Crusader kings III: Khans of the Steppe Review (Vaeleth)
Mixed on this one. While its nice to see the Steppe region get some love, the execution is poor.
The Good:
- Tributaries and confederations are nice addition. I look forward to a play through where I form a confederation empire.
- New raiding mechanics should make raiding as tribal more interesting.
The Bad:
- The mechanics aren't well fleshed out and don't really matter. For example the whole fertility mechanic in its current form doesn't work. I never had to migrate once during my world conquest play through which pretty much defeats the uniqueness of being a nomad.
- Obedience is bunch of micro management where you need to "negotiate" or "demand" obedience from all your vassals / tributaries even when they have 100 opinion. As you expand, this becomes extremely tedious.
- Game balance is more broken than ever. The power scaling introduced for the Mongols is absurd. It makes an already easy game trivial. There is no feeling of accomplishment from your conquest. They never stood a chance.
-- With confederations, they really should have made it so empires and large kingdoms joined together to stop the Mongol invasion. As of now, once you become "The Great Khan" the game is basically over.
- Performance issues / bugs. Opening the military tab with a large number of "special troops" blocks / locks the UI for 5+ seconds in the late game.
My DLC Rankings:
- Iberian Peninsula > Roads to Power > Northern Lords > Tours and Tournaments > Khans of the Steppe > Royal Court