Paradox unveils new 'robust' Crusader Kings 3 expansions

The king is expanding, my lord

Paradox Interactive has big plans for 2024, and they include the “most robust” Crusader Kings 3 expansions to date, including a long-awaited Byzantine-themed expansion for the strategy game. The other CK3 expansion is all about shaping your legacy and influencing your realm from beyond the grave.

These expansions are part of Crusader Kings 3 Chapter 3, which also includes a big, new cosmetic pack and an event pack that encourages you to get on the road and make the most of CK3’s earlier travel update.

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“It’s very exciting to be able to talk about our plans for 2024,” Alex Oltner, Crusader Kings 3’s game director, said in a statement. “We’ve been working hard on trying to find ways to introduce major historical content like the Black Death and the Byzantine Empire’s distinct form of government into CK3, and we know that our fans have been wanting these as well. Chapter III promises to be one of the biggest phases in the game’s history.”

Legends of the Dead, CK3 Chapter 3’s core expansion lets you create narratives about yourself through song, propaganda, and legends to strengthen the legitimacy and power of your bloodline long after you’re gone. Whether that legacy can withstand the Black Death as it encroaches on your territory depends on just how good a leader you are. Death brings new opportunities as well. Meet the ravages of time and illnesses with proper mourning and funerary rites, and you might just save your legacy in the end.

Roads to Power is the chapter’s major expansion, and it finally puts you in Constantinople at the head of a new government form, presiding over a suite of new, Byzantine-themed events and challenges. There’s even the option to chuck all this out the window and wander the land as a nomadic noble.

Finally is the Couture of the Capets cosmetics pack, which Paradox confusingly called free, despite it only being available for those who pre-purchased the Chapter 3 expansion pack. Either way, it gives you a new set of fashion items inspired by 13th-century French nobility, so you can get your Hundred Years War on in style.

You can pre-purchase Crusader Kings 3 Chapter 3 for $43.98 ahead of its March 4, 2024, release date.

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