CK3 director reveals what he would do differently if he got to launch it again
By Marco Wutz
Everyone’s favorite medieval family drama simulation, Crusader Kings 3, celebrated its fifth anniversary earlier this year and will soon hit another major milestone with the release of its mega expansion, All Under Heaven.
I had the opportunity to submit some questions to CK3 game director Alexander Oltner for a written Q&A around the time of the anniversary, looking back at CK3’s launch and the game’s subsequent evolution, which didn’t always go the way the team planned.
For example, Oltner and his crew were surprised about how popular unlanded adventurers became as a starting point for campaigns, to the point where he now says that he’d try and implement the feature for the initial release of the game, if he’d got another crack at it.
I also tried to wriggle out some hints about a potential ancient Rome version of the formula – because the foundations are utterly perfect for one – but Oltner and his team have no plans in that direction at the moment. I tried, fellow Romeaboos, I tried.
Find the full CK3 anniversary Q&A with Alexander Oltner below.
Q: Having a game evolve over time is always part of the Paradox experience, but has there been feedback over the years that drove CK3 into a direction that was unexpected even for you?
A: You usually go into these long term projects with a rough road map. We knew we wanted to expand into East Asia eventually, and a Byzantium rework was always in the cards. But sometimes player response can suggest new avenues for improvement. For example, I don’t think we expected unlanded adventurers to become the preferred starting point for so many players. This can lead us to think of ways to plug that into future work.
Q: CK3 is a remarkably versatile game. Some play it as an RPG, some as a grand strategy title. How do you keep the balance between all these elements and ensure that all your fans get what they need from the experience?
A: After all these years of Crusader Kings being the primary grand strategy role-playing game on the market, you’d think that it would be natural for us, and it usually is. But there are extremes in the playstyles that can be hard to reconcile. There are folks that just want to tell their Sim stories about a messed up family and others that want to have a real challenge to their aspirations for world conquest. Sometimes designing with one of those extremes in mind can weaken the appeal for the other. We do user research and listen to a lot of feedback, and try our best.
Q: Suppose you had the time and budget to add one feature that’s in the game today to its launch version back in the day. What would you pick and why?
A: I think if we had started the game with unlanded adventurers, the game would be in a very different and probably more interesting place for us. Having that major task already out of the way – and it was a major task to implement – would have freed up so many hours for improving and balancing other content.
Q: Has there been a mod you encountered over the years that made you go “Damn, wish we’d thought of that” and if so, what was so impressive about it?
A: There are so many cool and interesting mods out there that it’s really hard to pick just one specific example! We’ve frequently seen mods do small and clever improvements to various existing features, and we often find ourselves thinking “that’s a clever solution, we should add that.”
Q: This is completely independent of any future plans whatsoever. But of all the aspects of medieval life, society, and politics, what element would you personally like to see fleshed out most – or introduced – in CK3?
A: This varies widely across the team, as it does with players. Some of us would like to see the religious side more in-depth, because the Catholic Church was a true restraint on a lot of royal actions over the centuries. As always, more depth in actually ruling instead of conquering and seducing would be nice, but we don’t want to distract too much from player fantasies. The medieval world is so much larger and deeper than anything we can really explore to any complexity even in a game like Crusader Kings III.
Q: Your colleagues at Paradox Tinto have chosen ‘Be ambitious’ as the tagline for EU5 — a line that’s applicable to you guys as well, given your plans with All Under Heaven. Why is it the right time to take that step over the horizon?
A: Well, the expansion of the map and game into East Asia was always a long term goal. Medieval China was the most powerful nation on earth in this period, despite the dynastic changes. But I don’t think we could have done it until we had mastered the concept of Administrative Empires, which we introduced in last year’s major expansion, Road to Power. The Celestial Empire is a more advanced Administrative Empire but we needed that baseline in place more to prove that it could be done. As inappropriate as the feudal map was for the Eastern Roman Empire, it would have been even more out of place in Tang or Song China.
So yes, All Under Heaven is ambitious. But it’s a measured ambition — we set the foundation stones in place first.
Q: After the expansion of space comes the expansion of time. I think CK3 would be a great foundation for a similar game set in Ancient Rome’s mire of intrigue and conquest, don’t you?
A: Maybe? I know a lot of people at the studio are into the competitions of the Roman Republic and the crises of the Roman Empire, and we had Imperator: Rome from our colleagues not that long ago. Making a family based game in that setting isn’t beyond imagination, but it is not something we are thinking about right now.
Q: Okay, looping things back to the anniversary: Comparing CK3 at launch and today, what are you most proud of?
A: Our team, of course. We have some very talented people who come to work every day excited to solve difficult design problems and have fun with history. Not everything has landed with the community as well as we would have liked, but we love the game and we love its fans and that makes even the not-so-fun parts very manageable.
Q: I’m sure you’ve all seen a fair share of insane plays from the community over the years. Do you remember one that made the team scratch its collective head?
A: One of the first things that comes to mind was that there was someone who conquered the world in less than an in-game year. Speedrun, anyone?
Q: CK3 is a story generator for all of us, but doubly so for you. Is there any especially memorable anecdote you can share with fans from behind the scenes?
A: In August we brought a small team to Medieval Week in Visby and set up a tent on the main path. The day turned into a stream of conversations with veterans of our games, diehard history fans, newcomers just starting out with our games, people who had never heard of us but were curious to see what all the fuss was about.
Hearing a player tell us how a mechanic finally clicked for them after a hundred hours or how someone looked up their own ancestors in our game provides a kind of grounding and context that is priceless for us. We're fans of history and strategy games in general ourselves, but there's something about connecting directly with our fans that just can't be beat. We have tons of research data, charts, and market information that paints a picture of what people want from our games, but seeing and speaking face-to-face with players helps turn that picture into an actual story. After all, creating stories is what we want our players to do with our games.
Medieval Week was exhausting, but at the same time energizing because we left Visby knowing better than ever just how our players make the game come alive.
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