Crusader Kings 3 can be considered one of the most immersive and epic medieval grand strategy games out there. The ability to roleplay and respond uniquely to a myriad of events can truly make anyone feel like a king (or queen).
Not surprisingly, religion plays a major role in the world of Crusader Kings 3 and can affect the many decisions that come up during gameplay. Therefore players who want to roleplay differently by introducing matriarchal tenets or live like the Targaeryens from Game Of Thrones (it’s for an achievement!) will need to reform or create a new religion. The question is how?
6 Understanding The Basics
In CK3, the game focuses on 3 main resources: money, prestige, and piety. Piety represents a character’s virtue and how much of a goody-two-shoes they are. It also happens to be a critical resource needed to reform or start a new faith. To effectively modify a religion, it is important to ‘mold’ a specific character that can make these changes.
There are also additional bonuses for players to improve their piety income. Certain acquired traits like being zealous can significantly improve the respective character’s piety, in this case by at least 20%.
5 The Right Vessel
As mentioned above, modifying a religion requires the right character to do the job. Players should develop their heir’s learning stat which will increase the amount of piety they receive. Next, players should marry off their heir to a spouse with a high learning stat as well as it will only provide additional piety. In addition to this, players should also find a realm priest blessed with high learning and have them improve religious relations. Sometimes players will not be able to select their priest. That’s no problem though as undesirable agents can sometimes end up with unfortunate illnesses… Ahem.
Players should also select and work their way through Theologian lifestyle focus as it grants characters additional piety. Grabbing the prophet skill is also a must as it will half the piety cost needed to reform the religion. There are also additional lifestyle choices and perks that a player can select. These can include the mystic trait which boosts learning up to a whopping +4, whilst undertaking a pilgrimage and earning the pilgrim status can increase monthly piety by 10%.
4 Holy Sites
Players will also need to have holy sites in their domain to reform their faith. This means that players will need to own and hold 3 of the 5 holy sites available on the world map that their religion considers sacred. It doesn’t count if another faction with the same faith owns it, although players can benefit from the holy site’s perks.
This requires the right timing as players who have multiple children can sometimes have their territories split up depending on their succession laws, which may further drag and complicate matters. Again, timing is extremely important. To clarify where holy sites are, players need to select the religion tab and find the religious symbols on the map denoting each holy site.
3 Choosing Tenets
Once players can pay the cost and satisfy all the requirements of creating a new faith, they can select the ‘form new faith’ tab. It should be noted that although a new faith can be created, players can’t exactly start a whole new religion.
With that clarified, players will then have to select new tenets that their new faith will hold in esteem. Tenets can impart certain bonuses and affect how different characters and nations perceive one another as it determines the virtues and sins of a faith. Therefore it’s important to choose wisely. Each tenet will have a piety cost and some are more expensive than others. But who can put a price on a religion that celebrates incest, kin slaying, nudity, and cannibalism?
2 Over To Doctrines
These are laws that basically govern the realm and will heavily impact the roleplaying and how other characters perceive your actions. Doctrines come in 4 main forms: main doctrines, clergy doctrines, marriage doctrines, and crime doctrines.
Main doctrines affect things like succession laws, whilst marriage doctrines cover aspects of bastard legitimacy, polygamy, incestuous marriage, and so on. Clergy doctrines on the other hand cover things like gender equality and whether players are allowed to kick out their useless, drunk realm priest to hire a new handsome one that can do the job better.
Crime doctrines determine the dos and don’ts in society and cover areas like the legality of same-sex relations and kin slaying. Kinslaying could be particularly useful for players to justly smother their siblings in their sleep to peacefully inherit the entire realm. It should be noted that doctrines also cost piety so players should decide which doctrines suit them best.
1 Spreading The Holy Word
As a result of these decisions, the newly created faith will determine the sins and virtues. Characters will view and judge one another based on what virtuous traits (or lack of) they have. Players will then find out how much their faith modifying bill is and get to name and describe their new cult.
Players will also get to see how many members (family, friends, and vassals) will join in on the conversion. Not everyone will partake and this could potentially fracture relationships down the line but a good religious war or forced conversion can sort everything out.
Crusader Kings 3 is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.