Summary
- Crusader Kings III: All Under Heaven arrives today for Xbox on PC, the game’s biggest expansion yet. It will come at a later date to the Xbox Series X|S version.
- All Under Heaven adds China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia to the map for the first time, building on existing systems in clever ways to incorporate new cultures.
- Paradox worked closely with historians and community members to ensure historical accuracy.
All Under Heaven is the biggest expansion we’ve ever made for Crusader Kings III, and, arguably, one of the most ambitious add-ons in Paradox history. It adds thousands of new provinces and characters, so it is large in pure numbers. But it is also big because of its scope and themes, adding a new region to Crusader Kings for the first time. Finally, the drama of medieval China, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia is coming to the game!
The Crusader Kings titles have generally focused on the history of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Crusader Kings II expanded the map to India and North Central Africa, and these regions were in Crusader Kings III at launch. So, expanding the story of the Middle Ages beyond the titular crusade realms is not in itself new. But the differences between, say, medieval China and the Holy Roman Empire are so immense that simply adding a new map would not do justice to the history.
One of the immediate challenges is that the idealized feudal system we use to represent the political battles of Europe is entirely inappropriate for Tang and Song Dynasty China. There was no sense of mutual hierarchical obligations in the Chinese politics of the era.
Fortunately, we were able to test some ideas about how to model China in All Under Heaven in an earlier expansion, Roads to Power. That DLC introduced the idea of the Administrative Empire – a realm that had governors, not vassals (an important historical distinction). We used this design to further distinguish the Byzantine Empire from its Western counterparts. If this design worked here, it might be appropriate to adapt it to East Asia. Ultimately, the Byzantine model, where governors competed for influence with the ruler, proved to be a closer fit for medieval Japan, which is, like Byzantium, easily abstracted as noble families jockeying for position. China required something special.
Imperial Chinese bureaucracy was highly professionalized, with subjects competing in official examinations. Earlier Crusader Kings III expansions had introduced travel and tournaments, so couldn’t the exams be made into similar activities for characters? In the game, characters can organize or attend exams, traveling to the exam location and passing tests defined by the exam host. Good performance on these exams would then be tracked and make characters eligible for higher office. The better the performance, the better the job.
These are just two examples of how we adapted systems designed in previous expansions to bring a little more historical flavor and distinction to East Asia in All Under Heaven.
But the biggest challenge for us, I think, was facing the relative weakness of the team’s historical knowledge about the region. Coming from Europe, it is easy to absorb – or at least know where to find – reliable history for our own continent. How can we promise a plausible historical simulation if we are not starting from a strong historical foundation.
As with most Paradox grand strategy games, we start with what we have on the team. We are fortunate to have some trained historians with us – people who not only know a lot, but are very aware of what they do not know and what needs to be fleshed out.
Paradox is very fortunate to have a large global audience for its strategy games, and we were able to make use of that audience by inviting members of Asian communities to comment on design and art decisions. Working closely with our community members, we were able to avoid errors, both big and small, from making sure that we were using the proper terminology when referring to medieval Asian societies to double-checking the colors used in art and character clothing.
The simple fact is that, for the most part, the real authorities on a nation’s history have deep roots in that society and can point us to the correct sources. Even when some historical facts are a matter of debate – an inevitable fact of life when dealing with the Middle Ages – knowing the ground of that debate and the key issues at stake is very helpful in guiding our content team in the development of the game
All Under Heaven is the biggest expansion we’ve ever done for Crusader Kings III, and required a great deal of effort to design and complete. Having a strong development foundation has made this herculean task much easier than it could have been, given the ambitions we set for ourselves.
We look forward to our community digging into the expansion and writing new stories in exciting new realms.
Crusader Kings III: Starter Edition
Paradox Interactive