Info about Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments:

Official game description:
Life is a journey of chivalric adventure, so why don’t you embrace yours, ruler? Create your very own epic story with the major expansion, **Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments**. Be awed by the sights and events that await you, from bold, mock combat in the jousting area to adventuring perilous wilds with your royal entourage.  
Let wanderlust overtake your ruler’s desires during a monumental Tour, and seek out your subjects in a realm that can be both dangerous and richly entertaining. Prove yourself in one of the many forms of gallant Tournaments, either abroad or at home, or use the festivities to murder a quarrelsome rival. Be the host of new Grand Activities, be it grand weddings or stirring falconry hunts. But beware! Many celebrations are the perfect cover for the dastardly scheme against foes… or family.  
**Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments** presents a brave, new medieval world of trials and tribulations, deeds and adventure, and refreshing storytelling.  
**Get ready for adventure**  
Restless feet carry their master far and wide. Travel, and discover your realm in intimate detail with your own personalized epic Tour.  
*   Handpick your **Entourage** and customize your **Route** carefully. The road ahead might be long, but is filled with colorful characters, exotic cultures, and life-changing events.  
*   Pay your vassals a visit and interact with them closely. Inspect their holdings, and get to know how your subjects live their lives in the most distant corners of your realm.  
*   Manifest your benevolence and bestow gifts and rewards. Or, bring a horde of tax collectors and finally get your due from those conveniently hard-to-reach vassals.
**A novel form of Tournament**  
Aspiring warriors or prestige-seeking nobles, the **Tournament** is the perfect place to show your worth. Will you impress during the myriad new tourneys, pageantry, and chivalric trials of jousting?  
*   Join **Contests** to win extraordinary **Prizes** and gain valuable experience in new skills.  
*   Host a magnificent Tournament with all its splendor and festivities. Prepare yourself well by paying a visit to the blacksmith or gain some liquid courage in the local tavern.  
*   Beguile your opponent with setting **Intents**, then bash their heads in or win the heart of your quarries with your excellent jousting skills.
**Grand Activities, Knightly Honors, and new art**  
Medieval life wouldn’t be the same without elaborate weddings and knights. With **Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments** both impress even more!  
*   Gain an edge in backroom diplomacy by organizing a **Grand Wedding**. Negotiate beneficial prenuptial Pacts, please your Courtly vassals, and gain favors at these new intricate ceremonies.  
*   Bestow your knights with honors, allowing your warrior nobles to specialize, whether in politics or on the battlefield. Train them up, sending them to tournaments or war for even more experience.  
*   Admire the new museum-worthy character art, showcasing in detail the evolution of armor and dazzling changes in western medieval clothing, from the early to late Middle Ages.

Release date: 11 May, 2023

Categories: Grand Strategy, RPG, Character Management, Political & Espionage Systems, Emergent Storytelling, Diplomacy, Event Management


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Immersive travel and tours (weight 0.96): The new travel system and grand tours allow rulers to physically traverse their realms, impacting vassals, collecting taxes, and engaging in diplomatic missions. This adds a crucial layer of immersion and strategic decision-making, making the kingdom feel more tangible.
- Enriched peacetime gameplay (weight 0.88): The DLC significantly enriches peacetime gameplay by providing numerous new activities, events, and interactions. This addresses the previous lack of content during truces or periods without warfare, making the game more engaging and varied throughout its duration.
- Best DLC, core expansion (weight 0.85): The DLC is widely considered the best expansion for Crusader Kings III, significantly enhancing the core gameplay and setting a new standard for future content. It adds substantial depth and replayability, particularly in role-playing and peacetime activities.
- Strong emergent storytelling (weight 0.79): The expansion greatly enhances the game's ability to generate emergent, character-driven stories. Player choices during activities and travel lead to meaningful consequences, fostering deeper emotional connections and unique narrative experiences.
- Strategic grand weddings (weight 0.78): Grand Weddings are a valuable addition, serving as a strategic tool for securing powerful alliances, gaining legitimacy, and even manipulating or eliminating rival dynasties. They offer a non-military solution to various in-game challenges.
- Deeper knight and entourage mechanics (weight 0.76): The mechanics for knights and entourages have been deepened, allowing players to bring specific characters to activities and witness their development through event chains, fostering rivalries, friendships, and unique personal stories.
- Spectacular new visuals (weight 0.74): The DLC introduces spectacular new clothing and armor designs, enhancing the visual appeal and historical authenticity of characters and events, particularly within the tournament system.
- Substantial free update (weight 0.73): A substantial portion of the new mechanics and improvements, including the fundamental travel system, were delivered as a free update alongside the paid DLC, providing significant value to all players.
- Engaging tournaments and knights (weight 0.24): Tournaments are a major highlight, offering diverse competitions, valuable rewards (artifacts, prestige), and opportunities for character development and social interaction. Knight accolades further personalize knights, making them more memorable and impactful.

Common complaints:
- DLC Overpriced for Content (weight 0.56): The DLC is widely considered to be severely overpriced for the amount and quality of content it provides. Many players feel that the content offered should either be part of the base game or priced significantly lower, especially given the perceived lack of depth and replayability.
- Disappointing Tournament Mechanics (weight 0.19): Tournaments are frequently cited as a major disappointment. Players find them to be passive, lacking in player agency, overly reliant on RNG, and often plagued by bugs. The lengthy, unskippable transition screens and text-heavy presentation further diminish their appeal.
- Persistent Bugs and Glitches (weight 0.19): Players report numerous persistent bugs, particularly with Grand Weddings and Tournaments, some of which have gone unaddressed for over a year. These bugs often disrupt gameplay, force restarts, or make certain features unusable, leading to significant frustration.
- Repetitive and Tedious Events (weight 0.13): The new event systems, including travel and activities, are criticized for being repetitive, tedious, and leading to excessive pop-up spam. This often detracts from strategic gameplay and makes engaging with the new features feel like a chore rather than an enhancement.
- Paradox's Development Practices Criticized (weight 0.09): There is a strong sentiment that Paradox is prioritizing the release of new, often incomplete or overpriced DLCs over fixing existing issues in their games. Players feel that the company is not investing enough in quality assurance and is engaging in 'money-grabbing' practices.
- Cumbersome Accolade System (weight 0.05): The Accolade system is described as cumbersome and poorly implemented. Players are frustrated by constant notifications and the lack of an automated system for assigning successors, making the feature feel like a chore.
- Underutilized DLC Content (weight 0.04): Many players find that they rarely get to utilize the new DLC content in their playthroughs. This is partly due to the content feeling like a late-game time-sink or being integrated in a way that doesn't naturally fit into typical gameplay loops.
- Unsatisfying Treasure System (weight 0.04): Players express disappointment with the game's ability to provide valuable treasures and a general feeling that the gameplay does not meet their expectations, especially after resource reductions in patches.
- Lack of Depth in Minor Activities (weight 0.03): Existing activities like feasts, pilgrimages, and hunts, while present in the base game, are perceived as lacking depth and feeling like mere checkboxes. The new DLC doesn't significantly enhance these activities.
- Missing Core Gameplay Systems (weight 0.03): The game is noted for lacking a robust system for feudal relations and military affairs. Additionally, players desire the ability to play as theocratic or republican rulers, indicating a desire for more diverse gameplay options.

Gameplay feedback:
- New Grand Activities (weight 0.13): The DLC introduces three main grand activities: tournaments, weddings, and realm tours. Grand weddings offer expanded benefits and problem-solving opportunities, while grand tours help manage vassals and collect taxes.
- Building & Military Revamp (weight 0.08): The DLC and free patch include significant changes to the building system, reducing initial construction slots and revamping how buildings work. The men-at-arms system has also been updated, allowing for garrisoning and specialized buffs in specific regions.
- Expanded Existing Activities (weight 0.06): Existing activities like hunting have been expanded, allowing players to target specific animals for trophies. These activities can also be used for character interactions, such as increasing intimacy or facilitating assassinations.
- Enhanced Role-Playing Focus (weight 0.04): The game emphasizes role-playing and individual character lives, with players leading armies and having family members serve as knights. This reinforces the focus on personal and lineage development.

Performance notes:
- Game crashes after DLC (weight 0.03): Players are experiencing frequent game crashes, particularly after installing the new DLC or loading old save files with major updates. This issue significantly disrupts gameplay and needs urgent attention.
- Graphic settings reduce lag (weight 0.02): Adjusting graphic settings has reportedly reduced minor lag issues, especially concerning unit movements. This suggests that optimization improvements or clearer guidance on settings could enhance performance for some users.

Recommendations:
- Essential DLC, buy on sale (weight 0.42): Many players consider this DLC to be essential for the full game experience, especially for those who enjoy the RPG elements. However, there's a strong consensus that it should be purchased on sale or as part of a bundle due to its perceived value at full price.
- Unskippable tournament animations (weight 0.02): A specific point of frustration for some players is the unskippable animated tournament screens. They suggest that a mod is needed to bypass these animations.
- Negative rating unjustified (weight 0.01): One review expresses surprise and disagreement with the overall negative reception of the expansion, suggesting that the criticism is unwarranted. This might indicate a review-bombing trend.
- External content recommendation (weight 0.01): One reviewer recommends external content creators for information on Paradox games. While potentially helpful, this is not direct feedback on the game or DLC itself.

Other player notes:
- DLC offers long-term activities (weight 0.09): The DLC offers long-term activities and a new accolade system, appealing to players who enjoy managing royal entertainment. While some find the price high, the core concept is seen as a good foundation with potential for future mods.
- No AZERTY keyboard option (weight 0.02): The game lacks an option for AZERTY keyboard layouts, which is a significant accessibility issue for players using this common European keyboard standard.
- Missing coronation feature (weight 0.02): Despite having detailed mechanics for weddings, tournaments, and tours, the game surprisingly lacks a coronation feature, which seems like a thematic omission.
- Offline play for mod stability (weight 0.02): Some players choose to play offline to prevent frequent game updates from breaking their installed mods, highlighting a conflict between updates and mod compatibility.
- Achievements outside Ironman mode (weight 0.02): Achievements can now be earned without needing to play in Ironman mode, which is a positive change for players who prefer more flexible gameplay without strict save limitations.
- Integrate travel into events (weight 0.02): There's a desire for the traveling mechanic to be more deeply integrated into future game events and mechanics, suggesting it has potential beyond its current implementation.
- Polish localization mod updated (weight 0.02): The Polish localization mod has been updated to fix errors, though new game mechanics are not yet fully translated, indicating ongoing community efforts to support the game.
- Cultural inaccuracy in hairstyles (weight 0.02): A specific cultural inaccuracy regarding the Tartar hairstyle for Han people is a significant issue for one reviewer, who states they will change their negative review if this detail is corrected.
- Grand activities under review (weight 0.02): The 'Grand Tours' and 'Grand Weddings' features are currently being evaluated by a reviewer, implying they are new or recently updated mechanics under scrutiny.
- Suspected review bombing campaign (weight 0.01): There's a suspicion that recent negative reviews are part of a review-bombing campaign, potentially linked to a different game's DLC that angered a specific East Asian country. This suggests external factors influencing the current review scores.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.28): Players are highly satisfied with the new activities, particularly the travel and tournament systems, which add significant depth, immersion, and role-playing opportunities. The DLC is seen as high-quality, offering good value for money, and enriching both early and late-game experiences with new events and strategic options.
- Disappointment (weight 0.23): Disappointment stems from the perception of poor value for money due to limited content, repetitive events, and shallow mechanics, especially given the high price. Players also express frustration with buggy implementations, lack of developer attention to fixes, and unmet expectations regarding content depth and integration.
- Frustration (weight 0.22): Frustration is primarily caused by persistent and game-breaking bugs, poor UI design, and an exorbitant price point for content that is often perceived as unfinished or should have been part of the base game. Players also experience frustration with repetitive events, cumbersome mechanics, and a general lack of polish.
- Excitement (weight 0.07): Players are excited by the enhanced role-playing opportunities, dynamic activity systems, and the new travel mechanic, which make the game feel more alive and immersive. The addition of new NPC-hosted events and significant content additions also contribute to this positive emotion.
- Anger (weight 0.04): Anger is directed at the developers due to perceived shameless money-grabbing tactics, absurd pricing for bugged content, and a general lack of fixes. Players feel that the quality of implementation and the monetization strategy are unacceptable.
- Joy (weight 0.03): Joy is experienced through customizable travel routes, skill-building tournaments, and the overall reduction of boredom during truces. Players enjoy the new mechanics and activities, which lead to emergent narratives and character development.
- Amusement (weight 0.02): Amusement arises from the chaotic, entertaining, and sometimes absurd nature of the new events, particularly tournaments and tours. The emergent narratives from gameplay choices and overpowered mechanics also contribute to this feeling.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.02): Enthusiasm is driven by a strong recommendation for the DLC, often citing its superiority over other expansions due to substantial content, new events, and intuitive, well-thought-out features.
- Appreciation (weight 0.01): Players appreciate the enhanced gameplay, increased immersion, and the well-implemented new features. The historical and thematic value of tournaments is also a significant cause of appreciation.
- Hope (weight 0.01): Hope is expressed for future integration of features and potential improvements through future updates or community mods, indicating a desire for the game to evolve positively.
- Dislike (weight 0.01): Dislike is specifically tied to undesired cutscenes and the mechanic of killing spectators in archery matches, indicating a negative reaction to specific design choices.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion stems from incomprehensible features and unexplained game mechanics, making it difficult for players to understand and utilize new content effectively.
- Helpfulness (weight 0.01): Helpfulness is observed when players provide advice and explanations to others, indicating a community effort to clarify game mechanics and features.
- Concern (weight 0.01): Concern is primarily related to the high cost of activities within the game and the overall high price of the DLC, raising questions about value and accessibility.
- Minor annoyance (weight 0): Minor annoyance is caused by repetitive notifications and features that appear to be merely reskinned versions of existing content, suggesting a lack of originality or polish.
- Understanding (weight 0): Understanding is achieved when players grasp the mechanics of perk management, indicating a positive learning experience regarding specific game systems.
- Caution (weight 0): Caution is advised regarding the price of the DLC, suggesting that players should be wary of the cost-to-content ratio before purchasing.
- Heartbreak (weight 0): Heartbreak is a strong emotional response to the death of a character's wife, highlighting the impact of in-game events on player emotions.
- Immersion (weight 0): Immersion is achieved through an emotional connection to the game, indicating that the game successfully draws players into its world and narrative.
- Acceptance (weight 0): Acceptance refers to the player's acknowledgment and coming to terms with the DLC, suggesting a resignation or a decision to move past initial reactions.}