History YMMV / CrusaderKingsIII

** On the status of the ''Royal Court'' DLC and related to its big patch. Or to be more specific, the time it took to make it. Part of the base is glad it ''finally'' arrived, adding badly-needed content to the game. The other part is thoroughly disillusioned with the direction the game is already taking and turning gameplay into piling up modifiers. Then there is the main content of ''Royal Court'', which is essentially a 3D slideshow that took almost a year to make, without adding anything to actual gameplay beyond visuals and thus leading the split of base what should even be the focus for the "fluff" part of the game. There is also a related debate whether or not the 30 dollar pricetag is way too expensive for the amount of content provided, especially since most of the gameplay-altering content was released free for everyone as part of the patch. Unsurprisingly given all this, the DLC's Steam reviews are settled on "Mixed". The later development cycle would show this as a sign of things to come, with massive frustrations over a very slow development pace for features people didn't ask for.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Among the scripted hybrid cultures is New English, which requires a combination of West Germanic heritage and ruling over Mongolic or Turkic peoples. As outlandish as that particular combination sounds, it's a reference to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_(medieval) the medieval New England (or Nova Anglia)]] formed by Anglo-Saxons who fled the Norman Conquest and, with the blessing of the Byzantine Emperor, settled in Crimea.

* MemeticMutation:

* TierInducedScrappy:
** City holdings went from the most profitable to the most useless type in the game. Unlike previous entries to the series, in [=CK3=] cities specialise in ''development'' now (which is a scaling modifier to a county's income), rather than raw money income. On top of that, cities have fixed, non-negotiable taxation, which has a relatively low baseline and can only be increased by small handful of innovations and lifestyle perks. Furthermore, since the economy was reworked, each holding type generates the exact same amount of money from economic buildings, meaning cities provide the same amount of money as temples when it comes to income. For comparison, castle holdings can be directly controlled by any given ruler regardless of government type (providing 100% of produced taxes and levies) and when given to nobles, they have a negotiable feudal contract, meaning heavier taxation is possible. Temple holdings, depending on religion, can either be held directly like castles, or provide a ''substantial'' 50% tax and 100% levies to the liege if he's on friendly terms with the archbishop - all while also giving piety to whoever controls them. Cities end up being best ignored, beyond the mandatory "1 of each type" in counties that can have more than two holdings.
** The Glory path of legacy perks. It was terrible in the release state of the game, offering meaningless, outright useless bonuses and the later rework to rebalance and bolster the weaker legacies unintentionally made Glory even ''worse''. While the whole line went from completely useless to [[BuffySpeak somewhat-sometimes-situational-generally-still-bad]], due to the fact that legacies now operate under [[DiminishingReturnsForBalance steadily increasing price with each one unlocked]], you will be hard-pressed to even look toward the Glory line, thanks to the costs.
** Certain cultural traditions are nearly completely useless or offer "bonuses" that are are at best questionable. All while specific individual traditions are impossible to get unless starting with them or the costly hybridisation/reformation/divergence options. Caravaneers is probably the most prominent example: it offers diplomatic range increase (not bad, but nothing special) and ''makes idle courtiers leave your court sooner'', which is outright detrimental.

* CriticalResearchFailure: Although better researched than many history themed games, there are still a number of glaring errors, especially if you're aware of the actual history.
** There are a bunch of historical universities present in the game as special buildings, all of them from the 12th and 13th centuries. For whatever reason, France has ''none''. That despite [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris University of Paris]] being the second oldest of the medieval universities[[note]]This might be related to the fact that Paris already has a special building (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris Notre-Dame cathedral]], which ironically started construction ''after'' the university). Still, it's pretty glaring.[[/note]]. Nor are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Toulouse the University of Toulouse]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Orleans the University of Orléans]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Montpellier the University of Montpellier]] present.
** Ignoring even all of the above, globally, if a university received its charter post 1300 AD, it's not present at all. That leaves places like Dublin, Florence, Pisa, Grenoble, Prague, Pavia, Cracow, Vienna, Erfurt, Heilderberg, Cologne (meaning the German part of the HRE also doesn't have a single university), Ferrara or St Andrews without one. Some of this can be argued to be for game balance, but the majority have no real excuse being omitted. And this translates into ComplacentGamingSyndrome, since universities are so good and important, you are going to beeline to conquer the pre-definied provinces to get those present in the game.
** Many of the Chinese rulers of Guiyi are Taoist in 867 despite Buddhism playing a prominent role in the region, with Guiyi's rulers needing to patronize and work with Buddhist authorities in real life.
** The major strand of Sunni Islam at the start of both bookmarks is Ash'ari, but the founder of Ash'arism, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ash%27ari Al-Ash'ari]], wouldn't be born until c. 874 CE, several years after the 867 bookmark.

* BreakingTheFourthWall: During the event from the “Release Your Anger” decision, the player character will insult several people. The button reads, “And you! Don't think I don't see you!” Since no one else is being insulted (the button does nothing but close the event), one could be forgiven for thinking the character is talking directly to them.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Among the scripted hybrid cultures is New English, which requires a combination of West Germanic heritage and ruling over Mongolic or Turkic peoples. As outlandish as that particular combination sounds, it's a reference to the medieval New England (or Nova Anglia) formed by Anglo-Saxons who fled the Norman Conquest and, with the blessing of the Byzantine Emperor, settled in Crimea.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Among the scripted hybrid cultures is New English, which requires a combination of West Germanic heritage and ruling over Mongolic or Turkic peoples. As outlandish as that particular combination sounds, it's a reference to the medieval New England, or Nova Anglia, formed by Anglo-Saxons who fled the Norman Conquest and with the blessing of the Byzantine Emperor, settled in Crimea.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Among the scripted hybrid cultures is New English, which requires a combination of West Germanic heritage and ruling over Mongolic or Turkic peoples. As outlandish as that particular combination sounds, it's a reference to the medieval New England or Nova Anglia formed by Anglo-Saxons who fled the Norman Conquest and with the blessing of the Byzantine Emperor, settled in Crimea.

* AccidentalAesop: Vast empires require strong foundations in law and institutions. Otherwise, they are prone to splitting up. Said laws and institutions also require time to develop.

* AccidentalAesop: Vast empires require strong foundations in law and institutions. Otherwise, they are prone to splitting up.

** While it's expensive (especially as far as family renown goes), rather than being stuck with a bad heir and switching inheritance laws or trying an UriahGambit, you can simply disinherit your primary heir if he's terrible.
** ''II'' had some infuriating mechanics when it comes to your council. Whatever task the councilors were doing was instantly made void and stopped at their death. For example, if you were proselytising in a province for a decade and was almost done, but your chaplain died, it removed all progress and you had to start all over again. Same with fabricating claims. [=CK3=] makes those tasks separate from people doing them, so once they die, their replacement not only can, but will automatically continue where their predecessors stopped, with minimal hindrances.

*** And on top of this, daughters are usually exempt from inheriting titles, unless there is no male heir (and sometimes not even then). In the early game, where partition is the only succession option, having a single son and a ton of daughters is the best possible outcome - lots of alliances and dynastic marriages, while having just one heir to your own realm. Even if you end up with a situation where your son dies before you and one of the daughters ends up as your heir, the rest of them are still outside the line of inheritance.

** "Had a duel with a pope. And lost"[[labelnote:explaination]]If you are a rival with someone, you can call them to a duel to settle things once and for all. This includes even the pope, a character that routinely is an old man with Learning-related education and traits. That doesn't mean he can't beat you, either due to blind chance or because he simply has high Prowess stat.[[/labelnote]]. This is made further funny if you call him into a duel as a pagan, since it means BattleStrip - but the pope keeps his mitre on.
** There is a variety of memes regarding the stress mechanics, covering both how arbitrary stress levels feel after a while of playing and how weird it gets when you end up gaining purely positive traits from them. "Haha, Athletic goes neigh"[[labelnote:explaination]]Athletic trait is represented by a galloping horse and provides bunch of purely positive and desirable bonuses[[/labelnote]] is a particularly popular one in few different meme formats.

** On the status of the ''Royal Court'' DLC and related to its big patch. Or to be more specific, the time it took to make it. Part of the base is glad it ''finally'' arrived, adding badly-needed content to the game. The other part is thoroughly disillusioned with the direction the game is already taking and turning gameplay into piling up modifiers. Then there is the main content of ''Royal Court'', which is essentially a 3D slideshow that took almost a year to make, without adding anything to actual gameplay beyond visuals and thus leading the split of base what should even be the focus for the "fluff" part of the game. There is also a related debate whether or not the 30 dollar pricetag is way too expensive for the amount of content provided, especially since most of the gameplay-altering content was released free for everyone as part of the patch. Unsurprisingly given all this, the DLC's Steam reviews are settled on "Mixed".

** Shared with its [[VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII predecessor]] and ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIronIV'', the policy of including content deliberately appealing for MemeticMutation, BestKnownForTheFanservice or out-there AlternateHistory. This includes many of the aforementioned features such as nudity or the option to found your own religion, including potentially an incestuous devil-worshipping nudist witch-cult, but also such things as the EasterEgg in the ''Northern Lords'' DLC allowing you to turn the Isle of Man into a PurposefullyOverpowered pirate kingdom. To some, this is Paradox choosing marketability over actual improvements of the core mechanics and historical accuracy, while others enjoy the flavor and feel it adds its own kind of longetivity to the game. Came to a head with the ''Royal Court'' DLC, as many feel its main feature of holding court was used primarily as a vehicle for fart jokes and overly wacky/horny events in an attempt to be more like ''VideoGame/TheSims'', rather than providing interesting storylines or new strategic opportunities. Flared up once again with the ''Friends and Foes'' event pack, particularly the event where your rival fires your pet cat out of a catapult.

** Shared with its [[VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII predecessor]] and ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIronIV'', the policy of including content deliberately appealing for MemeticMutation, BestKnownForTheFanservice or out-there AlternateHistory. This includes many of the aforementioned features such as nudity or the option to found your own religion, including potentially an incestuous devil-worshipping nudist witch-cult, but also such things as the EasterEgg in the ''Northern Lords'' DLC allowing you to turn the Isle of Man into a PurposefullyOverpowered pirate kingdom. To some, this is Paradox choosing marketability over actual improvements of the core mechanics and historical accuracy, while others enjoy the flavor and feel it adds its own kind of longetivity to the game. Came to a head with the ''Royal Court'' DLC, as many feel its main feature of holding court was used primarily as a vehicle for fart jokes and overly wacky/horny events in an attempt to be more like ''VideoGame/TheSims'', rather than providing interesting storylines or new strategic opportunities. Flared up once again with the ''Friends and Foes'' event pack, particular the event where your rival fires your pet cat out of a catapult.

** Shared with its [[VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII predecessor]] and ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIronIV'', the policy of including content deliberately appealing for MemeticMutation, BestKnownForTheFanservice or out-there AlternateHistory. This includes many of the aforementioned features such as nudity or the option to found your own religion, including potentially an incestuous devil-worshipping nudist witch-cult, but also such things as the EasterEgg in the ''Northern Lords'' DLC allowing you to turn the Isle of Man into a PurposefullyOverpowered pirate kingdom. To some, this is Paradox choosing marketability over actual improvements of the core mechanics and historical accuracy, while others enjoy the flavor and feel it adds its own kind of longetivity to the game. Came to a head with the ''Royal Court'' DLC, as many feel its main feature of holding court was used primarily as a vehicle for fart jokes and overly wacky/horny events in an attempt to be more like ''VideoGame/TheSims'', rather than providing interesting storylines or new strategic opportunities.

** In [=CK1=] and 2, there was nothing worse than ending up with an entire string of daughters, especially as a Muslim. All you could do with them was sending them was to marry them to someone and forget they even existed. There is nothing better than being ''blessed'' with an entire string of daughters, ''especially'' as a Muslim. Their main role is still to be married away, but thanks to greatly expanded focus and game mechanics for the dynastic aspect of the game, it is well-worth having as many marriages as possible, building alliances and dynastic renown in the process. As a Muslim, this is especially potent due to polygamy. Your daughter might not be the queen consort ([[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident yet]]), but she's still married to some powerful (or even less powerful) person for benefit of the entire dynasty. You can go as far as marry''all'' your daughters to the same ruler. This is especially potent when marrying into the Seljuks or another Muslim imperial house, as it counts as ''4 emperors by marriage'', bordering on a GameBreaker.

* UncannyValley: Children have weirdly proportioned and modeled heads, and the youngest ones have a doll-like appearance. On top of that, seeing newborn babies standing upright like older children can be jarring.

** "Had a duel with a pope. And lost"[[labelnote:explaination]]If you are a rival with someone, you can call them to a duel to settle things once and for all. This includes even the pope, a character that routinely is an old man with Learning-related education and traits. That doesn't mean he can't beat you, either due to blind chance or because he simply has high Prowess stat.[[/labelnote]]. This is made further funny if you call him into a duel as a pagan, since it means BattleStrip - but the pope keeps his NiceHat on.

** There are a bunch of historical universities present in the game as special buildings, all of them from the 12th and 13th centuries. For whatever reason, France has ''none''. That despite [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris University of Paris]] being the second oldest of the medieval universities[[note]]This might be related to the fact that Paris already has a special building (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris Notre-Dame cathedral]], which ironically started construction ''after'' the university). Still, it's pretty glaring.[[/note]]. Nor are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Toulouse the University of Toulouse]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Orl%C3%A9ans the University of Orléans]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Montpellier the University of Montpellier]] present.

* CriticalResearchFailure: There are a bunch of historical universities present in the game as special buildings, all of them from the 12th and 13th centuries. For whatever reason, France has ''none''. That despite [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris University of Paris]] being the second oldest of the medieval universities[[note]]This might be related to the fact that Paris already has a special building (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Paris Notre-Dame cathedral]], which ironically started construction ''after'' the university). Still, it's pretty glaring.[[/note]]. Nor are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Toulouse the University of Toulouse]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Orl%C3%A9ans the University of Orléans]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Montpellier the University of Montpellier]] present.

* BestKnownForTheFanservice: For many players, the rich and complex system by which you can convert or even found your own religion boils down to, "You can see boobies," since you can pick the Natural Primitivist tenet that makes all the religion's followers permanently naked. And this is what people will mostly discuss about those religions. Which is somehow still an improvement for Jainism, given its reputation [[UsefulNotes/NonNaziSwastika from II]]. Jainism and the new Adamite Christian faith join the club with [[BrotherSisterIncest Zoroastrianism]] and the [[IncestIsRelative Messalian]] [[SatanIsGood sect]]. Additionally, a preview video for the game showed incidentally that nudist characters would not be NippleAndDimed[[note]]the devs later clarified there's an option to change this, and fig leaves cover the genitals, though some previews used BarbieDollAnatomy instead[[/note]]. It was never explicitly mentioned in the preview, merely seen in a video, and the character seen naked [[NationalGeographicNudity was an elderly woman with a physique appropriate for her age]]. Many of the top comments, second only to [[BrokenBase complaints about the new naval system]], were variations on, "''boobs!''"

** The way the royal footstool event in ''Royal Court'' is coded tends to drive players up the wall and conjures up flashbacks of the aforementioned retroactive parentage change event. It selects a random ally of yours and has them instantly deposed by their child. Then they appear at your court seeking aide, where you are given two options: Backstab them and sell them out to the new ruler, or let them stay at your court but humiliate them by forcing them to serve as your footstool from now on. This was ostensibly meant to be a lighthearted BlackComedy event, but is usually considered the worst case of RailRoading in the game, not just because the player is given no option not to act like a JerkAss, but also because it completely bypasses the game's normal mechanisms of how power is maintained, instantly forcing the loss of a valuable ally with no check for how logical it would be for them to lose their throne like that[[note]]they could be extremely well-entrenched and universally beloved among their court, while the usurper might not have any power to speak of[[/note]] and no chance to prevent it, all for the sake of a joke.