The strategy game Crusader Kings 3 (Steam, PS5, Xbox) finally presented its plans for the current year on March 12, 2025: Chapter 4 brings the Mongols and mechanics for the steppe peoples. In addition, one will pay more attention to the culmination of a monarch. At the end of the year, the world will be expanded in the east. China, Japan and Southeast Asia come into play. Paradoxes: This will be the greatest expansion for Crusader Kings ever.
These are the next highlights at Crusader Kings 3 in 2025: Paradox again sells a chapter pass for Crusader Kings 3, which receives 4 extensions, two large and two smaller ones:
As of today, “Crowns of the World” is live: this is a cosmetic package with 6 new crowns, 4 new hairstyles and 2 beards. The package is immediately available when buying the chapter pass. With the cosmetic DLC there is also a new patch that improves the AI and which makes it easier to coordinate large army associations. The most important roles at the courtyard were also revised.
The 20 € DLC Khans of the Steppes starts on April 28. The DLC further designed the nomads from the steppe government and brings its own mechanics.
The aim of the DLC will be to become the “scourge of God”: to a large Khan who masters the steppe and leads a conquest campaign from the east to deep to the West.
The DLC will also bring cosmetic objects for the Mongols people.
Crusader Kings III shows his new DLC: Khans of the Steppe
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The map of Crusader Kings 3 is significantly expanded in the east
What’s next? In 2025 the DLC “Coronations”, coronation. It is about Event or event chains that are about crowning a new monarch. A coronation ceremony is currently still missing in the event collecting: Although you can marry pompous, go hunting, visit a university and celebrate firmly, and even carry his father to the grave, but there is still no event for a crowning glory.
In 2025, the “All Under Haven” expansion ends, here Paradox promises the new regions of China, Japan and Southeast Asia, including the expansion of the card from the east. The game will then extend from Ireland in the west to Japan in the east.
Paradox speaks of unique forms of government for Japan, South Korea and the “Gottkaisern” of the Indonesian archipelago – including new cultures and religions.
New forms of government should also come to Crusader Kings 3, special events, roles for characters and other things. China will apparently still be a level over the previous largest rich, the empires, and become a hegemony. As a special feature for China, “dynastic cycles” that make it difficult to keep a dynasty stable and a special treasury.
The previous world map is to grow significantly in the east:
The largest and most ambitious expansion in the history of Crusader Kings 3
So raves paradoxical of the expansion: While you already know the steppe peoples from earlier parts of the series, paradoxical here: This has never happened in earlier parts of Crusader Kings 3.
Paradox says: That is the “largest and most ambitious expansion” in the history of Crusader Kings.
Fans fear that even greater performance problems
How does that get? It is certainly a “strategic expansion” – the games of Paradox have many fans in Asia, who sometimes go to the barricades. Players from Asia, who know other paradox games in which you can play China or Japan, now you obviously want to get Kings 3.
However, some fear that an even larger card could ensure that the already tough game runs even slower.
The relatively high price (€ 44), which should be paid in advance, also has some evil. After all, one does not yet know whether the DLCs are really good. And the high prices at Crusader Kings 3 are a permanent topic.
But there are also some who are enthusiastic about the suggestions. Paradox listen to the player.
Expansion follows an “economic” logic, none absolutely playful
This is how Meinmmo author Schuhmann sees it: For me this is nothing now. Japan and China can be played in Victoria 3 and Europe Universalis IV – I don’t necessarily need that in Crusader Kings 3. I see that more as a game with a focus on knights, castles and the crusades.
In my view, the Mongols are also more of a “endgame threat” in a game in which I never get into a final game with my way of playing.
At the end of 2024 I already expected the Mongols to come because such a military threat is still missing in the game after the black death had the plague as a threat.
However, I would have liked a deepening of the existing game system, especially DLCs, which further expand the role-playing aspect, such as secret associations, maybe revised the Vikings again or a Great Britain or France DLC.
For me it would also be more exciting to start historically earlier and to have a starting point from 800 AD – but well, the tastes differ clearly here. Crusader Kings 3 As a big game on Steam, a lot more players in Asia than the parts earlier, so it is probably logical from an economic point of view that paradox is trying to pick up strategy players from China here.
As early as 2024, Crusader Kings 3 was significantly expanded: I was obsessed from a game on Steam, spent 1,360 hours in it – now the series has been getting the best new feature for 20 years