Crusader Kings 3's By God Alone expansion offers plenty of holy hijinks, even if your polyamorous Pope doesn't get divorced three times in one day - Rock Paper Shotgun

TomAlright, we need to talk about this one: Crusader Kings 3's By God Alone expansion offers plenty of holy hijinks, even if your polyamorous Pope doesn't get divorced three times in one day. Where do I even start with you on this?

CarolThe idea that you can’t divorce a pope three times in a single afternoon feels like a massive oversight to me. It’s the kind of absurdity that made the original game stick, and now they’re toning down the chaos right when players want it most. That restriction changes how people engage with the character entirely.

TomYou're acting like losing a feature is a tragedy, but honestly, I'd rather write a complex character than just spam a button until the engine breaks. The "holy hijinks" are probably where the real depth lives anyway, not just in arbitrary speed limits.

CarolCalling it “arbitrary” misses the whole point—this isn’t about spamming buttons, it’s about whether the game respects its own logic. When you strip away the wilder options, you’re left asking how many players will actually notice the difference in their first week of playtesting.

TomI’m not saying it’s trivial, but your worry about players noticing it in the first week assumes everyone plays the Pope. Most folks are stuck dealing with feudal politics and plague outbreaks, so the expansion’s deeper roleplay hooks matter way more to my audience than that specific cooldown timer.

CarolAssuming most players ignore papal mechanics ignores the fact that religious intrigue drives half the gameplay loop in CK3. If you can’t execute the core joke of the job, the rest of the "deep roleplay" feels like busywork rather than genuine agency. That restriction specifically targets the power dynamic that makes the Papacy unique compared to regular dukes.

TomYou’re making too much of a button click; the real problem is that the game lets you marry five women at once but won’t let you end those marriages without waiting for the sun to rise again. That inconsistency ruins the immersion more than any missing feature ever could.

CarolWait, really? So you think the marriage queue is fine but the divorce queue is broken because of a time lag? That’s a weird thing to latch onto when the actual issue is why the game treats ending a relationship differently than starting one. It’s less about the clock ticking and more about whether the developers understand that power exchange goes both ways.

TomPower exchange works great in fiction, but in a turn-based strategy game, it mostly means the server takes a nap while you wait for your turn. I’d rather fix the pacing issue than lecture the code about emotional symmetry. The "holy hijinks" work best when the timing keeps up with the plot twists.

CarolBlaming the server for narrative gaps is like blaming the printer for bad writing; the pacing serves the story, not the other way around. In By God Alone, every delay needs to feel like political weight, not just technical friction holding up your next move.

TomPolitical weight sounds nice on paper, but in CK3 it usually just means staring at a map while your heir dies of dysentery. The By God Alone expansion needs momentum to carry the plot, otherwise the "weight" is just dead air between turns. I'm betting players want the chaos faster, not slower.

CarolMomentum kills nuance, especially when you’re running a character defined by slow-burn scheming. The By God Alone DLC sells itself on intricate web-spinning, so rushing the pace just strips the tension right out of the diplomatic dance. Players who care about this expansion aren’t looking for speedruns; they want the satisfaction of watching a carefully laid trap finally snap shut.

TomWatching a trap snap shut is great for the guy sitting across the table, but boring for the one actually trying to set it. I’d rather have the option to accelerate the scheme myself than watch the AI slowly chew through its own logic tree. Speed isn't the enemy here, it's the player's ability to choose their own tempo.

CarolChoosing your tempo is just another word for ignoring the consequences you created; if I can fast-forward my own schemes, I’m no longer playing a Pope, I’m clicking a button until the screen changes. The whole point of the Papacy in By God Alone is that your moves stick, and letting players scrub away the awkward pauses destroys the very tension you say you love.

TomYou're confusing patience with punishment; waiting ten minutes for a single decree isn't tension, it's just bad user design. A good storyteller knows where to hold the breath and where to let the reader run, and Paradox clearly doesn't get the difference yet. We'll see if they patch that out before the hype fades completely.

CarolCalling it bad user design misses that the pause forces you to sit with the fallout of your own greed; if Paradox removes the wait, they’ve removed the cost of being a corrupt pope. I’d rather have a game that makes me uncomfortable for five seconds than one that lets me cheat without consequence. The patch will likely smooth the edges, but don’t expect them to gut the tension entirely just to appease the impatient crowd.

TomMaking discomfort the default mechanic assumes every player wants to be punished for having fun, which is a risky bet for a mass-market title. Until we see how many people churn because the Papacy feels like a chore rather than a playground, that "tension" is just speculation dressed up as design philosophy.