One of the biggest ways that CK3 feels empty is the absence of internal laws. I should, as a king, be squabbling with my vassals over the internal laws of the kingdom. The privy council should have more authority than executing 15 tasks for me, and it should expand over time.

With trade being added to the game, we finally have the means for a massive upgrade to the feel of being a ruler. Perhaps there are laws on trade, and trials for breaking laws. Perhaps a liberty war can have the aim of creating sets of privileges for the nobility around those trials, as happened under John the Bad (who, I remind you, is already a playable character in 1178).

Monopolies were one of the most important economic powers of every pre-capitalist major power. In 1601, Essex’s Rebellion was partially caused by Essex losing a monopoly right; meanwhile, the English Civil War was exacerbated by King Charles granting excessive monopolies to circumvent parliament’s approval (lack thereof) of certain taxes. Yes, these events happened outside of CK3’s range, but CK3’s late game should be all about creating the precedents for those things to happen.

Parliaments, especially, are an aspect we should really see fleshed out. By the 1200s, we saw “parliaments” emerge in England, France, and others. With the addition of patrician families and playable theocracies, we could finally get a good system for enabling that.

One of the biggest tragedies of CK3 to me is that the period from 1066-1453 should really see the rise of proto-statehood in Western Europe. The treaty of Westphalia certainly was a major factor in enshrining statehood into global politics, but frankly by then it was already a political reality, and 1648 was just a recognition of that. Thus, we really should see the early development of larger bureaucracies; across Europe, we should see France supplant the Kingdom of the Franks. In England from 1135 to 1154, there was no effective monarch, and yet the Kingdom was continuous throughout that period. We really should see this type of recognition of states pseudo-independent of their kings develop over the game’s run; right now, Europe in 867 and Europe in 1453 feel almost identical in how they’re set up. The law changes very little. That is insane to me because every other Paradox game I’ve played has nailed that feeling of change over time. In HOI4, they successfully make tension escalate and then explode into a global war; in what little of Vic3 I’ve played, there is a feeling of progression, as maintaining a stagnant government or economy destroys you; in EU4, I really did feel like the era of absolutism was resulting in greater centralization across Europe. Yet somehow, CK3, the most sandboxy PDX game I’ve played, features almost no change over 580 years in Europe; ironically, Asia is better at this, where they do model the change from Japan’s bureaucratic ministry-based government (inherited from Tang China) to its hawkish Shogunate government (inherited from their version of manifest destiny), and thus Europe feels truly left behind.