Post your CK3 Empire!

[Cymsdale]

Why do we not have this thread yet?
I want to see screenshots of all your glorious (and inglorious) empires. Your final end state or a work in progress, it doesn't matter.
Bonus points* if it comes with a little story of how you started and how you got there.
No empire shaming, they are all good empires.

(*Disclaimer: points have no value and cannot be traded for goods or services.)

 

[Cymsdale]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to start things off but here I go. I started my game as the Count of Say in Africa (867 start). The reformed Orisan faith is not that much different than the base, I just made family murdering more frowned upon because I had to change something to allow it to reform. Old Orisan keeps popping up quite a lot so I guess a number of believers are pretty stuck in the "perhaps we should allow more family murder" ways.

I plan to play all the way to the end date so I still have plenty of time to grow, although the size the power of the Arabian Empire is a bit scary. Their military power is like 48k compared to my 9k, not to mention they are way ahead in innovations. Fortunately there are still some smaller fish to the west and within my borders for me to gobble up.

My current task is more building up my economy and consolidation. That's why you see I am currently well above my domain limit. I revoked titles in my main duchy and that lead to some rebellion which gave me a lot more to revoke. I quit for the evening before I decided where and how to distribute all of those.

I'm high partition male preference and only have one son (a rare case!!!) so I'm in a pretty good situation in terms of next succession.

Let's see more empires!

 

[Boogeyman]

867 start. Feudalized around 1000 and I'm still recovering from that. Mongol invasion happened around 1190 and I spent a lot of money to fund his war targets into victories. Now they are out of special troops. Byzantines and the Rasulids have an insane amount of troops and money as they have been feudal all game. Next up is continuing to catch up to them and looking for ways to maybe destabilize them so that they can be pacified. Finnish culture is still ways behind them also even though every ruler of mine since the start has been doing learning focus. I reformed the suomenusko and then made a new religion after that. The new religion is super strict so that unruly people are easier to deal with as there are plenty of secrets going around.

Actually now that I'm reading what I wrote feudalizing seems like a mistake. 200+ years and I'm still weaker than before.

edit. scratch the mongol part, they seem to spawn more special troops.

 

[Cymsdale]

View attachment 621837
867 start. Feudalized around 1000 and I'm still recovering from that. Mongol invasion happened around 1190 and I spent a lot of money to fund his war targets into victories. Now they are out of special troops. Byzantines and the Rasulids have an insane amount of troops and money as they have been feudal all game. Next up is continuing to catch up to them and looking for ways to maybe destabilize them so that they can be pacified. Finnish culture is still ways behind them also even though every ruler of mine since the start has been doing learning focus. I reformed the suomenusko and then made a new religion after that. The new religion is super strict so that unruly people are easier to deal with as there are plenty of secrets going around.

Actually now that I'm reading what I wrote feudalizing seems like a mistake. 200+ years and I'm still weaker than before.

edit. scratch the mongol part, they seem to spawn more special troops.

I'm definitely jealous of that gold income.

 

[Jarl Galdur]

Started as a tribal Count in Darfur, renamed my Dynasty to Bakare, with the motto "Glorious is the Soul of Re".
The Bakare Dynasty built it's way to a reformation of the worship of the Kushite/Egyptian Gods. After many succession crisis, High Priestess Fawzia started a subjugation war on a neighbouring King in the Horn of Africa. That King became an Emperor before the end of our war, and I ended up subjugating an Emperor, myself having only two King-Rank titles.
This granted Fawzia the title of Empress. With the title of High Priestess, Patron of the Guardians of Duat (Kushite Holy Order) and with enough land for a second Empire, the realm was stable enough to adopt Feudalism.
This is my first time in CKIII that I reached Empire-Rank, all in Ironman.

 

[Saint Angelo]

Second Slavic Reich, exactly at the moment of its inevitable collapse

Vassals are insane, all the pink in northern Russia is their doing. There were also some attempts to restore Slavic lordship in Denmark, born during First Empire (again, thanks to batshit crazy vassals of mine).

First Empire has fallen in 1038 after Tsaritsa Matylda's feudal reformation. Vistulan Tsar's power was reduced greatly and they were overwhelmed by powerhungry subjects. Literally exactly 150 years later story repeats itself - emboldened bastards are looking to depose 6-years old Małgorzata (her dad Prince Andrzej was slain in a dramatic Bavarian crusade in Czechia, seriously like twenty lords just died in this one), coffers are empty after the crusade, it's 14k raging vassals vs 6k imperial forces. Soon my aunt, Bożena, will be crowned new Tsaritsa and then destroyed by independence faction in an instant, same as last time.

Only 20 years ago did Tsar Przemysław defeated the last successor state of Pomerania and now we are back to chaos...

Loving this campaign seriously, can't wait to attempt Slavic Reich for the third time in a row :sheep:

wish me luckies

 

[joelsin07]

start 1066 count of cornwall
im small but i have more troops than the bloobs

 

[Pro]

I was a bit unsure about continuing to play a gender equal religion when female rulers and heirs marry patrilinearly, so I took a break from my empire of Guinea (formed from the count of Igbo) to play around as a European duke, Burgundy to be exact.

I wanted to try to focus on spreading my dynasty far and wide rather than focusing on expansion. Early on it went pretty well, with members of my dynasty ending up on the thrones of Croatia and Galicia, plus a few duchies, counties and baronies. But my last few dukes have struggled to produce children, so I haven't had much success lately. Also the kingdom of Galicia got conquered by the Muslims.

Despite not making an active effort to expand I've pressed claims when I got them (or my vassals got them) and I had the military advantage. The result has actually been quite a lot of expansion. 100 years from starting the game I'm one province away from being able to form the kingdom of Burgundy. One of my bishops has a claim on Lyon, so I'll probably go to war with the Holy Roman Empire next time I play. Other than pressing claims that I got by accident my only expansion has been to holy war for two provinces in Provence from a heretic count and another from a Sami Astaru invasion.

Early on my duke and his brothers all got claims on the duchy of Barcelona. Since I wanted to spread my dynasty I pressed one of the brother's claim. That was a mistake because both times I did it the duke of Toulouse (who had previously held the title) took it back within a couple of years. The descendants of one of the dukes brothers is still count of Barcelona though.

Bonus picture, the Kingdom of Galicia established by the games first crusade. Ruled in all its glory by my great uncle:

 

[junassa]

867 Daura. Just finished tribal innovations in the past few hours or so. I'm the proud owner of Thrace but I thought I declared war for Tunis, lulz

Despite my best efforts to cheese elective gavelkind, an untimely death led to me once again only having one county (well, excluding Thrace which I just won). I really want the Mother achievement but I'm also afraid of going feudal and getting rolled over.

As a side note Ghana was once much larger than shown (as you can probably tell by those lone counties surrounded by blue). They couldn't form an empire I guess so they broke into pieces, and my vassals started gobbling up land.

 

[Tuo]

View attachment 621837
867 start. Feudalized around 1000 and I'm still recovering from that. Mongol invasion happened around 1190 and I spent a lot of money to fund his war targets into victories. Now they are out of special troops. Byzantines and the Rasulids have an insane amount of troops and money as they have been feudal all game. Next up is continuing to catch up to them and looking for ways to maybe destabilize them so that they can be pacified. Finnish culture is still ways behind them also even though every ruler of mine since the start has been doing learning focus. I reformed the suomenusko and then made a new religion after that. The new religion is super strict so that unruly people are easier to deal with as there are plenty of secrets going around.

Actually now that I'm reading what I wrote feudalizing seems like a mistake. 200+ years and I'm still weaker than before.

edit. scratch the mongol part, they seem to spawn more special troops.

Don't worry, it gets better.

I'm at a point where I'm running into vassal limit, so I'm focusing more on improving my holdings and trying to set up my vassals smart. The Damascusids of Arabian Empire just conquered the other of the top three powers, so I'm a bit stressed about sharing a new border with them, especially since my 109 year old High Shaman is about to drop dead within half a year (a bit later than this screenshot was taken, but the borders are the same). The Bilalids are coming in strong from the east, but I'm not too worried yet. The Byzzies are hobbled and are no threat, and most of the other Christian rulers are insular or cathars, so there's no power in the Pope's crusades. The mongols came and failed spectacularly to even get out of Mongolia.

 

[junassa]

Actually now that I'm reading what I wrote feudalizing seems like a mistake. 200+ years and I'm still weaker than before.

Didn't elective gavelkind try to create more empire titles? Kind of scared of that happening to me.

 

[Boogeyman]

Didn't elective gavelkind try to create more empire titles? Kind of scared of that happening to me.

I kept my expansion in check, sometimes even releasing vassals in order to avoid that. Just keep an eye your vassals expanding and the inheritance screen.

Don't worry, it gets better..

Looking at your numbers one can hope. You also seem to have expanded into lands that start as feudal, which might have been a better strategy. I went for the cultural/religion areas that were related to my starting position.

 

[Trixie_Felgear]

So far, my first game on this was still my best one in terms of doing anything particularly major. This is the crown of Arthur I, King of Scots and the Irish (that one county was subjugated a few months-to a year before Arthur died). Heretic (turning Scotland and half of Ireland Lollard) and ruthless besides. His sons, Arthur II King of Scots and Alexander King of the Irish, inherited after him.

The game had bugged out after a crusade against me for Cumberland of all places, and I was permanently stuck in a war-but-not-war with the Danelaw, so I had to stop it. A shame, it was great fun.

 

[Thund91]

This AI HRE is quit impressive. This has also been my most successful game so far starting as the duke of Aquitaine. I hated King Phillipe so I quickly murdered him since I bribed his wife to assist. After that, I led an independence faction with the Duke of Toulouse and slowly expanded after that - all the while keeping my vassals happy for the most part. I'm currently having to do the Reconquista myself because Sancho merged all the kingdoms and then converted to Islam. ?_?

 

[Zauan24]

The pope-emperor of carpathia and russia (his name is Dan )! Started as a count in the duchy as transylvania as the only living member.

.... yes... de hauteville are the byzantine emperors now...

 

[AnandB]

Took some time to get going with twice having to take back stuff after succession. Iron Man save.

 

[TenshiN]

My rather tame Empire of Qinghai started as a random Han chinese character on the eastern edge of the map. The fun thing is that the most of the game i was fighting my own vassals, as Tibetan mountains were actually huge with tons of 2-province duchies, and noone wanted to stay in their de-jure borders even with High Crown Authority enabled, which should've prevented them from fighting eachother, but well, it didn't. Tried to make my final borders look somewhat aesthetically-pleasing, but random vassals conquering land... Also a bit of Indian land i took for the Taoist holy place.

Also, mine was the world of huge blobs, as you can clearly see. At one point, the Seyfulahhid and Yaqubid was one huge empire under the former, slowly devouring the world. Certainly the biggest AI state i've ever seen in a Pdx game!

 

[Nochin]

It was really fun ironman run at 9th Century. But i think the empire is going to die now. I suffered so many rebellions to achieve this. First i reformed tengriism, then created new faith and now turned to feudalism. That is enough for this run, i guess.

 

[Thund91]

Don't know if it's relevant to this thread, but considering all the border gore in this game, it was a nice change of pace to see this very beautiful British Isles, all done by the AI!

 

[AGHOSTY]

This is my English ironman Kingdom so far. France converted to Catharism and ever since then it has been open-season on the Capets
The only frustrating thing is the amount of fragmentation in Scotland also the Byzantine Empire is scary..
The HRE is my only significant threat right now we are living it up
Close-up of Ducal Map