Tribal to Feudal How to Guide for Crusader Kings 3 (Adopting Feudal Ways) 

All of My Crusader Kings Guides: t.ly/4UkZ Thanks so much for watching guys! My next guides will be focusing on Faith & Piety as well as creating your own religion. IN addition, I'll be touching on Vassals & Councils to help tweak their opinion and keep them happy! If you haven't picked up the game, you can grab it through my link here: www.nexus.gg/italianspartacus . This helps me out a TON as it gives a direct commission to the channel, and depending on what time you see this, a discount to you as well.

When reforming the Faith, make yourself the Head of Religion. You'll be able to launch Great Holy Wars, and that's SO FREAKING AWESOME!

My tribes are gonna be SO feudal after this, boy lemme tell ya.

Man, it's a little more than 500 food and 2 dark age buildings, isn't it?

"It's a huge time sink..." That's CK3 in a nutshell. Micromanagement is the name of the game!

Something that's good to mention for the "appeasing your vassals" part - you can use your priest to fabricate a claim on your own vassals land which allows you to retract titles (and I believe vassals although I'm not certain) without incurring tyranny. It's helpful to know and also a good way to keep your personal domain strong without vassal border gore

A single important note, sorry if it was mentioned. In those holy sites, now that you're feudal, you can build some serious special buildings, which will improve income and development.

Special shoutout to religions that have the Esotericism tenet for the learning stage, since they will help you gain extra learning exp by using the wise (wo)man trait which you can get from pilgrimages. -Some of these faiths also have holy sites that will give you even more learning. Also it's worth mentioning that the Prophet perk in the Theocrat tree for learning cuts the reformation cost in half.

Great video as always. You seem to always make these informational videos right when I'm running into the exact problem.

This is The Video I have been waiting to see bro , real real helpful

you can move your capital once per lifetime and if the culture of that land is not your culture you can adopt it. so you can use that to "unlock" your tech tree fast

I'm going to try being norse, and just researched the culture tech options that the french don't have, than conquer the dutchy of normandy and create norman culture (which will have both norse and french culture researched), which will hopefully be a faster way to get all tribal techs

I love you. I had always wish to change faiths like this didn't know it was a feature!

I would suggest raiding as tribal before the transition to get a $h-t ton of gold so you can build cities and temples. Also, focus on some tax / gold buildings early because money is so needed for more building and men at arms.

My MAN! Saving the day with yet, another thorough video!

This helped a lot! Thank you for these in depth video I really appreciate them. Take care

You post great tutorial videos. I just built an optiplex sff after watching game play for months and your videos basically walk me through and cement what I’ve learned from gameplay videos. You speak clearly and well. Thank you!

I literally could not have figured this out without your video. Thank you!

If you "find secrets" before converting faith you can use a hook to guarantee it. There's also a tenet called communal identity that will speed faith conversion if it has same culture and vice versa. Makes it go much faster and only costs 50 piety.

Really good vid man... prob gonna watch it over again.

Thanks for clearing a lot of things up! 😘

Awesome videos and guides. I've watched some of them twice and still struggle. This game is a lot to learn, not having played CK before.

Really appreciate the clear explanation of the process. Another great video.

A few things. First, as of patch 1.2 (I think), vassals no longer automatically convert their lands to the right faith. You can't demand the vassal to convert and he automatically converts the county. Second, the 3 level of Crown Authority isn't as good as you say, because it only prevents your vassals from going to war. The vassals of your vassals can still gleefully go to war no matter what level of Crown Authority you have.

Incredibly helpful content as always.

I did a Pomerania campaign and had almost 40k troops in my empire. Upgraded to Feudal and lost ~30k troops lmao didn't realize there's be so big of a penalty

Awesome video, covered so much 👍

Thank you very much, your best video yet

This is supper helpful thank you !

Tanks for his great Guide!

This was super useful I’m doing a Play through as a Kushitte Ruler near the Horn of Africa and I have the innovations but I still need two more holy sites

Can’t wait for your useful guides 👍🏻

This is a very good video, good explanations, good editing. Thanks!

Great video. Thanks!

Your videos help a lot ! Thanks !

great break down again, i cant even IMAGINE how many hours it took for you to figure all this out via trial and error so i know this is just words when i say THANK YOU! but know i truly appreciate this video.

I love your channel my man

Thank you friend!

Very nice one! Thanks. :)

Great video! Thx!!

6:16 ooooo no wonder I was getting absolutely ROCKED towards the end game portion of my campaigns 🤦🏾‍♂️

I love how I don’t even have the game yet I still watch your guide videos and imagine myself playing CK3

I dont think its required to go martial for conquest as a tribal. If you go into Diplomacy and grab the August tree, you get huge prestige bonuses, allowing you to declare war more often, have more men at arms, and buy buildings faster. I think the first character is actually better as a August Diplomat so your future rulers can inherit men at arms.

Great guide. Inspired me to play my first tribal campaign. Have you considered doing a "Trait Guide" for explaining for instance if "Reckless" is a good trait for a commander or on genetic mechanics for heirs...or why and how to breed better vassals?

Long waited video.. Thank you.

Really appreciate this video!

such a good tutorial

Saved me. Thanks!

Thanks for the video! Can you do a development explanation/tutorial? Maybe with some tips on how to boost it quickly? That would be super helpful.

I know it's not unique and I just picked up the game but I've only been picking dutchies in Ireland. I refuse to move on until I've mastered taking a small country into a kingdom. Every time I master things a little better check out a video from you and have to rework how I play and master new skills. Around every corner is a new skill and procedure to learn. It's overwhelming in some ways. Thank you for making it easier.

When you disable 'monthly maintnance' while recruting troops to your men-at-arms you accualy stop recruiting them. That's just wrong :D You better let them get to full size and maintnance cost will drop by itself to minimum level. Not a great advice not to have army ;P

Man this was such a great guide, really well explained. Awesome job. I played close to the same way, the tips on the Learning tree with the wife aiding was something I didn't think about so should get to Feudal faster now, cheers :) and almost at the Empire (about 80% in 972 AD atm, also didn't want to do the tutorial so just played to see). But why, why do they all jump in as knights like lemmings??.. or am I missing some command somewhere, I'm so over forgetting about that haha. And props for Lithuania! Only kingdom I've played. Subbed. Great vid.

your guides are so helpfull thankyou so much

Boy this video couldn't have come out at a better time, I'm only about 15 years away from unlocking all tribal innovations in my Scandinavia campaign. I'm loving these videos, Spartacus. Keep up the good work! One quick question: Feudal contracts only apply to that specific person, right? As in once they die your contract with their heir resets?

I've waited my whole life for this video

You don't have to progress the authority stages one at a time and wait 10+ years, you can go straight from 1 to 4 if you have the prestige. The timer is just a cooldown so you can't change it constantly particularly after vassals demanded you lower it and you accepted

Nice you still have that sale going on. Been playing on game pass and I want to support Paradox for this awesome game. I know what I'm going to do now.

Still a great series to learn the game!

this was helpful thanks :)

as tribal you get a severe pentaly to development unless u get public works u cant go above 10. ur better off increasing development of the surrounding areas that are 4-5 as the capital get dimishining returns

The Marshal task Train commanders can massively reduce MAA maintenance. Also, since the regiments in the video were not fully reinforced, they use raised maintenance instead of unraised maintenance.

This is the hardest game I've ever played. I nearly quit. Now I'm obsessed.

havent even jumped into the video yet and you're already getting a like hahah

FYI: As of 1.1.2, the game sometimes messes up government types and succession laws when you reform your religion. So, sometimes if you make yourself the temporal head of faith, it will miscalculate your heirs. A prototypical case of this is if one of your sons died and you have a grandson who should be taking his place in the inheritance calculation. Alternatively, if you create a spiritual head of faith, it might not grant the head of faith to someone who has a theocratic succession law. In which case, a generation down the line, you may end up inheriting the theocratic head of faith title and then not having any heirs and getting game over. So, after you convert, you can double check that everything is correct, and if it is not, you can open the game in debug mode and set the realm laws for the characters to be the correct ones. Sometimes you have to change them to something else and then back again. Or you may have to use the take title option and then give it back to them after setting the correct law. For example if you get stuck inheriting the spiritual head of faith, after giving that title away, you may have to tell the game to swap your crown authority to a different level, then swap it back to the correct one, then force a recalculation of your heirs. I *think* you can avoid this happening in the case of a spiritual head of faith by making sure that the de jure title for your religion's reformed head of faith is a theocracy. I.e. when you conquer that holy site, make sure that the county capital is the temple and grant the county to someone who is unlanded so that it will turn into a theocracy properly and so that the head of faith title is given to the correct person. For the temporal head of faith, it shouldn't matter as long as you have all of your sons alive, or at least the sons along the direct lineage that you want to inherit, and you don't accidentally grant a theocratic holy site to one of them if your religion doesn't allow secular ruler to hold religious buildings. But if you have the grandson issue, I think you need debug mode. Maybe someone else understands why this happens better and can tell us how to fix it. Also, remember that if you change the gender rules that when it recalculates your heirs, they may change fairly dramatically. But this is intended behavior since you are changing who is eligible for the calculation to begin with. Edit: Both of these are in the paradox database for a fix in the next patch. The issue with the temporal head of faith is as follows: the title to the head of faith cannot pass to children who are not of the same religion. The dead heir cannot convert. So the title cannot pass through him to his grandson who did convert. Hence the grandson and all of his other children will be excluded from the inheritance if their father is already dead. If you wanted to fix it via the console, you'd have to make the dead character's religion change to the reformed one.

Dont forget that you can engineer a civil war to keep vassals in line - if you hit an independence faction and win the war then you have a period of 10 years or more that you can pretty much do what you need to do. Just dont let them out of prison until they learned their lesson.

Development is a huge part of adopting feudalism you will notice the amount of levy's you lose when adopting it that's because the amount of development adds benefits for feudal rulers its difficult to develop as tribal but it's worth it in your home duchy of your empire or kingdom. He doesnt mentioned it but if you choose to form your own kingdom rather then creating the title of a de jure. Make sure you have the highest developed duchy as your main title because this will transfer into a powerful domain even for your rulers who end up not having high stewardship or marshal will most likely be able to hold factions at bay.

Thanks

Would love to see some tips and pitfall on preparing and post conversion to fuedal. In my campaign I went from being exalted among men with lots of prestige and a strong army to bankrupting myself and ending in a debt spiral. How it happened: Moved my capital from Odessa to Visegrad and held a few tribal counties (thinking they would also convert) ended up converting with 200 or so gold and an army that was using 15 gold per month. Post conversion my main county with upgraded holdings was tribal and not making me anything and my feudal county was not upgraded and effectively useless. I was then drawn into a holy war against me (indebted through defending with my army + a significant advantage penalty due to debt and insufficient troops vs the pope to win) lost the war, my troops and then had the world start declaring war against me. Haven’t recovered from it and am just thinking about what can I have done to change the outcome. Enjoy your content and youtube streams.

Thanks! When I went feudal before (before the patch I think), my buildings did not convert, they just stuck as useless (literally did nothing) tribal ones. Also the game converted me automatically as soon as I met the requirements (which I wasn't mad about because I was going for it, but in hindsight could really suck). Also, if you're used to raiding for gold as tribal, you can no longer do it as feudal (at least that was my experience). It was so bad that I just quit that play through. What I recommend is 1 build up to empire status 2 make a ruler that is focused on piety to reform/convert + consecrate 3 steward or intrigue to get everyone in line and make gold 4 finally go to feudal with a ruler that can keep people in line / make gold

A few things... 1)You didn't specifically say it, but the way you were describing it, you seemed to imply that lifestyle focuses have to align with a specific lifestyle tree. That's not the case. At 7:00 mark, for example, your words SEEM to KINDA imply that there's a co-relation between Focus and Line (you don't do the same thing at the 10:00 mark). As thorough and wonderful as your guides are, I actually expected you to mention that Focus and Lines are separate. In Martial Lifestyle, for example, you can do an Authority Focus and grab the Strategist Tree. Or, of course, you can grab from more than one tree. Yes, it's usually best to concentrate on one tree, but you don't have to do so at the complete exclusion of the rest. I frequently grab Bellum Justum and then concentrate on Overseer, for example. I don't know if you've said so in other videos. I just wanted to mention this. 2)When talking about mass-conversion-demanding at 16:00, you went by it on the Religion screen. And that makes sense for this guide, without a doubt. But... it's just straight up easier, as a broad generality, to do it via the Court (F5) tab. Just scroll through the entire list of landed characters, which is what you need. Take a look at anyone with the wrong religion icon (note: I'm a bit disappointed in PDX for not doing a better job at ensuring the icons are clearly different post-Reformation... lookin at you Bori faith!), right click, scroll down, and DEMAND. From an efficiency perspective, it's much quicker and most likely more thorough. I tend to do this every few years no matter what, just to get any strays in my flock :) Anywayz... superb video as always, thank you so very much!

I started as Prussia in 867 and I now have an empire spanning from Novgorod to Italy

Can you make a guide to reform religion, is very difficult make 5000 piety

I just wanted to know the basics to switching and what you need to do

Why go feudal when you have more troops tribal?

Thats one problem I always have, I just focus on Scholar (Learning) and Archtect (Stewardship) perks always, not others!!!

Something just happened and I thought of this video. Figured id tell you and you can tell others. I converted from Asataru to Catholicism then formed the Empire of Russia. Few generations later i formed my own religion, took latium, moved my capital to Rome, and then took england (this was in a span of like 10 years tops). Right after i took England I went to look to adopt feudal ways and realized the option was gone. Several buildings have to be feudalized. This is the important part though, my troop levels didnt drop and neither did my money. It SEEMS that because I took over a bunch of Feaudal stuff (possibly because I moved my capital to Rome) that my government converted without all the drawbacks. I have to feaudaluze several tribal holdings but thats whatever. Just wanted to share, this felt like adopting feaudal ways on easy mode.

I wish that reforming religion didn't need three holy sites. Like if they were to keep the three holy sites thing, make it to where you can reform without them, but just spend more piety. Another idea could be the creation of holy sites by spending piety, but you can only make one per dynasty or per game, and or if there is a head of faith, they need to approve. Historically speaking, leaders around the world have altered their religion ever so slightly for their benefit. Some would make them up.

Started as Hordaland. Reformed Asatru. Became feudal. Founded an empire. It took 200 years but it was fun. You should try too

Btw if you are feudal or tribal and reform Islamic faith, and as head of the faith - ie Caliphate title created, you turn to Clan Gov! and crown auth back to 1.

God I need to do some sorting my domains.

How to convert to Feudal: Use console commands. Really fracking helpful dude! I was wondering how to get to 8000 piety while collecting 1 piety per month. Awesome!

God I always hate being the 1st country to reform to feudal cause it puts a huge target on your head since you lose 90% of your troops kinda sucks but I guess it makes sense

Quick question. I'm currently playing as Novgorod in 867 and I require a development of 10 or greater at my capital. Is that even possible while in tribal stage? I mean, I cannot have more than a single settlement on the county, the capital itself.

Nice vid, this will help, though i disagree about man at arms. Prestige is rather easy to gett even outside of wars imo. And ther's the gallant tree aswell. Do you have a vid or points were what domains to keep? I acidentaly gave away a kingdom title as an emperor, and forever after (untill i scutteld this campaign) he hated me, as i held domains in that kingdom. I guess it is in domain manegment in general, to keep duchey and king titles were your private place is. If not, one will be hounded with those severe opinion penaltys.

Tbh Tribal is best played as marshal for your first playable ruler, the heirs are better off either being Stewardship or Learning focused. At least if you start in the year 800 Stewardship means more domains which means more buildings and Tribal has overpowered military buildings early on(They get beaten by fuedals late game thou). Scholar is self explainatory. However what you look for is; Research + development bonuses, you want to try develop your culture so you can push trought the innovations quicker then other tribal rulers. Stewardship also got the "popular figurehead perk" while Scholar have the "Open Minded" and "Apostate" perks... Tribal go to war... alot so you want the popular opinion to be on your side(Ignored if you play a faith with Warmonger, like Asatru). After that you want to; Conquer at least a kingdom, then start raid alot in fuedal countries with 10 or more development. This will allow you to pillage for slaves to massively increase your development to 15 around your capital. Once you reached 15 development, move your capital to another part of your domain and repeat this(You can do this once per ruler). This will allow you to keep up to the development of fuedal countries.Because what will happend when you go fuedal... your economy will tank hard... and if you are stuck in a low developed Tribal area It will be even worse.

Great video, but one question: what are the best ways to boost your tech? That has always been the "bottleneck" in going from Tribal to Feudal for me, but if any contact with a culture with a tech you don't have has a chance to randomly proc a boost, isn't half-heartedly trying to "sway" another leader of a more advanced culture until you get the proc and moving on going to just turbo charge your boost opportunities (and taking learning as a secondary to Martial or Stewardship depending on if your armies need the martial boost to start kicking ass and taking names or not), or are there requirements and thresholds I'm missing?

Now you can conquer Isle of Man as a viking, be illustrate and have 2000 prestige and you are now feudal :)

I’m stuck at not being able to get to absolute authority. I’ve done everything I can think of but still can’t get to the last lvl

I just did this and managed to do this more or less as you said. However, how do you get your vassals to go feudal that aren't your culture? Do they have to wait until their culture adopts feudalism?

19:29 YES YES

There is a perk in the learning theologian tree that will half reformation cost!

Great video. Can you comment on Culture? How important is it to change culture? It takes forever to get my council to do it.

1:51 that doesnt show up for me lol, Im using Denmark at the earliest time possible, is that why?

I have a tribal building in Galway that I can't upgrade to a castle to save my life. How do ya upgrade these tribal buildings when everything else in 1052 England is Fuedal?

And I've been manually converting my territories this whole time

Okay so I'm in a Scandinavian and I have all the requirements to go feudal except level 5 capital and for the life of me I cant figure out hot to upgrade it I'm currently at lvl 4 but there's nothing else I can upgrade

How do i change my type of holdings though? i dont get anythinh from them now anf cant upgrade or change it seems..

My strugle with the transition is having tribal neibourgs with HUGE armies. The vassals isn't exactly a problem but fight tribal enemies as feudal is hard

I've played this game for a couple years and never looked at any of this stuff, LOL. It's been all about marriages, conquest and acquiring an Empire title ASAP. (and 90% of that time has been searching dozens of courts over and over to arrange the best marriages)

What is the Best way to collet the amount of Faith to reform? I am Always a bit short to reform and then my Character dies