Here’s how to do the North Korea strategy in Crusader Kings 3 and become supreme leader.
How to do the North Korea strategy in CK3
There are a few steps you’ll have to take to pull off this strategy, and full credit to YouTube channel Reman’s Paradox for an excellent video run-through of how it all works. So what is the ‘North Korea’ strategy? Basically, you ignore the existence of vassals, titles, and everything the game wants you to care about, instead directly holding everything yourself. The domain limit is a mechanic that tries to discourage this, as it severely penalises you for going over the limit. However, in normal feudalism, gold and levies are split between vassals below you to the point where the top ruler barely sees any of the actual cash, so it’s not as severe a penalty as the game would have you believe. Being over the domain limit can ramp you up to a -90% penalty to both taxes and levies very quickly, but if you have a ludicrous amount of land anyway, this barely even matters. You can also get other benefits such as almost unkillable men-at-arms, allowing you to completely dominate the world without having to worry about uprisings. So, how do you actually pull off this strategy? Follow these steps and we’ll have you covered. Revoke titles from them, one county at a time. Whenever they lose land, they automatically usurp land from a vassal beneath them. Imprisoned characters can’t do anything about this, so you’re kind of golden. Keep doing this and you’ll be able to get absolutely every part of the realm without anyone having an issue with it. The entire realm should now be yours, and your domain limit will probably look absolutely ridiculous. Now is the time to wait. Control will be in a bad place, but since you prepared for this eventuality, it’ll tick back up over time. Eventually, your levies, prestige, piety, and tax income should have increased significantly, and you won’t have to deal with whiny vassals trying to murder your spouse, and you’ll be the only one able to kill your children and heirs.
Invincible men-at-arms
With this strategy, you can use buildings in all the cities you directly hold to gain a ridiculous amount of military power. If you stack buildings that help men-at-arms throughout your enormous empire, you will be able to both increase their damage and make them nigh on invulnerable after a while. Duchy buildings should also be prioritised - normally you should only be able to reap the benefits of a few at maximum, but after doing the North Korea strategy, you’ll have access to far more duchy buildings than you have any business holding. The effects stack, so if you build 50 Military Academies, the -2% Army Maintenance effect will add up to -100%, and you’ll have completely free soldiers. As well as this, you’ll get absolute stacks of extra knights with a bonus of over +1000% strength. Build all these to make your army ridiculously overpowered, and you’ll be able to take over far more land, whilst crushing peasant revolts or any other disgruntled nuisance who stands in your way. Be careful with this strategy - it’s a straight-up exploit that breaks the game, and once you get to a ridiculous level it’ll slow the game’s performance down a bit. It’s something fun to try out, but check out our beginner’s guide to CK3 if you’re a newer player - don’t just jump in the deep end.
