Crusader Kings veterans envy newcomers, since 14 years ago the world available for the game was limited only to the Christian kingdoms of Europe

Newcomers to long-running strategy games almost never stop to think that the title they're playing once looked completely different. With Paradox Interactive, that gap can be especially stark. Some of its games have expanded over the years to cover entire continents, growing worlds that simply didn't exist at launch.

A good example popped up on Reddit recently. A player posted the map from Crusader Kings 2 version 1.0 and reminded anyone who joined the series through the All Under Heaven expansion for Crusader Kings 3 just how lucky they've had it. All Under Heaven launched in late October 2025 and pushed the map out to China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Back in February 2012, though, Crusader Kings 2 stuck to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and only let players take on Christian rulers.

The rest of the map got filled in through paid expansions, following this rough timeline:

• Sword of Islam (2012) opened up Muslim rulers for the first time

• The Old Gods (2013) added pagans and a new 867 start date, pushing the campaign back two centuries

• Rajas of India (2014) stretched the map eastward and made Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain rulers playable

• Charlemagne (2014) brought a 769 start date along with tribal government

• Horse Lords and Jade Dragon later added steppe nomads and diplomacy with China

The launch version had a quirk that plenty of veterans still remember. If a Christian ruler's heir converted to Islam, the campaign would end in an instant game over the moment the current character died. Without Sword of Islam, the game simply had no way to hand control to a Muslim character, and plenty of confused players spent ages trying to figure out what they'd done wrong.

Character appearances had a similar problem. For a while, players only had two portrait sets to choose from – one for Europeans and one for everyone else – which meant Genghis Khan ended up with orange skin and Arab features. Proper faces for different regions came later, sold separately as their own packs.

Early Crusader Kings 2 did have one thing fans still miss today, though. Players could start a campaign on any single day between 1066 and 1337. Plenty of people admit to spending their school years flipping through dates, spotting weird border changes, and googling what actually happened that year. Crusader Kings 3 only offers a handful of start dates, and the community keeps floating the idea of bringing back that free date selection, at least in a later update.

Paradox sells the whole world these days, but there was a time when players spent years just waiting for permission to play as anyone other than a Christian.