her to do whatever i want here we go strong hooks would force her to join any murder plot of my choosing and on top of that she physically can't plot against me and even better it doesn't get used up when i call it in it just goes on to a cool down yeah hooks are really really damn good so there's various ways you might learn about legitimate secrets you can convert into hooks you might torture someone and they'll tell you about it you could send your spymaster in to just find some secrets but on this occasion of course yes this is about fabricating hulk so literally inventing them out of thin air this is really really powerful because one thing even a we cook can do is make a massive difference to marriage acceptance so you can arrange some really good marriages and on top of that it's a lot harder these days to invite people to court they seem to be a lot more reluctant to travel from court to court just because you invite them hooks once again can really help with that so being able to generate hooks on a person of your choosing very powerful very useful this is one of those early perks that's worth just nipping in to grab just because yeah even if you're not really planning to really dig into the intrigue lifestyle it's worth having anyway very powerful other than that fairly classic stuff no need to go into details here so find secret progress speed so yes your spy master can find secrets even flipping faster kidnapper an abduction scheme a hostile scheme which basically means it uses your intrigue and your spymaster skills and potential under some circumstances agents you have to recruit so a lot more complicated than a basic diplomacy personal scheme like swaying or romancing for example so yes good way to just uh grab someone so yes this is an example of an action that's only available by taking this particular perk so just grab them shove them in prison and once they're in prison of course you can do all sorts of nasty things to them though your council and the wider world might still object a little bit if you just execute people for no reason whatsoever but still very very powerful indeed and very very flexible too because for example say if you capture an enemy leader when you're a war with them well the war's basically over because you've got their king captured so potentially could this be a way of winning or getting yourself out of losing an otherwise unwinnable war could well be it's a really good scheme court of shadows just means your spymaster is better at stopping enemy plots from happening inside your territory nothing particularly dramatic there and then yes enemy hostile schemes are less likely to succeed against you and indeed everybody in your court nice to have nothing too complicated swift execution murder scheme power plus 30 so yeah you can just murder people a bit faster not spectacular but fine job done right hostile scheme success chance plus 25s that's all hostile schemes that's murder that's kidnapping that's really good that's really really darn powerful so if you're thinking of doing any form of intrigue stuff well worth grabbing that and then we get down to twice schemed so yes normally you can only be running one personal and one hostile scheme simultaneously with this two hostile schemes at once murder two people or you know kidnap one murder another basically doubles how fast you can scheme very very strong indeed so this is this is a really damn solid trait obviously if you're not planning to do intriguing whatever and if you've got not a great spy master and especially good stats in terms of your own intrigue might not be worthwhile because you know it can be difficult to make these schemes especially the hostile schemes come off they have a very low success chance unless you properly invest into them but still if you happen to be wanting to go this way obviously schema absolutely is a must and you'll be wanting to take pretty much all of it although i can't ever be a little bit disappointed that yes the actual schema perk at the end of the tree is entry plus five which is very good but yes it's hostile scheme power plus 25 not hostile scheme success plus 25 so that's a bit disappointing but then again i suppose it's a bit more important for the hostile schemes because they tend to be really on the slow side and given you're probably going to be wanting to do this against foreign leaders rather than people who are close by who need to get on side maybe because they're a bit slower it's better to have the scheme power up for hostile rather than personal it's fine i mean i'll take it just for intrigue plus five because that's a really really damn big boost right moving on to seducer say hello to possibly my favorite perk in the entire game like weeds in a garden available immediately because it's right at the top of the tree fertility 30 boom honestly i can see the advantage of just the moment you hit 16 in this game go into intrigue take weeds in the garden be on temptation focus for six or so years so you've got that and another perk of your choosing just to basically push out a bunch of children while you're nice and young very very good idea to my mind fertility 30 permanently i have no idea why that's so high up the tree i would have put that way further down it just seems really really damn strong the rest of the tree unfortunately is actually kind of pretty much garbage this is actually one of the weakest trees in the game to my mind so you've got seduction scheme power plus 30 just to seduce people a bit faster honestly in my experience it doesn't take too long to juice people anyway that's not spectacular seduction scheme success chance against your own courtiers and guests plus 50 that's nice but yeah in a world where it's more difficult to invite people to court you're going to be spending more time seducing people who aren't in your court than are so i mean it's fine but it's very situational unshackled lust so removes your attraction penalties in seduction schemes basically if you've not got any attraction penalties like you know you're disfigured or whatever then that's completely pointless as far as i can tell so that's kind of garbage subtle design now that one's kind of good because yes that means you can actually start seducing people regardless of tear difference so normally if you're like say i don't know a count or something and you're trying to seduce the emperor that would probably go down badly because you're only a count but yes if you take this perk then you can seduce people of a higher rank than you without it being a problem which is again fine but again very often i imagine you're going to be seducing people of a similar or lower rank than you i guess this one could be useful there's probably some ridiculous machiavellian scheme about i don't know seducing the pope or the emperor of the byzantine empire or something but i don't really uh see much of an advantage also it does mean that you can seduce your immediate family members much more easily if that's really what you want to do again not sure what the benefit is unless you're just really looking to create appalling genetic message that might go on to pollute your dynasty for generations to come but i guess if you want to you can grace for recovery you can't critically fail seduction schemes i've literally never seen a critical fail in a seduction scheme so that doesn't seem to come up much anyway but i guess it's nice to have as a backup mortal adoration so your lovers are less likely to join murder schemes against you and could potentially save you in the case of attempted murders that one could be nice but again how likely is it that one someone's going to be trying to murder you two the scheme is going to be advanced if it's actually going to fire when you know you should have your spy master stopping that sort of business and three even if it does this event actually triggers it just seems like there's too many ifs going on there that one just seems kind of garbage to me smooth operator success chance plus 25 that one's nice it's always nice to have success chance and finally seducer itself so permanent fertility plus 20 attracts your opinion plus 40 intrigue plus three pretty much garbage because fertility plus 20 well as we've discussed you can literally have fertility plus 20 in temptation and you literally got plus 30 on the first perk of the tree so why would you invest nine to get another 20 that's just no no no no no no i mean attraction opinion plus 40 is fine i guess but i can really leave it i feel like this is really just for role-playing purposes light weeds in the garden great shame it's not part of a better tray and finally torturer i love tortra there is some real trash in here that you definitely shouldn't be utilizing but i kind of love it anyway so you may recall back when we were discussing uh overseer i mentioned jess it was kind of half control but also a little bit about dread as well the reason why i didn't think that was particularly noteworthy is a torturer is where the real dread is that's what this tree is about it's basically the dread train because the easiest way to get your dread up is to torture people you get a load of dread for every torture you do torture is really good in this game so let's talk about how good torturing is if you talk to someone 50 chance of either gaining intrigue or compatibility that's fine max is out at five of each but again this is right at the beginning of the tree so i'm not really so fast i mean that's fine plus five to a primary stat plus five to ability to fight that's okay that's absolutely fine that's a nice to have dreadful as well dread gain plus 30 so you're gaining dread a lot faster which as i say you're gaining because you're torturing people now here's the fun one right here normally the game balances torture by saying okay if you talk to someone you're gonna lose a lot of piety and your priests aren't gonna be happy about it nope really really early on into this tree really powerful perk divine retribution where actually you know what all you priests just accept without question that whoever it is you're torturing they 100 deserve it spectacular but really the more important thing is that just means you can keep torturing forever just capture people get him in prison torture torture torture torture torture straight up to 100 dread no problem whatsoever and bear in mind of course 100 dread starts syncing with all sorts of other stuff really nicely like the catastrophically powerful prestige tree back in diplomacy where you can double your prestige with maxed out dread with the perk that's available right at the top of the tree nip in grab it nip back out again very powerful perk firm hand okay this one over here however this one's a bit of a joke one so thriving in chaos for every stress level that's between one and three you gain a four marshall four intrigue six combat ability now that sounds fun but you definitely shouldn't really do this like do not allow yourself to stay at high levels of stress just because you know it gets you some good stats that is some really really damn powerful stats right there plus eight to marshall level two stress plus eight intrigue plus 12 g combat stats don't do it you will die young of a heart attack it is not worth it it will never be worth it do not do this then we get into a bit of an odd one so dread gain per tyranny 0.5 this one is very unnecessary because if you're in the torturer tree you do not need to be picking up tyranny to gain more dread you will already have dread maxed out at all times so don't even worry about that one it's kind of completely unnecessary now here's a really powerful one fee attacks so yes indeed intimidated vassals give you 15 percent more taxes and levies terrified vassals that's how you leverage this by the way it's either not scared at all intimidated or terrified there's only the three levels 30 more to your levies and to your taxes that is a huge ridiculous benefit and bear in mind that's only flipping six perks in remember back in overseer where we had to invest eight perc to get like what was it five percent levy 10 tax no no no no no no this is vastly better another amazing perk below that forever infamous dread decay minus a thousand percent so basically once you've hit 100 dread you're just gonna stay there forever which is great so yes once you've taken that that's it you're just gonna be uh terrifying your vassals for the rest of time spectacular because then your vassals are just gonna be handing over huge piles of money in troops it's great torturer is such a good trade is an amazing train minor one but still nice to have of course if you need to imprison someone plus 50 chance that's a massive massive increase really really nice and torture of the perk is amazing combat skill up by four which is i can take or leave drag game plus 50 honestly completely redundant because by the time you've got this perk you will be at 100 and it will not be going down anymore so i don't even know why that one's here because it's completely unnecessary hostile scheme resistance that is nice and for some reason levy size plus ten percent i don't know why this makes your levy go up ten percent i don't know if like you know ten percent of all the people in your country are so bloody terrified of you they're going to volunteer just because they're worried you might torture them otherwise but uh yeah that's worth it just for that levy size 10 and hostile skin resistance really good so yeah i'd say intrigue together with diplomacy are my two favorites actually schema is solid if a bit plain torturer is just hilarious over here meanwhile the prestige and patriarch trees they are both spectacular right now we've covered intrigue let's go back over to stewardship and it's so boring it's not bad but it's so boring and so bland i don't know why this lifestyle is so dull but i probably find myself not using it just because it's very uninteresting so let's start with avarice here and golden obligations so this one probably sounds amazing as a starting point so straight away you join this tree and you can start demanding payments for hooks if you've got a hook on someone you can get them to pay you off now there is a problem with this you see if you're a smart cookie your brain might immediately have gone oh my goodness as dynasty head i get hooks on every single one of my family members i could get every single one of them to pay me off yes in theory you can but there's one small problem which is yeah there's no guarantee people have actually got money the vast majority of people in this game have zero gold because gold kind of seems to represent like significant accumulated wealth so as a result of that yeah we've got a lot of people here who just sort of don't don't have any money don't have money no money no money plenty of adults in the world who simply don't have money and you can't blackmail them for money if they've got no money to hand over and even if you do find someone who's landed on this has a bit of money coming in the amount you get is so so bloody little like yeah we got to count here got a hook on him a strong hook in fact a really powerful hook and he gets me 50 gold so yeah that's basically very little in the grand scheme of things that's just really not much at all this is exacerbated by the fact that yes generally hooks coming a bit on the uh the random side because if you send your spy in to look for secrets and hooks you don't know who he's gonna find the hooks from odds are it's going to be some nobody who's not got any money to pay you off so you've kind of got to sync this up where the truth is relative in order to find a hook on someone who's actually got money in order to actually blackmail them for the hook but the problem is of course if you're going to go to all the effort of getting a hook on an important person with a giant pile of money then there's a lot better things you could do with a hook on an important person than you know just getting 50 gold like say for example organizing a really advantageous wedding for someone in your family this just feels like a bit of a trash thing it never really seems to work out properly after that this one is a very dull tree i mean it's fine but it's not interesting so vassal tax up by 10 i mean that's not bad for only needing a two perk investment to get into if you're at war monthly income plus 10 that's nice because that's all income so you know that's your own holdings together with your vassals so that's okay and it is my domain extort subject good way of getting money in a hurry but i wouldn't use it outside of an absolute emergency because yes it is absolutely gonna screw you over somehow here we go so let's do a bit of extortion here so 85 gold which is not really that much of the grand scheme of things but as a result of that all of my corti is minus 15. now if your courtiers all love you i guess that's fine but it really feels like you're not getting much for screwing over your relationships with a lot of important people alternatively yes losing 150 prestige for only 50 gold bad trade to my mind or backing out and you're just losing prestige so this is this is not a good selection of options really another one not even worth thinking about here monthly income per stress level you never want to be deliberately floating high stress you will die i mean i guess it's nice while you're briefly stressed to have like you know 10 or 20 percent more gold coming in but the thing is if you're that stressed your priority is going to be stopping being that stressed so you don't die so the amount of time in this game you're gonna be stressed is so low you're not gonna be getting much benefit out of this so that's a bit of a trash one to be honest and uh oh here we go yes fearful troops so um basically this is what i wanted to intrigue first if you've gone down the torture route and you should it's hilarious fearful troops is amazing so many times maintenance per dredder minus 0.5 percent if your dread is 100 and not going down because you're a torturer yes congratulations your professional army is now half bloody price and that's just wonderful so if you've gone into the torture route well worth considering just nipping in here grabbing golden obligations grabbing war profiteer and then grabbing fearful troops because the bare minimum war profiteer you're going to be at war way more often than you're stressed so that's not a bad perk it's okay i suppose and then finally detailed ledgers so you can't play as republics right now but if you've got any in your empire then yes they just generate a little bit more in the way of tax might be useful might not depends where you are in the world to be honest and after all of that investment you finally access at any cost where you get to start selling titles and that's a thing you just shouldn't be doing because why are you selling your titles when you could be giving them to people who are part of say your family or your dynasty or who are friends to you or who look in general don't do this bad call at the end of the tree you get yourself yeah your own personal holding taxes plus 15 children plus two which is fine it's good it's catastrophically boring and bland but like if you want money here you go oh sorry did i just say that avarice was boring and bland say hello to architects the most boring tree in the game nothing interesting here whatsoever so yeah your buildings and your holdings just a tiny bit cheaper by like five percent which is so small you'll barely even notice it you can send your steward off to collect taxes just a little bit more effectively not much to be honest garrison size plus 20 is sort of nice but you know i'd much rather have more levy than more garrison fault level plus one might be useful if it pushes you over the limit whereby certain siege equipment just doesn't work anymore but unlikely to be the case seems pretty modest to me building construction time minus 30 and holding construction time minus 30 honestly they don't seem to take that long to me i feel like i wouldn't even notice that i'd taken that perk levy reinforcement rate plus 100 that's nice that's okay that's that's fine but honestly much of the game your levee's already going to be maxed so it's not going to make much difference whatsoever now centralization that one's okay development growth this is just yeah basically how technically and culturally advanced a particular territory is a so that's just going to rise a bit faster that's okay but do you really want to invest three perks in making that happen i'm not convinced you do especially when you can just send in your steward to help out with that business if you really want to once you've taken all of that boring nonsense popular figurehead popular opinion plus 50 basically just means that uh yeah there's less likely to be uh small uprisings but small peasant uprisings are literally the most unimportant things in the world because when has anyone ever seriously been threatened by a small non-vassal uprising it's not going to be a problem they've always got nothing but trash you just go and murder them it's fine noah concedes domain limit plus two that's fine that's absolutely fine but if you're this deep into architect there's probably a very good chance you've already got a good stewardship education you've already got a very good stewardship stat so as a result of that do you really need another plus two is that gonna be essential i don't necessarily think it is and finally after all of that the architect's perk so stewardship plus two building time down construction costs down again not bad but not spectacular either it just feels like after you've invested nine perks you're just not getting much out of this to be honest like stack all of these together what you even have i mean as far as i can tell it looks like you're only getting buildings yet twice as fast but only 15 cheaper which strikes me as a very small saving for an investment into architects like there is one thing you can do of course which is you're allowed one per reset per lifetime so there could be an argument to say you know what what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna invest heavily into architect and then i'm gonna build all the buildings with a pile of money i've got from somewhere then i'm gonna reset my perks and put them somewhere that's not garbage but like even then i don't think it's worth it architect isn't even worth resetting out of just don't go into architect it's just not very good thankfully we've got administrator over here and yes indeed this is the good one so if you've got a stewardship education don't worry there is one good tree it's this one over here meritocracy is brilliant not obviously for everyone because if you're already you know an independent ruler who doesn't have a liege that's literally worthless however if you're a duke who's looking for a good opportunity to like you know go and seize the kingdom here you go you've now got a claim throne scheme you can use against your own liege for a free claim on the throne spectacular from there you can go straight into large levees so 20 more levees from vassals that's great that's a really really big pile of extra troops so that one is absolutely flipping lovely monthly tyranny going down honestly you probably shouldn't be having that much tyranny anyway to be honest but i suppose if you happen to think of a tiny bit of tyranny like you know there's someone who really needs to be executed but everyone's saying oh no you can't do that that's a crime i guess that makes it you know a little bit easier to get away with that sort of thing if you want toe the line's a bit vague because the game is very unclear what less likely means like five percent less likely 90 percent less likely doesn't say haven't had time to dig into the exact numbers but uh yes less independence factions not terrible if you're an emperor and you've got a lot of big vassals who are like you know strong enough to maybe be thinking about that probably not a bad idea over on the left i mean while yes domestic affairs efficiency plus 25 that one is absolute flipping trash because yes for whatever reason chancellors are completely useless now i don't know why chancellors are useless but they just are so let's get a decent chancellor into position right now so 16 diplomacy that's pretty darn good and we'll put him on domestic affairs as a result of that after like you know several years or something my direct vast opinion is going to be plus eight which is just so insignificant i don't know why chancellors are such trash now but chances are trash now and they don't do anything useful they just sit around doing nothing because all the useful stuff got moved over to other people actually i'm being mean they generate prestige so basically yeah just keep them on foreign affairs because at least that generates a bit of prestige and at the bare minimum if they're competent at their job yes there's a chance they might generate extra stuff like you know extra vassal opinion extra good stuff in vassal contracts and whatever so i guess if that stuff triggers that's positive at least likeable is never going to hurt direct vassal opinion plus 10 is always nice leisure opinion plus 20 that's gonna be nice too positions of power counselor opinion plus 20 very very useful because of course yes generally it's going to be your most powerful important vassals on the council that's really really darn nice honored to serve this one is lovely powerful vassal counts to contribution in terms of tax and levy plus 20 percent really really darn nice that one's very welcome and finally administrator diplomacy plus one stewardship plus three vast opinion at plus five again more and more vast opinion that's never going to flipping hurt honestly if you've got high diplomacy you probably don't need this because people are going to be loving you anyway so it's not really necessary but it's probably the best of a bad bunch i mean avarice over here is sort of okay administrators got some fun stuff architects just catastrophically dull i want to stress it's not a bad one it's just one that does precisely what it says on the tin plenty of other lifestyles give you a whole bunch of fun role play stuff contain a whole bunch of wild cards stewardship does precisely what you expect it to gives you more money makes you better at building makes you better at being an administrator no more but no less either it's a good solid dependable if somewhat bland peck and finally learning our learning is learning is an interesting one there's a real star of the show here but uh there's interesting stuff going in uh in all three trees so okay let's start with whole of body i don't like whole of body i think hole of body is kind of bad but the thing is it really is down to playing the numbers game if you think about it because uh the whole point of whole of body is it keeps you alive it means doctors work better you have got more health you're gonna live longer however bear in mind of course the only way you invest in whole of body is by spending maybe two decades of your life investing in it so unless you're pretty confident you're gonna get two decades plus of extra life out of it then why did you bother investing in it in the first place if you're gonna spend so much of your life investing in you know making sure you're healthy but then you die before you get that investment back then yeah i'm i'm not a hundred percent convinced let's have a look see it anyway there is at least some interesting stuff here so yes less chance of court physicians just chopping off your leg and then tossing a nest of bees into the room just to see what happens your physicians tend to be vaguely competent that's nice that's very welcome unfortunately yes this left hand branch is very weak because it pertains to stress just like we've seen before back in the what was it the patriarch tree i believe so yes uh carefree stress gainer minus 20 again you don't need to bother with this just look at what your character likes or doesn't like just play along with what they like you will find yourself losing stress nice and fast without too much of a problem then mental resilience mental breaks i.e big dramatic moments where you've been too stressed for too long they come along less commonly but the thing is you are not going to be floating around at high stress that much at all it is too easy to lose stress faster than that so this one strikes me as completely pointless and speaking of completely pointless say hello to restraint where you can embrace celibacy and then abandon it i don't really know what the point of that is because yes that means obviously you could become celibate but celebrities pretty garbage like one party a month is very low priest opinion up plus 10 that's not much at all and then you have less children but like you need children to make alliances so i mean i guess maybe if you've got one child or the right number of children you don't want any more in case he's going to mess up your succession plans maybe i suppose but seriously celibate just seems like a real waste of time to marry know thyself however is extremely useful so when you're going to die of natural causes in precisely one year you will just know you'll just know about it you'll be told there's going to be an alert so if you need to you know make some last minute changes to succession law one last minute you know stabby in the eye of one son who really shouldn't inherit etc etc could be useful potentially but it's really a nice to have you notice there's a lot of stuff that i'm not impressed with over here this on the right this isn't so bad so less likely to get ill which is very very nice indeed iron constitution so yeah fertility and health good boosts right there in terms of disease resistance now that's nice that's really nice because that is the point where you might get yourself some actual time back if you just come into hole of body take anatomical studies so doctors don't kill you with bees then you just take wash your hands so you're less likely to get ill and then move down to iron constitution so once again you're less likely to get ill you're more likely to recover that's only going to take what like seven to ten years of investment now the fact that you're not gonna die of illness or at least you're less likely to die of illness you're less likely to die of medical incompetence you might well make a time profit off that at least but yes unfortunately because you've got these garbage perks here these perks at the bottom are relatively inaccessible healthy is just a generic medium boost just keeping you alive a bit longer and then hole of body at the bottom very dull warner fertility plus 20 another medium boost and stress gain down possibly the worst perk at the end of an actual tree in the entire game to my mind especially as there's so many easier ways to get fertility plus twenty percent than investing nine perks in the whole of body like say investing in a single perk over in seducer seriously game what are you doing right let's move over to theologian which you might be expecting to be the equivalent of the prestige tree over in diplomacy kind of but it's nowhere near as good in fact it's almost sad how much worse it is to be honest so we start off with faithful same faith opinion plus five that's nice that's okay because if you're like a mono cultural mono religious empire that's effectively general opinion plus five which i'm not going to say no to even if it's a bit on the modest side head over here down the right side religious relations efficiency plus 20 yep that's basically yet another council job which is honestly not very good and boosting it by 20 isn't really going to help you much so yeah this 13 skill person is only getting me 0.65 piety and yes uh theocratic rulers are up to plus 6.5 kind of garbage because yes the thing is all those perks boost the actual main part of the job but the main part of the job is always garbage the good bit is the possible side effects where if the person's incompetent they're going to mess up a lot but if the person's really good at their job they get some really really damn nice stuff going on in terms of yes the benefits the possible side effects are way better than the actual job itself so boosting the job itself strikes me as a bit of a waste okay now here's where this tree gets a bit funky which is it changes depending on who you are so because right now and i'm not sure exactly what the difference is i think it might be like pagan versus not pagan which isn't normally a distinction this game makes but it's the closest i could see yes because this guy is not pagan church and state for him is monthly party from buildings plus 100 and down at the bottom defender of the faith is diplomacy plus level of devotion plus one so level of devotion is what level you've got to in your religion same as we saw with prestige earlier but with piety instead of prestige and also monthly piety plus 20 that's nice but uh yes there is a small problem with that which is the benefits from leveling up piety through level of devotion just aren't as good as leveling up prestige because prestige gets you big old piles of knights this just gets you opinion with people of the same religion as you which is fine i suppose but again could be better the prestige tree is just so much objectively better but hang on a minute if i go over to ghana here ghana's defender of the faith also gives me diplomacy plus level of devotion and monthly piety plus 20 percent but church and state now is a realm priest opinion i.e the person who is uh the priest on your council plus 50. so that's actually different and if i just nip over to england and catholicism for a second yes their church and state is also realm priest plus 50 but their defender of the faith is tyranny gain minus 25 and same faith opinion plus five so yes theologian is a tree that just sort of goes all over the place depending on what religion you're part of i'm not 100 sure what the uh the pattern is but keep in mind this one's a hard one to evaluate because what it does varies wildly and then you've also got radian which increases the level of devotion impact by a hundred percent same as increasing the level of prestige impact over in the other tree except again a bit more of a wild card because what level of devotion does varies religion to religion so in islam say that's really really damn nice because that actually gets you up to plus 30 opinion with literally everyone of the same religion as you but in plenty of other religions it literally only impacts the clergy not everybody so yeah it's a real mixed bag whether this is actually worth it or not meanwhile on the left-hand branch yes you can convert faith in the county a little bit faster that one is okay i suppose like you know it really depends where you are if you're in a monocultural mono religious area that's completely worthless if you're invading an area that's a different religion to yours and it's so different that it's going to cause problems then that's pretty essential so very situational religious icon once again just helps you convert counties county by county just on the off chance that uh yes the religion is a little bit more uh well entrenched but here's the big one the one reason why you might want to dig into theologian to my mind which is uh profit profit is really really good because yes if you want to reform or create new iterations of faith that's really expensive like uh thousands and thousands of piety worth of expensive so yes if this guy wants to create an offshoot of islam that's going to cost her 4 600 piety and that's before we've actually made any like you know changes if i wanted to make say like you know a spiritual head of faith it's starting to get a lot more a lot more expensive as time goes by and yes we're gonna accept witchcraft and now now five thousand uh five which is possibly the level where it's very difficult to actually you know create or a form of faith within a single individual's lifetime but profit cuts that in half which is spectacular and gets you more piety per nights which is very very nice indeed and of course syncs really nicely uh with gallant over here as we've discussed previously so i would stay away from theologian unless your goal for this character's lifetime is to create a new religion or reform their religion or whatever like reforming a religion is really a lifetime's work because the amount of piety and investment in theology it takes to do is huge and i like that that's good it should be a character's lifetime work to reform a religion it's supposed to be a big complicated thing that's fine but uh if you're not planning to do that probably worth staying out of theologian but then again look at it depending on what religion you are because as i say certain islamic religions get a lot more out of it in terms of general opinion within their faith than some other pagans do so have a look over at yourself your tree may differ slightly from mine well probably won't differ however is uh yeah theologian itself learning plus three monthly party plus 20 that's fine i suppose if you're really desperately going for as much piety as possible which to be honest if you're in this tree you're probably going for profit you're probably looking at reformation therefore you probably do just need as much flipping piety as you can get your hands on so honestly if you're in this tree you're probably going down to the bottom yes but so put those aside because they're both not very good aside from certain very specific situations scholar oh scholar is wonderful scholar is absolutely flipping wonderful now you may recall previously when we were looking at patriarch i did mention that that was basically uh yes the tree that produced free skill points no no no no no it has been topped by one tree and that is scholar because scholar is wonderful admittedly it does start out a bit on the weak side so yes once again you can have two wards at any given time they might become extra skills they might become your friends i mean that could be useful if you're really looking to the next generations like you know if you take that and you also take a groomed to rule and then you're also the guardian of your own children that could be very nice those things kind of stack on top of each other to actually give your children some extra skills if you know you're going to be playing as that character during the next generation that's fine i suppose and also it is useful if you're going into a very culturally or religiously diverse area particularly like you know if you're expanding into that sort of an area because yes uh open-minded and it's equivalent down over here yes you've got yourself basically a different faith and different culture opinion plus 15 together with the faith conversion cost of being much much reduced and you can ignore negative culture opinions so basically yes it makes it much easier to just live in a very diverse area if you've got these perks over on the right another very very situational one so scientific cultural fascination progress okay very quickly tech tech in this game basically yes tech is decided at the cultural level where the person who gets to decide what tech is really being actively researched at any one time is whoever actually has the most land of that culture so in this case that does actually happen to be me therefore i get to choose what we should be researching at any given moment they are going to very slowly fill up over a very long period of time anyway so yes uh 325 years but if i'm fascinated then it's going to be only a 28 years so yes naturally we want to speed that up because if we can get a tech advantage over other cultures that's going to be really really bloody useful in war so broadly this is really an everything or nothing type situation here if you are the culture head you definitely should take scientific immediately if you're not it literally does nothing but unfortunately yes there is some good stuff uh gated down below increase development in county that's just a job that you're i think it's your steward can do just made that a little bit on the better side that job tends to be a bit more efficient than some of the others so that one's kind of okay then scholarly circles learning per level of devotion plus two no i think that one's actually pretty darn solid because yeah that means you can get some really massive learning bonuses up bearing in mind of course yes level devotion has uh five levels right here so we're talking about a bonus of between two and ten to learning which is honestly not nothing even at a low level now you're probably thinking john this doesn't seem very good why are you telling us this tree's so good yes unfortunately it's another one those trees where the stuff at the beginning doesn't look particularly interesting but it's worth it all right it's worth pushing through to the stuff at the bottom it's like the patriarch tree again down over here where yeah it's flipping friendly council and sound foundations where the gold is in fact it is literally exactly the same shape okay there's a fun coincidence so um learn on the job learn on the job this one is this one is slightly dumb so 20 of your counselors primary skills are added to your own so if say for example you've got a chancellor who has got himself say diplomacy of 20 you just get four added on to your diplomacy right there that for every single flipping position so if you say for example that everyone on your account is gonna have skill of around 12 which is not desperately high but it's not a disaster i think you're gonna arrange them to make sure they've all got vaguely appropriate stats on show well that's gonna be what two or three added on to everything that's just 10 skill points right there and if you've got one really really good candidate like say you know a martial with 30 or a spy master with 25 well then all of a sudden you've got five or six being added on in that skill and that's really significant this is possibly the best perk in the game this is one of the strongest just the amount of stats you could gain off the right council is uh yeah that one is crazy strong and then below that you may recall right back at the beginning i said uh yes the whole fabricating claim 75 faster wasn't so good because there are a lot of better ways to get claims these days uh yes say hello to sanctioned loopholes a perk that is so good i have suspect at some point they'll modify it or patch it out sanction loopholes let you buy claims you can just walk up to anyone in the world and say hi there i see you've got to claim how do you feel about selling it to me and that's just ridiculous especially as of course if you want a particular claim you can just use the ui to your advantage so for example say i just want to have a claim on the kingdom of west frankia well the game tells me who the flipping claimants are i know everybody who's got a flipping claim okay i couldn't afford that but i've just bought myself a claim on the duchy of verona so uh i've now just got you know the right to go and invade the duchy of rona and have it if that's what i want to do so yeah she just uh spends piety to get yourself a claim basically any claim in the bloody world if you can afford it you can find someone to sell it to you which is that's so ridiculous they've got to patch that out at some point and even better at the end of the tree scholar is actually one of my favorite lifestyle traits so learning plus five which is great you've got uh hostile schemes and personal schemes success chance both up by 10 spectacular development growth so all your counties start getting more and more advanced more and more tech diddly diddly dee plus 15 a month very very nice indeed really solid perk right there so there you go ladies and gentlemen a quick and i put quick and inverted comments because i genuinely thought this was going to be a really short video but um i'm guessing actually it's um it's not in the end but anyway possibly actually a very comprehensive view of the new lifestyle system which trees are good it's this one this is the good one this is the good tree invest in this tree you mad bastard possibly this one too this one's pretty darn solid yes there's there's some good trees and there's some there's some fine ones i'd say like overseer is not very good i love gallon strategist is really solid stewardship is boring but i guess it's not bad i suppose alvarez and administrator are both sort of okay torturers hilarious schemers pretty darn solid seduces kind of garbage scholars amazing theologian bloody hell who only knows is the absolute wild card whole of body wouldn't flip and bother with but uh yeah there's some good darn stuff here some really good stuff hopefully some food for thought hopefully i've managed to you know help you have a think about uh how to navigate this system in particular don't just pick a tree and think okay i'm now going to fill out this tree consider whether you just want to nip in grab some stuff and then move straight on do not fall for sunken cost fallacy dammit so yeah some good stuff crusader kings three always happy to have an excuse to talk about that and very happy to confirm indeed the full proper complete crusader kings 3 series will be starting later this week ladies and gentlemen so plenty of crusader kings 3 yet to come hopefully you are looking forward to that but in the meantime i'd be john's has been many of true nerd and this has been the crusader kings 3 lifestyle walkthrough thank you very much and goodbye this this guy's enjoying that this guy's enjoying his elephant a bit too bad oh my god it's fair for rona we set our scene oh my god becky look at her bud it is so big they've managed to glitch inside one of the buildings elephants at the rear and then come the chariots

Channel: Many A True Nerd

Views: 182,955

Rating: 4.889667 out of 5

Keywords: Crusader Kings 3, Crusader Kings 3 game, Crusader Kings 3 gameplay, let's play Crusader Kings 3, Crusader Kings 3 tutorial, Crusader Kings 3 guide, Crusader Kings 3 pc, Crusader Kings 3 walkthrough, Crusader Kings III, Crusader Kings, crusader kings 3 lifestyle, crusader kings 3 lifestyle perks, crusader kings 3 diplomacy guide, crusader kings 3 martial guide, crusader kings 3 intrigue guide, crusader kings 3 learning guide, crusader kings 3 stewardship guide

Id: 5eTZEDyQxXc

Length: 98min 1sec (5881 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020