History VideoGame / CrusaderKingsIII

* RuggedScar: Suffering injuries may result in a character gaining a scar, which grants them a minor bonus to attraction opinion and monthly prestige.

* ComebackMechanic:

* NoNudityTaboo: Adamite Christians and Yapaniya Jains, as well as other faith with the Natural Primitivism tenet practice universal nudism, if you did not disable the option to show it. Additionally, Digambara Jains (the most mainstream Jain faith) have the special Naked Priests doctrine, in which nudism isn't expected of all practitioners, but priests and zealous characters reject clothing.

* NoNudityTaboo: Adamite Christians and Yapaniya Jains, as well as any other faith with the Natural Primitivism tenet practice universal nudism, if you did not disable the option to show it. Additionally, Digambara Jains (the most mainstream Jain faith) have the special Naked Priests doctrine, in which nudism isn't expected of all practitioners, but priests and zealous characters reject clothing.

** In gameplay, cultures with the Eye for an Eye tradition see this is normal and just and the vengeful trait is considered proper behavior for an upstanding member of the culture, while being forgiving is seen as a sign of weakness. Likewise, this also applies to the Germanic Pagan faith and any faith with the Sacred Murders (Fedayeen if Muslim) tenet, as they too see vengeful behavior as pious and Germanics see being forgiving or cowardly as sinful, while those who practice Sacred Murders see cowardice but not forgiveness as sinful.

** Once a dynasty unlocks the entire Warfare line of legacies, it gains access to House Guards men-at-arms. Compared with regular Armored Footmen, they have better stats all over the board (and gain additional high Screen stats that regular footmen lack). Only a single regiment of those can be maintained.
** Cultural retinues are this, being a regional flavor of the regular unit type with improved stats, the ability to counter additional types of enemy retinues, [=and/or=] terrain specialties related with their place of origin. To get them, your culture must either have specific cultural traditions ''or'' you have to control a sufficient number of counties in a specific region of the map and then research the necessary innovation.

** From ''II'', ''de jure'' drift and "all count vassals" were nerfed. Now, ''de jure'' drift has an additional requirement of close proximity (e.g. sharing a land border) before the drift can begin. Also, with the "Rightful liege" mechanic, count vassals now give you reduced taxes and levies if you are a king or emperor and not holding the duchy title directly above them. However, there's also a buff to ''de jure'' drift in the form of a new Steward action that accelerates the process.

** In a broader sense, every barony (city/temple/castle) belongs to a county, every county belongs to a duchy, every duchy belongs to a kingdom, and every kingdom belongs to an empire, regardless of the historical existence of any or all of those levels of political organization in the area in question, with a great many ''de jure'' kingdoms and empires literally existing just to fill space and with borders defined more by game balance and loose adherence to geographic regions than any particular historical basis. This is most visible with imperial titles, as vast majority of them has zero historical basis, existing solely to consolidate land in places like Eastern Europe, the Great Steppe and Central Asia.

* StoryDrivenInvulnerability: The Papacy has a slightly downplayed version of this, though not individual Popes. Unless the Great Schism is mended or you control the entire region of Italia and choose to dismantle it, there will always be a Pope, and even if you conquer and convert the Eternal City as another religion but not the entire peninsula, the Pope is staying right there undermining you. This is in stark contrast to real life, where the actual Papacy moved to Avignon as soon as Rome started to decline (later moving back).

* FromNobodyToNightmare: Inverted with Norse culture. It starts ''very'' strong in 867, with a plethora of special gameplay elements, along with religion and cultural innovations tailor-made for fearsome raiders. But as time goes on, viking raids go from "pretty challenging" to "annoying nuisance", and eventually become completely ignoreable. On their own, the Norse will eventually either split into Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, [[GoingNative go native with the locals they've conquered]] or get completely sidelined on the fringes of the map. Most notably, to prevent the ever-increasing power-disparity, Norse rulers must either reform Ásatrú religion (a daunting task) or simply adopt any of the organised faiths - either of which will disable raiding, on which Norse gameplay revolves, but at least allows to escape the Tribal Era tech restictions. Tellingly, in the 1066 start, Norse is effectively a dead culture, limited to remnants on Iceland and the Orkeys.

* ZergRush: Downplayed from previous entries; while it is still possible to overwhelm your opponent with a massive doomstack, far more emphasis is placed on the composition of your armies, the skill of your commander, prowess of your knights and the suitability of your men-at-arms to the terrain. A high quality but small army can easily curb-stomp a huge army consisting of nothing but levies (who are basically peasants given a sword and told to fight.)

* WorkingOutTheirEmotions: One of the rare coping mechanisms with purely positive effects is for a character to channel their stress into exercise.

** Periphery regions of the map like East Africa, West Africa, Central Asia, the Himalayas, Northern Europe, and the Eurasian taiga and steppe see little to no development or innovation gain between the 867 and 1066 start dates, while the core regions see significant advances and has mostly moved on to the Early Feudal era. Said periphery regions are further locked in the lowest of TechnologyLevels, as they are likely to be following an unorganised religion and thus prevented from advancing to the next level.
** The game uses TechnologyLevels, and each of those levels, known as eras, has a hard-coded starting date. Even if a culture manages to blitz through an era (which is likely in 867 starts), it is locked from further research until the game reaches the mandated minimal year to unlock the next era. In the most extreme cases, it is entirely possible to sit for ''almost a century'' without progressing the tech one bit. And if one changes or removes the minimal date or simply cheat, the in-game tech still ends with the Late Medieval inventions.

** From ''II'', ''de jure'' drift and "all count vassals" were nerfed. Now, ''de jure'' drift has an additional requirement of close proximity (e.g. sharing a land border) before the drift can begin. Also, with the "Rightful liege" mechanic, count vassals now give you reduced taxes and levies if you are a king or emperor and not holding the duchy title directly above them.
** Levies are no longer a random smattering of units of specific types like in ''II'', but instead just an armed rabble, offering close to zero use in battles (not even as CannonFodder). This not only renders any structures and policies increasing their number useless, but also affects your dealings with your vassals. Since they are only offering a percentage of their levies, there is no real point or reason to maintain a high level of their military participation, or to keep their troops standing.

* RaisedByGrandparents: A very common occurence in the game is for the current player character to raise their ''grand''kids, grooming them into perfect rulers. Oftentimes, it leads to the situation where the direct heir to the current character is a ''worse'' successor (due to being controlled by AI and screwing around for a few decades on their own) than the grandchild that barely hits maturity before the elderly PC finally dies, which might lead to some... creative ways of handling the inheritance.

* StayInTheKitchen: 'Male Dominated' faiths take this stance, blocking women from succession by default, giving opinion penalties to female rulers, and barring female characters from polygamy even if the religion permits male rulers to practice it. Due to the time period the game is set in, this kind of attitude is quite common among in-game characters under the default religion and succession game rules. A few faiths however avert this, and custom and reformed faiths can even invert the trope, favoring equality or even a female-dominated society. Additionally, cultural traditions can override these religious expecations, such as Basque and Visigothic equal succession and certain African cultures having traditions of warrior queens (and female-preference or female-only succession).

** The game follows a rule that every barony must exist on-map even if unfilled, and must belong to a county, which in turn belongs to a duchy. These are often based on a mix of out-of-period settlements, regional tribes, geographic names (that may or may not have been assigned by people who would only later occupy the regions in question), but mostly have some clear basis and are inherently necessary to the game as these levels of organization are immutable in normal gameplay. However, all of these duchies in turn belong to ''de jure'' kingdoms and these kingdoms to ''de jure'' empires based loosely on either geography or cultural presence in the large portions of the map where no unifying state ever existed (or wouldn't exist until long after the game for the significant portions of the map that would eventually fall under empires like Russia and the Mughals), or where historical kingdoms or empires are simply prohibitively large (again, such as the vast swathes of the map that would eventually wind up under the Russian Empire). These are also less strictly necessary as the game allows for the creation of titular titles (titles with no ''de jure'' territory) and for duchies to drift into kingdoms and kingdoms to drift into empires as part of the natural course of gameplay, as well as allowing for special effects on certain types of title creation that add some or all titles to a new ''de jure'' kingdom or empire.

** There is a limit of 15 for 'legitimate' children per character, at which point the fertility of the character's marriage(s) and ongoing affairs is set to 0. Like in ''Crusader Kings 2'', bastards are exempt from this.

** The children of two parents with a genetic trait will always pass on that trait (this includes known recessive traits like Albinism), and has a chance of upgrading it if it exists on a scale. In real life, even autosomal dominant traits are at best only passed on 75% of the time (there is a 25% chance that the recessive allele is passed on from both parents).

* ProudWarriorRace: Tribal vassals' obligations depend on the liege's level of fame. Gold is very much a secondary method of income, as most things are purchased partially or entirely with prestige instead. Gameplay is focused on organizing raids (which provides gold and prestige in equal quantities) and waging many wars by spending prestige to rapidly expand, with heavy undertones of BlingOfWar.

* TheVamp: The Seduction lifestyle tree culminates with the Seductor/Seductress trait, providing a huge ''+40'' attraction opinion modifier[[note]]For perspective, Beautiful, an in-born trait, provides +30 - and you of course can have both, all while the scale ends at +100[[/note]]. The opinion is near-useless for males... but reaches game-breaking potential for female rulers. By just existing, a Seductress can easily do whatever she wants, since nobody will mind - the bonus alone can negate ''unlawful revocation of two titles'' as if nothing happened. And that's without the fact that she's irresistible in-game, as all the perks needed to even reach the Seductress perk make seduction schemes near-impossible to fail and allow you to ensnare ''everyone'', even if you happen to be homosexual. Oh, and the trait itself offers +3 Intrigue, so all types of backstabbing and scheming are even easier.