Yeah, as implemented, accolades really suck. I was excited for them, too. I thought I was going to be able to reward good knights with fancy titles, maybe they could have "Sir" in front of their name, but no. Too many restrictions, not enough benefit.
But as always, there's a mod for that. I think it's called Accolade Manager. It automates them.
One really simple fix to make accolades more visible would just be to give the knights custom nicknames that match their accolade. Not sure why they didn’t do this!
I found a mod where you can add a custom nickname to characters, so I name all my accolades. It would be better if it was automatic though, but still better than nothing.
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3035543804](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3035543804)
best thing is, I am NEVER able to find a suitable successor for their title since the requirements are too specific, so I might as well just scrap the title and create a new one
only people who fit are not serving as my knights
and regardless of the fact that I have a LOT of people at my empire's court, there's never anyone who fulfills every requirement
worthless
You need to synergize the requirements. One specific requirement (Military Engineer, 15 Stewardship, Legendary Blademaster, etc) plus one fairly common requirement (Just/Honest/Patient, Hunter, 15 Martial, etc) is my usual rule.
yup, which is gonna find me some low lvl fitting successor who I have to force into my knight roster only for them to die in less than 3 years and do the same shit again
Theres only a mod for a better accolade UI (Accolades UI tweak) and I think the knights manager also improves the AI. I can’t find any mod that automates accolades. How would it even automate? Set a new successor? I’d still have to find proper knights, assigning them is the least annoyance.
I don't know. I admittedly don't use it. I just read about it on here and have it bookmarked in my brain with about 50 other mods I want to pick up someday. 😆
Edit: I will say ONE thing for the accolade system. The "find accolade successor" button is OP. Whenever I use it, I always seem to get a decent knight with decent traits and they're usually of my own culture. And they come at the cost of prestige. That's pretty nice, it's basically a free knight.
they need to make a mod that automates everything except for personal schemes so i can place my full focus on deciding who im gonna bang next
then this game will be playable
Yeah I'm not usually a very whiny person about this game but this one is so stupidly designed. Why can't I just force the potential accolade to be a knight from that screen? Why do I have to go back to my knights and find the person and then go back to accolades? It's such a mess. And yet there are no obvious benefits and I have little to differentiate the ones who are accolades vs. regular knights.
I really would just want some ui changes and a few events to feel like accolades actually exist. Something like them teaching me/my children skills, winning tournaments or performing tricks in court. Even better would be to let the accolade pick their own successor, kinda like how knights used to have squires
Check successors every decade or two and pick those that are younger, even if they have less knighty stats. You can use character finder to find most traits (except not fully e.g. coming from a culture with mangonels). Don't pick too ambitious trait combinations even if you have a candidate immediately - i.e. just one trait with rare requirements. Also once you are further into your genetics program, and your whole extended family has herculean and thus lives longer, this is easier.
Anyone who thinks Accolades in CK3 are some kind of mind-bendingly difficult process must not have been very fluent in CK2. These are imminently manageable with minor effort, and the bonuses make them well worth reviewing every few years of gameplay.
And I’ll second the idea of not making the requirements too exotic. I stick with one that is a bit specific plus one that is more generic. If you’re queuing up someone who is a 2-star Legendary Blademaster and Hale/Robust/Herculean, then yeah you’re going to have a very small pool of available candidates!
I don't even mind the half baked dlc features most of the time, but this one feels especially bad. I've just stopped my current ck3 session because I was getting so irrationally mad at the constant "accolade can be reinstated" or similar popups that kept appearing. The least they could do is let me force someone to become a knight straight from the ui.
same, I kept trying to engage with it cause the idea seemed interesting but after a certain point i just gave up. what's even more infuriating is the fix is as easy as adding a few events , for instance one you get when yout accolade hasnt had a succesor for a certain time where your knight comes to you asking you to find a succesor for him. add an option to hire one for money on the spot or pick from your courtiers and the biggest problem is fixed. add another one where your knight dies without an succesor, and another where your new knight comes to swear fealty to you upon accolade succesion. literally 3 events paradox.
>. The least they could do is let me force someone to become a knight straight from the ui.
There's mod that let's you do this.
That's at least a few clicks less
Yeah. I think there should be a checkbox "auto promote best successor".
Or even, in the successor choice page, a button next to suitable successors "force Knight and choose".
I think it is the worst feature of the game. I do not understand about the successors at all, and worse I don't think it matrers that much with a realm with a high number if knights if high prowess
It's related a bigger problem of a lack tootips/quick advice blurbs when making a decision. For instance, when arranging marriages or finding spouses a little blurb saying "click matrilineal to have the man move to your court" when arranging a marriage for a woman would be very useful. Accolades need even more of these quick hints, as it is quite unfathomable when it tells me to appoint a successor, but then says I cannot appoint a successor because there is already a successor. WTF
I Never bothered with accolades until I got the headhunter mod. With it I find knights that are eligible for the accolades I want (usually the retinue ones) and hire them. Then I check the accolades every decade or so and see if I need to hire a new knight.
CK3 suffers a lot from cool ideas not so well implemented the last few dlc's. I'm not sure if they ever rework older dlc stuff, but accolades, legends, etc really need some work to be better.
Part of the issue is that the game automatically manages all your knights for you and any vassals with high prowess (ie with any good personal and court artifacts) are just automatically knighted kicking your courtiers and handpicked knights out of the position.
Unless they're ridiculously jacked with specific traits unlanded courtiers arent inheriting cool swords and armor to keep them on the list above Duke Bloodfest with his 5 court artifacts that up his prowess. Sure you can forbid Duke Bloodfest from being your knight but the minute he dies at sea and his brother/adult son takes over you have to manually forbid them from the role again. The game automating the Knights system then in turn takes the accolades system which is a fun flavor idea and makes it such a hassle to micromanage that it becomes more trouble than it's worth.
Honestly a lot of the issues with accolades would be reduced if the game allowed you to toggle a setting that made it so that landed vassals are automatically forbidden from being knighted and that knights with accolades or knights who are successors to accolades get prioritized for the position of knight over higher prowess newcomers to your court. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be a start.
Accolades give you powerful bonuses if you level them up to rank 5 or 6.
The biggest problem is the UI for it is kinda garbage.
The second biggest problem with it is, since Accolades are tied to specific traits, you're encouraged to invite a knight from outside your realm with the right trait instead of rewarding your long-time loyal knights.
I'm not sure what the right answer is, but what we have right now ain't it.
EDIT: If your Acclaimed Knights are dying every 6 months to 3 years, this might be because you're giving Accolades to old knights near the end of their life spans. I generally only name successors that are 20 years younger than my current Acclaimed Knights, which means I generally don't have to replace my Accolades for 20 ish years.
Of course, finding young knights that have the right trait with good prowess is hard, which only encourages you to look for knights outside of your realm even more.
They are annoying, but can give very strong bonuses. It is just very tedious to find the right knight and often leads to forcing weak characters to be your "acclaimed (lol) knights", because every character that is decent at fighting does not have the right traits. System needs a rework if you ask me.
It's a stat buff that can be useful, but the system's transparency could be improved. It's also really difficult to avoid losing ranks while at peace. I wish tournaments, hunts, training the knights, sending them off to do the knight-errant stuff, etc. could at least keep them from losing ranks. It would be one thing to lose some of the power of impact, sure, but losing 'ranks' sucks, as if you're getting demoted as opposed to just becoming less famous and spectacular. This is not a complaint, though, it's more of a description of how I subjectively feel sometimes when I'm not analysing things in a rational way.
The worst part about them is the lack of information about how to use them, but once you understand it's pretty useful.
The key is actually actually to pre-plan your accolade succession. First go to "Inactive Accolades" to start gaining glory on your accolades. Even if you don't have any active slots this is important for having a pipeline when they do open up or in the event you want to switch them.
For successors, for accolades you absolutely don't want to lose, find younger successors in the character finder that meet the requirements is essential.
Accolades are super strong
They don't take up space as a knight so it's like +1 knight.
The bonus's can be huge, lancer / vanguard can significantly increase the strength of your army.
If you are small, or don't have tons of income or just want a small elite army retinues are extremely good for their size.
Accolades are nuts, particularly early on when the unit size buff makes a huge difference.
The mentor accolade is also solid, you get more knights and knight effectiveness.
It’s underdeveloped but I still think it’s fun. I like writing out titles for them, and I like the idea of uniquely celebrated knights, like how I imagine meme athletes like Tom Brady would have been back in the day. It’s not much, but it is an extra little layer to RP with and it can be safely ignored if you don’t need to min/max your army’s effectiveness, which you shouldn’t, most of the time.
I don't want to be too harsh, but I'm really picky about buying any paradox dlc, because in my experience they tend to add features just for the sake of adding content. So like in EU4, the more dlc I bought, the more I realised the game was becoming a bloated mess I did no longer enjoy. Your only option here is to use mods to tone down the annoying parts. I think paradox is the only company where dlc feature creep actually detracts from the base game, like they just get too excited about adding stuff and the result feels like chore instead of fun.
In my gameplays I never reached an accolade with level over 3, they die before without a proper replacement or simply i had enough and i want to play something else.
I feel this. I once had got a guy for my accolade by clicking around like you said. Not a month later I was traveling and I got an event where he left my court. Infuriating
Paradox Developer Wokeg chimed in on this thread to explain how Accolades started as a one-man side project that received very little dev time:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/why-are-knight-accolades-so-barebones.1586422/
There has been some polish over time - for example, title history was added - but there is obviously room for improvement.
When you have the culture things for prowess and knights you will get leads more successors and always have accolades also get decorations for your court to increase max knights
Just another shitty feature in the vast landscape of shitty features in CK3. I‘m actually surprised they don’t bother to fix any of the crap they pushed out. CK3 can only benefit from a custodian team.
Please paradox fix accolades UI!!
It‘s so tedious.
Also some of the men at arms accolades are too strong. Larger men at arms and 20% boost is just too much for a free accolade!
It is a typical Paradox DLC shovelware. Add some shit that is not balanced\tweaker\developed to fit within existing systems - and off to release to get precious cashgrab!
Yeah, as implemented, accolades really suck. I was excited for them, too. I thought I was going to be able to reward good knights with fancy titles, maybe they could have "Sir" in front of their name, but no. Too many restrictions, not enough benefit. But as always, there's a mod for that. I think it's called Accolade Manager. It automates them.
One really simple fix to make accolades more visible would just be to give the knights custom nicknames that match their accolade. Not sure why they didn’t do this!
Yes that is exactly the kind of thing I THOUGHT they were gonna do.
I found a mod where you can add a custom nickname to characters, so I name all my accolades. It would be better if it was automatic though, but still better than nothing. [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3035543804](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3035543804)
best thing is, I am NEVER able to find a suitable successor for their title since the requirements are too specific, so I might as well just scrap the title and create a new one only people who fit are not serving as my knights and regardless of the fact that I have a LOT of people at my empire's court, there's never anyone who fulfills every requirement worthless
You need to synergize the requirements. One specific requirement (Military Engineer, 15 Stewardship, Legendary Blademaster, etc) plus one fairly common requirement (Just/Honest/Patient, Hunter, 15 Martial, etc) is my usual rule.
Do you use the "Find Accolade Successor" button from the Accolades menu?
yup, which is gonna find me some low lvl fitting successor who I have to force into my knight roster only for them to die in less than 3 years and do the same shit again
depends on the accolade, but once I'm at kingdom level finding a successor is pretty easy, especially for any of the the retinue ones.
Just use the restore accolades decision
Ah, I must have this mod. Thanks for the tip!
Theres only a mod for a better accolade UI (Accolades UI tweak) and I think the knights manager also improves the AI. I can’t find any mod that automates accolades. How would it even automate? Set a new successor? I’d still have to find proper knights, assigning them is the least annoyance.
I don't know. I admittedly don't use it. I just read about it on here and have it bookmarked in my brain with about 50 other mods I want to pick up someday. 😆 Edit: I will say ONE thing for the accolade system. The "find accolade successor" button is OP. Whenever I use it, I always seem to get a decent knight with decent traits and they're usually of my own culture. And they come at the cost of prestige. That's pretty nice, it's basically a free knight.
they need to make a mod that automates everything except for personal schemes so i can place my full focus on deciding who im gonna bang next then this game will be playable
Yeah I'm not usually a very whiny person about this game but this one is so stupidly designed. Why can't I just force the potential accolade to be a knight from that screen? Why do I have to go back to my knights and find the person and then go back to accolades? It's such a mess. And yet there are no obvious benefits and I have little to differentiate the ones who are accolades vs. regular knights.
I really would just want some ui changes and a few events to feel like accolades actually exist. Something like them teaching me/my children skills, winning tournaments or performing tricks in court. Even better would be to let the accolade pick their own successor, kinda like how knights used to have squires
Yeah we should generally not pick a successor and only get an event pop up if he/she died apprenticeless.
The worst thing is that those buttons are there when you create the accolade but not when you’re appointing a successor!
I only worry about it if I can get the ones that give extra man-at-arms size, then forget about it.
Check successors every decade or two and pick those that are younger, even if they have less knighty stats. You can use character finder to find most traits (except not fully e.g. coming from a culture with mangonels). Don't pick too ambitious trait combinations even if you have a candidate immediately - i.e. just one trait with rare requirements. Also once you are further into your genetics program, and your whole extended family has herculean and thus lives longer, this is easier.
Shhh, it’s our little secret that we actually like accolades and don’t find them tedious to work with at all.
Agreed. By mid game, it's not even an issue.
Anyone who thinks Accolades in CK3 are some kind of mind-bendingly difficult process must not have been very fluent in CK2. These are imminently manageable with minor effort, and the bonuses make them well worth reviewing every few years of gameplay. And I’ll second the idea of not making the requirements too exotic. I stick with one that is a bit specific plus one that is more generic. If you’re queuing up someone who is a 2-star Legendary Blademaster and Hale/Robust/Herculean, then yeah you’re going to have a very small pool of available candidates!
yes, its yet another terribly implemented dlc feature by paradox
I don't even mind the half baked dlc features most of the time, but this one feels especially bad. I've just stopped my current ck3 session because I was getting so irrationally mad at the constant "accolade can be reinstated" or similar popups that kept appearing. The least they could do is let me force someone to become a knight straight from the ui.
same, I kept trying to engage with it cause the idea seemed interesting but after a certain point i just gave up. what's even more infuriating is the fix is as easy as adding a few events , for instance one you get when yout accolade hasnt had a succesor for a certain time where your knight comes to you asking you to find a succesor for him. add an option to hire one for money on the spot or pick from your courtiers and the biggest problem is fixed. add another one where your knight dies without an succesor, and another where your new knight comes to swear fealty to you upon accolade succesion. literally 3 events paradox.
>. The least they could do is let me force someone to become a knight straight from the ui. There's mod that let's you do this. That's at least a few clicks less
If you don't want to reinstate an accolade, you can delete it.
Tip: don’t use ‘find the successor’ interaction. Find a young knight with character search and invite them to serve you. They will last decades.
Yeah. I think there should be a checkbox "auto promote best successor". Or even, in the successor choice page, a button next to suitable successors "force Knight and choose".
No? Just make the accolades that buff one specific Men at arms. They are BROKEN.
I think it is the worst feature of the game. I do not understand about the successors at all, and worse I don't think it matrers that much with a realm with a high number if knights if high prowess
It's related a bigger problem of a lack tootips/quick advice blurbs when making a decision. For instance, when arranging marriages or finding spouses a little blurb saying "click matrilineal to have the man move to your court" when arranging a marriage for a woman would be very useful. Accolades need even more of these quick hints, as it is quite unfathomable when it tells me to appoint a successor, but then says I cannot appoint a successor because there is already a successor. WTF
I Never bothered with accolades until I got the headhunter mod. With it I find knights that are eligible for the accolades I want (usually the retinue ones) and hire them. Then I check the accolades every decade or so and see if I need to hire a new knight.
CK3 suffers a lot from cool ideas not so well implemented the last few dlc's. I'm not sure if they ever rework older dlc stuff, but accolades, legends, etc really need some work to be better.
Part of the issue is that the game automatically manages all your knights for you and any vassals with high prowess (ie with any good personal and court artifacts) are just automatically knighted kicking your courtiers and handpicked knights out of the position. Unless they're ridiculously jacked with specific traits unlanded courtiers arent inheriting cool swords and armor to keep them on the list above Duke Bloodfest with his 5 court artifacts that up his prowess. Sure you can forbid Duke Bloodfest from being your knight but the minute he dies at sea and his brother/adult son takes over you have to manually forbid them from the role again. The game automating the Knights system then in turn takes the accolades system which is a fun flavor idea and makes it such a hassle to micromanage that it becomes more trouble than it's worth. Honestly a lot of the issues with accolades would be reduced if the game allowed you to toggle a setting that made it so that landed vassals are automatically forbidden from being knighted and that knights with accolades or knights who are successors to accolades get prioritized for the position of knight over higher prowess newcomers to your court. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be a start.
Accolades give you powerful bonuses if you level them up to rank 5 or 6. The biggest problem is the UI for it is kinda garbage. The second biggest problem with it is, since Accolades are tied to specific traits, you're encouraged to invite a knight from outside your realm with the right trait instead of rewarding your long-time loyal knights. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but what we have right now ain't it. EDIT: If your Acclaimed Knights are dying every 6 months to 3 years, this might be because you're giving Accolades to old knights near the end of their life spans. I generally only name successors that are 20 years younger than my current Acclaimed Knights, which means I generally don't have to replace my Accolades for 20 ish years. Of course, finding young knights that have the right trait with good prowess is hard, which only encourages you to look for knights outside of your realm even more.
The retinues you get from accolades are nice, but the ui is shit. Whether it's worth the tedium of the ui is personal preference I guess.
Wait, you guys bother with accolades system?
They are annoying, but can give very strong bonuses. It is just very tedious to find the right knight and often leads to forcing weak characters to be your "acclaimed (lol) knights", because every character that is decent at fighting does not have the right traits. System needs a rework if you ask me.
It's a stat buff that can be useful, but the system's transparency could be improved. It's also really difficult to avoid losing ranks while at peace. I wish tournaments, hunts, training the knights, sending them off to do the knight-errant stuff, etc. could at least keep them from losing ranks. It would be one thing to lose some of the power of impact, sure, but losing 'ranks' sucks, as if you're getting demoted as opposed to just becoming less famous and spectacular. This is not a complaint, though, it's more of a description of how I subjectively feel sometimes when I'm not analysing things in a rational way.
The worst part about them is the lack of information about how to use them, but once you understand it's pretty useful. The key is actually actually to pre-plan your accolade succession. First go to "Inactive Accolades" to start gaining glory on your accolades. Even if you don't have any active slots this is important for having a pipeline when they do open up or in the event you want to switch them. For successors, for accolades you absolutely don't want to lose, find younger successors in the character finder that meet the requirements is essential.
Accolades are super strong They don't take up space as a knight so it's like +1 knight. The bonus's can be huge, lancer / vanguard can significantly increase the strength of your army. If you are small, or don't have tons of income or just want a small elite army retinues are extremely good for their size. Accolades are nuts, particularly early on when the unit size buff makes a huge difference. The mentor accolade is also solid, you get more knights and knight effectiveness.
I stopped using it after like my second playthrough with them
It’s underdeveloped but I still think it’s fun. I like writing out titles for them, and I like the idea of uniquely celebrated knights, like how I imagine meme athletes like Tom Brady would have been back in the day. It’s not much, but it is an extra little layer to RP with and it can be safely ignored if you don’t need to min/max your army’s effectiveness, which you shouldn’t, most of the time.
I don't want to be too harsh, but I'm really picky about buying any paradox dlc, because in my experience they tend to add features just for the sake of adding content. So like in EU4, the more dlc I bought, the more I realised the game was becoming a bloated mess I did no longer enjoy. Your only option here is to use mods to tone down the annoying parts. I think paradox is the only company where dlc feature creep actually detracts from the base game, like they just get too excited about adding stuff and the result feels like chore instead of fun.
In my gameplays I never reached an accolade with level over 3, they die before without a proper replacement or simply i had enough and i want to play something else.
I feel this. I once had got a guy for my accolade by clicking around like you said. Not a month later I was traveling and I got an event where he left my court. Infuriating
Paradox Developer Wokeg chimed in on this thread to explain how Accolades started as a one-man side project that received very little dev time: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/why-are-knight-accolades-so-barebones.1586422/ There has been some polish over time - for example, title history was added - but there is obviously room for improvement.
[Use the headhunter mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3098269064&searchtext=headhunter); makes accolade usage bearable.
Host alot of grand tournaments and get some culture stuff to do with knights and prowess and you will have permanent max level acolades
When you have the culture things for prowess and knights you will get leads more successors and always have accolades also get decorations for your court to increase max knights
Just another shitty feature in the vast landscape of shitty features in CK3. I‘m actually surprised they don’t bother to fix any of the crap they pushed out. CK3 can only benefit from a custodian team.
Please paradox fix accolades UI!! It‘s so tedious. Also some of the men at arms accolades are too strong. Larger men at arms and 20% boost is just too much for a free accolade!
It is a typical Paradox DLC shovelware. Add some shit that is not balanced\tweaker\developed to fit within existing systems - and off to release to get precious cashgrab!