Crusader Kings III - From Viking to Emperor of France (Tips and Tricks)

Butcher79

September 5, 2020

This guide to Crusader Kings III will give you some tips on how to become Emperor of France.

Useful tips and tricks

At the start of the game

Start as Hastein of the Hastenin dynasty. You will start with one county, Montaigu, in Western France. But don't worry, it looks like Count Hasteinn brought with him 3000 of his Viking followers and a large amount of gold. You will also have a lot of prestige to start with. So use this to your advantage.

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Before you unpause, choose a combative lifestyle, focusing on strategy. Also, you don't need to spend gold on soldiers, because with 3000 soldiers early on, your forces are far superior to other countries, except of course the King of France (so better stay away from him).

First invasion

At the beginning, you are surrounded by several kingdoms, including the Kingdom of Brittany and the Kingdom of France. If you make the mistake of attacking them, you will die.

From the looks of it, the King of France is an ally of the King of Brittany, so attacking any of them will draw the wrath of their ally and could destroy you.

So instead of attacking those kingdoms, why not focus on the County of León on the outskirts of Western France. The baron only has a couple hundred soldiers here, which is way worse than your Viking horde. It should be easy.

Don't think about the actual belli incident, as you are viking invaders, in fact, you can invade any county of France.

Where to go?

So the next question is: since the Kingdom of France and Brittany will bring you destruction, where will you invade next?

The answer is Ireland. Since Ireland is mostly made up of a few chiefdoms at this time, you expect a large force to oppose you.

Basically Desmond and Thomond surrender without a fight. Connaught would be easy to take too (but I didn't). Ormond and Ossory will be allied with High Chief Meath so you can stay away from them.

The task is to conduct a blitz in these counties with minimal losses. The problem I ran into after doing this is that they are different types of ownership. The solution is simple, I gave the titles to my son.

But if Ireland is too far away and you want to focus on France, you can skip this part.

Become a vassal of France

The dilemma is whether you stay as a Viking horde or kiss the King of France and become his vassal. I chose the second.

I chose as my direct overlord the King of France, and not some French duke. What for? because you will never become a duke if you are under someone else's dukedom. If you didn't attack León and Ireland early on and immediately decided to become a vassal of France, you will find yourself under the rule of the Duke of Aquataine and become a baron. The trick to prevent this from happening is to have other holdings and move your capital there for a while.

If your capital is handed over to Leon or Desmond, this will mean that you will become a direct vassal of the King of France. In other words, he is your only boss. Because crown authority is low at this time, you can still attack another duchy if you have a valid casus belli.

Also don't forget to change your religion to Catholicism. This will allow you to invite Catholics to court (since you are in France and Catholicism is the main religion).

Invasion of the Kingdom of Brittany

It's time to attack the Kingdom of Brittany.

Since you are a vassal of the French kingdom, your lord will not mind attacking the kingdom of Brittany, even if the latter is an ally of the former. Brittany will not put up much resistance. At that time they had only about 700-800 heads.

Congratulations, you will now have the Duchy of Brittany and you are now a duke.

Use your family

The next step is not to use your military prowess to take over France, but rather to carefully infiltrate your bloodlines into other houses.

The following tips and tricks will be helpful.

Use your daughter to marry someone with pretensions using maternal marriage. So, all the children will be under your house. Also, the husband will move into your court so you can use his lawsuit to expand.
Use your daughter or sister to marry the prince of France. Not necessarily the heir to the French kingdom, but rather other sons or grandson of the King of France. This ensures that one of your nephews will claim the throne. With a little luck and influence (diagram), their opinion of you may be high enough that you can use matrilineal marriage and your nephew will become part of your dynasty.
Use your sons to marry the daughter of nearby kings or a duke with a large army. Getting married will automatically grant you an alliance (by blood), so look for those kingdoms with a "potential alliance" icon in the marriage window.

In my script, my sister Vigdis married Prince Carloman of West France. Since Prince Louis (another prince of France) is disfigured, he cannot marry and have children, hence Prince Carloman is a potential heir to France.

Use schemes / intrigues

This will require careful planning.

Since my sister Vigdis married Prince Carloman of France using a Marrilinear marriage (how I did this I have no idea. Perhaps I had a lead, their opinion was high enough, or he was not the main heir, so the King of France agreed to this). I was waiting for their son to be born. You can offer him guardianship after if you want him to be transferred to your court. By the way, your nephew will be under your dynasty. His name in my script was Angelbert Heistening.

So the line of succession for the Kingdom of France would be Prince Louis (principal heir), then my nephew Angelbert (I don't know why Prince Carloman wasn't next in line).

This is a tricky party.

You want to kill them all so that your nephew becomes the Heir to the Throne.

Luckily for me, Prince Louis died in battle on February 8, 881, at the age of 18.

Then I planned the assassination of King Louis II of France. You need a very good spy to keep this scheme going. In addition, you need allies and the good opinion of other vassals.

Finally, a few months later, King Louis II died under suspicious circumstances (from me, of course!).

My nephew, Angelbert Heistening, is the new King of France!

Take the throne of France

Now my nephew Angelbert is the new king.

Patience is the key to seizing the throne. I expected him to take part in several wars with neighboring kingdoms. Moreover, by this time, I had allied with the neighboring kingdoms. Remember that even if you are allied with several vassals, they will not help you in the fight against the throne, so find allies outside of France.

When I saw that the 6000 soldiers of the French kingdom were fighting other kingdoms and were somehow exhausted, I used the best excuse to take over France.

I am the head of the Hestin dynasty, therefore, as the head, I claim the throne. I moved quickly, attacked Paris head-on and captured several valuable family members, including Prince Carloman of West France. In the end, I won the battle.

Now I am the King of Western France.

Unite France

France was divided between the Kingdom of West Francia and the Kingdom of Aquitaine.

My nephew Angelbert became King of Aquitaine. You have 2 options: wait until the truce ends before taking over the Kingdom of Aquitaine, or break the truce and become a tyrant.

I chose the second. After 2 years of waiting for me to form allies and reinforcements, I broke the truce and attacked the Kingdom of Aquitaine. My nephew lost and, of course, was killed, and I consolidated power in France.

Now I am finally King of West France, Brittany and Aquitaine.

Keep Vassals Happy

Ever since I became a tyrant, the opinion of my vassals has been bad. Here are a few tricks on how I managed them.

Rock (diagram) them to improve your opinion.
Offer positions on the council (this greatly improves)
Focus your chancellor on internal affairs, as this improves the opinion of vassals by +10
Change your lifestyle focus to leadership and administration. Get a branch with cute and powerful positions.
Ask them to change their religion to Catholicism. If they refuse, throw them in jail. They can't rebel there.
Revoke titles (if they let you).
An invasion/plot to kill them.

Create an Empire France

Since you now own 3 dejure kingdoms (Brittany, Aquitaine and West Francia) and King Lothar III owns the Kingdom of Burgundy, you can create the Empire of West Francia.

You need 800 gold. Just wait and don't waste your money on unnecessary things.

Alas, you are now Emperor of France.

Expand and enjoy the game

As Emperor, there is nothing left but to expand.

Fortunately, one of my vassals, Duke Karel III, has a claim to the Kingdom of Italy. Using 1500 prestige points, I invaded the Kingdom of Italy. With the help of my allies from the Kingdom of Lothargia and the Kingdom of Bavaria, I conquered Italy with ease.

Duke Charles III became king of Italy and is still my vassal.

I also created other titles such as the Kingdom of Brittany. I gave the kingdom of Aquitaine to my heir and son, knowing that when I died he would inherit the Empire and the Kingdom of West Francia. His brother will become king of Brittany and his vassal.

And now what? you can expand west and defeat the infidels occupying Spain. Or expand north to the kingdom de jure Britannia. Nothing is impossible for the French Empire!