New Crusader Kings 3 players may not put a ton of thought into their lands and holdings, particularly the small details, at least until the first succession comes along. Then they’re usually shocked and overcome by the loss of large amounts of land. The good news is you do have some control over which lands stay under your rule.
As a reminder, the primary heir will always inherit your previous ruler’s primary title, realm capital, and direct De Jure titles associated with them. Note that it specifies the realm capital is always passed on. This means you can move your capital prior to death, or at any point, and guarantee that you’ll always have at least one great piece of land for your heir to get started with.
In this guide we’ll talk about how to move your realm capital in Crusader Kings 3 and some tips as to how you should approach it.
What is a Realm Capital?
First of all, if you aren’t sure which town is your capital, click on each one until you see a golden crown next to its name. This is your realm capital.
Realm capitals are important not only because they’re always passed along to the heir, but because they also come with a tax, loot, and levy bonus. They get a bonus of one gold in tax per month and an extra ten percent increase to the monthly levy rate. They’re also worth more gold if looted by enemies, so watch out for that.
Lore wise, this is where your ruler and court are ruling from!
How to Move Your Realm Capital
Moving your realm capital is easy. Just click on the town you wish to move it to and click on the icon that looks like a golden crown with an up arrow. This moves your realm capital. Keep in mind that it can have an affect on your previous capital if you have realm capital specific buildings.
Capital Location Tips
Like we mentioned, this is one of the few pieces of land you can directly control succession rights for. With so many countries locked into partition succession until much later in the game, it’s one of the few ways you can influence who inherits what without assassinating or disinheriting your own children.
We recommend putting most of your development efforts into your realm capital. It’ll be passed on from heir to heir, letting you reap the rewards for lifetimes.
If your liege decides to take your land or you lose it in a war, no worries, just move on to the next highest development area and make that your capital. There’s no reason you can’t keep that 4 Development island as your realm capital, but if you’ve newly conquered a 7 Development area, feel free to move it on over!
What is Development?
Development is an indication as to how, well, developed the land is. This value starts much higher for the feudal areas of the game compared to the tribal and clan territories. Each point increases the area’s supply limit by 150 and if ruled by a feudal or clan ruler, provides an additional half of a percent in taxes and levies.
The development value of a county can increase all the way up to 100 but most areas start in the single digits. These values increase over the course of the game with hard caps placed on development until certain innovations are discovered in each era. You can directly assign your Steward on the Increase Development task to speed up this process though it takes years to complete.
And that’s it! Best of luck on your realm building efforts!
