Guys, Crusader Kings 2 is still kicking, and its latest DLC is coming out soon: The Glory of Charlemagne release date has been set for Oct. 14, so we’re rolling up on that pretty quickly. The DLC is the biggest in a while—about the size of the fantastic The Old Gods expansion—and does something that Paradox originally said they would never do: Extend the game even farther back into the past.
Crusader Kings 2: Glory of Charlemagne Release Date
The Glory of Charlemagne release date focuses on Europe—looks like Rajas of India was a one-off—and extends the game’s earliest possible start date to the 8th century, during the rise of a certain Charlemagne, future founder of the Holy Roman Empire. And that early date brings a whole slew of new events, features, and other changes. The most obvious is that, at that very early date, the Holy Roman Empire, generally the dominant power in Crusader Kings 2, does not yet exist.
Much of the gameplay of the new expansion seems like it’s focused on various series of events that can lead to the Empire’s formation, either in its familiar form or a rather different one. The specifics haven’t been revealed yet, but we do know that, if you follow a certain event change when playing as Charlemagne, you can indeed—with a bit of luck—essentially recreate his great deeds. Or you can blaze your own trail, thanks to the new ability to turn any de jure title into a higher-ranking title: That is, you can declare your duchy a kingdom or your kingdom an empire, assuming you meet certain requirements.
Other new features also abound. First, the game-breaking assassination button is gone, now that the robust plot-based assassination system has become quite familiar. A new tribal system for Holdings has been implemented, since the 8th and 9th century was not nearly as developed a time as later eras. Tribal holdings will also exist in some regions of the world in much later timelines, and in them, buildings can be built using prestige rather than gold. Yup, The Glory of Charlemagne is partially pre-currency.
We’ll also get a host of new sects, and a timeline set in an era when the Abbasid Empire is at its absolute peak—the first great Islamic Empire controls essentially the entire Middle East, plus North Africa and Spain, as a single, united polity. It’s a very different world, when Europe was still essentially recovering from the Germanic invasions, and the Lombards still sitting pretty in Italy—but we’ll see what Charlemagne can do about that!
Glory of Charlemagne is especially interesting because so much of Crusader Kings 2 takes place in the wake of Charlemagne’s accomplishments, even though those happened before the game started. The Holy Roman Empire was his most notable and obvious achievement, but the existing of a somewhat unified France and a divided Italy, Burgundy, and Low Countries are both vestiges of the Carolingian reign. Those absolutes, after years of constancy, are now potentially in flux. It should be an interesting DLC, to say the least, and I’ll be picking up Glory of Charlemagne on its release date, Oct. 14.
