Crusader Kings 3 Special Soldiers

In this guide we'll talk through the nuts of armies and the various troop choices available in Crusader Kings 3. There's a lot to learn so let's get to it.

To raise armies in CK3 yous need to start make a Rally Signal. At the lesser of the Military tab, you lot can click to add and and then select a Belongings anywhere inside your Realm. Each new Rally Point creates a different coloured flag on the map and if yous click on this you see the pick to either Enhance Local Army or Enhance All Hither.

If you cull local merely, you will generate a stack of nearby Levies (the number can be seen to the side of the button) along with your Men-at-Arms. This means that no matter where yous raise your commencement regular army of war, it volition include your elite troops. It'due south worth noting hither that you cannot declare war with armies already raised.

Y'all are able to reorganise stacks, moving troops and Knights into new armies and then it is ofttimes a good idea to simply raise all in one place to make certain you don't take straggler stacks getting picked off across the map, before organising them manually. Your Men-at-Artillery will arrive immediately, but the rest of your regular army could accept several days to appear so be patient and wait before starting to manage them.

CK3 All-time Men-at-Arms

Men-at-Arms are your elite troops. If y'all were familiar with Retinues from CK2, they are more or less the same idea, with noticeable refinements. Yous begin with a Regiment Limit which is how many dissimilar units you can hire. This is not the same equally the number of men in the units though. When you lot hire them they begin with only 5 men and slowly reinforce to total strength.

Each unit, once hired, can be upgraded through multiple tiers, each adding an extra hundred soldiers. As Innovations progress, more tiers becomes bachelor allowing for larger units to be maintained. Yous will too unlock the power to have more Regiments in total and gain access to new unit types.

One affair to consider when edifice up your Men-at-Arms aside from the initial cost of each tier is the upkeep. While this is fairly low while they remain unraised, once you bring them onto the field, they tin apace add together up to a much higher toll. That said, considering the ratio of the number between these elite troops and your Levies, your Levies will almost always be the well-nigh expensive forces to maintain during war, being upward to an order of magnitude more expensive.

The next thing to consider is the rock-paper-scissors of how they fight against opposing Men-at-Arms. Each type of Regiment has a strength and a weakness to another. This can reduce gainsay capability past every bit much equally 90% with enough of a counter and then it'south important to study your enemies and brand sure you aren't wasting your resources.

As you could predict, archers are good against Skirmishers, only weak against Cavalry units. The below list shows what each is strong against, with it looping dorsum to the top at the cease:

Archers
Skirmishers
Heavy Infantry
Spearmen
Cavalry

Annotation: Crossbowmen, despite being considered Archers by the game mechanics, are not the replacement for Bowmen. Instead, they actively counter Heavy Infantry and Heavy Cavalry, meaning that you would demand Light Cavalry to counter these and still crave regular Bowmen to counter Skirmishers.

As we talked about above, as Innovations progress, Men-at-Arms see improvements to their logistics, merely y'all are besides able to ameliorate their gainsay performance in other ways. Diverse edifice in your Domain grant Realm-wide bonuses to a particular type of unit of measurement. These bonuses stack to become incredibly powerful.

Take, for case, the Military Camps building. Past level three, it grants +iv damage and +ane toughness to Archers (along with Skirmisher bonuses). If you had ii of these in different Baronies, information technology would equate to +eight, and so on. Combining multiple bonuses quickly adds up and considering the base damage of an Archer is 25, you can encounter how much of an improvement we're talking about.

There are many such buildings and several for each type. You can read more nearly them in our Building guide but suffice to say, they are well worth the investment. Yous should also check out the Martial Lifestyle which gives your electric current ruler some squeamish bonuses to Men-at-Arms.

1 thing you can't improve on though, is their terrain modifiers, with each type seeing favourable and harmful terrain. This is probably less important to worry about than most aspects of battle, but could tip the scales when a fight is otherwise even.

CK3 Stack Splitting

To split up your stacks you select the raised army and click on Divide off new Army in the window. From here you lot tin select which units y'all wish to transfer to a new command. Once that is done you tin either ten out or click Select to bound directly to that stack. New stacks won't have a commander withal, and this is when you would desire to assign i. High Martial skill gives a curlicue Advantage in battle, so choose a good ane here.

Some characters accept additional Commander Traits and these should also be factored in. Many of these traits offer huge bonuses to the entire army they atomic number 82. For case, Unyielding Defender reduces friendly fatalities by 25% and in a prolonged war, this will massively decrease your losses every bit even in victory, troops die. Other traits are no less effective such every bit its polar opposite Aggressive Attacker that instead increases enemy fatalities by 25%.

There are too more abstract traits here such as a Forder, which removes the penalty from river crossings or an Organizer which increases army motion speed past 25%. In curt, accept your fourth dimension to choose the Commander that will be most useful to you lot and plan alee for what that particular army volition be used for.

CK3 Movement

Moving troops is as simple as left click, correct-click but one affair to go on an centre on is the verbal location of the stack. In order to prevent overflowed text, CK3 will often push the icon away from the actual stack it represents. This tin lead to y'all missing intercepts or being in the wrong location in a hectic war.

This is more apparent when you lot consider that move is non locked to a Canton simply instead allows for armies to exist positioned on individual provinces within them. Why aren't you besieging that Castle? oh yes, you're stood in the empty field next door. Just be aware of this and use the zoom to make certain your forces are where you desire them to be.

At that place are Commander Traits and Lifestyle Perks that affect movement only we'll permit you lot discover those on your ain. None are particular must-haves and none are focused on just that.

The last and perchance about annoying attribute of movement is the sea. To movement onto transports but tell your stack to enter a water province. This costs gold to build a fleet but is otherwise extremely quick. We'd consider this annoying as you lot volition come across the AI constantly building fleets to movement a handful of provinces and to avoid incoming armies. This doesn't sound besides bad, but you will cease upward playing whack-a-mole with enemy stacks.

CK3 Supply Limit

Supply Limit determines how many men can live off the land in a single province and while you won't observe it in the early on game, it can hurt you if you raise larger armies later on. You will meet how much supply you have when you lot hover over your destination with your army selected.

Supply is slightly different to this and it can exist confusing. Each army gains Supplies up to a certain indicate past remaining in friendly territory. This Supply represents the nutrient the army is carrying with it and will only be used if the stack enters a province where it would otherwise accept attrition. But once Supply runs out, will you begin taking casualties.

CK3 Pursuit and Screen

Skirmishers and all Cavalry give you Pursuit numbers and it is a adequately straightforward mechanic. When you are victorious in a battle, the more pursuit you have, the more enemy units are killed instead of beingness routed.

Screen is the opposite of Pursuit in that when defeated, the screening number gives you protection against the victors' Pursuit. Information technology is made from Skirmishers and Light Cavalry.

CK3 Disbanding

When you lot are through with your troops, you can hit Disband Army and they will return to the pool. This can take several months if you disband them far from their home.

CK3 Levies

The chief troop type in CK3 is the Levy. Each Levied man has ten harm and 10 toughness and this remains unchangeable throughout the game. Levies come up from all types of Holding and their totals can exist increased through buildings. You will always receive the maximum available Levies from your personal Holdings, but only a pocket-sized corporeality from each Vassal, depending on their Feudal Contract and opinion of you.

The exception to this is the Clergy. The armed forces support (and Taxes) you lot get from your temples is straight related to the opinion of your Realm Priest, of whom you have no control over choice of. There is a less troublesome Court Chaplain choice, just just for sure faiths. Either mode, maintaining the adept opinion of your spiritual Councillor is a must.

It is besides a good idea to maximise the number of Levies you directly control to ensure yous have enough men to fight off any rebellious elements since numbers do thing. This can be further increased through the Councillor action Organize Levies. Still, as these are the peasant masses - the fodder yous will apply to soak up the harm - they are no professional regular army. For that, you will take to look to the Men-at-Arms.

CK3 Siege Weapons

The final blazon of Men-at-Arms Regiments are Siege Weapons. These have no office in regular combat but instead add weight to the Siege Progress. At that place are 4 types bachelor, with each being effective but upwards to a certain Fort Level. They as well have only ten men per tier but that doesn't mean much.

Onagers - Effective upward to Fort Level 9, +0.3/day
Mangonels - Constructive up to Fort Level xv, +0.6/twenty-four hours
Trebuchets - Effective up to Fort Level 21, +1.0/day
Bombards - Effective up to Fort Level 29, +1.5/mean solar day

To efficiently siege higher Fort Levels, you need to include at least some Siege Weapons, otherwise, it takes substantially longer for the defenders to break.

CK3 Mercenaries

Mercenaries are an expensive and drastic human action but offer excellent combat potential. Each Mercenary band is fabricated up of a choice of Men-at-Arms grade units with their ain Knights. Some also include Levy troops though, and that is a signal against them.

The toll of Mercenaries is simple to understand. You pay upfront and gain their loyalty for 3 years. If y'all dismiss the units before then they remain available to you alone in the listings until the contract expires and can too be chosen back to service for no further cost.

If yous are desperate plenty to call on Mercenaries, you are probably short of money but don't worry, as you lot tin go into up to 24 months debt to hire them.

It is doubtful the smallish bands will plough a losing war in your favour, but there is a couple of ways we've found that they tin can be effective. Offset off is the suicide run deep into enemy lands, either besieging down their Holdings or cartoon forces away from your ain armies.

The second is using them as a Men-at-Arms counter. By this we hateful that if the enemy for instance has a lot of Archers, you could rent Mercenaries that accept a lot of Cavalry at the first of the war, helping to counter that advantage.

CK3 Holy Orders

Holy Orders are the Mercenaries of the religious earth. You can hire them with Piety if you are in a organized religion-based state of war. You lot can occasionally get an upshot to rent out a Property to an Order. This comes with a squeamish chunk of aureate for your trouble, but you lot do lose all Tax and Levies from the Property while they are occupying it.

If your Devotion is loftier enough you proceeds the ability to found a new Order and give information technology i of your straight Holdings. Why would you do this you lot ask? Well for one if yous are their patron, you lot tin call them upward for free, which depending on where you lot are on the map, might exist worth losing a Property for. You as well have the selection to evict them if y'all want to.

If you're looking for more Crusader Kings 3 guides, you might desire to check out our Console Commands and Cheats page, as well equally how to finer employ Knights.

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