How long do you think it would take to convert the entire world map of Crusader Kings III to a single culture? Not as long as you’d expect, it turns out, as a known CK3 speedrunner has managed the so-called ‘one culture’ feat in a fraction of the strategy game’s game time.
Most large-scale projects in grand strategy games are meant to take up most of the timespan available to achieve. In Crusader Kings III’s case, assuming you start in the 867 start date, that could mean you’ve got a cool 586 years to play around with. Reddit user Doctorsandwich8 felt they didn’t need that long, and managed to convert every province that exists in the game to the ‘Outremer’ culture in just 44 in-game years. 44.
This is a feat that took over 100 hours of planning, and you can read a full write-up of their methodology over on the r/crusaderkings subreddit. This is the fourth such speedrun they’ve done, following on from their ‘one ruler world conquest’ (which took 23 years), ‘one religion’ (which took 29 years), and finally a game where they managed to get the Mongol Empire to use Primogeniture succession rules, which quite frankly is just nonsense. Wonderful nonsense.
Here’s the thread regarding the culture speedrun, along with the proof image just in case doubt still clouded your heart:
It’s an achievement so difficult no one has done it yet, so I decided to speedrun one. One Culture Complete! from CrusaderKings
The detail Doctorsandwich8 goes into is impressive, as is the achievement itself. Unlike other domination states using religion, or conquering the map, there’s actually no quick way to switch a province’s culture in the game. We won’t replicate the entire detail of how this was achieved, but it does involve replicating both the world conquest and one religion speedruns above, and a lot of very careful title management.
A couple of notes for context: this isn’t a formal achievement you’ll be able to find on the Steam achievement list or anywhere official, more of a self-set challenge. The Outremer culture itself isn’t anything significant, but it does have several powerful events associated with it that make this kind of run achievable in the first place.
Doctorsandwich8 also claims they are the first to achieve this, and certainly at the time of writing no-one’s come forward to say otherwise. This is definitely one way to pass the time while we wait for more news regarding the 1.3 patch and first expansion. I wonder what they’ll try next.