Crusader Kings 3: Which Innovations to Get First

Ah, my dear friend, let me regale you with tales from my long and storied journey through the annals of Crusader Kings 3! The path to victory is fraught with challenges, but armed with knowledge of the Innovations, we shall conquer like never before!

In a similar fashion to how some grand strategy games have tech trees, and similarly to how Chesser and Cussher became the names for counties with their own unique cultural influences, so does CK3 reflect your modern technological advantages stemming from the evolution of your ruler’s culture

Each Innovation in Crusader Kings 3 comes with a few useful bonuses, but not all of them are equally helpful to the average player. So if your ruler ends up being the head of their culture, it helps to know which Innovations to focus on first.

How to Get Innovations Fast

Crusader Kings 3: Which Innovations to Get First

To discover the innovations available within your leader’s culture, look for the candle icon situated near the top of your leader’s head in the bottom-left corner. Clicking on it will display a menu where you can view your leader’s culture and subsequently choose the ‘Innovations’ option to access the list of available advancements

In order for you to influence this menu, your leader should govern a greater number of territories with your cultural background than any other leader shown on the map. It doesn’t matter if you are not an independent ruler; if your liege shares the same culture, they will be considered the cultural head

In simpler terms, for a culture to function effectively, its leader, or ‘culture head’, should be an adult. If a child, too young to govern independently, controls the majority of the regions in the culture, then the person with the second-most territories assumes leadership duties until the child reaches maturity

If you want to research a particular Innovation, you’ll need to meet a few requirements.

Your culture must have access to the right era.
- All cultures can access Tribal Innovations.
- To unlock the Early Medieval era, the date must be at least 900 AD, your culture must have at least half of the Tribal Innovations, and the culture head can’t control a tribal government.
- To unlock the High Medieval era, the date must be at least 1050 AD, and your culture must have half of the Early Medieval Innovations.
- To unlock the Late Medieval era, the date must be at least 1200 AD, and your culture must have half of the High Medieval Innovations.
To research a Cultural or Regional Innovation, your culture must either belong to a specific region, or you’ll need to introduce your culture to enough regional counties with your steward’s Promote Culture job. Each Regional Innovation says which region it requires, and how many counties you’ll need to start the research.

One way to enhance the chances of progress in any culture or society is by fostering innovation and technological advancements. By doing so, you may increase the probability that change occurs within a specific timeframe, such as monthly or yearly. However, it’s also important to note that there are two primary ways to boost the likelihood of progress:

As the cultural head, you can choose an available Innovation to be your Fascination. Fascination increases the odds by 24 percent (to 29), plus an extra point for every point of the ruler’s Learning skill. So a ruler with Learning 40 provides a 79 percent chance to progress every month.
Another way to boost this number is with the Learning Lifestyle perk “Scientific.” This gives you a flat 20 percent to your monthly Fascination odds.
The other booster is Exposure. You get this if your culture shares a realm, a border, a religion, or something else in common with a culture that has an Innovation yours doesn’t. Exposure provides a flat 40 percent bonus to an Innovation’s progress, but the Innovation in question is random and unchangeable.
If you choose an Exposure Innovation as your Fascination, the bonuses stack.
The Exposure Innovation has a blue border, while the Fascination Innovation has a yellow border.

The last factor that matters to Innovations is your culture’s Development. Each time an Innovation progresses, no matter what the odds are, it increases by 0.3, plus a bonus based on the average Development of every county that belongs to your culture. This means that a small, highly developed culture can innovate faster than one that’s spread out. In other words, it may be worth the hassle to keep your ruler’s culture as an imperial core instead of spreading it out to every province.

The Best Innovations in CK3

Crusader Kings 3: Which Innovations to Get First

Tribal

Mottes, City Planning, Barracks, Crop Rotation, Ledger. These four Innovations unlock the ability to build castles (Mottes), cities and temples (City Planning), military buildings for men-at-arms (Barracks), and buildings that boost your domain income (Crop Rotation). The order you get them depends on your home territory, but be sure to get them all. Finally, Ledger gives you an extra building slot in every settlement.
Onager, Mustering Grounds. Onager is the first Innovation to unlock a siege weapon, and siege weapons make sieges go several times faster. Mustering Grounds let you create more men-at-arms, which is never a bad thing.
Longships, West African Canoes. Your culture must be present in Northern Europe and West Africa respectively, but these two Innovations give you a big discount on embarkation costs and let you transport troops on major rivers. If you somehow get your culture into both regions, you can embark for free.

Early Medieval

Battlements, Manorialism, Burhs, Bailiffs. These Innovations let you upgrade your castle’s main building (Battlements) or your cities and temples (Manorialism). The first three also let you upgrade your minor buildings to level four (along with the first duchy buildings), while Bailiffs give you yet another building slot.
Mangonels, Household Soldiers. Mangonels are 50 percent better than onagers, and the extra men-at-arms you get from Household Soldiers stack with the bonus from Mustering Grounds.
Hereditary Rule. This unlocks Partition, the first succession law you can access after Confederate Partition. While Confederate Partition creates new titles when dividing a ruler’s lands, Partition only divides the titles you currently own. This lets you keep your realm together by only controlling one kingdom or empire title at a time.
Royal Prerogative. This lets you enact High and Absolute Crown Authority. These laws lower your vassals’ opinions, but the extra levies and powers you get are worth the trouble.
Chronicle Writing. If you plan on expanding through marriage claims or fabricated claims, Chronicle Writing makes the process faster by letting you press every valid claim in a single war.

High Medieval

Hoardings, Windmills, Castle Baileys, Guilds. These Innovations unlock the next set of building improvements. Hoardings and Windmills are especially important, since they let you upgrade the central buildings (something which the Windmills description fails to mention). Windmills and Guilds also give you two more building slots, along with access to powerful windmill and watermill buildings.
Trebuchets, Men-at-Arms. The next siege engine type, and the next men-at-arms booster.
Heraldry. This unlocks the High Partition and House Seniority succession laws. They aren’t as useful as comparing Partition to Confederate Partition, but they can still be an improvement.
Divine Right. This Innovation lets you press all of another character’s claims at once, instead of just your own.

Late Medieval

Machicolations, Cranes, Royal Armory. With these Innovations, along with the ones from previous eras, you can reach the best building levels in the game.
Bombards, Standing Armies. By this point, your men-at-arms can fight wars without any levies, and your siege weapons can crack castle defenses in a matter of days.
Primogeniture. This unlocks the best succession laws in the game. All your ruler’s titles will go to a single child, no matter what.
Renaissance Thought. The Increase Development job slows down as a county’s Development level goes up, but Renaissance Thought lifts the slowdown cap to 90. Crusader Kings 3 has an Innovation like this in every era, but unlike other Innovations, these don’t stack. This means Renaissance Thought is ultimately more useful than the other three.

2024-09-05 16:03