Crusader Kings III (PC & Mac)

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Standard Edition

Standard Edition
Starter Edition
Royal Edition

$57

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$12.60

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About

Crusader Kings III for PC is a grand strategy game, albeit with many role-playing game (RPG) elements, that is set in the middle ages. It covers civilisations that run from the Viking age to the Fall of Byzantium, and offers the player two start dates: 867AD or 1066AD. The game, like its two predecessors, is based on national dynastic interplay but rooted in almost entirely in character. How to Begin? The previous iteration of the game was universally agreed to be one of the most complicated...

Installation:

How to activate your game

Developer:

Paradox Development Studio,

Publisher:

Paradox Interactive,

Release date:

31 August 2020

Genre:

RPG, Simulation, Strategy,

Recent Steam reviews:

Very positive (824)

All Steam reviews:

Very positive (78721)

Editions

Standard Edition

Crusader Kings III

-5 more

Starter Edition

Crusader Kings III
Crusader Kings III: Elegance of the Empire
Crusader Kings III: Fashion of the Abbasid Court
Crusader Kings III: Friends & Foes
Crusader Kings III: Garments of the Holy Roman Empire
Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments

1 more

Royal Edition

Crusader Kings III
Crusader Kings III: Fashion of the Abbasid Court
Crusader Kings III: Royal Court
Crusader Kings III: Northern Lords
Crusader Kings III: Flavor Pack 2

0 more

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Crusader Kings III: Khans of the Steppe

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Crusader Kings III: Chapter IV

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$49.72 $38.42

Crusader Kings III Content Creator Pack: Arctic Attire

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$5.64 $4.74

Crusader Kings III: Wandering Nobles

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$5.64 $5.36

Crusader Kings III: Roads to Power

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$33.90 $24.44

Crusader Kings III: Legends of the Dead

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$22.59 $16.94

Crusader Kings III Content Creator Pack: North African Attire

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$5.64 $5.07

Crusader Kings III: Legacy of Persia

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$14.68 $7.69

Crusader Kings III: Tours & Tournaments

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$33.90 $19.64

Crusader Kings III: Friends & Foes

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$5.64 $2.78

Crusader Kings III: Fate of Iberia

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$14.68 $6.84

Crusader Kings III: Royal Court

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$33.90 $13.80

Crusader Kings III: Northern Lords

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$14.68 $6.84

Crusader Kings III: Expansion Pass

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$39.21 $31.08

Crusader Kings III Content Creator Pack: Medieval Monuments

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Crusader Kings III: West Slavic Attire

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Crusader Kings III: Chapter III

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Crusader Kings III: Chapter II

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Crusader Kings III: Wards & Wardens

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Visuals

Game features

Remote Play on Tablet

Family Sharing

Description

How to Begin?

The previous iteration of the game was universally agreed to be one of the most complicated games and came with little in the way of a tutorial. This version is much more user friendly, and there is an island nation, based on Ireland but called by popular demand ‘Newbie Island’, which serves as a tutorial base.

There are also ‘tooltips’ which lead into a rabbit-hole of information in which you click on one topic, highlight a word you want to understand further opening another info-sheet, on which there are yet more words or tooltips to explore. The UI (user interface) of the tips is as user friendly as possible, which is just as well as it houses a huge amount of data, which can seem daunting when you are chasing an answer that you need!
It is reassuring that it is there when you need though! And, there is little that the database does not have buried somewhere within its depths, so you can find the answers to all possible questions (and probably some impossible ones too!) with a little searching.

Customise your Characters

The fully rendered 3D characters that you are playing with in this game are a huge improvement to the last one, and there are some developments that take it up a level into the almost fabulous. Your characters will age over time, showing the results of too much stress, too much wine and food, battle scars form part of their look and their hair will slowly grey or go thin. They can also pass on their features to their children.

This sounds like a small thing and remarkably obvious, but seeing the result of your brunette beauty mixed with Nordic muscle adds to the realism and authenticity of the game’s narrative. One thing that this genetic accuracy can do too, is pass along the effects of incest. So if your dynastic family decides to go full GoT by keeping it all in the family, their desirable traits will slowly warp, over a generation or two into disability and distortion.

When picking out your first characters, you will find that they come with a fairly detailed psyche already, but to save time they are given a pithy epithet that encapsulates their core character, so you can grab a ‘plucky optimist’ alongside a ‘depressed scribe’ without ending up with characters at odds with the actions you want them to take.

The personalities and quirks of the characters are tremendously important to the overall gameplay: it is amazing how a character can influence such huge national reactions!

Features of the Game

The main overarching purpose of the game is to expand your empire as far as possible, and to paint the map in your empire’s colours. And what a map it is! On the surface a beautifully authentic ‘hand-drawn’ looking chart, but zooming in brings out ever more details about the area you are looking at, to an almost insane level of detail. The terrain is diverse and interesting, each region has geological quirks and there are special buildings to explore too!

All that map exploration comes in handy as you train and supply your army, before sending them off to achieve your aims in lands as yet unknown. Keep a few loyal soldiers around your court though, to protect your empire and family – or to protect you from your family!

Cultural traits are important and you can customise these, as well as coming up with your own religion if you are not impressed with any of those on offer in the game! However – do not go too wild with blood-thirsty and savage behaviour, even if it is the law of your theocracy that five slaves must be sacrificed on a Friday morning!

Stress in this game is a literal killer, and it builds up in each character each time they go out of their comfort zone. Even the most vicious king needs to show mercy occasionally to keep their stress levels down, while betraying friends, committing acts of disloyalty or treason can upset good characters and so on.

Some moral choices seem bad either way: should you agree to sleep with your son, or just have him killed rather than risk the hit to your stress? Will that not stress you out in turn? You can, however, make naked Wednesdays a thing without worrying about the stress – hopefully, you’ll all be laughing too much for the stress levels to be impacted at all!

Career Paths to Success

There are five career paths to success and some of them can open unexpected doors for you:

Diplomacy – the art of sweet-talking people into going along with your ideas

Intrigue – spying on the enemy, schmoozing with them, and then betraying them for the glory of your own empire. Winning!

Warfare – the straightforward world of combat

Learning – study old documents, secret arts and new skills – and perhaps present your own candidate for the throne, or yourself, why not? You know you don’t deserve it, but they don’t…

Stewardship – looking after kings and their families is an excellent way to discover all the hidden places and secrets of court! Then use them – carefully, watch out for that stress! – to spin things to your own advantage!

This is a long and in-depth game – not for when you have an hour to kill! You can rack up literally hundreds of hours of play time: but you will still not be bored and be finding new things to try even after your empire is into its third or fourth generation!

Crusader Kings III for PC is available for purchase on Instant Gaming for a fraction of its retail price. You will receive an official key and be able to play the game in seconds. Play smart. Pay less.

Configurations

Windows
SteamOS + Linux
MacOS

minimum*

OS: Windows 10 Home 64 bit
Processor: Intel Core i3-2120 / AMD FX 6350
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 (2GB) / AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB) / Intel Iris Pro 580 / Intel Iris Plus G7 / AMD Radeon Vega 11
Storage: 8 GB available space

recommended*

OS: Windows 10 Home 64 bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K / AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB) / AMD Radeon R9 390X (8GB)
Storage: 8 GB available space

minimum*

OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Processor: Intel Core i3-2120 / AMD FX 6350
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 (2GB) / AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB) / Intel Iris Pro 580 / Intel Iris Plus G7 / AMD Radeon Vega 11
Storage: 8 GB available space

recommended*

OS: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K / AMD Ryzen 5 2400G
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB) / AMD Radeon R9 390X (8GB)
Storage: 8 GB available space

minimum*

OS: Catalina (MAC OS X 10.15)
Processor: Intel Core i7-7820HQ
Memory: 12 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon PRO 560 (4 GB)
Storage: 8 GB available space

recommended*

OS: Catalina (MAC OS X 10.15)
Processor: Intel Core i5-7600K
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon PRO 580 (8GB)
Storage: 8 GB available space

Game's latest news

2 years ago

Crusader Kings 3 will receive its Tours and Tournaments expansion on May 11th

Announced last March, the DLC for the strategy game by Paradox Interactive has just found a release date. Indeed, Crusader Kings 3: Tours and Tournaments will arrive on May 11, 2023. The expansion will be sold for about thirty euros and will offer a whole series of new features to discover. This additional…

2 years ago

Crusader Kings III is soon getting an expansion called Tours and Tournaments

There will be something new in the third installment of Crusader Kings! Indeed, Paradox Interactive has officially announced the upcoming release of a new expansion. Entitled Tours and Tournaments, it will allow our rulers to meet their subjects across the kingdom. It will also be possible to take part…

2 years ago

Paradox Interactive will announce three new games on March 6th

The Paradox Announcement Show will take place on March 6th at 6 pm (Paris time). In partnership with Xbox, the publisher will take advantage of this event to announce three different games. Behind these projects, we will find the studios Colossal Order, Harebrained Schemes, and Paradox Tectonic. Finally,…

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59 comments

Instantané et fonctionne parfaitement !

3 months ago

5 months ago

Easy, fast, and cheap

5 months ago

quick and successful delivery

7 months ago

The payment was secure and fast!

8 months ago

quick and fast

A year ago

Reviews

All languages

Game review score based on 160 reviews, all languages included

Review this game!

Best reviews

This is one of the very few strategy games that mostly depicts most of what It was like to be living in the middle ages, where a roof can come crashing down and kill your current character, not before his good heir was assassinated by god knows who, and you're left with the inbred child that's already on his death bed by age 6, that's the beauty of the game. It's not meant to be easy, but you're capable of overcoming each challenge thrown at you. The world is your playground, although unlikely you'll make it out of your liege's rule alive. This game is also extremely fun with friends, whenever they're not actively trying to exterminate your entire blood line, or "influencing" it with their horrible traits. Allies, competitors, or enemies, all have one thing in common; it's going to be a lot of fun interacting with them!

Anyways, Great game, buy with discounts, if possible buy from instant gaming, I haven't had a single issue buying any of their games, and you'll probably save a lot more time and money than waiting for steam sales.

Rule a dynasty and die at every opportunity
Conquer The World (your neighbor's lawn)
have fun with friends conquering (them) the world!
Not the best optimization, seen better
Multiplayer system can use a rework
Paradox.

9th November 2023

Useful?

Royal Edition

10/10 game - Base gameplay is great and you can get stuck into it for ages - Only pain is 90% of the DLC is poor, no where near as good as the OG gameplay, annoyingly it does add onto the baseline game but for the price it isnt worth it - buy basegame at any price but DLC on the cheap

All good
Bad DLC

19th November 2023

Useful?

Royal Edition

Great game, but what a time thief - hard to put down! Recommended for all strategy fans, it has a massive role-play potential too. Super enjoyable and fun. The random events and flavour texts are super creative, glorious to see the bizarre outcomes. Failure is part of the journey!

8th May 2023

Useful?

Royal Edition

It is what it is.

All in family.
Make it out with your mom.
Find out, that your cousins rule most of nations around.

7th November 2024

Useful?

Recent reviews

Starter Edition

There is not much to say, this game is great and the historical immersion is something else. There are a couple of mechanics i don't really care about like half of the courtier system but everything else is just perfect

27th April 2025

Useful?

Starter Edition

Came with all the dlc work in canada

25th February 2025

Useful?

It works perfectly! Thank you!

21st February 2025

Useful?

One of the better game i have ever played, if you hesitate to buy it, do not hesitate anymore

Strategy

31st January 2025

Useful?

10/10 never played a strategy game that good

literaly played all of paradox with +500h yet this is the best one

Customization
Super easy to learn
replayablilty
DLCs price

14th January 2025

Useful?

Masterpiece!

21st October 2024

Useful?

all round great game , has a bit of a learning curve but is incredibly fun when you get the hang of it .

in depth gameplay
many hours to sink into it
learning curve
complicated mechanics
not new player friendly

28th June 2024

Useful?

Hyper fixated on the game in the beginning and grinded really hard, also player with a friend but I think it need a lot of patience or not using the full potential of the game (speed running tricks or something) to play a round till the end

Cool game mechanics
Boring after a while

28th January 2024

Useful?

Royal Edition

Very nice Game! It is a lot of fun even after hundreds of hours. You're very free in designing your houses and kingdoms. Sometimes the battles seem unfair or unlogical, so the way bigger army looses. But still a very nice game, there are a lot of mods and DLC's.

Very strategic
Mods
creative

7th August 2023

Useful?

Royal Edition

A gold quality strategy-history game for those who really enjoy lots of options/ - in-depth game mechanics to explore and strategize on.

Been so far hybridizing the Viking culture with france and italy, creating an empire in central europe while making the old Asatru faith which still are in mostly Scandinavia and todays Scotland my allies. Now the eastern roman empire and the weak catholic countries left trembles.

In my other campaign i now have a Kingdom in India. Trying to breed my family into dwarfs being geniuses while really messing around with a lot of options of getting more influence and land.

92/100 GREAT GAME!

25th April 2023

Useful?

Royal Edition

One of the best strategy games from Paradox!

Well made game and a decent upgrade from Crusader Kings 2 but in my opinion they could include in the base game more content that they plan to add with future DLCs!

24th April 2023

Useful?

Royal Edition

one of the best grand strategy games out there. complex like all paradox (strategy) games and with great dlcs so far. not easy to learn all the mechanics but you get in to it quickly with the tutorial mission or just try and error

24th April 2023

Useful?

Royal Edition

I love this game.

I did not know that it feels so good and it is so hard to be a king at the same time. This game helped me to thing outside the box. I mean I always thought that to be a king is just saying things and everything will be okay, but now I know it is a really hard logical thinking game. You have to plan and thing before making a move (a bit like in chess).

If you like harder, logic, simulation games try this (it is better with DLCs, but I will not think with your wallet).

Good graphics
Expensive DLCs

7th April 2023

Useful?

I was scared to buy this game just to try it out. I didn't want to pay what the asking price was on Steam. After grabbing it here...it was more than worth every penny. Do yourself a favor and get it.

In depth
Customizable
Hours of fun
Hard to learn
Very unforgiving game-play
Paradox loves DLC

20th January 2023

Useful?

DLC is way too expensive, and I only played the game to access the Middle Eastern campaigns, so that's a pretty big let-down for me. I guess I wasted 16 bucks for nothing. I wish I could be refunded but I already placed in the key.

7th October 2022

Useful?

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