Crusader Kings II

Crusader Kings II

Developers
	Paradox Development Studio
Publishers
	Paradox Interactive
Engines
	Clausewitz
Release dates
Windows	February 14, 2012
macOS (OS X)	May 24, 2012
Linux	January 14, 2013
Reception
Metacritic	82
Taxonomy
Monetization	Free-to-play, DLC, Expansion pack, Subscription
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Bird's-eye view
Controls	Direct control
Genres	RPG, Strategy, Simulation
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Medieval
Series	Crusader Kings

Crusader Kings
Crusader Kings	2004
Crusader Kings II	2012
Crusader Kings III	2020

Crusader Kings II is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view RPG, strategy and simulation game in the Crusader Kings series.

Key points

Performance can be poor in the later game due to the increased save game size and the increased number of calculations that have to be performed.

General information

Official Manual

Official Wiki

Fandom Wiki

Official forum

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Amazon.com
GOG.com		Dynasty Starter Pack, Royal Collection and Imperial Collection also available. Singleplayer-only version.
Steam		Dynasty Starter Pack, Royal Collection and Imperial Collection also available.
GamersGate (unavailable)		No longer being updated or supported.
(unavailable)
Green Man Gaming (unavailable)
Humble Store (unavailable)
Publisher website (unavailable)		Royal Collection and Imperial Collection also available.

Version differences

The Dynasty Starter Pack is available only on Steam and includes the Ruler Designer, Legacy of Rome, Sword of Islam, The Old Gods, Way of Life DLC.

The Royal Collection includes all Expansions ever released, while the Imperial Collection includes all Expansions as well as all Content, Music and Portrait Packs.

Monetization

Type	Notes
DLC	The game has over 45 separate cosmetic micro-transactions, these are comprised of unit packs, portraits, music, ebooks, dynasty shields, clothing and customisation tools.
Expansion pack	Many packs have been released that can either add to or alter gameplay, though are typically accompanied with a free update that adds the most major changes to all players.
Free-to-play	On October 19, 2019 Paradox released the base game for free.

DLC and expansion packs

Name	Notes
Dynasty Shields
Mongol Faces
Songs of Albion
Songs of Faith
Ruler Designer
Songs of the Holy Land
Sword of Islam	Now possible to play Muslim rulers.
African Unit Pack
Songs of the Caliph
Dynasty Shields II
Legacy of Rome	Able to restore The Roman Empire, expanded Orthodox religion and employable retinues.
Byzantine Unit Pack
African Portraits
Mediterranean Portraits
Russian Unit Pack
Russian Portraits
Songs of Byzantium
Sunset Invasion	The Aztec Empire will invade across the Atlantic at mid to late game, unique culture and religion.
Songs of the Rus
Norse Portraits
Norse Unit Pack
The Republic	Can now play as Merchant Republic, able to build trade posts and compete in new Doge election system.
Songs of Prosperity
The Old Gods	New bookmark set at the year 867. Now possible to play Pagan rulers and reform religion. Added raiding system for Pagan rulers.
Hymns to the Old Gods
Celtic Unit Pack
Celtic Portraits
Dynasty Shield III
Europa Universalis IV Converter
Customization Pack DLC
Sons of Abraham	Now possible to play Jewish rulers. Revised Christianity with College of Cardinals for Pope election. Pope has new powers and can now donate to Holy Orders.
Military Orders Unit Pack
Warriors of Faith Unit Pack
Hymns of Abraham
Songs of Yuletide	Free.
Saxon Unit Pack
Finno-Ugric Unit Pack
Rajas of India	Now possible to play as Indian rulers. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism as new religions with separate sects. Also adds a caste system.
Turkish Unit Pack
Turkish Portraits
Songs of India
Persian Unit Pack
Persian Portraits
Charlemagne	New bookmark set at the year 769. Introduced tribal holdings that offer a new unique playstyle.
Early Western Clothing Pack
Early Eastern Clothing Pack
Dynasty Shields Charlemagne
Way of Life	Rulers are now able to select one of ten focuses for ruler granting stat boosts and new events and decisions.
Iberian Unit Pack
Iberian Portraits
Horse Lords	Introduces new government type, "nomad". Adds The Silk Road trade mechanics. Expanded adventurers mechanics.
Horse Lords Content Pack
Orchestral House Lords
Conclave	The council now has more power and influences realm decisions. Revised the education/guardianship system. Added new "favor" mechanics.
Conclave Content Pack
Viking Metal
South Indian Portraits (5 Year Anniversary Gift)	Free.
The Reaper's Due	Improved illness and diseases, added hospitals, court physicians and province prosperity.
The Reaper's Due Content Pack
Full Plate Metal
Monks and Mystics	Adds Societies you can join including demon-worshipers and monk orders. New councilor actions.
Hymns of Revelation
Jade Dragon	Adds China as an off-map entity you can interact with.
Holy Fury	Overhauls gameplay with Christian and Pagan religions, adds dynastic bloodlines, Christian saints, Pagan warrior lodges and coronation ceremonies for royalty. Also adds the ability to start games with worlds shattered down to its duchies, or with the cultures, religions and names randomised.
Pagan Fury
Pagan Fury - Warrior Queen

When playing multiplayer, expansions and some micro-transactions (customisation tools) that the host owns are made available to all clients for that session.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\
macOS (OS X)	$HOME/Paradox Interactive/Crusader Kings II/
Linux	$HOME/.paradoxinteractive/Crusader Kings II/

This game does not follow the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux.

Mods use the settings.txt located in the mod subfolder, e.g. %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\A Game of Thrones

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\
macOS (OS X)	$HOME/Paradox Interactive/Crusader Kings II/
Linux	$HOME/.paradoxinteractive/Crusader Kings II/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
OneDrive		Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud		Approx. 954 MB available.

Video

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See Borderless fullscreen windowed.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See Anisotropic filtering (AF).
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Listed as 'Multisample Level' in game. Options are 0, 2, 4 and 8.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Locks to refresh rate set in video settings.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Windowed

Windowed option added in patch 2.1

Manually edit fullscreen[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open settings.txt. Change fullScreen=yes to fullScreen=no

Borderless fullscreen windowed

Borderless fullscreen option added in patch 2.1

Manually set borderless fullscreen[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open settings.txt. Change fullScreen=yes to fullScreen=no Change borderless=no to borderless=yes

Anisotropic filtering (AF)

Edit anisotropic_filtering[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open settings.txt. Go to anisotropic_filtering=0 Change this value to any number greater than 0 and less than or equal to 16 for varying degrees of anisotropic filtering. This doesn't actually do anything. This was confirmed by an official Paradox employee.[citation needed]

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Ambient sounds, music & effects.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Italian				Fan translation; download here.
Spanish

Network

Multiplayer is available only in the Steam version.

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
LAN play		14
Online play		14

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

VR support

3D modes	State	Notes
Nvidia 3D Vision		See Helix Mod: CRUSADER KINGS 2.

Issues fixed

Activation code length

If the provided activation code is too short for the code input box upon installation, fill the additional spaces with the character 'X', e.g. for a code formatted as AAAAA-BBBBB-CCCC, input it as AAAA-ABBB-BBCC-CCXX-XXXX-XXXX.

Graphics card stress/overheating

This is a likely cause of a game crash if the system only just meets the minimum system requirements to run the game. With such crashes, usually the graphics card is the culprit. One way to reduce stress on the graphics card is to turn off some of the more system-intensive options.

Instructions[citation needed]

Go to the configuration file location. Open settings.txt. Change draw_trees=yes to draw_trees=no Change draw_rivers=yes to draw_rivers=no Change draw_postfx=yes to draw_postfx=no Change draw_sky=yes to draw_sky=no Notes This will prevent the game from rendering trees and thus significantly reduce the amount of information the graphics card has to process, in turn reducing the overall load on the system.

Multiplayer incompatible versions

The game version is shown by "CK2 v<version> (<checksum>)" (for example, "CK2 v1.06 (YYEV)"). After entering a singleplayer or multiplayer game, it is possible for the checksum to change on some PCs (for example, to "CK2 v1.06 (ZYEV)"), while the others keep the same checksum. This prevents multiplayer connectivity with incompatible versions. Restarting the game fixes this problem.

Most mods also change the checksum, all players are required to have the exact same versions of the same mods as the host.

Alt-tabbing out and back in changes system resolution (Linux)

Since the introduction of the new launcher, alt-tabbing out of the game and back into it changes the system resolution and consequently makes the game unplayable. This can be prevented by bypassing the launcher via a terminal command. The command, in its simplest form, is: <path-to-game>/ck2 -skiplauncher

Additional arguments are:

• -mod=$MOD where $MOD is the filename of the mod to enable.
• -exclude_dlx=$DLC where $DLC is the filename of the piece of DLC to enable.

A third-party free software launcher is available as an alternative.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9.0c

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux

Console commands

All the console commands can be found on the Crusader Kings II wiki. Only some of the debug commands are listed below. Discretion is advised when using the console as it is very easy to cheat with it (adding/removing traits etc.).

Console is disabled if playing in "ironman mode"

Press ~ (or the equivalent key above Tab ↹ on the keyboard) or Alt+Numpad 2+Numpad 1 in-game to enter console commands.

• fullscreen - Toggles fullscreen
• clear - Clears the console
• debug_assert - Toggles asserts on/off
• debug_bloom - Toggles bloom on/off
• debug_borders - Toggles borders on/off
• debug_citysprawl - Toggles city sprawl on/off
• debug_dumpevents - Dumps event data to game log
• debug_hires - Toggles terrain hires mode on/off
• debug_info - Toggles debug info
• debug_lines - Toggles debuglines
• debug_nogui - Toggles GUI on/off
• debug_nomouse - Toggles mouse scrollwheel on/off
• debug_postfx - Toggles postFX on/off
• debug_rivers - Toggles rivers on/off
• debug_sky - Toggles sky on/off
• debug_smooth - Toggles frame smoothing on/off
• debug_terrain - Toggles terrain on/off
• debug_textures - Dumps texture info to debug log
• debug_tooltip - Toggles tooltips on/off
• debug_trees - Toggles trees on/off
• debug_water - Toggles water on/off
• debug_wireframe - Toggles forced wireframe on/off
• help - Print out all console commands or a specific command's description
• observe - Switches to play no character at all
• refresh_portraits - Refreshes all character portraits as soon as possible
• reload filename - Reloads the gui or lua file
• reloadinterface - Reloads the entire interface
• reloadtexture texture-filename - Reloads the specified texture

Modifications

• A Game of Thrones: A full-conversion mod set in the world of George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" (ASoIaF).
• Elder Kings: A full-conversion mod set in the Elder Scrolls world.
• Middle-earth Project: A full-conversion mod set in J.R.R Tolkien's legendarium.
• Crisis of the Confederation: A total conversion mod, allowing the player to take the role of a military officer, politician, or crime lord amidst the chaotic political upheavals of the 31st century. It is set in an original science-fiction setting.
• After the End: A total conversion mod set in a post-apocalyptic New World.
• Warcraft: Guardians of Azeroth: A total conversion mod set in the World of Warcraft universe by Blizzard Entertainment.
• Witcher Kings: A full-conversion mod set in the world of Andrzej Sapkowski's "The Witcher".

System requirements

Windows

macOS (OS X)

Linux

Windows
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	7
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3500+
System memory (RAM)	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	2 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 8800 ATI Radeon X1900 512 MB of VRAM DirectX 9.0c compatible
Sound (audio device)	DirectX compatible

A 64-bit operating system is required.

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	10.11
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core Duo 2.0 GHz
System memory (RAM)	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	2 GB
Video card (GPU)	AMD Radeon HD 6750 Nvidia GeForce 320 Nvidia GeForce 9600 1 GB of VRAM

A 64-bit operating system is required.

Linux
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	Ubuntu 16.04
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3500+
System memory (RAM)	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	2 GB
Video card (GPU)	AMD Radeon HD 6750 Nvidia GeForce 320 Nvidia GeForce 9600 1 GB of VRAM

A 64-bit operating system is required.