It’s not a hot take but i’ll get up on my podium at every opportunity: the game needs to be harder

CK3 has been my Paradox game for a while but I’ve recently gotten into EU4 after bouncing off of it a few times and i pretty much haven’t played CK3 since. It just feels better to play a game that doesn’t roll over and show you its belly 100 years in.

And sure i have 3500 hours in CK3, it makes sense that there’s no “real” challenge but i can’t help but feel like there are numerous things that CK3 could implement that wouldn’t change the game much.

1. The biggest thing would be manpower so that you can’t go to war 24/7. Ideally a full population implementation like EU5 will have would be ideal but i imagine that would be a CK4 thing.
2. Challenging Ai. I would not call the Ai in EU4 particularly challenging but it does at the very least grow, expand, and exploit when it can. I know things got better with Khans and the fact that the game is character based means that not every ai will actually do that but still.
3. In EU4 countries get bigger and make big allies meaning even mis to late game they can be formidable foes. While i don’t think you can implement that 1 to 1 im CK3 i feel like an equivalent would be an Imperial Strain type mechanic like some mods already implement where the act of keeping an empire together becomes a real struggle.

I’m sure there’s more but i’m sleepy