Just about a month after the release of the Asia-focused Europa Universalis IV: Mandate of Heaven, Paradox has announced its first-ever “immersion pack” for the game. It’s called Europa Universalis IV: Third Rome, and it’s pretty much exclusively focused on the great Eastern bulwark of Orthodox Christianity, Russia. The DLC comes with a host of new Russia-specific features to help the player or the AI shrug off the Tatar yoke and build the largest land empire the world has ever seen.

Europa Universalis IV: Third Rome Transforms The Russian Experience

Third Rome is called an “immersion pack,” which Paradox said in a forum thread is “a smaller expansion type with a clear focus.” Other expansions have brought big new features and mechanics to entire regions. This one is focused largely on one country, and the handful of smaller principalities that surround it and historically eventually became part of Russia. Here are some of the features Paradox has announced so far:

• Tsardoms and Principalities: New ranks of Russian government with new abilities and, for Tsars, strong bonuses including the right to claim entire States – not just provinces
• Iconography: Commission great religious icons for the Orthodox Church, boosting your empire’s power depending on the saint you choose to revere
• Metropolitans: Consecrate highly developed provinces with Metropolitans, adding to the authority of the Orthodox Church, but for a cost.
• Streltsy: Special Russian soldiers that excel in combat, but raise the cost of stabilizing your empire
• Siberian Frontier: Russia can slowly colonize uninhabited border regions, with no fear of native uprisings
• New Graphics: Includes three full unit packs and new portraits for Eastern Europe.

The biggest changes seem like the ones to Russia’s government types—being the Tsar seems like a pretty choice and powerful position, if you can get it—and the boosts to Orthodoxy. The Siberian Frontier buff allowing for easy and safe colonization should also be critical in attempting to achieve Russia’s historical size. Remember that Russia had conquered all of Siberia, then very loosely settled, and built its first city on the Pacific Ocean before 1650. That’s less than 50 years after the settlement of Jamestown, so Russia has a lot of ground to cover quickly if you want to keep up with historical events.

A Russian DLC is a welcome addition to Europa Universalis IV, and the name “Third Rome” embraces Russia’s historical role as the preserver of the legacy of Byzantium and the Roman Empire before it. The idea slowly transformed Russia from a peripheral hinterland into one of the great powers of Europe. Now, we’ll be able to do that in Europa Universalis IV as well.

Paradox hasn’t announced a release date or pricing yet, but we can hope it will be cheaper than the regular DLC since the company acknowledges this is a smaller “immersion pack.” As usual, a free patch with some of the features will be available to all Europa Universalis IV players. And best of all, Third Rome is likely to be just the first of many immersion packs, at least if it’s successful—we can expect more countries to get the full-featured treatment as time goes on.