Crusader Kings 3 Guide - How To Declare War

This article is over 4 years old and may contain outdated information.

In Crusader Kings 3, wars are going to take up most of your time due to being your primary source for getting new domains and titles. Because of this, it would be a good idea to learn how to declare them. That said, in this guide, we will explain how to declare wars in Crusader kings 3.

How To Declare Wars

To declare war in Crusader Kings 3, all you need to do is right-click a rival ruler’s portrait and click the option to declare war. This will then open a menu tab showing you all the options to do so, and all of them revolve around Claims and Titles. Besides, different war options will have different paths to gaining them. For example, declaring a subjugation war will instead of claiming the domain/title for you, will only claim the primary title for yourself and make the current owner of it your vassal.

The various war options will also cost different resources with some costing piety while others prestige. The cost of both will also depend on the type of war and the how high of a title it might give you. For instance, the Invade kingdom option costs around 2000 prestige, while declaring war to claim a county only costs 50 piety. Different religions will also get access to special wars. Christians get access to crusades, Muslims, Jihads, and as shown in the image above, Norse religions can declare raids for captives.

Our Other Crusader Kings 3 Guides

Moving on, before you even should think about declaring war, make sure you have a good enough army and that the person you are going to declare war on doesn’t have a bigger one. With that said, you can check this by left-clicking a domain not owned by you and then clicking on the owner’s portrait, as shown below.

A new tab will open up after you do that, showing everything there is to know about that rival ruler’s stats, court, vassals, children, his traits, and what flavor of ice cream he likes. But all of that is not important right now, and what you are going to want to look at is the army strength indicator. This indicator will tell you the total strength of his armies, and if this lower than yours, well, you can pretty much steamroll him unless you goof up.

However, this is not the only thing you should check regarding a rival’s military strength, you should also be checking their ally’s military strength. This is because they will not hesitate to call in big brother to give you a good wallop if you declare war on them. Luckily, there is a way to counter their allies, and it is by getting allies of your own, and you can do this really easily by marrying off some of those kids you have lying around.

How To Form Alliances In Crusader Kings 3

To form an alliance via marriage in CK3, left-click one of your unmarried family members you want to marry, as shown above. Alternately you can also click the option to do so when it shows up under the issue tab at the top of the screen; either option will work. Next, you will want to left-click the “find a spouse option” as shown below. Once you click that, another tab will open up showing you all the available candidates for marriage, you’re going to want to look for the ones with house crests next to them as shown below.

The ones with the house crest next to them belong to a ruler’s house and by marrying these individuals will create an alliance between them and you. So you will take a moment to look through all of these available candidates for one that has a particularly good military strength. As a side note, you can click the tab above the marriage candidate’s portraits to sort them by alliance power, which will show all the candidates that will create alliances at the top.

Also, if they have let’s say around 2k military strength, it could prove useful to marry more than one family member to this kingdom to ensure a longer alliance power. When you find someone you want to marry, you click that person and then click “send proposal”. Then after a little over a month, a message pop up will appear from the liege of whoever you are marrying saying that they accept the proposal, after this, you will then have an alliance with them.

Now when you declare a war, you then have the option to call them into the war, which can be done by clicking the option in issues. It will also cost prestige to do, and the cost increases with your ally’s strength and rank. After this that will be everything, there is to know on how to declare wars in CK3. We hope this guide helped on your way to mastering the art of declaring war, and if it did be sure to let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to share this guide so it can help someone else. That’s all for now, have fun!