In Crusader Kings 3 there are a lot of ways to make money that include blackmail, building marketplaces, and special events, however, none can compare to the profits raiding can bring to your kingdom. Additionally, raiding can also earn the player prestige combined with the prospect of earning vast sums of gold. That said, in this guide, we will explain how to raid in Crusader King 3 and how to do it well.
How to Raid In Crusader Kings 3
In short, raiding functions similar to how it did in the previous game, nonetheless in order to raid you must first have a good sizeable army; one that is also preferably bigger than your raid target. To check this we are going to need to go to our military tab and we can do this by either pressing “f3” or clicking the sword and shield icon under the big crown that’s on the top right of the screen as shown below.
Under this tab, we can see all information regarding our Military’s current strength and more specifically total levy size, Champions, and Man at arms regiments. At the top of this tab we have the choice of three options, Raise All Armies, Raise All As Raiders, final Disband all; we are going to want to choose “Raise All As Raiders” and this will muster all our levies combined with our man at arm regiments and champions at our first rally point. before doing this, you should also note that if you have more than one rally point it will raise and split your army amongst all rally points.
To avoid this we will need to click one of the currently available rally points, as shown above, afterward a small tab will appear on the screen as shown below and we are then presented with three options; Raise Local Army, Raise Local Raiders, and Raise all here. Depending on your preference and how many soldiers you want to bring, you can choose any of the three options, with the two local options only raising the levies garrisoned in that holding the rally point is at and with the other “Raise all here” raising all of your soldiers at that rally point. We recommend picking the latter as it is most ideal to bring as many soldiers you can when you go raiding and pillaging due to the simple fact rival kingdoms don’t appreciate you trying to nick their stuff and won’t hesitate to club you to death for doing it.
Our other Crusader Kings 3 Guides
- Crusader Kings 3 Guide – Does Crusader Kings 3 Have Ruler Designer?
- Crusader Kings 3 Guide – How To Protect Against Schemes
Now that you know how to raise your army as raiders let’s move on to picking a raid target. To look for raid targets simply click on any castle holding that doesn’t belong to you or your vassals; castle holdings will look like something like in the image below and after you click it a small tab will open up as shown below that will display various information about that particular holding. What we are going to want to look at is Fortress strength and more importantly loot, this is because the higher the fortress strength the longer it will take to raid, and for loot that is how much gold you can steal so it’s oblivious that you would want to hit the holdings with the highest amount of it. Another thing you should check is how far this holding is, as you will suffer attrition the farther you march away from your lands combined with the fact you only have a limited amount of supplies. Terrain also factors in with attrition so keep that mind when raiding in enemy lands because certain areas will make you lose soldiers.
As shown above, we can see the County of Otrar currently has 20 loot, thus making it a pretty decent raid target; in addition, we can also potentially capture prisoners that can later be ransomed for even more money so keep that in mind when you go raiding. But now we have a raid target so let’s raise our army, do this let how we just talked about and to reiterate; click the Miltary tab, click rally point, and then click raise all here. Afterward, your army will start gathering at your chosen rally point but you are not done yet as you also set them as reading by checking the second to last button in your army’s information tab. To find this tab all you need to do is right click your army and click the button as shown below.
Then once you have done that you are now ready to send your raiders to your chosen raid target, it will take a few days depending on how far it is so feel free to increase the game speed to speed things up and after a bit your raiders will arrive and start pillaging the countryside as shown below.
Raiding will also take a bit so feel free to focus on something else while your army loots that county, now you should also note it is really easy to forget that these guys are raiding and wind up having an enemy army wipe them out when you are not looking. Luckily Crusader kings 3 has a really sweet tool to help you keep track of your armies it is called the outliner and it can be accessed via the icon at the top right of your screen above the realms crown icon as shown below. Click this icon and it will open up a small tab with three categories; Armies, Characters, and Domain Holdings. All of these will help you keep track of the respective category and the one you want to click is the Army tab and afterward, it will move the game to your army where it is currently placed on the world map. Additionally by using this feature you can effectively micro more raiders to double both the speed and efficiency of your raiding.
After this bit of information that marks the end of this guide on how to raid in Crusader Kings 3. We hope you found our guide useful and if you do be sure to let us know in the comments below and as well share the guide so it can help someone else. That’s all for now, Happy Raiding!
