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Crusader Kings 3 won’t launch - how to fix
Launch issues? Fear not.
Crusader Kings 3 county control and development guide
How to improve control and development.
7 days ago
Feature: New year, old games
What's up gamers? It's 2021 and that means it's time to round up the team's favourite games of 2020. You'll already know our selections if you read our annual Advent Calendar, but this post gathers all those words and games together in one convenient package.
3 months ago
Feature: Updated with the best of 2020
Looking back at it now, 2020 doesn't feel like a banner year for strategy games, but that doesn't mean there haven't been a few gems. The list below - gathered by a panel of experts and regularly updated - contains games from as recently as 12 months ago alongside classics from as far back as 28 years ago. They're all games we think you could…
4 months ago
Feature: Pass the duchy
Six weeks after the release of Crusader Kings 3, and there are already over 1200 mods, tweaks, and more to download. Paradox's grand soap opera is as much fun to fix as it is to play, it seems. A lot of the more extensive mods are still heavily in development, so I've steered clear of most total conversions (aside from one that I couldn't not…
Feature: Words to maybe not live by
One of the strange things about Crusader Kings 3 is that the sheer size of the world means that even the mightiest empire will still operate in perhaps a quarter of the map at most. When you're a small realm, or one squished into a corner like Ireland or Kham, you can spend the entire game without proof that most of the world even exists.It's…
5 months ago
Feature: Sheer Benin brass
If I hadn't got in on Crusader Kings 2 shortly after it came out, I would have taken one look at its list of DLC (currently going for £184.65 on Steam, and that's with a discount) and noped right the hell out. Fortunately, the base game was already outstanding enough that I gladly supported it for our best games of the 2010s list. Most of…
Feature: One Off The List
Regicide is once again a topic at dinner, thanks to the release of Crusader Kings III. Your aunt passes you the gravy, and asks about council matters. Your mother comments on the rise in guillotine stocks. Your father, the king, chews his mutton with a rueful and distant glare, probably thinking about war. A cloaked advisor enters and hands you a note on parchment. “The…
Feature: You come at the Pope, you best not miss
Yesterday, I dived into the magical world of themed Crusader Kings III playthroughs, with this sobering exploration of what a man's life might look like if he cared for nothing except banging giants. I may return to my nightmare re-imagining of C12th Estonia at some point, but not today. You see, today, there's science to be done.CK3 is, emphatically, all about planning for the long…
Feature: Big time
I’ve already made an Estonian giant farm in Crusader Kings 3
High Chieftain Andyamo doesn't ask for much in life. In fact, he wants only two things. To live forever, and to bang every giant in Christendom. Crusader Kings 3, which comes out today, is a game where you very much get out what you put in. You get something, anyway. The sheer density and interconnection of the medieval RPG's many simulations mean that, pretty much…
9 months ago
Feature: Gadzooks etc.
Hands-on preview: Crusader Kings 3 is the RPG that will suck you into grand strategy
Crusader Kings 3 is coming on September 1st, and after having access to an early build for a few days, I’m seriously impatient to get back to scheming, disinheriting, and declaring myself the new pope. It’s got that terrible magic that leads to all-day-and-half-the-night sessions, and that’s largely because, secretly, it’s two games at once. It’s a strategy game, obviously. But it’s also a roleplaying…
1 year ago
Feature: 2020 vision
Over the break we had a chance to do some serious scientific study of this business we call games, and it turns out that games are actually good. 2020 in particular has a healthy mix of big budget bonanzas and smaller indie plates to suit everyone's discerning tastes. And, as you know, the RPS treehouse is the most discerning, so to make it easier for…
Feature: Beware negative splendor
Crusader Kings 3 is basically a Game of Thrones RPG in disguise
The Crusader Kings franchise has always had a massive Game of Thrones vibe. Indeed, the first two games in the series got their own Westeros mods, and our own Adam Smith called CK2’s “such a blindingly obvious combination of worlds and mechanics that it simply had to exist”. Now, however, looking into the new dynasty mechanics for Crusader Kings 3, it’s clear what Paradox are…
Feature: Too many popes
Although we won’t be able to play Crusader Kings 3 until next year, last weekend I got to try the next best thing - a massive game of Crusader Kings 2 without a single PC involved. As part of the celebrations at PDXcon, Paradox turned the interior of the Nalepastrasse radio station (formerly the broadcast hub for communist East Germany) into a vast map of…
Feature: When you're king, there are no bad ideas
Crusader Kings 2 isn’t the easiest game to define. It mixes Paradox’s grand strategy formula with a big bucket of RPG flavour, creating something that’s just as playable as an emergent storytelling toy as it is as a wargame. Crusader Kings 3, its freshly-announced sequel, has this same mix of ingredients. But from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like it might just have…
Feature: Best start believing in feudal dynastic struggles: you're in one
Crusader Kings 3 is happening: here’s ten things we know so far
A few minutes ago, Crusader Kings 3 was announced at PDXCon in Berlin, with an actual choir of hooded figures, and this splendidly grim trailer. Predecessor Crusader Kings 2 is still going strong after nearly eight years, with its last expansion launched last November, but now it's time for that old warhorse to be put to pasture. Or perhaps become pope. Either way, it's free…
