Crusader Kings III

Crusader Kings III

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Dark Ages
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969.883 MB
13 May, 2023 @ 3:55pm
24 Jul @ 11:31am
134 Change Notes ( view )

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Dark Ages

In 1 collection by Cardolam
Challenge, Realism & Roleplay
24 items
Description
*** 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

- No Skill Caps - Skills can be higher than the Dark Ages 25 maximum value
- 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. It feels like another game where the player must take notice of his Skills as they will be routinely tested

- 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.
Popular Discussions View All (17)
6
10 Jun @ 9:05am
War Exhaustion Bug?
Captain Chaps
56
24 Jul @ 12:09pm
My Mods List..
tilarium
19
1 Jan @ 9:58am
Error Log
TheLoneWanderer
2,578 Comments
Gilgamesh 6 hours ago 
Have you ever played with the mod "No More Gods, Only Man - Rebalance for High Skill Values" What do you think about that mod's approach of solving the issue of skill values being too high without making it a static cap?
Cardolam  [author] 13 hours ago 
Regarding Estates of the Realm I guess the possible buffs attainable, while it is debatable they are worth the gold and risk invested, can only be defined as very powerful. I will turn its effects more clear in the decision.

However, the bottom line of the implementation is to add a new gold sink... as long as the players deem that worthy compared to the refusal to Enact the Estates of the Realm.
Cardolam  [author] 13 hours ago 
@Everyone

You can now download a submod for Dark Ages called No Skill Caps that returns skill caps to vanilla levels. Load this new mod after Dark Ages.
Captain Smollett 14 hours ago 
I'll chime in and say that Assembling the Estates is a decision i clicked twice.... and never did it again. It sucks and it also doesnt tell you that there will be a follow-up event which i think is important enough info to put into the effects
Cardolam  [author] 14 hours ago 
@Mightus

At this time I am looking to enliven landless play. But I will take notice of your suggestions. Thx!
Cardolam  [author] 14 hours ago 
To ALL,

OK, I read you all "loud" and clear. Will remove the skill cap for next week update. Don't worry with your saved games as the actual values will return after I change the caps.

@Baji

Not from Dark Ages.
Mightus 14 hours ago 
Hey, I have a small suggestion, I feel like confiscate religious land decision should be somewhat more impactfull; in-game reason is that it isn't really worth to take for larger realms, and historically it should be sort of a big deal giving you a lot of money while hitting your piety level and destroying relations with the religious head (if they exist)
And other suggestion for the future if you are looking upon adding some things, I think that overhaul of Assembling the Estates would be cool, like giving you various short term bonuses in exchange for hooks for your vassals.
The Bunk 15 hours ago 
While I appreciate your desire to avoid snowballing, I would also like to request a rethink or maybe a toggle option for the skill cap of 25. Especially since I play with Obfusckate it's a bit sad not having *anyone* in the world anymore with A+/A++ skill to hire or murder off.

Incidentally: this mod + Obfusckate + More Interactive Vassals together really do make the holy trinity of absolutely goated CK3 experiences, thank you so much (to all three of you!)
Baji 16 hours ago 
Anyone else having an issue with all children receiving +1 to every skill each birthday up until adulthood? Started happening after the update to previous saves and I'm leaning towards it being this mod.
wingyiu.lw 16 hours ago 
The feeling of cap attributes is kind of like cutting off everyone's feet to make same high, it's fair and balanced but lower realistic.