If you're looking to wage war in Crusader Kings 3, you'll definitely need to increase your Levies to do so. You may need to replenish them as well. Levies are the bread and butter of your army. Unlike Men-at-Arms, they are untrained and relatively weak, but do their damage by sheer numbers rather than weapon skill.
In general, the more territory you control, the larger your levies. However, like many systems in Crusader Kings 3, there are a few subtleties to creating bigger Levies and building them up faster. Here's what you need to know.
What are the royalty limits?
If you want to send larger levies to war, there are several ways to increase them. First, it would be helpful to familiarize yourself with why your withdrawal limit is set where it is.
Press the “F3” key or click the red shield icon on the right side of the screen to bring up your military menu. From here, you can see the basics of the number of taxes currently available to your territory, the size of the maximum number, and the cost of maintaining them. You can also see your knights, men-at-arms and many more details about your army on this screen.
If you click on the big Levies icon (the one with men holding pikes), you can see more details about them. You can see things like bonuses they may have accumulated and their strengths. Finally, the buttons at the top of this screen will allow you to raise and disband your troops at the same time, which we generally recommend if you're fighting a war.
If you want to know why your draw limit is where it is, you'll want to start exploring your holdings.
If you click on a territory with a farm (meaning it has a town or bailey on it, instead of an empty circle), it will show details about that particular farm. If you hover over the levies near the bottom right corner, it will show details of why that specific farm has that many troops.
All sorts of things affect this number:
- Your martial skill
- Type of support
- Technology you have developed
- military buildings
Here's how you can increase it.
How do I increase my contribution size in Crusader Kings 3?
There are too many ways to increase your levy amount to cover them all, but here are the basics.
Build military buildings
One way to ensure you have higher royalties for a long time is to build military buildings on your farms.
Click on a farm, then look for the “+” icons at the bottom. Each of these icons indicates a building you can construct, such as a barracks or a military camp. Each building shows the improvements it provides. Build (or upgrade) war camps or similar construction to increase the size of your levy.
Sharpen your martial skill
Your leader's martial skill will add or subtract a percentage to the size of your levy. Focus on martial abilities and add boons to further increase the size of your levies, or marry someone with high martial skills to add to your own.
Put your Marshall to work
Your Marshall is a member of your council. Their martial skill will also affect the size of your levy. They also have an action you can apply called “Organize Pickups”. Using this ability will add a percentage to your harvest size. It's the board menu icon that looks like soldiers in armor.
How do I strengthen and replenish my levies?
If you send your troops to war in a neighboring duchy or kingdom, some of them will not return. Luckily, Levies in Crusader Kings 3 are pretty easy to reinforce.
Well...they're designed to be.
Levies replenish automatically over time, which means fighting too many wars in a short period of time will leave your military on the run. If you open your military menu and hover over the "Total Soldiers" section. It will tell you how quickly your withdrawals will replenish.
Unfortunately, there's also a bug in early versions of CK3 (as of now it's 1.0.3) that seems to prevent taxes from getting stronger over time.
There is no clear indication of what triggers this bug/glitch, but those who encounter it report that their reinforcement rate sits at 0/month, even though it shouldn't be.
The main solution seems to be to raise your army and then disband it immediately. It seems likely that this bug will be fixed soon, as it significantly hinders the game. For now, this seems to be the only way around this problem if you encounter this problem.
That's all you need to know about how to boost and replenish your Levy Size in Crusader Kings 3. Be sure to check out our tips page for more guides to help you conquer the world.
