Kept my Men at Arms in Norway to finish sieging the castles I was claiming and shipped all the levies and knights down to France to fight them off. The CK3 AI did what it does and the kingdom of Aquitaine decided now was a good time to declare war for one French county they wanted. So went and found a young guy with a claim to a whole duchy in Norway and went after that. Playing as the Irish Emperor of Britannia, tried to press a few claimant claims to random counties in France and Norway only to have the old geezer fucks keel over in the middle of the war, invalidating the casus belli. Nothing better then vassalizing your goons They set up a small piece of Nordic culture in the middle of Anatolia.
So I looked it up and sure enough the ruler of the time hired some Viking mercenaries and gave them land. I remember in CK2 I was starting a new game and moving through the timeline an- wait what the fuck? Was that a Norse territory in the middle of friggin Turkey? Hold on what is this all about? One of the Big Things for his contemporaries was that he brought home a piece of the True Cross, a personal gift from the King of Crusader Jerusalem Baldwin I. Just heard a podcast about Sigurd III the Crusader (King of Norway 1103–1130) who led the Norwegian Crusade (1107–1110). The medieval world was nuts for stuff owned by Jesus. Literal wars have been fought over relics. And maybe it'll lead me to wikipedia pages that showcase how artifacts were more important in history than I thought they were But I'll keep an open mind and I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays. To me it just feels like it's an insignificant part of history and I worry a little that it'll get too prominent a spot in the game. I'm not mad that they're putting it in there or anything. Off the top of my head I can't recall anything from actual history revolving around artifacts. A lot of the things that happened in history are modeled in the game. One of the things I *really* like about CK3 is how I play a game in a region of the world and then go to Wikipedia and read about it. I just have a hard time seeing artifacts, and the ownership of them, playing a major part in history. Status symbols are important and expensive shiny things are the most straightforward kind of status symbol. On the other hand, why would any vassal pledge their allegiance to a crown that doesn't actually exist and a king that lives in a shack? Pledging your allegiance to the crown is a lot more understandable if that crown is made of gold and set with jewels and its wearer lives in a grand palace. Pomp and circumstance are important parts of feudalism, I think. The reworking of the culture system sounds great and I'm looking forward to playing with that. I don't see grandeur and artifacts being as important, so I'm not really sold on that aspect of the expansion. The main things I like about the CK games are the systems that simulate history and also the interactions between people - which I guess has also been very important historically.