With $250 of DLC to choose from, Paradox's new Crusader Kings 3 subscription is the answer to your choice paralysis

$248.81. That’s now the combined cost of all the Crusader Kings 3 DLC. It’s a pretty hefty chunk of change, and while you can get the whole lot (plus the $50 base game) in a 25% discount bundle that brings its combined $298.80 price down to $224.05, that’s still a rather staggering figure for anyone looking to dip their toe into one of the best strategy games on PC. Fortunately, we’ve reached the time in a Paradox game’s life cycle where it decides there’s enough on the table to merit the launch of a subscription model, giving you the ability to access every single thing it has to offer for a single monthly fee.

Crusader Kings 3 is a spectacle, one Ian scored a resounding 9/10 back in 2020, and one that’s largely been improved and upgraded over the years since through a combination of free updates and paid DLC. These add-ons range dramatically in size: there are small content packs built by community creators, cosmetic bundles, event packs that expand on particular historical moments or activities, region-specific flavor packs, and full-scale expansions that cram in major, transformative features.

Scroll through the reviews for each and you’ll see wild swings in reception; while some of the additions Paradox has made are widely beloved, others have been heavily panned. Your enjoyment of a particular item will also largely depend on how much you care about the aspects of the game it actually impacts, of course. This is where the Crusader Kings 3 subscription comes in, much as it has for the likes of Stellaris, Hearts of Iron 4, and Europa Universalis 4 in the past.

Subscribe to Crusader Kings 3 and you’ll get access to everything for a whole month – all the expansions, cosmetics, mid-size packs, and so on. That gives you free reign to try out as much as you want, acting as a testbed for the items you might actually like to buy. Alternatively, you could just keep the sub running for as long as you intend to play.

Priced at $9.99 / £8.49 for one month, $19.99 / £16.99 for three months, or $29.99 / £25.99 for six months, you could play for effectively two years of monthly subscriptions, or four years using the long-term scheme, before you’ve matched the price of buying all the DLC separately. That’s without factoring in the price of any new add-ons that launch during the coming months and years, which will all be included in the subscription pass.

It is worth noting that the CK3 sub’s price is higher than some of its strategy siblings. It matches the Stellaris pricing exactly in the US (although UK players will notice a minor bump up for the two longer-term plans), but exceeds that of the older EU4 and HoI4 offerings, which come in at $7.99 / £6.69 for one month or $14.99 / £12.79 for three (with no six-month tier for either).

The Crusader Kings 3 subscription is available now, priced at $9.99 / £8.49 for one month, $19.99 / £16.99 for three months, and $29.99 / £25.99 for six months. You can check all the plans and their full details on Steam to see what’s right for you.

If you’re getting into Crusader Kings 3 for the first time and aren’t sure where to start with its mammoth pile of add-ons, I’d probably recommend grabbing a month of the subscription unless you’re willing to burn some serious cash out of the gate. That should give you a good amount of time to poke around and see what works for you and what doesn’t, and then you can decide what you actually care about for the long term.