Hello everybody! Today we're releasing our Major Expansion for the year and the centerpiece of Chapter 3: Roads to Power. We're also releasing Update 1.13.0 "Basileus" alongside this expansion.
Check out the release trailer below, and then a partial changelog under that. The full changelog is well beyond the limits of what we can fit into a Steam announcement, so check out our forums for a more comprehensive list of changes coming in today's update!
► Read the full 1.13.0 changelog on our forums!
Expansion Features (Paid)
- Added Administrative Government: A new government heavily inspired by the Byzantine Empire which introduces a completely new playstyle focused around the bureaucracy of a large realm.
- Noble Families: Families are ranked and put into three categories depending on their overarching rating; Noble Families, Powerful Families, and Dominant Families, unlocking actions and various benefits as your family increases in importance.
- Family Attribute: Set an attribute for your Noble Family, giving you a small bonus to all members of your house.
- Influence: A new resource representing your political capital.
- Earn it by scheming, landing your family members, being a successful governor, and, most importantly, constructing buildings in your estate.
- Spend it on making your family members governors, or asking the emperor for various favors.
- New Succession Law: Appointment - Spend your influence to put yourself and the members of your family first in the line of succession of the many provinces throughout the realm.
- New Succession Law: Acclamation - Vie for control of the throne and become emperor. While skills, suitability, and family status is important, influence is the deciding factor in whether you will succeed in putting yourself, or someone else, on the throne.
- Has access to Estates: A domicile type owned and controlled by the head of a noble family.
- Upgrades and buildings provide valuable gold and influence income, and can be tailored to suit your own needs and playstyle.
- Governors: Administrative vassals act as governors, making use of several new features:
- Governor Efficiency: Based on a governor’s skill, they may increase or decrease the amount of taxes holdings provide, and the effectiveness of their Imperial Armies.
- Governance Issues: On-map interactive pieces on content, issues appear for governors to solve or somehow address, gaining valuable resources and Governor Trait experience.
- Governor Trait: A trait that represents a governor’s overall skill at governing. Experience is primarily gained by successfully solving Governance Issues, but older content has also been updated to provide experience whenever it makes sense, such as successfully reducing the impact of Plague outbreaks.
- 14 Political Schemes: A new category of schemes custom tailored to Administrative gameplay - Such as teaching others to become better governors, or raiding the Estate of another family.
- Imperial Armies: Recruit and maintain Men-at-Arms for titles.
- All governors can maintain a provincial army by recruiting any available Men-at-Arms for their provincial title.
- The liege has a unique access to armies, and can freely seize control of any available provincial army by spending influence.
- Other governors may request provincial armies from their fellow vassals, assuming they have a valid reason and enough influence.
- The efficiency of Men-at-Arms is affected by the respective governors Governor Efficiency.
- New obligation types: Have your vassals govern their provinces in the way you want with six new obligation types, Balanced, Civilian, Military, Frontier, Navy, and Imperial.
- Imperial Bureaucracy: A new law that replaces crown authority - Instead of individual levels of crown authority, the top liege of an Administrative realm sets the law level and all Administrative vassals will follow suit.
- State Faith: Decoupled from the ruler, a state faith is the primary faith of a given realm, making it easier to convert vassals to the state faith, but more difficult to convert them away from it.
- Reactive event content to the current state of the empire, the status of the emperor, and the nature of your governorate.
- Confirm Governorship: An Administrative version of Pay Homage sees the Emperor bestow his grace upon Appointments.
- Petition Emperor: Administrative vassals have new options for Petitions, including Gold, Family Governorship Appointments, and a bonus to House succession score.
- New Byzantine Throne Room - A spectacular throne room is made available for the Byzantine Empire (or any would-be conquerors of Constantinople!), including:
- Marble floors and walls.
- Stunning mosaics.
- Mechanical roaring lions with slamming tails.
- Added historical artifacts for Byzantium: hydraulic organ, (half of the) statue of the four tetrarchs, and statue of a Roman woman.
- New Dynasty Legacy: Bureaucracy - A new legacy with a focus on Administrative gameplay, unlocking new buildings for the Estate, improving Governor Efficiency, improving political schemes, and more.
- Added new Chariot Race activity.
- Host a Chariot Race to gain Legitimacy and Popular Opinion.
- Place bets on your favorite team, and favored charioteer, in an attempt to win large amounts of wealth.
- Interact with other nobles and governors, gaining influence, opinion, and more.
- Make skilled individuals compete for you by appointing them to the Champion Charioteer Court Position, providing you with influence.
- Added an exclusive Map Table, that reflects the marbled luxury of Byzantium.
- New Men-at-Arms:
- Ayrudzi - Light cavalry unit available to Armenians.
- Conrois - Heavy cavalry unit available to Normans.
- Akritai - Skirmisher unit available to Greeks.
- Ballistrai - Archer unit available to Greeks.
- Skoutatoi - Spearmen unit available to Greeks.
- Varangian Guards - Heavy infantry uniquely available as special Men-at-Arms recruitable only as title troops for the Byzantine Empire.
- New Greek Cultural Traditions: These have a heavy focus on Greek flavor, adding new Men-at-Arms, decisions, Court Positions, and more, as well as having several tie-ins with the new Administrative government type.
- Imperial Tagmata
- Roman Ceremonies
- Palace Politics
- Cultivated Sophistication
- New Norman Cultural Tradition: Audacious Cadets.
- New Armenian Cultural Tradition: Indomitable Azatani.
- Flavor Content: a stable of misc events, mainly for Greeks but some available also for neighboring cultures. Traits like Beardless Eunuch (with genuine hairlessness!) and Despoiler of Byzantium. New interactions and decisions such as:
- Castrate Kin
- Offer Eunuch
- Prepare Greek Fire
- Found the Varangian Guard
- Re-Establish the Theodosian Borders
- Refound the Pandidakterion
- Hold a Triumph
- Reinstate the Grain Dole
- Restore Greece
- Ask for Support - seek military aid from the Catholics of Western Europe.
- Evangelize the Pagans
- Restore the Byzantine Empire
- Establish Silk Production
- Commission Icon
- Commission Silk Regalia
- Splintered Crusade/Frankokratia: Catholic rulers can break their Crusade in two and redirect attackers in an assault against Byzantium. This unique war can destroy the Byzantine Empire, and begin a turbulent era as the new Latin Empire fights with Byzantine successor kingdoms.
- Crusader and Byzantine flavor events.
- Dynamic story cycle has multiple semi-historical outcomes and provides choices for both Byzantine vassals and victorious Crusaders.
- New decisions for Latins and Greeks to switch de jure kingdom ownership back and forth.
- Seize Imperial Duchy casus belli available to all rulers in former Byzantine lands: it provides special troops on attacker victory.
- Many new character assets to give the Byzantine Empire a distinct look:
- 26 unique new variants of byzantine clothing for both male and female characters
- 8 unique new variants of byzantine cloaks for both male and female characters
- 22 unique new variants of byzantine headgears for both male and female characters
- 12 unique new hairstyles for both male and female characters
- 4 new beards for male characters
- Added 7 New Artifacts:
- Statue of the Four Tetrarchs
- Statue of Constantine
- Statue of A Roman Woman
- Tree Automata
- Hydraulic Organ
- Byzantine Icons
- Throne of Solomon (Byzantine)
- Added 11 new music tracks
- 01 – Roads to Power - Main Theme
- 02 – Easter Prayers
- 03 – Knowledge from the Past
- 04 – Divine Mercy
- 05 – Greek Fire
- 06 – Ectenia
- 07 – Constantinople at Sunrise
- 08 – In the Name of the Lord
- 09 – A Journey to Adventure
- 10 – Awaiting Nightfall
- 11 – The Winds of Fortune
- Added Co-Emperors
- Sufficiently powerful entrenched regents can, if their liege's title or culture would allow a co-emperor, forcibly appoint themselves as co-emperor.
- Co-emperors and their senior emperors can now publicly scapegoat each other to the rest of the realm, sacrificing their relationship for influence.
- Co-emperors may request (or coerce) a private despotate out of their senior emperor at a certain scales of power level.
- Co-emperors may be blinded, castrated, disfigured, maimed, or killed to remove them from office — they may likewise do this to their senior emperor to steal control of the empire.
- Rulers able to have co-emperors can now (generally) dissolve powerful factions against them by appointing the faction leader as their co-emperor.
- Administrative emperors with Roman Ceremonies may now raise one of their children as a nominal co-emperor, graduating to a full co-emperor on their majority.
- Added Request Imperial Expedition interaction for co-emperors, allowing them access to a powerful cb to expand the realm's borders (_if_ their senior emperor is willing to risk it).
- Added Landless Adventurers, a new government focused on informal groups of characters (from small bands of scholars to large mercenary companies), allowing players to traverse the map and use the medieval world as a backdrop for smaller, character-focused roleplay.
- Contracts: adventurers cannot easily obtain significant fixed incomes, so they have to earn their gold and prestige from serving landed rulers via contracts. These can consist of mercenary work, decisions, event chains, and one-off events.
- Added 26 basic contracts.
- Added 4 dedicated warfare contracts for starting different types of wars + the mechanics for getting hired as a mercenary in an on-going war.
- Added 8 types of transport contracts.
- Added 11 misc/reactive contracts.
- Provisions: a new resource that adventurers require to travel across the map. As they travel, they deplete provisions (with the amount going up for some terrain types, as well as with the amount of Men-at-Arms they have).
- Has access to Camps: a domicile type owned by the leader of each adventuring party. Buildings and upgrades focus on the culture and specialities of the group you’ve gathered, providing powerful bonuses representing your position as a powerful (yet scorned) outsider.
- Several bespoke buildings are made available by your Camp Purpose
- Switch between six Camp Purposes representing different types of adventurers, each with different unlocks and a little added flavor:
- Travel the world as a Wanderer
- Kill for money as a Sword-for-Hire
- Teach as a Scholar
- Sojourn to far-off lands as an Explorer
- Commit many crimes as a Freebooter
- Regain a lost throne as a Legitimist
- Gallowsbait: adventurers that indulge in criminal acts will find that society no longer affords them the same respect a landed ruler would get. Petty crimes level up their gallowsbait trait, slowly making the world hate them.
- All landed-specific lifestyle perks have been redesigned for adventurers, effectively giving them a (mostly) entirely new set of lifestyle perks to choose from.
- The functionality for changing perk bonuses according to government is available for future vanilla use cases, as well as modding.
- Many ways to become an adventurer:
- A selection of historical adventurers can be picked from the ruler selection screen.
- Adventurers can be custom made in the ruler designer.
- Rulers that would otherwise game over due to losing all their land may become adventurers.
- Various ways for minor rulers or unlanded characters to spontaneously become adventurers during gameplay.
- Historical characters may appear in gameplay and become adventurers that players can switch to.
- Many new interactions for adventurers to interact with the world around them, from requesting support to buying land to leaving wars.
- Unlocked Iberian Struggle ‘Offer Contract Assistance’ interaction for landless adventurers.
- Added adventurer-specific Casus Bellis, unlocked by reaching higher Prestige Levels.
- Added the Seize Realm scheme unlocked when reaching a very high level of Prestige, allowing you to seize an entire realm (while significantly destabilizing it).
- A new micro-activity, the camp revel, that replaces feasting for adventurers.
- Added special Men-at-Arms refill mechanics for adventurers.
- They pay no maintenance on their armies, but do not refill them naturally. Instead, they have a brace of interactions that they can take to refill them in exchange for currency costs.
- Successfully sieging holdings also returns a small amount of troops, enough for their armies to recoup most siege losses (and maybe a little extra) most of the time.
- Added 28 camp officers, the adventurer equivalent of court positions (which they generally replace), most of which are unlocked by different domicile upgrades.
- Added Visit Settlement decision, allowing adventurers to explore the holdings they pass through.
- Added 7 new major decisions for landless adventurers:
- Become a Great Conqueror
- The [Your Faith Here] Path
- The Travels of [Your Name]
- Found a Holding
- The Knight of the Swan
- Champion Your Culture
- Levy the Outcasts
- Added various minor decisions alongside, including a small one for going fishing.
- Added story content for:
- Hereward the Wake
- Hassan Sabbah
- Wallada bint al-Mustakfi
- El Cid
- Added an interaction for expelling adventurers from your realm.
- Contracts: adventurers cannot easily obtain significant fixed incomes, so they have to earn their gold and prestige from serving landed rulers via contracts. These can consist of mercenary work, decisions, event chains, and one-off events.
Free Features
- Added new game rules
- Name of Byzantium - Don’t like the name of the Byzantine Empire? Pick the name you like the most with several options available!
- Added game rule for giving the historic ruler of Munster, Toirdelbach Mac Tadg, his rightful fiefdom (including becoming the player character if Murchad was selected; with credit to maniacal inc's thorough video on the subject for the switcharoo).
- Added a game rule allowing manual determination of the Conquest of England's victor in 1066. If left to default, this will be overridden if Hereward is a player and no one else is playing a key belligerent.
- Added a small slew of game rules for turning various arguably-administrative historical empires (plus the Carolingians, who only recently transitioned out of being administrative) into administrative empires, even if these realms aren't best suited to the mechanics of the government or already have their own distinct government flavors.
- Added game rules to turn off the Iberian Struggle and/or Iranian Intermezzo mechanics, should you wish to play without them.
- Added an optional game rule for restricting the creation of new empire titles neighboring/sharing a de jure with existing empires unless you have a stronger military, are married to their close family, or have a strong hook on them.
- Added a new start date, 1178, featuring two bookmarks: Call of the Empire and Swords of Faith.
- Added a grand city style event for visiting Constantinople while traveling.
- Added the ‘Conqueror’ feature - rulers across the world can now be designated as a great conqueror, giving them special bonuses, content, and altering their AI behavior.
- Conquerors switch over to a hyper-aggressive version of the AI, which is much faster to declare wars, can declare multiple wars at once, and invests all of their resources into warfare, Men at Arms, and means with which to declare more and better wars (such as hunt activities if they’re low on prestige and you’ve disabled their special bonuses via game rules, or taxation tours if they’re low on gold, etc.). They switch to the objectively best lifestyle focuses, use schemes in a very realpolitik way, etc.
- Frequency, inheritance, and extra bonuses are fully customizable via Game Rules.
- Added Message Settings: customize notifications to your own liking to have them appear in the message feed, as toasts, or pop-ups.
- Added the Vassal Directives feature - You will now be able to give Directives to your vassals, presuming that they respect you!
- Directives are either given from the character interaction menu, or via the ‘Vassals’ tab in My Realm, the latter having the benefit of showing you the current directive. All government types can issue directives to their vassals - if you fulfill the triggers!
- Administrative realms can give directives without the Vassal being able to refuse.
- Historical Characters can now appear across the map!
- Historical Characters such as Hildegard von Bingen or Ibn Battuta will appear in their historical birthplaces and seek employment with the local ruler. Recruit them, or set them on their own path throughout the world!
- Customize how you’re notified of their appearance via a new Game Rule.
- If you own Roads to Power, you can set out as an Adventurer as one of these characters should they spawn in your realm.
- Choose a New Destiny
- When you die, you now get the opportunity to switch to another character of your Dynasty that is not necessarily your direct Heir. Our game is a dynastic simulator, and we want to unlock playing through more branches of your Dynasty!
- Players will be offered up to three categories of Destiny characters: An Interesting Destiny, a Challenging Destiny, and an Adventurous Destiny. Each category aims to offer a different flavor. The last category specifically will allow you to go Adventuring, if you own Roads to Power!
- You can also select a Favorite Child (direct child or grand-child), who will then always appear as a New Destiny character. They will not get any extra titles or gold - in fact their siblings might get a bit jealous of their ‘favorite’ status.
- For those who like to roll the Die of Fate - we have a special “Random Destiny” option with several random variants, to continue as any Dynasty character. It might still be your Heir, if that is what Fate determines.
- You only get to Choose a New Destiny if you have a valid heir when you die. Securing your succession is an important part of CK3, and we want everyone to keep respecting that goal.
- Character of the Week: Each week a new character will be highlighted when you start the game, giving you information about them and a suggestion for goals to achieve!
- Music Player: Pick the track you want to listen to and customize which tracks to play
- Reworked the Scheme System
- Schemes have been reworked to include several new parameters, affecting the overall success and progression of any given scheme
- Success Chance: The current success chance of a scheme
- Potential: The maximum potential success chance a scheme may get
- Phases: Schemes have phases, where the length can vary between different types, which increases success chance and provides advantages with each completed phase
- Secrecy: How likely it is a scheme is discovered over time and when the scheme is executed
- Breaches: The number of time a scheme is discovered - Gain enough breaches and the scheme will fail
- Advantages: Spend these to recruit agents and increase the success chance when the scheme is executed
- Schemes utilizing agents now have dedicated agent slots - Each agent boosts the scheme in different ways
- Basic schemes only have a success chance and a single phase - Usually with a longer duration - Sway is an example of a basic scheme
- Updated character’s portrait animations in older scheme events
- Added 19 new Special Buildings
- Etchmiadzin Cathedral
- Cattolica di Stilo
- Cilician Gates
- Church of Saint Lazarus
- Church of Saint Sophia
- Despot’s Palace
- Hagios Demetrios
- Hosios Loukas
- Jvari Monastery
- Kassiopi Castle
- Maiden’s Tower
- Meteora
- Mount Athos
- Patras Castle
- Saint Catherine's Monastery
- Sant'Apollinare Nuovo
- Sumela Monastery
- Temple of the Theotokos
- Troglodytic Settlement
- Added co-monarchies for king+ feudal rulers, a permanent diarchy type that allows early access to designate heir in exchange for opting into one
- Added new Achievements:
- The Old Man of the Mountain
- Band of Brothers
- Mio Cid
- Birthright
- Historically Inaccurate
- Quantum Leap
- Regnum Dei
- New Management, same as the Old Management
- Rags to Riches to Rags to Riches
- Tamar Mepe
- Despoiler of Byzantium
- Chaos is a Ladder
- Epic Paperwork
- Against the Odds
- In Good Estate
- It's OK, I Got a Permit
- Despotic
- Byzywork
- Not Content to Serve
- Started from the Bottom now we're ERE
Plus much, much, MUCH more. Check our official forums for the full changelog!
Roads to Power is the culmination of more than a year of development, and we sincerely hope you enjoy playing it. If you encounter any issues after today’s update, please disable all mods and ensure you’re playing on a fresh save file. If the issue persists, then please submit a bug report either via our Community Support board here on Steam or via the Bug Report board on our official forums.