Crusader Kings III is introducing schemes, secrets, and hooks

If there's one thing Crusader Kings is good at, it's letting you behave like a pompous, arrogant, warmongering tyrant against pretty much every other kingdom in existence, and according to a new dev diary, there'll be even more ways for you to manipulate everyone to your heart's content in next year's Crusader Kings III.

To start with, the murder plots of Crusader Kings II are being replaced by schemes, which will work similarly. Simply target a character who relates to your fiendish plan, hire a few agents to increase the scheme's success, and then finally try to achieve it.

Previously you'd need to hire practically everyone in the land to have a chance in succeeding, but now you only need to recruit a few agents close to your target for much more convenience - particularly the ones who have right skills and intrigue to bump up the odds of success, which increases every month until the tenth one.

Murdering people is probably the most common scheme of the lot, especially if you behave like a villain, but there are less hostile schemes as well, such as seduction and swaying. Each of these is determined by different stats and circumstances and have different benefits, such as gaining new people to join in on other schemes. Whilst characters can run a single hostile and personal scheme at once, it isn't possible to use them both on a single target at the same time.

Since killing people tends to attract attention, a new feature known as secrets will change the way you play. These are gained whenever someone does something naughty, which could damage future relationships if they're discovered. On the contrary, your spymaster can also find out secrets from your rivals and friends so you can expose them to everyone and cause all sorts of chaos - or use them to blackmail others into your sly bidding.

Favours from CKII have evolved into hooks, however, where you can have a chance to force people to do exactly what you want.

Do you fancy being a tyrant and ruining everyone else's day in Crusader Kings III?