County-ing your blessings
How do I develop counties in Crusader Kings 3?Counties are the smallest kind of domain you can hold inCrusader Kings 3, and as such you’ll need to manage them carefully. In particular, your county control and development are vital for the output of both gold and levies, so it’s well worth improving them where you can. Here’s how to increase county control and development in Crusader Kings 3.
Control and development are significant aspects to the profitability and success of your direct realm. They can be a bit fiddly to work out though, so here’s our guide to improving your domain’s development and control, as well as what each of them is useful for.
How does county control work in Crusader Kings 2?
Control indicates how much influence your character exerts over a given county. The maximum is 100, and anything below that will incur penalties for bothleviesand taxes - 0.5% per point of control for levies and 1% for taxes. Your personal domain should have 100% control if possible, because you’re gaining all benefits from the higher level of control rather than only gaining the small percentage offered by yourvassals' domains.
Of course, higher control throughout your realm doesn’t go amiss, and there are some ways to improve your level of control to give yourself more taxes and levies. Some of them can take a while, but there are a few methods:
If your leader is specialising in the martial lifestyle, you can even get bonuses from having maximum county control. The ‘Absolute Control’ perk gives you bonuses to taxes and levies when you’re at 100 control, making it an excellent pick for your local empire, especially when you upgrade to the Overseer perk which improves your Control growth factor by +50% a month.
You can see your current development level by clicking on your chosen county holding and checking out the number to the right of ‘development’. It’s got a maximum of 100, and climbs slowly but surely every month - you can see the breakdown by hovering over your development number. Development level directly influences your supply limit, levies, and taxes, increasing the latter two by 0.5% per point of development, so you’ll want to be growing your cities as consistently as possible.
With development, it’s best to keep it close by. Focus your development on your directly-controlled counties, as you’ll gain 100% of the benefit from it rather than your vassals skimming the bonuses.
So how can you improve your development? There are a few ways to improve your realm in the long term. It’s absolutely worth doing both if you’re looking to cultivate a strong, small kingdom and if you’re more the expansionist type. Here’s a few ways to improve your level of development in Crusader Kings 3:
Make sure you have a focused hub for your empire, and development will start to increase without too much effort. Doing this will give you a constantly growing source of income and levies, offering long-term growth for the future of your dynasty.
For more helping hands, we’ve got more CK3 guides, including how to do theNorth Korea strategy, as well as usingCrusader Kings 3 cheats.
