Paradox has delayed Crusader Kings 3's Royal Court expansion to 2022. It was due out later this year.

The developer said it was not "entirely satisfied" with the progress made on the expansion.

"This year has been a long and interesting one, to be certain, but we are here all together to make sure that our community gets the product that we have all been waiting for and deserve," Paradox said in a post on Steam.

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Following the release of its smaller-scale Northern Lords DLC earlier this year, Paradox has announced Crusader Kings 3's first major expansion, The Royal Court, which will be lording over its subjects from atop its throne later this year.

The Royal Court is both the name of the expansion and a new hub area being introduced as part of the paid DLC that, alongside its associated mechanics, will be exclusive to emperors and kings who've risen to the peak of their power. It's intended to give high-level players new challenges and tasks to focus on, alongside their usual duties.

The court itself takes the form of a 3D throne room (visible from different angles and stylised to fit one of four cultures), that serves as something like a bridge between the map and characters. Here, players will be regularly petitioned by vassals and subjects seeking judgments on important matters of government, as well as somewhat pettier matters of person conflict. It'll be up to players to choose a side in a bid to turn a disagreement to their advantage - perhaps pacifying a conflict or deliberately inciting one to reap the rewards.

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Developer Paradox's superb Medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3 will be getting its first chunk of paid DLC - the Norse-themed Northern Lords Flavour Pack - this Tuesday, 16th March, and it'll be accompanied by a significant free update on the same day.

As its name implies, the Northern Lords Flavour Pack is a smaller-scale offering rather than a fully fledged Crusader Kings 3 expansion, and is designed to make the era's northern kingdoms - and the characters within - feel more distinct.

It will, for instance, introduce a range of new Viking-themed cosmetics, including new clothes and hairstyles for characters, plus new ships, units, and holding models for the map.

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Crusader Kings 3 will soon let you resolve grudges, disagreements, feuds, and other miscellaneous disputes in a more up-close-and-personal capacity, when elaborate one-to-one duels are introduced as part of the medieval grand strategy game's next free update.

Building on Crusader Kings 2's Duel system, Crusader Kings 3's next update, known as version 1.3, will let players challenge rivals to fully interactive one-to-one combat scenarios, enabling them to select from a range of attacks and special moves until an agreed victory condition - from landing a light scratch to a mortal blow - has been met.

Developer Paradox explains the new system in extensive detail over on its blog. The gist, however, is that duels - which can be unlocked via the Chivalry lifestyle tree's Stalwart Leader perk - will play out over two to four rounds, with each new round presenting players with a choice of three distinct combat moves from an expansive pool.

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Beautiful, awful randomly generated poetry is coming to Medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3 as part of its next update, and players will even be able to torture enemies into submission with the very worst of their verse.

Expanding substantially on Crusader Kings 2's Poet trait, Crusader Kings 3's attempt will bring reworked stats, character interactions, and, most importantly, randomised poetry generation, meaning you can bask in the digital ditties conjured by rhyme-loving computer-folk all day long.

Poetry will be generated in-game by combining a particular subject with one of five overarching themes - romance, legacy, mourning, strife, and incompetence - enabling characters to influence events with a catchy rhyming couplet or two. Here's one of several randomly assembled examples provided as part of Paradox's latest blog post.

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Paradox Interactive is priming the next major update for its superb medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3, and, ahead of its 13th March release, the studio has started sharing details on some of the new features it'll bring - starting with winter.

Winter, as Paradox explains in its latest developer blog, is intended to make the world of Crusader Kings 3 an even harsher place, and will gradually blanket the world in snow - a change clearly visible on the map - as the seasons progress and temperatures plummet.

Paradox says winter will arrive in three different variants - mild, normal, and harsh, all easy to spot at a glance - and will affect all parts of the map just as you'd expect it to in the real-world. Mild and normal winters will be fairly common in central Europe and parts of southern Europe, for instance, while harsh winters are the norm in the likes of Sápmi, Mongolia, and Himalaya.

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Paradox Interactive is priming the next major update for its superb medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings 3, and the studio is now ready to begin sharing details on some of the new features it'll bring - starting with winter.

Winter, as Paradox explains in its latest developer blog, is intended to make the world of Crusader Kings 3 an even harsher place, and will gradually blanket the world in snow - a change clearly visible on the map - as the seasons progress and temperatures plummet.

Paradox says winter will arrive in three different variants - mild, normal, and harsh, all easy to spot at a glance - and will affect all parts of the map just as you'd expect it to in the real-world. Mild and normal winters will be fairly common in central Europe and parts of southern Europe, for instance, while harsh winters are the norm in the likes of Sápmi, Mongolia, and Himalaya.

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If all the current Black Friday deals already flooding the internet weren't enough, the Steam Autumn Sale is now here, with hundreds of deals on PC games and software.

This year the sale lasts until December 1st, 18:00PM GMT, and as usual the main Steam storefront has been redesigned to promote the new deals, with sections for genre, for major franchises, for users' wishlists and featured deals, among others. We've outlined some of the best offers we've seen here, and there's a good chance that there'll be other offers cropping up as we go through the week.

This also marks the start of nominations for this year's Steam Awards, the site-wide ceremony where users can nominate and vote for various games in various entries - game of the year, best VR game, soundtrack, story and so on. Nominations start now and voting will occur during the Winter sale later (presumably landing in the Christmas period).

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"What happens if you give every horrible trait and disease to a Crusader Kings 3 character?" is a question I had never thought to ask: but as ever on the internet, someone did ask that question, and now we have an answer.

As you've clicked on this article, dear reader, I suspect you might have some idea of the horrors you are about to witness - but be warned, this is proper nightmare fuel.

Reddit user "i_hate_usernames" took it upon themselves to enlighten us all by applying every single disease and ugly trait Crusader Kings 3 had to offer to their character, King Svend II Ulfsen of Denmark. Bubonic plague, typhus, smallpox, pneumonia - this guy has them all, and he's even been made a toadish scaly drunkard to boot. "This is you, unfortunately" indeed.

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Like any grand strategy game, systems get real complicated real fast in Crusader Kings 3, so it's little wonder that Paradox Interactive has taken player feedback on board to introduce a raft of changes for the game's first major patch. And seriously, there are a lot.

One of the major changes in patch 1.1 addresses a technique the community has dubbed North Korea mode - essentially a way to conquer the world by ignoring domain limit penalties and holding enough counties to make up for the reduced levies and income. As many players deemed the strategy overpowered and unrealistic, it's now been patched out, and the penalty for being over the domain limit has been increased from a 90 per cent reduction of taxes and levies to a full 100. On top of that, vastly exceeding the domain limit for over a year will deactivate all buildings until your domain limit is lowered. No more world domination for you.

Another common complaint voiced by the Crusader Kings 3 community was the apparent abundance of bastard children in the game, which many players discovered when exploring their save files in debug mode. The patch adds more restrictions to see if characters are willing to cheat on their partners, while the intrigue event "confused heritage" is now being restricted to players only - "as the AI was going a bit wild with it and turning everyone into bastards unnecessarily."

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