Paradox Interactive has released By God Alone, a new expansion for Crusader Kings 3, alongside a free update to the medieval grand strategy game. The paid DLC adds playable theocracies, including the option to rule as the Papacy, and puts the Great Schism that split the Western Catholic Church from Eastern Orthodoxy in the player’s path. It is priced at $19.99 / £16.99, and is also available as part of the CK3 Chapter 5 bundle at $43.99 / £36.99.
What the free Crozier update changes
Update 1.20, named Crozier, is free to all players and rebuilds how faith works. It introduces rites, distinct traditions within a faith that each have their own head. A faith follows its main rite, and any rite within it that drifts too far apart is considered heretical and branches out into a new faith of its own. Heresies can also break out if religious fervor within a faith falls too low.
Excommunication has been reworked to carry a scaling piety cost, with ways to mitigate it and an option for religious leaders to appeal to their heads of faith for absolution. Each character now carries a spiritual fulfillment score that rises as they act on their virtues and falls when they commit sinful actions, and characters can hold personal beliefs alongside the core tenets of their faith.
Holy orders have been redesigned and separated into monastic orders and military orders, each with its own government type, patron and leadership. Players can ask specific people to take vows to join the clergy or a monastic order, bestow temple holdings upon an order, or demand a child for the cloister, which removes that child from the chain of succession. The update also adds a higher tier of eminent holy sites, raises the total number of holy sites a faith can recognize to nine, and lets a ruler declare one of their clerics an Antipope, with a casus belli to establish their chosen rite as the faith’s mainline one.
What the paid expansion adds
By God Alone models the Christian Church as a religion-wide situation that moves through seven chapters, with Papal Bulls and periodic Ecumenical Councils to handle. It enables play as a theocratic or ecclesiastical ruler and brings back the College of Cardinals from Crusader Kings 2. Choosing the 867 start date forces players to deal with the events leading to the Great Schism, with progress building gradually as they decide whether to adopt a stance or attempt to mend the rift. The expansion also adds the Grand Cathedral great project, which multiple characters can fund in collaboration and which is built across three tiers, progressing from Romanesque to Gothic and Flamboyant.
Being a good ruler and being a good believer aren't always the same thing. Your characters will wrestle with sin as they try to live up to their faith's ideals, while navigating the rich and evolving political landscape of the Christian Church.
By God Alone is out now. The Crozier update applies to all Crusader Kings 3 players, including those who do not buy the expansion.
