Some players of Crusader Kings 3 aren’t in it for the blood and guts of war or the sneakiness of schemes. For them, Paradox Interactive has built a robust, flexible Diplomacy system with which they can micromanage the lives of their characters and the families of their characters.
Whether used for strategic land-taking, to boost up certain numbers, or simply to role-play as everyone’s favorite person at the party, the Diplomacy Lifestyle has a perk for everyone. It’s a powerful set of perk trees that grant players access to a bevy of new options for developing lands and developing stories.
Updated April 26, 2022 by Ryan Bamsey: One of the most satisfying ways to play Crusader Kings 3 is to be... quite friendly and pleasant. You can make friends, build a loving family, and rule with a pleasant fist.
12 Befriend
Making friends is possible in Crusader Kings 3, but it's usually something left to the random number generator and the decisions you get to make during events. You can influence these things sometimes through holding regular hunts or feasts, but the characters you get to make friends with are largely random.
With the Befriend perk, however, this is a thing of the past. The perk unlocks the Befriend scheme, which allows you to pick and choose the characters you want to become close to. This can be for roleplay purposes, or for more devious schemes.
11 Groomed To Rule
One of the biggest parts of Crusader Kings 3 is raising children to be successful, efficient heirs - after all, they'll end up being the player character one day. Groomed to Rule is a perk you'll want to take if you value high skill points, as it grants them a random skill point boost upon coming of age.
The skill that gets boosted depends on their childhood education, so it's quite easy to make your heir a specialist in a certain area with this perk, ensuring they have some ability with it.
10 Embassies
In Crusader Kings 3, it is rather easy to rack up children and betroth them to foreign powers to secure powerful alliances. Alliances are crucial for warding off hungry powers who want to take a player’s lands or power for themselves, so most players are keen to get a few of these going.
The perk Embassies makes alliances even more valuable. Providing a not-insignificant +1 Diplomacy per alliance, your character is guaranteed to have a nice stat boost as long as they look after their political relations. With the Royal Court DLC, this perk now also gives you a big bonus to your Learn Language schemes.
9 Writing History
Whether for role-playing or prestige-building purposes, Writing History is a very nice perk to take for Diplomacy-focused characters. It unlocks the ‘Commission Epic’ decision which allows a character to trade a decent amount of money for an epic to be written.
The character chooses the writer and the theme, and the varying outcomes are all nice boosts – especially the +5 Monthly Prestige that can occur if the epic turns out to be rather exceptional.
8 Inspiring Rule
Once a character hits the level of Duke or King, they are bound to have accrued a few unruly so-called ‘Powerful Vassals’ who will prove to make themselves issues if they are not placated. They generally will stop at nothing to be considered for a place on the council of their liege, even if they are woefully terrible candidates.
Inspiring Rule can offset the pain of hiring a sub-standard Powerful Vassal onto the council, granting a five percent bonus to Monthly Prestige modifier per Powerful Vassal on the council. And hey, if the vassal turns out to be tremendous at their job, even better.
7 Accomplished Forger
In the early game of Crusader Kings 3, it can be a bit tricky to expand a realm as quickly as one would like. Sometimes a character’s only option is to set their Court Chaplain to Fabricate a Claim on a nearby county or duchy.
Accomplished Forger expedites this process up significantly, providing a 75 percent boost to the speed at which this little scheme works. Pair this with, for example, Flexible Truces from the same perk tree, and you can expand with the agility of a ruthless tyrant.
6 Heart Of The Family
Family is extremely important in a game like Crusader Kings 3. You must not only navigate the tempestuous waters of international diplomacy but the murky waters of your own families.
Between scheming cousins and sulky uncles, it can be hard to keep track of everything. This is especially true if a certain someone has ended up with 12 sons (which you can now dress up like little crusaders!) while you weren't looking for just five minutes. This perk lessens the blow a little, giving a nice opinion bonus to close family – hopefully staving off that fatal stab in the back.
5 Thoughtful
Sometimes a tiny bit of good-willed bribery is the most powerful action a character can take in this game (save, perhaps, eating someone). Thoughtful modifies the Send Gift option, making it twice as powerful for the purposes of changing a character’s opinion.
Those with a surplus of cash will see this as an easy route to quicker schemes, better outcomes for diplomatic actions, and peace within the realm. What’s particularly nice is that it’s the first perk in the tree, meaning any character can quickly dip into the Diplomacy perk tree and duck out once they’ve got the powerful buff.
4 A Life of Glory
Fame accrues at the same time as prestige and doesn’t really go down, barring certain events which can send a character into disgrace. With fame comes nice perks, such as increased opinion, tax, and levy modifiers.
A Life of Glory is a perk that capitalizes on a character’s fame, doubling the impact of their current fame level. At the highest levels this buff can be truly glorious, providing a +40 or +60 opinion modifier amongst vassals, or a massive +80 percent tax from tribal vassals. Even at less famous levels though, this perk is a very nice one to take.
3 Benevolent Intent
Being able to increase a character’s opinion is a powerful ability to have. Benevolent Intent increases the power of the Sway scheme by a whopping 30 percent, making it very likely to convince even the most untrusting of courtiers or distant cousins that the player’s character is not all that bad when you get to know them.
This power is particularly useful for mid-sized Kingdoms and Empires where Powerful Vassals will be running rampant, and the stakes are so high that a player character cannot survive long without doing something to get people on their side.
2 Confidants
While much harder to pull off than a quick Sway scheme, the Befriend scheme ensures that the characters involved will be loyal to each other for the duration of their friendship.
Confidants is a perk that requires the Befriend perk to already be taken, and the two work extremely well together. A character with this perk has a negative five percent stress modifier per friend that they have, so liberal usage of the Befriend scheme is strongly encouraged. Stress can be extremely lethal, so surrounding oneself with stress-relieving companions is a nice role-play-friendly strategy for a long life.
1 Friendly Counsel And Sound Foundations
As these perks work extremely similarly and one must be taken before the other, it is not hard to see them as two halves of a single super-perk. Friendly Counsel grants a character +2 random skill points for every Friend or Best Friend they have, and Sound Foundations gives a single random skill point for every living child.
These perks exemplify the gameplay encouraged by the Family Hierarch tree; players who make many friends and have many children will benefit greatly from these perks. While there is a maximum of 10 extra skill points and they are randomly allocated, there is no doubt that a character will derive some sort of significant benefit.