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Dark Ages

*** UPDATED TO 1.16.2.3 (latest version of CK3) ***


Greetings and welcome to Dark Ages!



Abstract

Dark Ages is a mod designed for the segment of the players that have mastered the vanilla game and have a penchant for good role play. In Dark Ages you will face a more challenging, realistic and gritty game without providing the AI blatant bonuses.

You will lose battles and wars, your gold will not be enough to build everything, you will be presented with difficult choices and different aspects of gameplay will need to be juggled in a careful exercise of risk management. Expect sudden turns of fate and the unpredictability of fortune while a plethora of new events and decisions add significantly to the emergent narrative the player experiences. Hopefully, the lives of your digital rulers will be infused with much more drama and depth.


Translations

Dark Ages works with all languages (it displays its own text in English). There is a weekly updated translation to Spanish integrated in the mod.

External translations are also available in the workshop but I cannot vouch for their state or quality.


Important Note

Dark Ages has more than 30 game rules to allow the player to configure the gameplay experience according with his/her tastes. Browse through them and pick your way of playing exactly as you prefer.


Install Instructions

- Place Dark Ages as the last in the CK3 mod list
- For total conversions instead of placing it as the last in the list, try placing it immediately before the total conversion mod. Due to the complexity of Dark Ages compatibility with total conversions is not assured.
- If you are using More Provinces Expanded, even if it's not a total conversion, make sure you load Dark Ages BEFORE it
- If this is the first time with the mod, play with a King or Emperor. You will need to adapt your style of play to the vast changes to game balance Dark Ages introduces and you are better off if you start the game in a consolidated position.


Submods Internally Developed

- Alternative Muster Time - Returns to vanilla the speed armies muster
- Increased MaA Size - Returns to vanilla the size of your MaA regiments
- Lifestyle Undone - Returns to vanilla the amount of XP needed (1000) to gain a perk
- Fleets Undone - Reverts the changes made to Fleets costs, army maintenance while embarked and fleets' speed to vanilla values.


Some Features

- Weekly updated (every Friday there are bug fixes, tweaks and new content)

- Warfare has been rebalanced and is now more unpredictable and consequential.

- Several new ways - mostly enacted through decisions - of earning gold, adding new layers of role play and management to the gameplay.

- Several money sinks have been introduced, to keep the game more challenging and interesting.

- Diseases can kill. Expect to get "under the weather" more frequently, sometimes leading to serious diseases.

- Distance to the Realm Capital will be factored in calculating the problems far away vassals will potencially cause.

- There are many different game aspects that might lead to murder attempts on the player character.

- Character development as well as lifestyle perks have been reviewed in order to produce less powerful characters.

- Traits are used aplenty as modifiers in Dark Ages. A rival might hate the player but if he has some "good" personality traits he will refrain from planning a murder attempt. Or a Herculean character will have a much lower chance of getting a serious disease than a Weak one. In the same vein, Loyal, Just, Content or Honest Vassals will not cause special troubles due to distance from capital.

- Possibility to train your less endowed Knights to improve their Prowess

- Possibility to train yourself to increase your Prowess - if it is not good - with some complexity in the process.

- Pregnancies are risky affairs and children will die very young much more often.

- Characters can now be completely infertile and the respective trait only revealed later in life.

- Stress is an important variable in Dark Ages.

- Going into aggressive warfare will increase Stress yearly by a certain amount dependent on the character personality traits - a Compassionate character will have a much harder time dealing with his/her conscience than a Callous one.
Conversely, when at peace, Stress will decrease naturally by itself, again dependent on traits - in this case Compassionate characters will recover Stress faster than Callous ones.

- If the player character is over 39, without a direct heir - for instance if he/she or his/her partner is infertile - and the character is not very principled, the player can choose to go in search for a impostor to pose as a legal heir.

- Vassals will have an opinion penalty if they are far from the capital of the player character and lack some personality traits (like Loyal, Content, Honest or Just). The farther they are, the higher the opinion penalty.

- The Dread concept has been reviewed to be a two edged sword. Besides all the bonuses the players already know from vanilla plus the capability of the player character to intimidate his vassals or courtiers to gain something through a character interaction, it progressively lowers vassal's opinions and may turn the character liable to assassination attempts.

- There are a couple of new Traits to attain.

- There are new decisions to help the player to administrate better his/her Domain. You can now implement Harsh Rule, Plan Purges, Confiscate Church Land, Help the Communities by spending gold or Lower Taxes, for instance.

- County Control has been used extensively and dynamically changes the financial well being of the player. It can even pose a risk to his/her life as travelling across one's own Domain can end up being a risky proposition.

- Popular opinion can also be dangerous if going heavily into the negatives. Some desperado might attempt a revenge on the player.

- If his/her Council lacks talented people, the player might elect to attempt to locate someone with a good skill in the profession sought.

- There are a few changes made to the Legacies, specially the Blood Legacy has been balanced. Ubbermenchen will be rarer.

- Characters have now the ability of borrowing money by asking the right people outside the vanilla ways

- Applied throughout the mod principles of diminishing returns, trying to prevent the nasty effects of snowballing so prevalent in vanilla that break the immersion and challenge of the game.

- many, many, many more changes... it is a whole new game, with different ways of playing it. Pick your strategy and tread carefully as in the end your life will be always on the line.





A word of deep thanks to NoHackToday as he allowed me to include his superlative More Background Illustrations into Dark Ages to enrich the variety of the events' backgrounds with many, many new beautiful contextual art.

A word of deep thanks to The Professor as he allowed me to include his superlative Men at Arms Art into Dark Ages to provide each MaA unit with its own art.

Decisions to Massive demand obedience, ask for herd and ask for conversion were authored by Saltfish, NetFoley and 洛山达的法师.

Nomad herd reduction related to seasons was authored by Parttime Toast.