History YMMV / CrusaderKings

** With the importance of the Crusades in-game, ''CK'' also inherited the "Remove kebab" meme spawned by ''Webcomic/{{Polandball}}''. Paradox is on-record considering the statement racist and doesn't allow it on their official forum.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: [[OpenMouthInsertFoot Paradox unintentionally got into a bit of hot water]] with a March 2018 promotion where ''[=CK2=]'' was free to keep on Steam for a couple days. They announced this with a tweet that included the phrase "deus vult", which [[http://www.newsweek.com/paradox-interactive-875640 unfortunately for Paradox had become a slogan for various white supremacist groups in the years since the game's release]]. Cue a minor backlash and Paradox having to explain their intent and the historical context in a response. Not coincidentally, the term again pops up in another controversy when ''Crusader Kings 3'' was announced; see the relevant entry under Broken Base above.

** Recently instance occurred when a [[https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/10/19/crusader-kings-3-is-happening-heres-ten-things-we-know-so-far/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS%29 Rock, Paper, Shotgun Article]] stated that Crusader Kings III that phrase "Deus Vult" was now a form of hate-speech and that, when the writer of the article asked the developer about it, they were "told emphatically that the words will not appear in Crusader Kings 3". This resulted in a large amount of anger among fans of the series and of Paradox Interactive in general, who feel this change and the motivation behind it represent an example of PoliticallyCorrectHistory and fear it will that more drastic changes will follow. There was so much anger over this that the forum moderators made a [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/deus-vult-a-megathread-read-op-before-posting.1261285/ dedicated megathread]] and then locked that thread temporarily to clean it up first. And all this before CKIII even came out. On one side of the debate are the aforementioned fans who oppose this, while on the other are people who consider the reaction to be an overreaction or who outright support the change. Only time will tell what will come of this.

** The ChessWithDeath event from Reaper's Due is rare, will only fire once per character and requires that you play with Supernatural Events on. If it fires, however, you find yourself in a LuckBasedMission which is extremely unintuitive, has a close to 80% failure rate, and will kill your character instantly with no escape if you fail. And there is no way to back out or escape it once it fires.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: [[OpenMouthInsertFoot Paradox unintentionally got into a bit of hot water]] with a March 2018 promotion where ''[=CK2=]'' was free to keep on Steam for a couple days. They announced this with a tweet that included the phrase "deus vult", which [[http://www.newsweek.com/paradox-interactive-875640 unfortunately for Paradox had become a slogan for various white supremacist groups in the years since the game's release]]. Cue a minor backlash and Paradox having to explain their intent and the historical context in a response.
* WinBackTheCrowd: After the mixed reception of ''Conclave'' and its patch, ''The Reaper's Due'' is regarded as a much-appreciated return to form, especially with the removal of automatic calls-to-arms. It also added some more flavor to non-Germanic pagans. The crowd would truly be won back with the release of ''Holy Fury'', as the expansion allows tailoring of reformed pagan faiths to players' playstyle.

** Related to the previous example, everytime you as a child ruler get killed in a plot you not only get one of the aforementioned death sounds (the sound of a baby choking to death, which is nerve-chilling in itself), but also a frighteningly chilly first person experience of the events leading up to the character's death. Examples include stuff like getting pushed off the branch while playing in a tree, and getting taken out in the middle of the woods and then left to fend for themselves, practically guaranteeing that they'll get eaten up by local wildlife in the process. And the game doesn't shy away from making the soon to be dead child you're playing is scared as any child would be in any such situation. AdultFear, indeed.

** Recently instance occurred when a https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/10/19/crusader-kings-3-is-happening-heres-ten-things-we-know-so-far/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS%29 Rock, Paper, Shotgun Article]] stated that Crusader Kings III that phrase "Deus Vult" was now a form of hate-speech and that, when the writer of the article asked the developer about it, they were "told emphatically that the words will not appear in Crusader Kings 3". This resulted in a large amount of anger among fans of the series and of Paradox Interactive in general, who feel this change and the motivation behind it represent an example of PoliticallyCorrectHistory and fear it will that more drastic changes will follow. There was so much anger over this that the forum moderators made a [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/deus-vult-a-megathread-read-op-before-posting.1261285/ dedicated megathread]] and then locked that thread temporarily to clean it up first. And all this before CKIII even came out. On one side of the debate are the aforementioned fans who oppose this, while on the other are people who consider the reaction to be an overreaction or who outright support the change. Only time will tell what will come of this.

* GameBreaker:
** [[FanNickname North]] [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea Korea mode]], a popular strategy which circumvents a lot of the restrictions on ruler actions by adopting a [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen reign of tyranny]], stripping lands from vassals, forcibly passing laws they'd never agree to, and executing or banishing anyone who objects. In the short term, it's easy to replace the now-disloyal followers with more loyal ones, or at the very least, find a skilled spymaster and chancellor, find ways to make them loyal to you, and have them counter plots; your angry nobles will be plotting to kill you right off the bat, but as long as your spymaster is sufficiently skilled he can stop these plots dead in their tracks, and if you can identify the conspirators you can simply order them dead. Alternatively, wait and do this at the tail end of your ruler's lifespan; when he dies, none of the negative penalties are passed on to your heir (until the 2.5 patch, which added a temporary buff or debuff for vassal opinion giving the heir half the opinion the vassal had of his predecessor, though elective succession is exempt), and you now have a kingdom with vastly more favorable laws, all of the territory under your control, most of your hated enemies dead or banished, and your new ruler suffers none of the penalties associated with any of it. Some players even take this a step further and go tyrant their entire campaign, resulting in a brutally rich and powerful dynasty with massive armies, loads of taxes, and a long line of corpses behind them.
** Note that an autocratic and hegemonial rule as described here is only a Rule of tyranny. ''North Korea mode'' refers to an AwesomeButImpractical ruling style that involves holding all counties in one's own territory by oneself, i.e. not having any vassals whatsoever who have the ability to rebel (and thus, no rebellions, factions, etc.) However, depending on demesne size the penalties incurred from doing so might be so large that it can completely negate the monthly income and prestige bonuses one gets from their holdings. A not quite as popular strategy called ''Guantanamo Mode'' is to keep all vassals who can rebel imprisoned at all time, the drawback here being that every attempt at imprisoning somebody will cost you 10 piety, and that failed imprisonment typically leads to rebellion.
*** And now that the game allows you to set the demesne size to unlimited at the start of the game, it's no longer impractical.
** Muslims in general have a lot of advantages in early starts.
*** Your basic Muslim ruler has Iqta government instead of normal Feudal, which allows nobles to freely hold mosques instead of only castles, meaning higher income from both the temple(s) and the fact that Iqta tax law defaults to 10% on both castles and mosques, making them usually richer than any Christian nation. [[note]] While the Conclave [=DLC=] changed it such that Christian nobles will pay some tax by default, ''Catholic'' clergy still retain their unique mechanic of ''only'' paying taxes to the Pope and withholding their levies, if they like the Pope more than their secular liege. Needless to say, a pious Pope would be a significant drain on both income and levies for Catholic realms.[[/note]] Muslims are restricted to open succession unless the council is fully empowered, meaning that the vassals cannot form factions to change the succession law (a source of civil wars) [[note]]In addition, at early start dates, many Christian realms use gavelkind succession, which can easily split apart large realms when succession takes place[[/note]]. In early start dates, they also begin with two strong realms, the Umayyads in the west and the Abbasids in the east, whereas Catholic Europe is very divided and it's common to see Charlemagne die before he can form the Holy Roman Empire to rival the Umayyads, and only the Byzantine Empire poses a significant threat to the Abbasids. In addition, the game doesn't model the things that historically made the Spanish Visigoths not worth the Moors' trouble to conquer (i.e. that they were poor and good guerrilla fighters). [[note]]If anything, game mechanics make Asturias an even ''more'' attractive goal to conquer. First of all, Asturias lies in the same ''de jure'' empire (Hispania) as the territory the Umayyads control, which meant that the Muslims could muster more levies from the territory once it is conquered, as compared to other regions which lie outside Hispania. Next, a special creation condition for the Empire of Hispania is that its constituent kingdoms are not held by infidels. Thus, for the Umayyads to form Hispania, they ''have'' to fight the Spanish Visigoths until they ''at least'' lose the Asturian crown.[[/note]]
*** Muslim merchant republics are exempt from the Decadence mechanic and patricians can designate heirs or rely on seniority, while polygamy means plenty of sons for extra trade posts (potentially magnified even further with the Seduction focus), and Islam's religious ''casus belli'' mean one need not rely on the underpowered [=CBs=] of merchant republics for expansion. For bonus points, play as Shi'a or Ibadi to get holy war [=CBs=] on most of the Muslim world in addition to infidels.
*** The Yazidi heresy of Sunni Islam. If you can manage to become the Yazidi sheikh, you get holy war casus belli against basically the entire world, the ability to call jihads, ''plus'' the ability to excommunicate fellow Yazidis you don't like. (Of course, like vassalizing the Pope, getting there is extremely difficult: only two counties in the game are ever majority Yazidi by default.)
** A relatively infamous one is the Horse Archer unit, a combat unit type mostly exclusive to Altaic and Turkic cultures. It is by far the most powerful unit in the Skirmish phase of combat in the game (which is the phase every single battle starts in) and does an obnoxious amount of damage. All elite knights in the world are of no use if they get massacred before they can even reach their enemy. Even worse, Altaic cultures also have what is generally considered to be the most dangerous culture-specific combat tactic in the game, ''Retreat and Ambush'', which besides boosting the Horse Archers' damage output by 200% also immediately changes combat to the skirmish phase again. One reason why the Mongols are so bad is because their [[FanNickname Doomstacks]] consist mostly of Horse Archers who are all led by excellent tacticians and ''will'' use that tactic to eradicate any resistance on the way.
*** Horse Archers (and regular Archers) got nerfed around the time of ''Conclave'' (mainly because they made nomads too much a GameBreaker themselves), to the degree that they're considered the worst unit in the game from ''Conclave'' on. Mainly this is because Horse Archers have ''atrocious'' tactical synergy and [[ViolationOfCommonSense adding them makes your army worse at the Skirmish phase]], and flanks consisting of pure Horse Archers will only use the 'Disorganized Swarm' tactic which is also completely awful. In its place, plain old Light Cavalry became kings of the battlefield, to the degree that pure Light Cavalry (and especially Camels, who are basically slightly better Light Cavalry) will quickly sweep entire battles by continually getting the 'Raid' tactic (which triples their damage output) and [[LosingTheTeamSpirit cause the enemy to flee long before they hit Melee]]. Generally speaking, any faction that doesn't have Light Cavalry or Light Infantry (which can use the 'Feint' tactic to deal decent if not overwhelming Skirmish phase damage) retinues is best off building armies based entirely on the [[StoneWall Defense retinue]], as it is nigh impossible for 'regular' levy troops to significantly damage it.
*** Italian and Scottish pike retinues also score very high as retinues go. See the above section on Defense retinues? Well, Italian or Scottish pikes are basically those, but with some decent punching power on top of it. Because they count as Heavy Infantry, they're also very good at StormingTheCastle (unlike Cavalry and Light Infantry retinues who dominate battlefields but are terrible at sieges).
** Nomads, even after nerfs to their most commonly used unit (see above) and to their population and manpower. With ''Holy Fury'', nomads can even ''force a change in their succession type'', by reforming a pagan faith and selecting the relevant doctrines, to the powerful Open succession used by the Muslims. While Open succession is powerful by itself, it is even more significant for nomads as their Nomadic succession disqualifies dynasts of different cultures ''and'' children from the title of Khagan (leader of all clans in the realm).
** As a Catholic, having a vassal Pope (which can be achieved by making an Antipope and pushing his claim on Rome, making him the official Pope). Putting aside that you need to be an Emperor to have one in the first place, once you have one, you get free claims on any Catholic duchy or county in the game and the power to excommunicate any Catholic character who annoys you, letting you imprison them penalty-free and making it nigh impossible for them to form factions. This doesn't so much break normal mechanics for vassal management and expansion as snap them neatly in half. ([[ObviousRulePatch This is set to be patched]] in ''Holy Fury''.) However, the patch merely toned down the ''active'' use of papal mechanics; Catholic emperors still benefit from vassalization by the fact that since they are the Pope's liege, they cannot be excommunicated. Next, by not asking the Pope for the Game Breaking favours listed above, the Pope is likely to have positive opinion of his liege Emperor; this meant that the Pope will pay taxes to the liege, thus closing the revenue loss due to bishops from the realm paying taxes to the Pope. Even a vassal Pope's tendency to ask for independence in exchange for officiating a coronation ceremony can be mitigated by having Free Investiture, because this law allows the emperor to pick other clergy vassals to officiate, and as a bargaining chip (the vassal Pope might instead ask to instate Papal Investiture).

** Due to the way how alliances and feudal support works in the game, it violates one of the basic "rules" of it: the vassal of my vassal is ''not'' my vassal. In [=CKII=], any stage of vassalage is transferred to the top liege. So, if you want to conquer any given province that's controlled by a minor, weakling lord, but who also happens to be a vassal of a vassal of a vassal to some large empire, it won't be just his direct liege declaring war on you. '''EVERYONE''' in said empire will go to war with you. Automatically. With no option for negotiations, backing down or simply flipping out. This is especially annoying in terms of UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and any larger Islamic empires, because it leads to ridiculous, ahistorical situations where feuding minor lords bring entire imperial might into the fray. [[note]]The top liege receives benefits from every holding in their realm. See Analysis/CrusaderKings for more details.[[/note]]

** Due to the way how the alliances and feudal support works in the game, it violates one of the basic "rules" of it: the vassal of my vassal is ''not'' my vassal. In [=CKII=], any stage of vassalage is transferred to the top liege. So, if you want to conquer any given province that's controlled by a minor, weakling lord, but who also happens to be a vassal of a vassal of a vassal to some large empire, it won't be just his direct liege declaring war on you. '''EVERYONE''' in said empire will go to war with you. Automatically. With no option for negotiations, backing down or simply flipping out. This is especially annoying in terms of UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and any larger Islamic empires, because it leads to ridiculous, ahistorical situations where feuding minor lords bring entire imperial might into the fray.

*** The transition by itself means your potential (or actual empire) goes from a powerhouse to a complete wimp, on the principle that vanilla feudalism is by far the weakest of all forms of government the game has to offer, even when compared to tribal pagans. [[note]]At its core, feudalism only allows the liege to receive a cut of their vassals' levies and taxes. While tribal and nomadic lieges forgo taxes from their tribal vassals/nomadic clans, they call these direct tribal vassals/vassal clans into wars as allies, allowing the liege access to ''all'' their available troops. Feudal realms only become powerful with hefty investments in technology and buildings, which takes many generations of rulers.[[/note]]It takes another lengthy advance in administrative technology to reach anything resembling functional government and regain control over your own territory you had as a tribal pagan. Meanwhile, merchant republics are restricted heavily in size, so your massive conquest becomes a liability, rather than any sort of benefit. And should you be unlucky, your dynasty will be kicked out of the office of the doge right after your current ruler dies.

*** The transition by itself means your potential (or actual empire) goes from a powerhouse to a complete wimp, on the principle that vanilla feudalism is by far the weakest of all forms of government the game has to offer, even when compared to tribal pagans. [[note]]At its core, feudalism only allows the liege to receive a cut of their vassals' levies and taxes. While tribal and nomadic lieges forgo taxes from their tribal vassals/nomadic clans, they call these direct tribal vassals/vassal clans into wars as allies, allowing the liege access to ''all'' their available troops.[[/note]]It takes another lengthy advance in administrative technology to reach anything resembling functional government and regain control over your own territory you had as a tribal pagan. Meanwhile, merchant republics are restricted heavily in size, so your massive conquest becomes a liability, rather than any sort of benefit. And should you be unlucky, your dynasty will be kicked out of the office of the doge right after your current ruler dies.

** Adventurers, introduced in the ''Old Gods'' DLC, randomly lets characters gather a host to assault a realm they have a claim on, or which follows a heathen religion. Adventurers automatically scale with the realm they assault, no matter how little sense that would make, making it perfectly possible for a pre-christianised Finland to produce a 50,000 man army out of nowhere to attack your Frankish Empire or for one of your courtiers to go adventurer and form a 20,000 man expedition to take your kingdom... [[ViolationOfCommonSense from inside your own capital.]] Worse yet is that adventurers are treated as non-rebellious and saddle you with tyranny, dishonourable or kinslayer penalties for dealing with them (clearly, arresting your son-in-law for [[TooDumbToLive openly declaring the overthrow of your realm from inside your own court]] is the mark of a tyrant) and leave you at the mercy of the RNG.[[note]]Although giving them land prevents them from invading you.[[/note]] Removing the "diplomatic assassinate" option just made this mechanic even more annoying.

*** The trick to managing gavelkind succession is something of a ViolationOfCommonSense. You must be willing to parcel out titles to your junior heirs voluntarily, as opposed to the arbitrary distribution done by the AI. On top of that, you should aim to have only 1 title at the highest tier (e.g. not holding multiple kingdoms as a king or multiple empires as an emperor), which does reduce the amount of prestige you get from such titles. However, it would ensure that your heirs will not become independent of the primary one. Elective gavelkind further complicates this by forming same-tier titles whenever you control enough de jure land of said title, giving them to your heirs, and making them independent (e.g. if you are the king of Sweden and also control the de jure land of the kingdom of Denmark, even if you have not created the title, one of your heirs will become an independent king of Denmark). [[ButWaitTheresMore Also, all junior heirs have the option of going independent peacefully during succession.]]

*** The Coalition system was extremely contentious upon release. Not only was it very ahistorical for the time period (the closest thing to coalitions in the medieval era were the Crusades, who are already modelled in-game), but a flawed implementation where a character could be saddled with 200% infamy for defeating his own rebellious vassals in a civil war or the Pope would freely join an Orthodox war for the Holy Land on the side of the Muslims caused Paradox to slightly modify the whole thing in ''Conclave's'' first patch. People still complain about it though: with sufficiently large armies the pacts aren't even effective at their intended purpose of retarding map-painting, because the AI is terrible at coordinating allied armies and you can simply assault all the target holdings before the enemy can even work its way out to fight you. The ahistorical "features" like having the Sunni ''and'' Shi'a caliphs joining with the Orthodox Byzantines and various Catholic powers to stop a Catholic holy war against pagans in the Baltic also haven't been altered. In 2.6 (''The Reaper's Due''), Paradox made the entire mechanic completely optional with the new "game rules" system, and by 2.6.3 disabling it doesn't even affect achievements.

* WinBackTheCrowd: After the mixed reception of ''Conclave'' and its patch, ''The Reaper's Due'' is regarded as a much-appreciated return to form, especially as regards the removal of automatic calls-to-arms. It also added some more flavor to non-Germanic pagans.

** Egypt also used to be this for a long time. Although not large, it was always a united kingdom, extremely wealthy and wedged in an easily defensible position, making it difficult to conquer it. Also, except for 769, where it is part of the Abbasid Empire, the Sultan has the [[EliteMooks Mamluks]] mercenary company as a vassal, making it easy for him to win wars that would otherwise much more difficult. The real problem was though that unlike their Real Life counterparts, Egypt would ''immediately'' turn its attention to the militarily outclassed christian Nubian petty kingdoms and counties to the south and afterwards swallow Abyssinia even further to the south-east whole, essentially conquering the entirety of eastern Africa about 40 years into the game (and thus locking down the entire region for the rest of the game). The successful wars waged in the process would also prevent a decadence revolt from taking place. This has since been fixed by making the closest Nubian states tributaries of whoever controls Egypt at the time, but Egypt is still extremely powerful in AI, to say nothing of player hands.

** A issue consistently raise since the ''Old Gods'' DLC is the pointed absence of the Great Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, despite occurring within the expanded timeline of the game and being hugely relevant to the game's mechanics. This has been justified by developers as representing the already existing differences between the Eastern and Western branches of the church pre-schism, but as more and more "questionably historical" elements are added to the game, like Satanic Cults and Hellenic revivals, its absence is increasingly felt.

** Haesteinn of Nantes is a very popular start character because of his good starting stats and event troops and his unique position (a norse pagan in France, and ever since ''Charlemagne'' one of the only feudal pagans) that can take him almost anywhere on the map in a single generation. He's especially beloved by Achievement hunters.

* FriendlyFandoms: With the ''Videogame/{[Rimworld}}'' and ''Videogame/DwarfFortress'' fandoms, due to the sort of incredibly horrific antics that players of these sort of sandbox games can get up to.

*** The transition by itself means your potential (or actual empire) goes from a powerhouse to a complete wimp, on the principle that vanilla feudalism is by far the weakest of all forms of government the game has to offer, even when compared to tribal pagans. [[note]]At its core, feudalism only allows the liege to receive a cut of their vassals' levies and taxes. While tribals and nomads lieges forgo taxes on their tribal vassals/nomadic clans, they call these direct tribal vassals/clans into wars as allies, allowing the liege full access to their available troops.[[/note]]It takes another lengthy advance in administrative technology to reach anything resembling functional government and regain control over your own territory you had as a tribal pagan. Meanwhile, merchant republics are restricted heavily in size, so your massive conquest becomes a liability, rather than any sort of benefit. And should you be unlucky, your dynasty will be kicked out of the office of the doge right after your current ruler dies.

*** The transition by itself means your potential (or actual empire) goes from a powerhouse to a complete wimp, on the principle that vanilla feudalism is by far the weakest of all forms of government the game has to offer, even when compared to tribal pagans. It takes another lengthy advance in administrative technology to reach anything resembling functional government and regain control over your own territory you had as a tribal pagan. Meanwhile, merchant republics are restricted heavily in size, so your massive conquest becomes a liability, rather than any sort of benefit. And should you be unlucky, your dynasty will be kicked out of the office of the doge right after your current ruler dies.

** When ''Legacy of Rome'' was initially launched, it allowed realms with more advanced governments to employ retinues as an alternate source of military power. However, the balancing was off and retinue warfare became standard until Paradox nerfed retinues. With the nerf, many players felt that the expansion had become useless. [[note]]Besides retinues, ''Legacy'' only affected gameplay in the Byzantine Empire.[[/note]] The saving throw comes with the patch accompanying ''Holy Fury'', where players with ''Legacy'' are allowed to hire retinues which cost Prestige. [[note]]Tribal realms have low wealth income, but can earn prestige more easily.[[/note]]

** To counter the accusation that Germanic pagans [[note]]the Norse religion; the religion was renamed as Norse as a culture is also present in-game [[/note]] got all the attention while other pagans got shafted, ''Holy Fury'' added Eldership succession to African and Romuvan followers[[note]]Before this, pagans pretty much can only use gavelkind-style successions, which splits the realm easily. Eldership ensures that one heir inherits the realm.[[/note]], and a warrior lodge society to all pagan religions (except Aztecs). Also, ''Holy'' buffed all pagans by revamping the pagan reformation system, allowing the reformer to customise the reformed pagan faith.

** As a Catholic, having a vassal Pope (which can be achieved by making an Antipope and pushing his claim on Rome, making him the official Pope). Putting aside that you need to be an Emperor to have one in the first place, once you have one, you get free claims on any Catholic duchy or county in the game and the power to excommunicate any Catholic character who annoys you, letting you imprison them penalty-free and making it nigh impossible for them to form factions. This doesn't so much break normal mechanics for vassal management and expansion as snap them neatly in half. ([[ObviousRulePatch This is set to be patched]] in ''Holy Fury''.) However, the patch merely toned down the ''active'' use of papal mechanics; Catholic emperors still benefit from vassalization by the fact that since they are the Pope's liege, they cannot be excommunicated. Next, by not asking the Pope for the Game Breaking favours listed above, the Pope is likely to have positive opinion of his liege Emperor; this meant that the Pope will pay taxes to the liege, thus closing the revenue loss due to bishops from the realm paying taxes to the Pope.

*** Ditto the Umayyads in 769, who start out with solid control of Andalusia, and unlike real life will invariably conquer the entirety of Spain and then push for southern France without player intervention. If no intervention is made, it is very likely Umayyads won't stop before reaching Loire river.

** The UsefulNotes/{{Byzantine Empire}}'s Doukas Dynasty. The first Doukas emperor, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_X_Doukas Constantine X Doukas]] is [[RedRightHand clubfooted]] and inept with money. His heir, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_VII Michael VII]] is just as inept with money, and usually ends up lazy and craven. In real life, Michael VII ended up giving his throne ([[{{Squick}} and his wife]]) to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikephoros_III_Botaneiates Nikephoros III Botaneiates]] after realizing that he could not get anyone's support anymore - plus, he was very lazy and spent his reign giving all his power and responsibilities to [[FemmeFatale his mother]] and [[DeadlyDecadentCourt his councillors]]. They were so inept that many walkthroughs for the forming of the Roman Empire recommend against starting as him.

** Adventurers, introduced in the Old Gods DLC, randomly lets characters gather a host to assault a realm they have a claim on, or which follows a heathen religion. Adventurers automatically scale with the realm they assault no matter how little sense that would make, making it perfectly possible for a pre-christianised Finland to produce a 50,000 man army out of nowhere to attack your Frankish Empire or for one of your courtiers to go adventurer and form a 20,000 man expedition to take your kingdom... [[ViolationOfCommonSense from inside your own capital.]] Worse yet is that adventurers are treated as non-rebellious and saddle you with tyranny, dishonourable or kinslayer penalties for dealing with them (clearly, arresting your son-in-law for [[TooDumbToLive openly declaring the overthrow of your realm from inside your own court]] is the mark of a tyrant) and leave you at the mercy of the RNG.[[note]]Although giving them land prevents them from invading you.[[/note]] Removing the diplomatic assassinate option just made this mechanic even more annoying.
** Due to the way how the alliances and feudal support works in the game, it violates one of the basic "rules" of it: vassal of my vassal is not my vassal. In [=CKII=], any stage of vassalage is transferred to the top liege. So if you want to conquer any given province that's controlled by a minor, weakling lord, but who also happens to be a vassal of a vassal of a vassal to some large empire, it won't be just his direct liege declaring war on you. '''EVERYONE''' in said empire will go on war with you. Automatically. With no option for negotiations, backing down or simply flipping out. This is especially annoying in terms of UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire and any larger Islamic empire, because it leads to ridiculous, ahistorical situations where feuding minor lords bring entire imperial might into the fry.

*** This transition got so painful that Paradox eventually streamlined it; you now only need a single fully decked-out holding in your capital to turn your entire demesne feudal/republican, and your vassals can switch governments for free (and usually will very quickly as long as they like you). While this makes the process much quicker and cheaper than before, it's still painful for pagans and leaves your realm vulnerable.
*** The transition by itself means your potential (or actual empire) goes from a powerhouse to a complete wimp, on a principle that vanilla feudalism is by far the weakest of all forms of government the game has to offer, even when compared to tribal pagans. It takes another lenghty advance in administrative technology to reach anything resembling functional government and regain control over your own territory you had as a tribal pagan. Meanwhile, merchant republic is restricted heavily in size, so your massive conquest becomes a liability, rather than any sort of benefit. And should you be unlucky, your dynasty will be kicked out of the office of the doge right after your current ruler dies.

** When ''Legacy of Rome'' was initially launched, it allowed realms with more advanced governments to employ retinues as an alternate source of military power. However, the balancing was off and retinue warfare became standard until Paradox nerfed retinues. The saving throw comes with the patch accompanying ''Holy Fury'', where players with ''Legacy'' are allowed to hire retinues which cost Prestige. [[note]]Tribal realms have low wealth icnome, but can earn prestige more easily[[/note]]