Crusader Kings 3lets you step into the shoes (or boots, slippers, sandals, etc) of thousands of historical or fictional medieval nobles, experiencing their struggles on the battlefield and in courtly life, but eventually the gameplay loop becomes the same old thing whether you’re in Ireland, India, or anywhere in between.
An expansion is always a welcome opportunity to shake things up by adding new systems or refining old ones. Roads To Power, the major expansion of Chapter Three (CK3’s 2024 DLC lineup), goes far beyond anything that the game has seen yet.
Roads To Power, as its name suggests, focuses on characters’ personal ambitions and climbing the social ladder of the medieval world, albeit from two very different perspectives. The first is the completely overhauled Byzantine Empire, present in all three of the game’s starting options.
Yes, three - Roads To Power adds 1178 as a starting year, letting players jump in during the leadup to the Third Crusade.
Byzantium has been given a unique government type in the form of the Administrative Empire. Unlike the Feudal and Clan structures in the base game, Administrative governments can grant holdings based on a new stat, Influence. When a titleholder dies, the candidate with the highest succession rating, as determined by the Influence they’ve spent, their family’s power, and the Basileus’ opinion of them, takes over as Provincial Governor. That includes the Byzantine Crown itself, so intrigue and scheming become much more important in the Eastern Roman Empire than the more military-focused kingdoms elsewhere.
This new Byzantium gameplay feels much closer to Crusader Kings’ reputation as a game of plots, seduction, and murder. Sure, the military aspect is still very important, especially when invaders from the east orvengeful Venetianscome a-knocking, but succeeding in an Administrative Empire is all about promoting your family’s interests, undermining those of your rivals, and scheming, scheming, scheming.
If you liked Merchant Republic gameplay and Viceroyalties in Crusader Kings 2, Roads To Power hearkens back to those systems in a lot of good ways.
An expansion dedicated to the lords of Constantinople, especially one this fun, would be plenty to keep fans satisfied, but if you’ve been following the recent development cycle for CK3, then you know that somehow it’s the other half of this expansion that really has people talking. Landless adventurers are at long last playable, and not only does it work wonderfully, it’s effectively an entirely new game mode.
Until now, Crusader Kings has always begun and ended with holding landed titles - if you don’t hold land, you may’t play the game. Roads To Power breaks this rule by giving landless adventurers their own subgame that feels like Crusader Kings meetsWartales. Using the travel system implemented in Tours And Tournaments last year, your dusty vagabond can now venture across the world in search of gold, glory, and maybe even a castle to call their own.
While the rest of the game’s world revolves around you as it always does, you can take on quests to earn money, upgrade your camp, hire other characters to support your schemes, and even influence the outcome of major events.
Several starting adventurers in the 1066 starting route have story campaigns, potentially letting them alter the course of history. Perhaps you fancy helping a rebellion against William The Conqueror, or forming a scholarly clique of wandering wise-women as the Umayyad Caliphate collapses?
Even if you aren’t playing one of the characters with a unique narrative, you’ll easily develop your own. Fighting bandits (or becoming one yourself), hiring your band out as mercenaries, and even the classic rescuing fair maidens are all on the table as you build a legend for your character.
One thing that particularly stands out about adventurer gameplay is how much more dangerous it is. Often, you’ll have no heir, and living by the sword often means dying by the sword. Within the first twenty minutes of starting as Hereweard of Oslac, I’d fought at least three duels to the death, and while I won them all, my character was looking pretty rough after just a year.
Constantly being in ‘travel mode’ means a lot more opportunities for your character to bite the dust. Fortune favors the bold, though, and on the bright side, being potentially limited to a single lifetime does technically mean that you could now play a full, satisfying game of Crusader Kings 3 in maybe five to ten hours, rather than several times that.
Roads To Power is more than just the next in a long line of DLC. It’s a true expansion, one that promises all-nighters to die-hard fans, and could be the missing something that brings hesitant newcomers to finally try on the crown.
