Crusader Kings 3 is out now, and it is very good indeed. Paradox’s flagship “dynasty ‘em up” returns with all the court intrigue, iffy inbred marriages, and poorly justified wars as you would expect. The grand strategy game has by all accounts been a huge success, and reviewers have particularly praised the updated visuals, including the 3D modelled characters and the trimming of the fatty features of Crusader Kings 2’s increasingly bloated later days.
However, this is a Paradox game, and we all know what that means – bugs! While Paradox is very good at supporting their games and ironing out bugs quickly, you can usually be assured of a rocky first few days with a new release, and Crusader Kings 3 is no exception. Here are a few of my favourite bugs that I’ve encountered in my roughly 20 hours of game time.
My Naked Wife
So picture this: Harold Godwineson, having recently achieved the impossible by beating back the forces of both Harald Hardrada and William the Conqueror, wants to settle down and live out the rest of his reign in peace. Good King Harold decides to marry, and all is normal on his wedding day. However, the very next day Harold awakes to find that his bride is a nudist. This is not the quiet life Harold was after.
As far as I can tell there is no reason or trait causing my beloved Bothild to so publicly de-gown. Loading to an earlier save didn’t fix the issue, and save-scumming is the act of a knave, meaning I had to play Harold’s following, very long, 20-year reign with a naked wife. To add insult to injury, the second Harold died, Bothild suddenly decided she was free to wear clothes again. No closure, no explanation, just confusion.
My Gay Wife
It turns out the struggle to find a suitable wife may be hereditary in the Godwinson family. Upon the death of King Harold II, we take the reins with the creatively named King Harold III (medieval England had little flair with this sort of thing). But an early obstacle presents itself; my Queen Ildegarda is gay.
Now medieval people had a far more, well, medieval approach to this than we do nowadays. As I prepare to tweet good old Popey (I assume Twitter was how you reached the Pope in the 1100’s?), I realise Queen Ildegarda has a child from a previous marriage. Even more surprising: she is pregnant with my child.
It turns out that talk of divorce was premature, and before we have even finished celebrating the birth of young Ric Flair Jr. we receive news of another wee baby on the way.
Now, I realise that life was hard for women in those days, and by and large you did what you had to get-by. But Crusader Kings has always bent the rules of fact to write a better story, and it begs the question: if the Homosexuality trait doesn’t do anything, why include it at all? Hopefully this will be fixed so there’s a bit more representation soon.
Spymaster Assists His Own Murder
Crusader Kings games have always been a boiling pot of mechanics and systems, so perhaps this one is inevitable, but it’s still bemusing to see. Upon discovering that I have an absolutely legitimate claim to a county one of my vassals, the unfortunate Count Otto, holds in error (read: it’s rich and I want it), I decide the best way to get it is to stop him from being my vassal, by stopping him from being alive. I can then revoke it from his heretic son.
I set about removing him from the succession (and existence), and set my Spymaster to assist my evil plot. Now my spymaster has a respectable intrigue stat, and this boosts my plot well. However, on checking which of my faithful minions I can invite to my scheme, I notice something dismaying: my Spymaster is Count Otto. That’s right, the Count Otto I’m actively plotting to kill. In a slight panic (getting caught plotting to murder your vassals is… unfortunate), I mull on cancelling the plot. However, before I can do that I receive the option to complete my scheme and murder the Count. To my bemusement it works: Count Otto has succeeded in murdering himself on my bidding. Now that is dedication to the good of the realm.
Feasts ‘N’ Letters
As I approach the end of King Harold III’s glorious reign, I notice an odd trend. Increasingly, the only prompts I see are invitations to feasts, and invitations to correspond. Seriously, at one point I am invited to 7 feasts in a row with no other prompt. Being only on my second character, it’s slightly worrying that this may be Crusader Kings 3 at its limit of stories to tell. I dearly hope this is a bug, because only 90 years into a play through is barely scratching the surface.
As this goes on, the invitations become increasingly erratic. I am constantly invited to feasts from far flung, minor rulers in the Middle East. Then, to my surprise, an invitation to a feast comes in from the Holy Roman Emperor, despite being actively at war with him. My favourite however was the invitation from an invisible character without a name. Upon accepting my game crashed and I had to revert to an earlier save. I choose to believe the invitation was from a ghost, and good King Harold III simply couldn’t handle this. I am willing to concede however that this MAY have been a bug.
They Killed My Cat
They killed Paws.
I’m choosing to believe this was a bug. No-one with a conscience could do this on purpose. Could they? Oh Paws, you were too pure for this world. I push my sorrows back down, and torture a courtier to death. Y’know, as a rebound.
Further Issues
On a serious note, there does seem to be some performance issues in Crusader Kings 3. I’m playing on a bang-average PC and have noticed freezing, textures popping in, and most oddly my keyboard becoming unresponsive until I minimise and then return to the game. I have also had several nasty crashes, almost exclusively happening during battles. One of these was so nasty I had to restart my computer to get it to do anything.
As I mentioned at the start of the article, launch-week bugs are nothing new to Paradox games, and to their credit they have acknowledged many of these and have a known issues list you can access through the launcher. However, more worrying is the lack of things to do mid-game. Crusader Kings games live and die by their ability to tell an interesting story, and struggling so hard to generate new intrigue that the game breaks is not a good look for this new instalment. Here’s hoping Paradox has this one in their sights.
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