After my initial infatuation with Crusader Kings 3 there was something of a low period in my interest probably due to simply having almost burned out on the game from playing it so much—along with feeling a bit lost since I didn't really have any goals anymore. That, however, has changed—at least a bit—once more, with the release of the Royal Court DLC. It adds quite a few more things for me to go after, and a reasonable enough excuse for me to start a new game which of course means new goals to pursue.
This time, I went for the somewhat more boring option of starting in Europe—to be fair, the game kind of feels made for this, but considering I come from here it just feels so boring and plain in a sense—and decided to focus a bit more on culture and religion this time around rather than pure expansion and dynasty. Now, I am still trying to do a decent bit of dynasty expansion as the traits acquired through that are very helpful towards completing whatever else one may be attempting, but it is an activity which doesn't preclude me from also simultaneously pursuing other things—and I do have to admit it feels kind of good seeing the multi-generation takeover plans of foreign realms bear fruit after having set them in motion early on in the game, where the amount of members and rules in the dynasty just keeps on going upwards.
I also started making a bit more use of the different hostile schemes in the game, having so far mostly gone for the diplomatic or friend building route rather than murders and the like, and I do feel it has its own charm as well. I should probably do even a complete playthrough more focused on the intrigue part of the game, though I guess that is partially coming up since my next heir looks to be—somewhat accidentally as I simply hadn't had my eye sufficiently far down the succession path—focused on intrigue. It will be interesting to see what he ends up achieving when the time comes.
Oh, now that I mention it, that is indeed another change I ended up doing: this time around I didn't enable the equal game rule and instead chose to develop it myself by reforming a faith. I'm still running on just plain equal instead of female-preference, so there have been the occasional male ruler along the way, but it has proven not to be quite as annoying as feared. Maybe the knowledge that it is my choice rather than something that has been foisted on me contributes to this increased acceptance of the state of things, I'm not quite sure, but there is also just a certain satisfaction in having gone and actually changed history a bit and enabled a more equal realm rather than merely having flipped a switch and made history a better place that way around.
I'm not yet sure how long this high will last, as I'm already rather more familiar with the game and it's limitations than I was when starting and as such will probably run into walls or disinterest faster now than before, but I'm still happy to have once more found some joy in the game and new interesting things to explore. Now then, back to the game...