Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
I own the game for PS5. Tried playing 3 times and just can't understand what I'm supposed to do. The learning curve is so high
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I get it, but here's some tips on case someone (maybe you) finds them helpful
- Roleplaying is your friend. It's okay to be a clueless ruler
- Making decisions you end up regretting is inevitable. It's just part of being a ruler.
- I still don't know how exactly a lot of the mechanics work, but it doesn't really matter, you don't generally have to know the rules to play and even succeed quite well. It's very much a game you learn as you play. It took me forever to get even the basics of how cultural development works for example. Didn't really hurt the game that much. You can't focus on everything anyway.
- The basic idea is pretty simple: you play as a dynasty. While you only control one member of your dynasty at a time, when that character dies you just move to play your heir, and then their heir, etc. Mostly you have very limited control over who your heir is.
- Many things in this game take literally multiple generations to play out, and a lot of things will only be available much later on in the game.
- This is very much a "set your own goals" kind of game, but generally you try to bring more land under the rule of your dynasty. The two main ways to do this are warfare, which is very simple (declare a war, pick a piece of land you want to conquer, press "raise all armies", move them where you want to fight, fight until the war is +100% which is when you win, or -100% which is when you lose), or through marriages and children (which is way more complicated). You can let the AI move troops if you're not sure what to do. The AI is stupid, but it does know the rules
- Common sense actually helps a lot. Also, knowing the basics of feudal systems.
- Use the tooltip a lot
- Main thing: you want other characters to either like you or fear you (dread). Generally, it's a lot easier to be liked. You especially want your most powerful vassals to like you, and your council. You're liked by someone when the number on top of that character is green.
- It's pretty hard to "lose" the game, but it's very common to suffer setbacks. Especially if you don't know what you're doing, you will lose wars, your kingdom will split apart, someone will murder your character etc. That only means that your next character will have a more difficult starting position... but since the game kind of gets more complex as your empire grows, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Just let the story of your dynasty happen.
- It's normal that when you switch characters, everything is on fire for a while. The previous ruler just died, and those are tumultuous times
- It's normal for stuff to be going on you don't really get. Your vassals and people in your court have their own agendas, most of which you don't know about.
- It's normal for things to happen that you weren't prepared for. Rebellions happen, assassinations happen, etc.
- You can even switch to a completely different character from a different dynasty, but on the same map/playthrough. You might try that if feel that your dynasty sucks or you messed up. Pick a neighbour and play as them, pick the Holy Roman Empire if you want to feel big.
- Look at suggestions a lot, and also check out available Decisions.
- Use Pause a lot, it helps to take your time before making decisions. Also use the speed variation. During wars you generally want to slow things down so you react to things, but sometimes you want to just let years fly by without doing much
- I also play on the PS5, and unfortunately the console UI is a bit buggy and generally not the best.
