Men-at-Arms

- The way Men-at-Arms are priced was overhauled. Hiring them now only takes a token amount of gold to recruit (20% of what they did, and you still pay full maintenance), however recruiting / expanding the regiments also expends prestige, around half of what the gold cost formerly was.

For tribes, Men-at-Arms still cost solely prestige.
Mercenaries still cost solely gold.
Holy Orders still cost solely piety to hire.

- Men-at-arms were given a second look stat and pricewise (quite drastically so, in some cases), and their pricing/stats was standardized and its now kept in excel-sheet like balance categories to keep them balanced in regards to one another.

Reasoning (Brief)
Since men-at-arms are basically your household troops, tying their recruitement to prestige in some way makes sense - and it also makes trucebreaking/going negative prestige pretty bad.

But most importantly, this makes AI recruit MaA way better and faster. So instead of waiting 50 years to face the famed french cavalry, you might now need to wait 5, if that! And everyone still pays the upkeep, so its not like they are free.

Furthermore, this also means you can get quite a bunch of retinue up and going from the very start of the game, rather than having to wait for gold to accrue (and you should be able to, since its not like time suddenly started in 1066 and before that realms had no men-at-arms of any sorts).

Siege Tweaks

- Siege progress and fort defense, alongside all their sources, were scaled up an order of magnitude (i.e forts have 1000 defence + 500 per level beyond the first, rather than 100/50, and base siege progress is +10, rather than +1).

- Non-cavalry Men-at-Arms now give a little bit of siege power - 0.2 per regiment for heavy infantry and pikemen, and 0.1 for archers and skirmishers, except some culturally strong variants - longbowmen, chu-ko-nu and abudrar, who also get 0.2. It doesn't show in the stat screen.

- Nerfed actual siege engines' siege power (relative to the new scaled up values).
Bombards by 33%, Trebuchets by 40%, Mangonels by 20% and Onagers by 16.6%. Do note that 1 bombard regiment is still worth 50 heavy infantry regiments siege power-wise, so its not like they're useless. Reasoning : Sieges were over too fast when actual artillery got involved. Like 3 months for max level forts fast.

- AI will devote 160% of the garrison to siege tasks, up from 150%, since fort levels are higher in the mod, and that causes more attrition, and AI is/was always bad at getting a siege to start again when its besiegers attrition to under the garrison size, causing AI realms to get stuck sieging objectives for months to years longer than it should take.

- "Nerfed" sappers strategy perk. It now only gives one-fifth as much siege progress per men-at-arms regiment. Reasoning : It used to give a lot, and retinues / mercenaries are a much more common sight in Sane Warfare. This led to lategame armies supported by mercs getting extra siege power equal to 40 bombard regiments (i.e 400 bombards) from men-at-arms, leading to sieges of level 40+ castles (the REALLY tough ones) being over in 2 months if the ruler just so happened to have it unlocked.

- Siege engine men-at-arms had their cost and upkeep quite massively increased.

- Base siege phase length increased (20->30 days). Had too much random impact.

- Tweaked AI % desire of men-at-arms regiments as siege machine regiments, so that if an AI realm can afford full cap men-at-arms lategame, it finishes up with 9 full size 20 regiments, rather than 7 full size 20 regiments of men-at-arms and one size 20 + one size 6 regiment of bombards.

These changes help the AI siege, since it is currently unable to actually devote its siege regiments to... well, sieging. It literally tasks which soldiers siege at random, so the bombards often just sit there in the next barony while the lategame hillforts are getting sieged for five+ years while it eats attrition.
Holy Orders are now relevant!

Holy Orders

- Everyone who is the patron of a holy order gets a decision to lease them more holdings (pick and choose from any castle baronies within your domain that you hold personally or via baron vassals) without any limit number-wise! This is in addition to the vanilla events where they might ask for some, though I'm not sure if I've fixed those.

- AI will now lease extra holdings to its holy order if it is a patron of one, up to a maximum of five, with the odds decreasing the more it already has. If the ruler is zealous, the chance is higher, and it can potentially give out more.

- No longer get or ask you to lease them cities, only castles! (they are a type of feudal government... so cities give them no tax or levies...)

- No longer get levies out of thin air, but get those given by their holdings (which can be a lot, because they no longer get pointless cities).

- Order MaA increased to 600 (+300 per extra holding), and Knights to 4 (+2).

- Piety cost massively increased. By five times. They should no longer be perma-hired.

I will add some nasty events in future updates for if you ever make your Holy Order too strong relative to yourself. You know, Teutons and Poland, for example.

Other Notable Changes

- Levy upkeep increased by 25% (2->2.5 gold per 1000 raised levies)

- Building income reduced slightly (10% or so, depends on type)

- Adopt Feudalism main decision requirements changed - instead of needing to both follow a reformed religion and to have all tribal era innovations unlocked, you need to either follow a reformed religion and the year must be 1000+, or to have all tribal innovations unlocked, making it significantly easier, though the minimum Fame Level requirement has also been raised to 3 (was 2).

- Converting to local culture no longer costs any prestige, because in the (rather plausible) scenario that an AI character who is out of prestige is restructuring their retinue, they might take a very long time to be able to convert, and we can't have that.

- Mercenaries are now slightly more expensive, on average, as are holy orders.

- Emperors get +2 monthly prestige (because MaA need prestige), Kings get +1, Dukes get +0.5, and Counts get +0.25. This also means Emperors/Kings should field much bigger retinues than Dukes/Counts simply because prestige is limited in quantity. And also because warmongering and winning battles can net you a bunch.



Feudal vassals

Low feudal tax is now base 10% (Up from 2.5%!, so four times as much)
Normal feudal tax is now base 20% (Up from 10%, so twice as much)
High feudal tax is now base 30% (Up from 15%, so twice as much)
Extortionate feudal tax is now base 40% (Up from 25%, a +60% increase)

Low feudal levies are back at base 10% (was 16.6% in mod, 10% in vanilla)
Normal feudal levies are now base 20% (was 25% in both vanilla and mod)
High feudal levies are now base 30% (was 33.3% in mod, 35% in vanilla)
Extortionate feudal levies are now base 40% (was 50% in both vanilla and mod)

Republic vassals

Now pay a 10% base tax to tribal lieges (up from 5%), and 30% to non-tribal ones (up from 20%), but no levies whatsoever (instead of 10%).

Theocratic vassals

Is now 10% base tax & levies to wrong faith liege, or 10% per liege's level of devotion, -10% flat, to correct faith lieges, for a total of 0%-50% depending on it. Sinners now get no church taxes or levies, whereas holier than the pope characters (not hard in CK3) get a lot.

Was 10% base tax&levies to wrong faith liege, or 5% levies / level of devotion to right faith liege, and an additional flat 10% tax - i.e between 5% and 30% levies, as well as 15% to 40% tax , depending on the level of devotion.

Tribal vassals

Unchanged (for now) - 20% levies and 10% tax per level of fame, capped at 100%/50% at level 5+.

Clan vassals

Unchanged (for now) - Kind of similar to tribals, except scaling with opinion of liege, rather than their prestige, and with a minimum floor based on crown authority.


- Income from buildings increased by around 15-20% depending on type.

- Building construction and upgrade cost increased by between 20% and 25% depending on type, excluding tribal buildings, and main holdings, which now are 20% costlier to construct, but not upgrade.

- Garrisons are a bit smaller, helps the AI handle sieges properly. However, fort levels from buildings are significantly increased, because there is more gold to hire mercenaries and upkeep men-at-arms, which made sieges last too short a time.


- Feudal governments now get equal levies and gold, %-wise, from their vassals - whereas clan governments get much more levies, but usually less gold, in comparison - though that depends on their vassals' opinion of the liege.

- Burghers pay only in coin, whereas, the church pays you depending on how pious you are, which can be a lot, or nothing. Or 10% if you are of a different faith and they want you to leave them alone.

- Buildings are now a bit costlier, but more profitable, long-term.

Overall, top lieges (emperors/kings) get more gold, and this allows them to build much more, as well as get MAA's faster, and hire mercenaries better. However, they don't get as many levies as they did before, at least not until after they build up their holdings!

Overall, all this makes the player run away from the rest of the world less throughout the mid -> lategame.


Difficulties rebalanced, and AI now builds A LOT more on the higher ones

Hard : AI (excluding player vassals) has 30% cheaper build cost and no other bonuses.
Very Hard : AI (excluding player vassals) has 50% cheaper build cost, and no other bonuses.
Easy : Domain Tax +25% for player and no other bonuses.
Very Easy : Domain Tax +50% for player and no other bonuses.

Note : Player vassals not getting the build cost reduction is handled via hidden events (only way possible atm afaik), so it takes a (short) time to update on game start, and after you vassalize someone.

MAA regiment size limit changes

MAA innovation now give +4/+4/+4/+5 to maximum size (from +2/+3 /+4/+5, with higher eras giving more). Cultures with all innovations researched will now be able to field up to size 20 regiments of MAA (up from size 17).

Building Logic

AI should now greatly prioritize building up duchy capitals over regular baronies. While they are not always realm capitals, this should hopefully make historically famous places less of a rural countryside.

War AI priorities redone (again). Should be much better now.

- AI War logic overhauled. Logic changes to make defenders and attackers that are losing less agressive, less foolhardy, and more coherent in their army movements. They will now take some time to replenish their losses, too. I've extensively tested it, and the results are better in vanilla in every case, except for wars between counts or very tiny dukes, where the AI is too cowardly without space to manuever, but that's okay to sacrifice for interesting mid/lategame.

- AI now always sets the marshal on "organize levies".

Compared to its vanilla tendencies, this results in stronger AI realms all game long, and while training commanders is sometimes okay, I struggle to see any scenario where increase control in county would be optimal - the AI almost exclusively used this two, in vanilla, with the organize levies as the bastard child backup option - where in fact it is 99% of the time the best one.

Warscore Changes

- Ticking warscore progress 1.65% per month -> 0.5% per month.

- Added flat occupation score per barony reduced to 37.5% of what it was, since the AI now knows how to siege better. Example : 10 baronies occupied out of 200 total (5% of the realm - keep in mind one siege can net you as many as 3-5 baronies) :

Vanilla : 5% + 40% = 45% occupation score * 90% multiplier-> 40.5% warscore.
Now : 5% + 15% = 20% occupation score * 90% multiplier -> 18% warscore.

These changes make large realms substantially tougher to occupation in wars, making them slower to conclude, and battles more important and decisive for the outcome, as they should be. The changes don't really affect small realms (counties/duchies) much, but they do affect wars like the 1066 threeway for England.

General small fixes


Might have fixed the big bad when it comes to the building logic.

For some reason, paradox assigned constructing main holdings an outrageously huge weight. Thus, vassals were constructing new holdings (which they would hand out to new characters because domain limit anyway), instead of improving their own existing ones, and the rulers...

The rulers were building holdings/buildings everywhere in their realm, and would almost never build any buildings in their ACTUAL holdings, even the capital, until they were done constructing every single main holding that didn't yet exist, and even then would prefer to improve those rather than their own.

This caused barons' baronies to be the most developed, followed by counts, followed by dukes, followed by kings, followed by emperors's last, and I believe it has now been fixed, but haven't yet had time to test it thoroughly.

It might well have been the reason behind the vanilla logic sucking in the first place - it made all characters that were relevant not build anything in their own holdings, just so they could spend thousands of gold on creating new holdings to have more barons, or improve the holdings of their counts and dukes, who would then depose them because they would grow stronger than their generous lieges.

- The topmost liege (who is usually the relevant character) will no longer construct buildings or holdings outside his domain (in a random baron/count/duke's holding), unless the AI logic tells him the building/holding in question is worth at least twice as much as the best option within his holding.

This (if it works like I think it does) should dramatically improve the quality of the domains of rulers around the world, and therefore make them much tougher to beat.

- Holdings (castle/city/temple) AI building logic reworked entirely. AI cares about upgrading the main building (castle/city/temple) more, the more buildings (and upgrades) the holding already has, and kings/emperors should make
improving their capital holding their first priority. Castle main building levels should no longer lag behind city/temple ones in the mid/lategame.

- AI now prioritizes constructing buildings over MAA between 50% (while having no men-at-arms) and 100% (while having the goal amount based on income) of the time. It was 0%->100% previously. This should make it build more early on, rather than it picking up its building sprees from midgame onwards.

- Restricted diplo range is now the default. Results in better map.

- Experimental changes to Warfare AI :

While attacking and winning, it should push and press forward more, otherwise it should withdraw and regroup if it already has the wargoal, trying to hold onto it, but evading engagements otherwise.

While defending and winning, it should try to grasp the wargoal and seek decisive battles with the enemy, and if said enemy runs away, try to siege and prioritize the capital while doing so. Otherwise, it should try to hold onto the wargoal, unless hopeless, then retreat, regroup and look for opportunities to retake the wargoal, evading engagements unless the capital is about to fall.

AI now won't care whatsoever about secondary participant's land, only their armies.

Wars should be shorter overall, big battles and sieges more frequent, and the AI should actually go for what the wargoal says its going for, rather than chase the allies of the enemy war leader.

- Minor Balance Changes to many things.

- Added Game Rules :

More difficulty options :

- Hard : +25% Tax income for all AI characters (including your vassals).
- Very Hard : +50% Tax income for all AI characters (including your vassals).

These do a lot to help them build, since at this point the logic is fine - they are just starved for money! Hence, at least for now, the default difficulty is Hard.

Domain Limit Ruleset :

- Sane Warfare : Holdings above your Domain Limit will not provide you any levies or taxes, but will not cause penalties to your other holdings.
- Vanilla* : Holdings above your Domain Limit will cause percentage penalties to tax and levies from all your holdings, as in the vanilla game.

*Currently does not work.


- Development no longer affects levies whatsoever. More developed realms didn't really tend to have more levies, just more gold. Having more gold, in turn, allowed them better infrastructure, which allowed them more levies...

- So, all levies and garrison from building upgrades are increased by 60%, and tier 2/3/4 holdings (castles/cities/temples) now increase local levies and garrison by 25%/50%/100%. The AI is able to deal with this better, since it does build a lot atm, but doesn't particularly make development its focus.

- Mercenaries are now pure Men-at-Arms professional forces, instead of a mixture of MAA and levies. They also increase in size more with technology (innovations), up to 260% of their base size, rather than up to 200%, at everything researched. They get an extra knight per size, too.

- This one was already in, but I don't think I listed it anywhere - you cannot go into more than a single month-worth of debt for hiring mercs.

- There will be slightly more buildings at game start for non-tribal nations, particularly in holdings with high development levels (like Constantinople).

- Vassal Levy/Tax multiplier from Crown Authority is now :

100% at Autonomous (Unchanged)
110% at Limited (Was 100%)
120% at High (Was 110%)
130% at Absolute (Was 135%)

Since AI struggles to maintain higher crown authority levels more so than a player does, this means most rulers will get slightly more gold, and levies, from their vassals.

- Feudal vassal base levy contribution depending on contract is increased from 10%/25%/35%/50% to 16.6%/25%/33.3%/50%. Same reason - they aren't exploiting maximum levy contracts like players do - in fact, their vassal contracts tend to end up lax, because vassals are quite powerful. High levy obligation is now -10 opinion rather than -15, because of the smaller jump.


- Landed characters (except barons and vassal counts) now periodically passively attract knights as guests, the frequency of which scales up depending on the their title rank (emperors > kings > dukes > counts), and their level of fame.

- Characters can now take the "Take Holy Vows" decision, which gives them the "Order Member" trait, increasing their prowess and martial skill (potentially giving you a decent knight and/or commander), but forfeiting the right of inheritance entirely.

List of checks a character has to pass in order to take the decision :

- Follows a faith which allows clerics to become knights/commanders via tenets/doctrines.
- Is unlanded
- Is not 3rd or closer in line of succession to any title
- Is eligible to be clergy (depends on religion and its clerical gender doctrine)
- Is either not married, or the religion allows the clergy to marry.

Furthermore, only characters that are zealous or have traits that are virtuous to the religion will ever take the decision, given they meet the prerequisites, and the chance is reduced for every sinful trait they have, and is increased if they are older than 20.

- Fix for North Korea mode - holdings above your domain limit no longer provide you with any tax or levies, however the artificial percentage penalties to the holding limit are no longer there, either. You now need to delegate power to vassals, as you should.


- The Pope (and landed spiritual heads of faith in general) will now always convert to the local culture. This ensures a single random early welsh culture pope does not change latium into an archer-paradise promised land of his visions, and makes his MAA retinue consistent. As fun as it were to have them be different cultural units every papal election, it made little sense at times.

- Rulers are more likely to convert to a culture that most their vassals follow, and less likely to convert from a culture that has a significant presence among the vassals of the realm. King vassals weigh more than Duke ones, who weigh more than Counts do.

- "Significantly slower" cultural and religious conversion rules are now the default, since the mod is best balanced with them in mind.



- All building bonuses to men-at-arms are now % based, and flat modifiers are limited to technology (innovations).

- All duchy buildings that boost men-at-arms effectiveness simultaneously increase their upkeep, whereas the barony buildings that do the same, reduce the upkeep.

- Men-at-Arms AI logic changes ensure that they will hire the most effective men-at-arms available to them, instead of a random mismatch of many types.

- All buildings were overhauled and rebalanced.

- The AI building logic was greatly improved.

- Each culture now has a starting "tradition" invention that starts already unlocked and slightly improves a certain type of MAA, which corresponds to that of the cultural unit.

- Most men-at-arms (excluding top-tier ones) had their base stats slightly buffed, leading to a bit more impactful early presence overall.


- Knight limit bonuses from buildings are severely reduced (between 25% and 50% of what they used to be). Knight effectiveness bonuses from most barony buildings are slightly weaker, but more common.

- Knights have a greatly reduced chance of dying in battle (around 40% of what they used to have), but are more likely to be captured, so you need money to ransom the good ones.

- Knights are now less killy, only getting 70 base damage per Prowess (down from 100), but also more durable, having 30 Toughness per Prowess (up from 10), and only characters with at least average prowess (9 or more) are eligible for knighthood.


- The impact of each point of development on tax and levies has been quadrupled (+2% per point), making development-oriented buildings actually worthwhile long-term, and tribal nations less overpowered compared to feudal ones.

- The supply per development has been reduced to 100 (from 150).

- The development growth from buildings has notably been rebalanced.


- The AI is much less likely to go capital-hopping, or embark and go by sea if it can walk by land in general (unless it would save a lot of time by doing so).

- Naval speed is greatly reduced (to 2x land speed, down from 5x). Embarking and disembarking both take longer, and the army upkeep while at sea is 200% (was 125%), making seabound invasions and travel more costly.


- Raised levies cost 0.002 monthly upkeep per soldier to maintain (down from 0.0033).

- AI base aggressiveness reduced by 40%.

- Prisoners can now be captured in raiding battles.

- Capture chances are dramatically increased in battles that end in a stackwipe.

- Levy gathering speed is reduced to 15 per month (down from 40). Land speed is 3, and vanilla naval speed is 15 for the sake of comparison (it is 6 in the mod).

- Advantage is now +2.5% damage per point (up from +2%). Gathering armies and being bankrupt now cause a -10 to advantage each, instead of -5, whereas starving armies suffer -15, rather than -20.

- Partition succession is less "volatile". While the amount of land each heir inherits stays the same, the chunks of land of each heir will now be as compact and close to each other as the conditions allow.

- Diplomatic range on the default setting is reduced to 750 (what "restricted" is in vanilla"), and restricted range is now 500. This helps prevent blobbing.

- Renown gain per ordinary, untitled dynasty or house member is reduced by 75%. Countries with concubines/polygamy, which could in vanilla complete all the renown trees within 150 years of game start due to their sheer population, can no longer do so.


In vanilla CK3, by holding 10 fully upgraded duchy capitals in your domain, one could reach 1500%+ Damage and Toughness with their chosen type(s) of men-at-arms, and also have them be free due to all the upkeep reductions.

And that wasn't even the limit or the optimal way to do it, no. That, was to hold your entire realm in your domain, playing vassal-less, despite the penalties, and have them be 10x as strong or more, resulting in 10k men-at-arms being equivalent to millions of levies in battle.

Stacking Knight bonuses was overpowered. With 10 Duchy capitals in your domain you could get 1100%+ Knight Effectiveness and 120+ Knight Limit.

An inbred dynasty of genius giant amazonian priest-women could (and still can) have a base prowess of 30+, or an average prowess of 40+ per knight. Your "troops" could kill 5000+ levies per knight easily with their 44 000+ damage each (and you'd have hundreds of them), and would rarely ever actually die. And that wasn't even the limit.

Perhaps even more importantly - remember how your entire family and council would die every other battle in every non-trivial war? Well, so did the AI's. This was not only unrealistic, but caused very harmful gameplay dynamics, with far reaching consequences.

Countries were losing all their courtiers in battles, leading to vassals themselves becoming knights, who would then die and cause all kinds of mess, starving out the male population of each realm and leading to the majority of the world's nation being ruled by women.

These women would then refuse to marry matrilinearly, causing dynastic collapse on a global level and making the world a fractured blob. This happened due to the AI being at present incapable of doing so, regardless of laws, religion or game rules (even in matriarchal societies!).

Local development, outside of its impact on research speed, was negligible, only giving +50% levies and tax at 100 development (a number which you would most likely not even reach at the end of the game, and the AI certainly would not do so).

The supply changes are to counteract many of the supply buildings now providing county-wide supply limit bonuses, rather than barony-wide. Overall, with the increased amount of levies as the game goes on, supply limits will still matter a bit more, and provide a slight defensive advantage to anyone fighting on their home turf.

The AI boat magic, where they engage in shamefur dispray, and the dishonourable, cheesy and completely unrealistic strategy of going aboard ships to siege your capital, only to retreat when you come back, because ck3 was intended to be a game of ping-pong. Nope.

The slower naval travel speed also makes distant allies less valuable, both to the player, and the AI, all the while making far-away holdings harder to the defend, reducing the AI blobbing. Players can still exploit rally points, but since gathering now takes much longer, and gives a bigger advantage penalty, it becomes a bit risky.


- Levy upkeep was reduced due to countries now fielding way more levies on average due to the development and building logic changes. It was necessary to improve realm stability, since rulers were having a hard time paying for everything, and all the while their vassals were rich and engaged in century-long building sprees, eventually deposing their ruler who was lagging behind, especially since warmongering ones had little to no gold to spare.

- AI Agressiveness was reduced to make sure AI rests a bit more inbetween wars, recuperating its forces and/or coffers. This results in fewer, but more meaningful wars.

- Raiding for prisoners being possible is not only logical, but it also incentivizes fighting battles both as, and against raiders. It is now risky to try and repel them, but it can also be profitable, especially in case of stackwipes which increase capture chances dramatically.

- Levy gathering speed changes make warfare a bit slower-paced, and provide a small advantage to compact realms over huge blobs.

- Advantage changes make commander skill, traits, terrain and defensive buildings matter a lot more, which helps while defending, especially since the AI tends to pick defensive terrain while outnumbered, thus making numerical superiority less significant a factor.