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Skipping through this blogpost and reading a little about it, Crusader Kings III seems to more or less identical to Europa Universalis IV. What is the differenc

Skipping through this blogpost and reading a little about it, Crusader Kings III seems to more or less identical to Europa Universalis IV. What is the difference between these two games? Seems it's the same publisher and almost like it's the very same engine, just somewhat different... Anyone with a grasp of both of them care to compare them?

di4na 4y ago
The first post in the series does that exact comparison in details...
diem_perdidi 4y ago
I'd recommend starting with the first blogpost of this series (https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching-paradox-crusader-kings-iii-part-i-making-it-personal/ https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching-paradox-c...) - it's a good read! It delves into the differences with other Paradox games - the second paragraph is actually a short answer to your question: This first part is going to focus on the way that Crusader Kings understands rule and rulers. This in particular is a fascinating place to start because unlike all of the other Paradox grand strategy titles, Crusader Kings III doesn’t actually feature any states in the narrow sense of the word; none of these rulers have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This is an enormous difference between CK3 and its sibling games and well worth diving into.
- deaddodo 4y ago
  I would recommend the other two series as well. First EU4 (https://acoup.blog/2021/04/30/collections-teaching-paradox-europa-univeralis-iv-part-i-state-of-play/ https://acoup.blog/2021/04/30/collections-teaching-paradox-e...) and then Victoria 2 (https://acoup.blog/2021/08/13/collections-teaching-paradox-victoria-ii-part-i-mechanics-and-gears/ https://acoup.blog/2021/08/13/collections-teaching-paradox-v...).
lemoncookiechip 4y ago
The Crusader Kings series focuses primarily on individuals, their traits, their dynasty, managing your court and vassals, rather than focusing on nations. This means that the game is less of a grand strategy title, and more of a role-playing game. At it's core, you scheme, you wage war and you play the diplomacy game by marrying and allying. I just had a playthrough in CK2 AGOT (A Song of Ice and Fire mod), where I role-played as a lunatic obsessed with religion, burning people, sleeping with other people's wives and having incest relations to expand my bloodline while keeping it pure. Vanilla CK2 (and CK3) are all about this moment to moment character driven gameplay. EU doesn't really focus on the individuals as much, and it's more of a traditional RTS game if you will, with resource managing as its core, rather than character roleplay. EDIT: Should probably mention that the time period is also very different, but mechanically, they're different games. Same with Hearts of Iron or Victoria. They all look somewhat similar, but they all have their own quirks that set them apart from each other in terms of gameplay.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  It's also worth noting that these differences are intentional based on the various ideas of how states were organized at different points in time CK2 - the Middle Age/feudal period EU4 - the Renaissance to Napoleonic Wars, where states start centralizing and developing a true identify of their own, so more state based Vic3 - the Victorian era of industrialization and massive societal change within countries Hoi4 - total war of the WWII era
DaedPsyker 4y ago
In short, outside of the time period, CK3 is focused on characters, rulers of kingdoms, counts etc. Whereas EU4 has that aspect very much abstracted away (you embody the state not a person) It makes CK3 a mix of RPG and strategy.
theresistor 4y ago
In EU4 you control a country. In CK3 you control a dynasty, one ruler at a time. EU4 plays like a complex but fairly “normal” strategy game in a pseudo historical setting. CK3 is more focused on managing your complex web of feudal relationships. Almost dating-sim. My best game of CK, I started as a minor a Norwegian noble and slowly worked my way up to becoming king of Norway, also owning part of Denmark. But I pissed off too many other nobles along the way, and they schemed with my brother to depose me in favor of him. I then went on a 20 year revenge spree to assassinate all of his heirs and inherit the kingdom back from him! I recall the trailer for one of the CK2 expansions had a bullet point feature that could really only happen in CK: “SEDUCE YOUR RELATIVES!”
- mcv 4y ago
  I believe the popular summary is that EU4 is about genocide, whereas CK2 (and presumably CK3) is about fratricide. Completely different games.
  - cptnapalm 4y ago
    I thought CK2 was generally considered an incest simulator to breed the best ruler.
  - deaddodo 4y ago
    If you’re committing genocide in EU, you’re prone to have a short game. Fratricide in CK is definitely par for the course, however.
ecshafer 4y ago
As a big Paradox GSG fan, I can safely say that despite visual similarities between Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Imperator and Victoria, the games are entirely different. Crusader Kings deals a lot with individual characters, their relationship, and has a lot more roleplaying in it. You can have a character that starts as a count in say Germany, and because of inheritance and marriage you set up your son to inherit Poland so when you die you are now playing the king of poland and your brother is ruling that county in Germany. The combat, trade, province development, etc is much lighter. Europa Universalis is much more focused no war and map painting, its basically a complicated game of Risk. There is more focused on trade routes, and developing your nations provinces. But you just play a country, you can change dynasties or change to a republic. It doesn't really matter. You might change the country you are playing, say if you start as the Duchy of Milan, and you conquer Italy and crown yourself the Kingdom of Italy. But there's always a direct line. Imperator is a Roman era game that is a mix of these two ideas, more character interactions but more focused on the country. Victoria is an 1800s victorian era game that is really focused a lot more on technologies, ideology, and economics. You play a country and Its about industrialization and colonization and trade. The war is usually a bit more simplified, but the economy is a lot more in depth with resources being consumed to create new resources for production. Hearts of Iron you also play a country but in WWII. But its also relatively simplified economy and ruling of a country. Instead you focus on conquering and has the most in depth war mechanics where you are really managing a lot of minutae of battle lines.
- fphhotchips 4y ago
  Meanwhile, in Stellaris: > pew, pew. pew pew pew! Seriously though thanks for this. I picked up EUIII a little while ago and also Crusader Kings, but couldn't work out how either of them worked really. Stellaris took me a little while, but I got there. I think you might have convinced me to pick up Victoria.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    I watched a few playthroughs of Crusader Kings (esp. by Quill18 on Youtube) before I understood enough to play without cheats.
Apocryphon 4y ago
What I'd like to know is if CK3 really is getting over CK2, which has had so many years of expansion content that I'm not sure how the newer title could promise other than a better interface, more graphics, and wacky heresies.
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  Paradox games have a bad habit of being overwhelmed by the cruft of their expansions, and CK2 was no exception. The game is phenomenal, but there are so many different unrelated systems (and systems in the vanilla game to support the DLC) that it can be incomprehensible. CK3 so far has taken the best insights of those expansions (dynasty/bloodline maintenance, personal armies, skill specialization) and integrated them into the main game. The DLC has been a coin toss whether it is so well-tied-in (I think the culture-molding mechanic is less awkward than the throne room and artifacts or the iberian politics that somehow everyone on earth is privy to).
- bee_rider 4y ago
  CK2 was really starting to strain under the weight of those expansions. The idea of just re-implementing the thing but with the knowledge of the ending scope seems quite promising (haven't had a chance to check it out, though).
flohofwoe 4y ago
In short, in EU4 you play as a country, and in CK3 you play as an individual of a dynasty (i.e. everything is much more "personal" in CK3). But understanding the gameplay mechanics of one Paradox game is definitely useful to also understand the others (my "journey" so far was CK3 => EU4 => HOI4). Still, those three games provide a very different 'gameplay experience'.

di4na 4y ago

The first post in the series does that exact comparison in details...

diem_perdidi 4y ago

I'd recommend starting with the first blogpost of this series (https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching-paradox-crusader-kings-iii-part-i-making-it-personal/ https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching-paradox-c...) - it's a good read! It delves into the differences with other Paradox games - the second paragraph is actually a short answer to your question: This first part is going to focus on the way that Crusader Kings understands rule and rulers. This in particular is a fascinating place to start because unlike all of the other Paradox grand strategy titles, Crusader Kings III doesn’t actually feature any states in the narrow sense of the word; none of these rulers have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This is an enormous difference between CK3 and its sibling games and well worth diving into.

deaddodo 4y ago
I would recommend the other two series as well. First EU4 (https://acoup.blog/2021/04/30/collections-teaching-paradox-europa-univeralis-iv-part-i-state-of-play/ https://acoup.blog/2021/04/30/collections-teaching-paradox-e...) and then Victoria 2 (https://acoup.blog/2021/08/13/collections-teaching-paradox-victoria-ii-part-i-mechanics-and-gears/ https://acoup.blog/2021/08/13/collections-teaching-paradox-v...).

lemoncookiechip 4y ago

The Crusader Kings series focuses primarily on individuals, their traits, their dynasty, managing your court and vassals, rather than focusing on nations. This means that the game is less of a grand strategy title, and more of a role-playing game. At it's core, you scheme, you wage war and you play the diplomacy game by marrying and allying. I just had a playthrough in CK2 AGOT (A Song of Ice and Fire mod), where I role-played as a lunatic obsessed with religion, burning people, sleeping with other people's wives and having incest relations to expand my bloodline while keeping it pure. Vanilla CK2 (and CK3) are all about this moment to moment character driven gameplay. EU doesn't really focus on the individuals as much, and it's more of a traditional RTS game if you will, with resource managing as its core, rather than character roleplay. EDIT: Should probably mention that the time period is also very different, but mechanically, they're different games. Same with Hearts of Iron or Victoria. They all look somewhat similar, but they all have their own quirks that set them apart from each other in terms of gameplay.

bobthepanda 4y ago
It's also worth noting that these differences are intentional based on the various ideas of how states were organized at different points in time CK2 - the Middle Age/feudal period EU4 - the Renaissance to Napoleonic Wars, where states start centralizing and developing a true identify of their own, so more state based Vic3 - the Victorian era of industrialization and massive societal change within countries Hoi4 - total war of the WWII era

DaedPsyker 4y ago

In short, outside of the time period, CK3 is focused on characters, rulers of kingdoms, counts etc. Whereas EU4 has that aspect very much abstracted away (you embody the state not a person) It makes CK3 a mix of RPG and strategy.

theresistor 4y ago

In EU4 you control a country. In CK3 you control a dynasty, one ruler at a time. EU4 plays like a complex but fairly “normal” strategy game in a pseudo historical setting. CK3 is more focused on managing your complex web of feudal relationships. Almost dating-sim. My best game of CK, I started as a minor a Norwegian noble and slowly worked my way up to becoming king of Norway, also owning part of Denmark. But I pissed off too many other nobles along the way, and they schemed with my brother to depose me in favor of him. I then went on a 20 year revenge spree to assassinate all of his heirs and inherit the kingdom back from him! I recall the trailer for one of the CK2 expansions had a bullet point feature that could really only happen in CK: “SEDUCE YOUR RELATIVES!”

mcv 4y ago
I believe the popular summary is that EU4 is about genocide, whereas CK2 (and presumably CK3) is about fratricide. Completely different games.
- cptnapalm 4y ago
  I thought CK2 was generally considered an incest simulator to breed the best ruler.
- deaddodo 4y ago
  If you’re committing genocide in EU, you’re prone to have a short game. Fratricide in CK is definitely par for the course, however.

ecshafer 4y ago

As a big Paradox GSG fan, I can safely say that despite visual similarities between Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Imperator and Victoria, the games are entirely different. Crusader Kings deals a lot with individual characters, their relationship, and has a lot more roleplaying in it. You can have a character that starts as a count in say Germany, and because of inheritance and marriage you set up your son to inherit Poland so when you die you are now playing the king of poland and your brother is ruling that county in Germany. The combat, trade, province development, etc is much lighter. Europa Universalis is much more focused no war and map painting, its basically a complicated game of Risk. There is more focused on trade routes, and developing your nations provinces. But you just play a country, you can change dynasties or change to a republic. It doesn't really matter. You might change the country you are playing, say if you start as the Duchy of Milan, and you conquer Italy and crown yourself the Kingdom of Italy. But there's always a direct line. Imperator is a Roman era game that is a mix of these two ideas, more character interactions but more focused on the country. Victoria is an 1800s victorian era game that is really focused a lot more on technologies, ideology, and economics. You play a country and Its about industrialization and colonization and trade. The war is usually a bit more simplified, but the economy is a lot more in depth with resources being consumed to create new resources for production. Hearts of Iron you also play a country but in WWII. But its also relatively simplified economy and ruling of a country. Instead you focus on conquering and has the most in depth war mechanics where you are really managing a lot of minutae of battle lines.

fphhotchips 4y ago
Meanwhile, in Stellaris: > pew, pew. pew pew pew! Seriously though thanks for this. I picked up EUIII a little while ago and also Crusader Kings, but couldn't work out how either of them worked really. Stellaris took me a little while, but I got there. I think you might have convinced me to pick up Victoria.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  I watched a few playthroughs of Crusader Kings (esp. by Quill18 on Youtube) before I understood enough to play without cheats.

Apocryphon 4y ago

What I'd like to know is if CK3 really is getting over CK2, which has had so many years of expansion content that I'm not sure how the newer title could promise other than a better interface, more graphics, and wacky heresies.

InitialLastName 4y ago
Paradox games have a bad habit of being overwhelmed by the cruft of their expansions, and CK2 was no exception. The game is phenomenal, but there are so many different unrelated systems (and systems in the vanilla game to support the DLC) that it can be incomprehensible. CK3 so far has taken the best insights of those expansions (dynasty/bloodline maintenance, personal armies, skill specialization) and integrated them into the main game. The DLC has been a coin toss whether it is so well-tied-in (I think the culture-molding mechanic is less awkward than the throne room and artifacts or the iberian politics that somehow everyone on earth is privy to).
bee_rider 4y ago
CK2 was really starting to strain under the weight of those expansions. The idea of just re-implementing the thing but with the knowledge of the ending scope seems quite promising (haven't had a chance to check it out, though).

flohofwoe 4y ago

In short, in EU4 you play as a country, and in CK3 you play as an individual of a dynasty (i.e. everything is much more "personal" in CK3). But understanding the gameplay mechanics of one Paradox game is definitely useful to also understand the others (my "journey" so far was CK3 => EU4 => HOI4). Still, those three games provide a very different 'gameplay experience'.