When I booted up Crusader Kings 3 for the first time, the only buttons that looked familiar were the ones for waging war, so I hit them as hard as I could. It’s a completely different gameplay language than I’m used to. Tooltips within tooltips allow players to find information quickly and easily. There’s no reason to conquer territory, for instance, when you can simply marry into it.
Then it’s simply a matter of putting the correct machinations in place to bring about the outcomes that you desire. Using the game’s menus, it’s possible to divine why another character feels the way they do about you. That opinion is influenced by social rank, but also additional factors like lineage and religion. The team explained to me that the world of Crusader Kings 3 is populated by tens of thousands of AI-controlled characters, and each of them has an opinion of all the others. Sometimes that means taking up arms, and other times it means paying bribes. Social manipulation is just as powerful as the ranks of specialized troops, and every character in the game has to work with what they’ve given. Turns out that Crusader Kings is a far more subtle experience. Games like Stellaris and Hearts of Iron 4 are all about taking the field with the most powerful military units available and fighting your enemies in the most advantageous settings. That’s certainly not my methodology for playing other grand strategy games, especially those made by Paradox. Try to let go a little bit, and just enjoy the experience.”
“One of the secrets to playing Crusader Kings,” game director Henrik Fåhraeus says during our interview, “is to sort of not worry so much about min-maxing and optimizing your game, to be honest. There’s no reason to conquer territory, for instance, when you can simply marry into it.Ĭrusader Kings 3 is Paradox’s chance to make a fresh start, and that means catering to loyal fans as well as setting expectations for a new kind of audience - people like me, who have never played the game before. With 15 different expansions published over the last decade, it’s also among the most thoroughly supported titles in that company’s history. The franchise went on to become Paradox’s first internally developed million-unit seller and ultimately one of the biggest, brightest jewels in the company’s crown. That launch went much more smoothly, and the sequel received praise from critics and fans alike. Over the next eight years the game eventually found its audience, and expectations were high for the release of Crusader Kings 2 in 2012. Employees - including former CEO and co-founder Fredrik Wester - actually packaged those games by hand, only to see the release marred by bugs. The original Crusader Kings was released in 2004, back when Paradox was a much smaller company. The game is still in development, and all images shown here are likely to change. The game also allows you to begin from the year 867, before Christianity has consolidated power in the region. Rather than playing Crusader Kings 3 like a traditional grand strategy game, they tell me, instead I should be playing it more like The Sims.Ī pre-game menu allows you to pick from several interesting characters across medieval Europe. That’s when I learn that I’ve been going about this all wrong. The next day, in a Zoom call with the team from developer Paradox Interactive, I arrive hat in hand to tell them of my misfortune. It’s not game over, but it’s pretty close. But while I’m out of town my neighbor’s allies sweep in from the north, lay siege to my castle, and imprison my heir. I declare my intent to enforce a claim on a neighboring county, raise an army of a few thousand men, and march off into battle. So I decide to start a war, and that’s when things come crashing down around me. My vassals are happy enough, it seems, and my wife - a Polish princess - has my back, securing the border with her father, one of my most powerful neighbors. The clock is ticking, and it’s time to consolidate my power and lay the groundwork for my legacy. Far from my duchy in Bohemia, the Battle of Hastings has just taken place, setting in motion an inevitable slide toward modernity. I’m only a few hours into a hands-on demo of Crusader Kings 3 when everything starts to go pear-shaped.
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