KingsBlade

KingsBlade reads the fight CK3 is about to resolve — both sides, every army and regiment, the commanders and champions by name — stages it in Bannerlord with the troops and heraldry those realms actually field, and writes the outcome back. The knight who falls in front of you is the knight CK3 buries.

Setting it up

1. Install the app. Run the installer; it checks for the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime and points you at it if it is missing.
2. Add the module. Put it in Bannerlord's Modules folder, so that Modules\KingsBlade holds it, and tick KingsBlade in the launcher after Harmony and CustomBattle.
3. Run through the Prologue. The app is a book, and it opens on its Prologue until you are ready. It finds both games and the module, sends you to the Workshop mods it uses (Harmony, and optionally Dismemberment Plus and RTS Camera), checks Bannerlord's load order, builds your realms' banners and the royal weapons, and lists the six ages of equipment. Then it turns into HOME. OPTIONS → Open setup prologue brings it back.
4. ShōgunsBlade, if you want Japan. Subscribe to Shokuho on the Steam Workshop, open ShōgunsBlade's book and press Build ShōgunsBlade from Shokuho on its Prologue, with Bannerlord closed — about two minutes. See ShōgunsBlade.

Playing a battle

1. Open KingsBlade. Its book opens and it starts watching both games.
2. Start CK3 and load your campaign — the app's button opens the Paradox launcher.
3. Start Bannerlord from the app too, with KingsBlade ticked. Either order works.
4. Open a battle with an army you own or command. The crossed swords follow CK3's battle panel.
5. Press them. CK3 is held while the battle is read and staged, and you are on the deployment screen.
6. Fight it out, through to the result screen. Back in CK3 the result is written and the game let go; carry on and CK3 ends the battle by its own rules.

When the button appears

The button follows CK3's screens as they open and shut. Grey means not yet, or not this one — a battle still pending, a duel that must stay in CK3 — and HOME and LOG say why. Ctrl + Alt + arrow keys move it; each kind keeps its own place.

What each fight brings

On the field

• Your real armies, at CK3's odds. Every regiment, levies included, under its own name in its own group. A small battle is fought at its true size; a great one is compressed alike on both sides, and the rest arrive as reinforcements.
• Command is earned in CK3. A commander's Martial becomes his Tactics: a good one draws his army up in battle array — levies in front, archers behind, men-at-arms in a second line, horse on the wings — and his allies back you up, follow your orders and pull broken groups out. A poor one charges.
• A speech before the battle. Every army's commander addresses his men in a recorded voice, riding his line when he can; his Martial, Diplomacy and character lift or sink their morale.
• An intro first. The battle's name and date as CK3 gives them, the war and its realms under their arms, both sides' champions and regiments, and the muster.
• Troops of their age. CK3 regiments become their culture's Bannerlord troops, armed by the campaign's date through six ages: 867 — Tribal, 990 — Early Medieval, 1050 — High Medieval, 1168 — Late Medieval, 1259 — Transitional, and 1380 — full plate.
• Every realm in its colours. Each realm's arms on its shields and standards, its colours on its men — allies read as separate hosts, and friend and foe never dress alike.
• A battle ends when the other side runs. Once a side's last men are a tenth of those who fled, they break too.

Sieges and the keep

• The castle is CK3's siege. The holder's culture picks it, the fort level sets it, CK3's breaches are open, the garrison mans every wall — one man in three a bowman — and your siege regiments bring their engines. A ram is always there.
• An organised assault. Above Martial 10 your army starts at its objectives: the levy at the ram, men-at-arms at the ladders, archers in cover. Your groups are yours at Ready; the ladders go up once the ram is a quarter of the way; your charge takes the gate once it is down.
• The keep. When the lord is home, he falls back to his keep with his champions and guard, and you storm it room by room. Take it and the assault is won — and whoever of his you knocked out can be taken prisoner.
• Your own walls. When your holding is besieged, hold it with the garrison, your stationed men-at-arms and your champions — as yourself, your best champion, or the City Guard Commander. Fall back to your own keep and hold it to the last.
• Afterwards. Both sides' losses and champions' fates go back; a garrison that holds takes its dead; a won assault takes the holding through CK3's own siege rules the next day.

Duels and tournaments

Duels. Fight CK3's single combats as your character, with both men's real prowess, equipment and wounds — stripped to the waist when CK3 strips them. Whoever goes down loses. Back in CK3 pick any move: the round goes to the Bannerlord winner, and CK3 applies the duel's own story and cost. Rigged duels and children's duels stay in CK3.

Tournaments. Your bouts in a tournament's duel contest, fought in an arena of the county's culture, the host's standards round the ring and the stands full and cheering. Real weapons or sparring kit, always to a knockout. Your result moves CK3's bracket on.

Large battles

Bannerlord holds 2,040 men and horses at once. Experimental engine capacity raises that to as many as 12,240, so up to 6,000 soldiers stand on the field at once and 3,000 at a siege. It is our own patch for Bannerlord 1.4.8, put into the game as KingsBlade starts it — the files on disk are never changed — and the soldier sliders never ask for more than the running engine reports.

How we can afford it. Memory is not the limit: a slot costs about 9 KB, so even 12,240 is around 100 MB. The limit is one CPU core — Bannerlord works through every soldier's AI on a single thread — so everything else here is about taking work off that core.

• CPU relief. Skips each soldier's input check when it has nothing to do, and takes the game's own path whenever it cannot prove that is safe. It stopped re-reading Harmony's records every tick, too — 1.6 ms a tick by itself.
• Head cuts from a prepared cache. KingsBlade takes the heads itself: every piece a cut can need is built from Dismemberment Plus's own meshes under the loading screen, for the whole army and its reinforcements, instead of in the middle of the blow. The rule and the look are still that mod's.
• Lighter plants and shorter-lived blood marks. Grass is drawn to 100 m and trees and other plants to 1,200 m, and blood marks last two minutes at most, less when the battle is busy.
• Lighter large battles. In a battle of 2,000 soldiers or more, lighter graphics, loose horses cleared away from you, distant soldiers and their animations drawn in less detail, and distant bodies settled sooner — and your own settings come back afterwards.
• Warmed up at load. A battle's animations and your weapons' pictures are prepared under the loading screen, and KingsBlade's own per-tick work was trimmed throughout.
• Every drop written down. With the recorder ticked, each frame-rate dip is logged with what it was spent on, every slow hit is timed, and the app notes any second Bannerlord stops answering.

The frame rate is your CPU's: an 8,000-soldier test battle ran its full two minutes at about 32 FPS at 4K on an i9-13900KS and RTX 4090.

What is written back

Losses on both sides, levies included, scaled back from the field to CK3's own regiments: killed men are hard casualties, the wounded and routed come home. Every champion's fate is decided at the moment of the blow and goes through CK3's own death, wound and maiming rules. The battle counts in its war, war score and contribution included, as one of CK3's own does. KingsBlade does not pick the winner — CK3 runs its own ending, pursuit and retreat.

Every setting

The app's BATTLE SETTINGS and OPTIONS chapters, and Bannerlord's own KingsBlade menu. Settings save as you change them, and a fight keeps the ones it was staged with.

Adventure Encounters

CK3's adventurer contracts, fought in Bannerlord — criminal duels, raids, ambushes, escorts and prison breaks. All 65 contracts are mapped to the fights they become, built on KingsBlade's duels.

ShōgunsBlade

Japan, as KingsBlade fights it — Japan's own troops through every age from 867 to 1380, its battlefields, castles, duel grounds and arenas, built on your PC from Shokuho. It is part of KingsBlade. Read about ShōgunsBlade.

Requirements

If something goes wrong

HOME and LOG say in plain words what KingsBlade is waiting for and why a button is grey. Un-freeze CK3 releases a held game, Fight again restages a live battle, and Clear cache lets KingsBlade find everything afresh. To report a problem, tick Debug log in OPTIONS, fight it again, and send the logs.