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This is the twelfth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything
Rajas of India: My Elephant for a Kingdom
Charlemagne: Back in Time
Way of Life: The Short Way
Horse Lords: For the Horde
Conclave: Lords of the Realm
The Reaper’s Due: Crusader Kings: Pandemic
Monks and Mystics: Secret Mystic
Jade Dragon: Off-Panel Dragon

After Jade Dragon, work on Crusader Kings II continued, but the next expansion would take a full year to come out, a very long time in the fast pace of expansions that Paradox had largely set since the release of CK II in 2012.

It was originally thought that this would be patch 2.9, but was bumped up to 3.0 when it was realized that Holy Fury would be the last expansion for Paradox’s breakout hit, which was released on November 13, 2018.

Map

One of the first orders of business was reworking parts of the map, for better geography and better balanced regions. Six new provinces were added to Poland, along with a rework of the area’s river system. The Baltics (Lithuania) got seven new provinces were added with a new de jure kingdom and duchy. Finland got eight new provinces (to help pathing as much as anything else), but available holdings dropped to one or two per province.

The main area of Russia also got a lot of changes, breaking up large provinces around important places like Kiev for somewhere over thirty new provinces, new de jure kingdoms and duchies, and the Kievan Rus was reworked into a set of tributaries around a central state for 1066, to represent the civil war between the sons of Yaroslav the Wise.

Scandinavia also got changes geared towards pathing issues and making it a better place to be marching in, with seventeen new provinces (and Iceland was increased from two to four), with appropriate de jure changes.

There are now two Burgandies (this is entirely appropriate), as the Duchy of Upper Burgundy in the HRE was already there (but now reworked a bit), and now there’s a French duchy in the Franche Compte. South of the Alps, there were extensive changes to Italy, which as one of the richer areas of Europe certainly deserved some extra detail. They also split up the de jure kingdoms there to encourage a more historical split of power.

Northern Africa did not really gain any explicit detail, but the borders were moved around a lot to get rid of a bunch of straight-line borders. Mali got detail, with about double the counties in the region, and a bunch of new territory east of there added (Kanem-Bornu and Lake Chad). This allows the sub-Saharan areas contact with each other, and keeps their only outlet being to the north. Additionally, they added in all-new trans-Saharan trade routes. These have a base value of nearly zero, so you have to make a special effort on them to make them worth anything (and require Horse Lords or Jade Dragon for the trade route mechanics).

New Game Rules

One thing the design team tackled was the ability to have separated bits of territory all over the map. This “border gore” isn’t too hard to get into, but with the communications of the time, fairly ahistorical. So, there’s a new rule (that defaults to ‘off’) that will generally force areas disconnected from the capital to become independent, if there’s no one immediately available to get the title, a random lowborn peasant will be generated to take over.

With the focus on crusades, new rules for them were also introduced. The Shepherd’s Crusade events from Sons of Abraham were completely redone, and a rule for disabling it added. Similarly, Holy Fury includes events for the Children’s Crusade and the Fourth Crusade (which is not fixed to any particular crusade), and rules for them.

Similarly, the Northern Crusades get a series of events (and a rule to turn them off), where the Teutonic Knights will target a de jure kingdom and try to conquer and convert it, one duchy-level title at a time. And the Reconquista of Iberia can be declared, with event troops showing up rather like the pagan conquest mechanics, or separate event adventurers may show up to try and take over particular counties, if things are going badly on the Catholic side.

A View of Characters

The main character window got a rework for the patch. A lot of section names were replaced with icons (with more complete hoverover explanation) to make more room.

To go along with this, the personal combat skill was given next to the main six attributes. It had existed before this, but was now given an expanded role, and broken out of the (army) combat modifiers list.

This let them squeeze in a few more buttons for the expansion, such as one that gives a list of everyone the character has killed. (Just in case, you know, you can’t keep track of all the ghosts haunting you.)

Burn It All Down

The expansion added two major game modes to the game. One, the shattered world, removes all the higher-level titles (as being held by someone, they still exist de jure for creation by a successful warlord), leaving everything as independent duchies or counties (depending on choices during setup).

To add to the chaos, a special “consolidation” casus belli is available at the start of the game which lets you declare war to make neighboring counties your vassals. How long this is possible is another at-start setting.

And then there is the random world, which keeps the higher-level power structures in play, but with actual political entities different, with different cultures and religions. In fact, there will be all-new religions and cultures, though they are just renamed ones from the normal historical set, and will act like their normal counterparts.

Note that the geography of Europe (and Asia and northern Africa) doesn’t change, nor do provinces, just the other aspects of the world. Both are ways to shake things up for people who are too used to all the usual powers of the medieval world. With the settings, you can keep or dispense with the empires, but even if you keep them, they will be different empires in different places. The religion and cultural mix will change where you run into trouble with different cultures.

Oh, and if that’s not enough craziness for you, if you cycle through the historical/non-historical options a few times, you can get at an animal kingdom/animal world option, where all the people are various types of animals (actual animals, not furries). Well, the portraits anyway, and it has problems with inappropriate clothing options, but its a surprising Easter egg for anyone who wants to go a bit silly. Also, annoyingly, the off-map presence of the Chinese Empire from Jade Dragon does not get modified by this.

Nature of Paganism

Holy Fury allows you to play as any of the pagan religions (also unlocked by The Old Gods), and enhances the religious reform mechanics.

Now, a person reforming a faith chooses one nature, two doctrines, and one leadership. Each religion has a default set to use, but there is no penalty for making it exactly what you want. The leadership options include a unique one available to each possible reforming religion.

All of this of course decides the religious rules that you will operate under, and can make it much easier to deal with your circumstances (e.g., the cosmopolitan nature lets you marry between different faiths, which may be important if you expect to be alone in your new religion).

I’ve never gotten around to reforming one of the pagan religions, so it’s a bit academic to me. One one hand the options are very nice, and nicely done, on the other you can really go against what anyone in that culture would accept (pacifist Norse…?) which is grating on my sensibilities. Also, you chose it all yourself at one time; I think a longer process, like the EU IV government reforms would have been a better idea.

On the other hand, they also added the mass conversion decision. Much of the spread of Christianity in the early Middle Ages was from a king converting, and ordering all his people to convert too. This is now covered in-game, and makes converting from a pagan religion much more attractive, as before a conversion would lead to poor relations with your court and rebellious provinces. This will at least alleviate that, as it won’t be universal (unless you’re really popular and powerful), but it should allow the realm time to get used to the new god.

On Crusade

Along with everything else, crusades (as opposed to holy wars) were reworked for the patch. It was felt that it was long past time to try to fix the problems that kept them from generating the kind of situation that happened in history.

Now, when the Pope calls a crusade, rulers can pledge themselves to it, and when the crusade starts, they are automatically at war. You can spend piety to change the target of the crusade (say, to someone nearby and threatening), name a beneficiary, and donate money and artifacts to the cause.

After a victorious crusade, the beneficiary of the ruler with the highest contribution becomes the king of the new kingdom (you can take it for yourself, but the computer won’t, and you get a relations penalty with the Pope). Lower contribution beneficiaries get the lower titles, and everyone gets a share of the donations to help get the new realm going.

This is a very nice rework of the crusade mechanic that gives much better results than before. The ability to change to your beneficiary when titles are handed out is also a really good feature, letting you deal with the problems of the Crusader States directly.

Thick as Blood

An all-new feature for the expansion is bloodlines. These are the reputations that follow the heirs of especially storied individuals and add a psychological edge just by being related.

There are over 60 historical bloodlines in the game. Many of these are for things after the standard start of the game (1066), but will be created if the right circumstances happen (for instance, if William of Normandy successfully conquers England, he founds a bloodline with reputation bonuses for Normans, English, and bastards, and members of the bloodline can legitimize bastards for free). There are a bunch of ways to create non-historical bloodlines as well, but instead of having them flow naturally out of impressive events (admittedly hard to write for in the abstract), a character needs to have an ambition to found a bloodline, and then hit the goals needed for a particular one.

A character can also become a saint, which will act like the founding of a bloodline. A character needs a fairly demanding set of traits at death, which will get them beatified, after which there is a small chance that they will be made a saint after some delay.

Bloodlines share some ideas with the central dynastic mechanics, but with more restrictions. There are ways to work around the fact that most only go down the male line, and of course joining two lines is possible, but difficult.

The effects of these are nice, but generally modest. Most bloodlines have a relations bonus with certain groups, and bonuses to a couple stats (often personal combat skill). They’re an edge, and look great on the resume, but they shouldn’t dominate your thinking.

Conclusion

All of this is still just hitting most of the highlights. Both the patch and the expansion are really huge packages that did a lot to improve the game. The map improvements are always welcome, and crusades not giving the feel of their historical exemplars has been a problem they’ve been trying to fix since the first game (still not necessarily perfect, but very much improved).

Further improvements include changes to how the succession laws work, adding a the need for Christian rulers to hold a coronation in the expansion, additions to the ‘restore the Roman Empire’ events, and so on.

On the other hand, it turned out to be the last expansion for Crusader Kings II. But not the end of development, as there would be another three major content patches. I will be wrapping up this review series with a review of those patches, and my overall recommendations for the expansions.