Now Available: By God Alone & 1.20.0 "Crozier" Update

Hello everyone! By God Alone, our latest Core Expansion for Crusader Kings III, is now available alongside the free 1.20.0 "Crozier" Update.

In By God Alone, being a good ruler and being a good believer aren't always the same thing. Your characters will wrestle with sin as they try to live up to their faith's ideals, while navigating the rich and evolving political landscape of the Christian Church. Stir up religious debates (or bring them to an end), decide where the authority of the crown ends and the cross begins, and weigh your ambitions against the fate of your soul.

By God Alone is available as part of Crusader Kings III: Chapter V, or as an individual purchase. Check out our release trailer below, followed by the changelog.

By God Alone & 1.20.0 "Crozier" Free Update Changelog​

Expansion Features (Paid)​

The Christian Church​

• Added the Christian Church, a Situation covering all of Christendom. Every Christian ruler of County tier or above is a participant. All participants share the same Chapter, modifiers, and Great Schism progress.
• Participants are sorted into six groups. The Main Power is the Christian Faith that holds the most Counties.

• Main Power (Clerical)
• Main Power (Secular)
• Secondary Powers (Clerical)
• Secondary Powers (Secular)
• Heretics (Clerical)
• Heretics (Secular)

The Situation moves through Chapters. Each Chapter has its own Religion, Subject, Diplomacy, and Warfare modifiers, applied differently to each participant group.

Chapters come in four types: Stability, Zeal, Instability, and Crisis. A Crisis Chapter can end in the Great Schism once Schism progress has reached its threshold.

Seven Chapters, each with its own events:

• Fragile Unity (Instability)
• Saeculum Obscurum (Crisis)
• Conversion (Zeal)
• Reform (Instability)
• Investiture Controversy (Crisis)
• Crusade (Zeal)
• Concord (Stability)

Catalysts move the Situation between Chapters. They include:

• Clerical marriage and children
• Simony
• Murdered prelates, including Cardinals, Heads of Rite, and Archbishops
• Cardinal appointments
• Holy wars
• Excommunications
• Lost and reclaimed Holy Sites
• New Rites
• Antipopes
• Heresy outbreaks
• Ecumenical Councils
• Consecrated kingdoms
• Great Project contributions
• A Pope of the same dynasty three times in a row

Added the Guide the Christian Church decision, available once every ten years. It triggers a Catalyst of your choice and pushes the Situation toward the Chapter you want. Taken as Head of Faith, it has four times the effect.

Added the Christian Church window. It shows the current Chapter, participant groups, active modifiers, and Great Schism progress, with sub-windows for All Phases and History.

Added events for the Saeculum Obscurum, Conversion, and Reform Chapters.

Clerical Titles, Clerical Regions, and the Ecclesiastical Government​

• Added the Ecclesiastical Government for Christian clergy. Ecclesiastical rulers hold land as an office of the Church, and their titles pass by clerical succession.
• Added Clerical Titles and Clerical Regions, the Church's own spheres of influence parallel to the secular one. An Archdiocese is a Clerical Region held by an Archbishop. Its seat is the Clerical Region Capital, the County the region was founded on.
• Added ecclesiastical titles with holder history for 867, 1066, and 1178, including Aksum, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.
• Clerical Regions can be founded on any held title of Duchy tier or above.
• Clerical Regions convert neighboring Counties to their holder's Rite over time
• Added a Clerical Regions map mode. It shows each see's holder and Rite, and stripes Counties whose Rite differs from the region's.
• Added Lease Contracts. They set the terms between a secular ruler, the clergy leasing land inside their realm, and the clergy's Religious Superior.

• Church Obligations are set at Minimal, Mild, or Strong Centralization. They decide how much the leasing clergy contributes upward to their Religious Superior.
• Secular Obligations are set as Personal or Fixed. They decide how much the leasing clergy contributes to the secular ruler's income.

Religious Superiors and Religious Subordinates form a hierarchy parallel to the feudal one, for both Theocratic and Ecclesiastical clergy.

All clergy of a Faith now belong to that Faith's clerical organization. The link is used for succession and other functions.

The Ecclesiastical Government uses a church Treasury. Most regular Treasury income comes from local income, unlike Administrative Treasuries, which are filled from a central point.

Ecclesiastical and Theocratic rulers can hold any Temple holding directly. Temples in their domain that they do not hold directly are held by a Baron-tier Ecclesiastical vassal.

When Ecclesiastical Rulers hold multiple titles of their primary Tier, the non-primary titles are kept together with the primary one on succession.

Added Ecclesiastical Laws covering Cardinal benefices. A benefice grants a Cardinal a special Treasury income paid by the Pope.

Added Clerical Elective and Clerical Appointment succession for Church seats. Clerical appointments favor the holder's own clergy and greater sees, and penalize candidates from outside the clergy.

Added decisions for rulers with clergy in their realm:

• Levy the Tithes: demand gold from every Theocratic and Ecclesiastical vassal in your realm.
• Educate your Clerical Court: ordain, instruct, or recruit clergy for your court.
• Seize the Clerical Region: take the Clerical Region your capital lies in. If the seat is held, its Archbishop is deposed.

Added interactions for managing Clerical Titles:

• Create Clerical Title: found a Clerical Title inside a ruler's realm, seated on the de jure capital of the title you pick.
• Expand Clerical Title: grow a Clerical Region into an adjacent de jure Duchy held by rulers of your Faith.
• Merge Clerical Title: absorb a neighboring Clerical Title and all of its Counties.
• Split Clerical Title: carve the part of a Clerical Region that lies inside a chosen ruler's realm into a new Clerical Title, and grant it to a cleric of your choice.
• Replace Archbishop: depose an Archbishop and give their Clerical Title to a worthier cleric. Deposing an Archbishop of another Rite costs far more Piety, needs higher Learning than theirs, and weakens your Faith's Fervor.
• Grant Clerical Title: give an existing Clerical Title to a cleric. If the seat is held, the current holder is deposed.
• Buy Clerical Title: purchase a Clerical Title from its holder. Available to Faiths with the Simony tenet.

Added petitions to the clergy:

• Request Elevation: petition the Head of Faith for the Clerical Title of your own Clerical Region, whether it is vacant or held by your superior. It grants the whole clerical domain, cannot unseat players, and has a low acceptance chance.
• Request New Court Chaplain: ask for a replacement Court Chaplain, drawn from courtiers in your realm.
• Request Church Treasury: ask your Religious Superior or Subordinate for gold from their treasury.
• Demand Church Succession: make yourself the fallback heir to a cleric's lands should they die without a rightful heir. Piety cost scales with the tier of the realm pledged.
• Request Enforced Succession: ask a cleric to compel the holder of a title you have a claim on to yield it to their rightful heir.
• Preach My Legitimacy: spend Piety to have a cleric's priests raise your Legitimacy.

Added Influence Clerical Candidacy: spend Piety to raise or lower a candidate's score for a Clerical Title.

Added interactions for land and claims:

• Beseech Claim: gain a claim on one of a ruler's titles with the help of an Ecclesiastical ruler or your Head of Faith.
• Negotiate For Land: take vassals or titles you have a claim or de jure right to, with the help of an Ecclesiastical ruler.
• Bestow Title: as a cleric, grant a title that does not yet exist directly to someone, possibly raising their rank.
• Bestow De Jure Lands: as a cleric, add a neighboring title to a ruler's de jure territory.
• Beseech De Jure Rights: ask a cleric to make a neighboring title a de jure part of your primary title.
• Consecrate Kingdom: as a cleric, create a new Kingdom for someone and gain a Hook on them in return.

Added war interactions:

• Incite Holy War: urge a ruler to declare a holy war.
• Incite Claim War: urge a ruler to press a claim by war.
• Request Victory: ask a cleric to declare your war against another Christian ruler won, once you hold at least 90% War Score.
• Request White Peace: ask a cleric to mediate a white peace with another Christian ruler.

Added personal interactions:

• Offer Spiritual Counsel: offer private counsel in exchange for a Hook.
• Seek Communion: petition the Head of Faith to receive your Faith back into the Church, ending its status as a heresy.
• Demand Divorce: demand that someone put aside a spouse whose marriage offends the Faith, or can be made to look that way.
• Demand Chastity: demand a vow of chastity. While the vow holds, the target takes a lasting Fertility penalty and cannot start a seduction or courtship. Lustful characters find a forced vow harder to bear. The vow can be shed with the Renounce Vow of Chastity decision.

Playable Theocracies​

• Theocratic and Ecclesiastical rulers are now playable. Theocratic rulers get their own government type and succession.
• Added Designate Theocratic Heir: name your preferred heir to your theocratic title.
• Added the Adopt Theocratic Rule decision, which converts your government to a Theocracy, and the Restore Temporal Rule decision, which converts a Theocracy back to Feudal.
• Theocratic gender succession follows the Clerical Gender doctrine.
• Theocratic titles can interact with factions.
• Theocracies can only declare religious wars.
• Clerical rulers can divorce on their own authority. Where dynastic approval applies, they ask their house head.
• Clergy of a marrying Faith can take the Renounce Vows decision, which removes the Devoted trait so they can marry again.
• The Court Chaplain of a Clergy Ruler is always going to endorse them.

Cardinals and the Papacy​

• Added the College of Cardinals and Cardinal Titles. A Cardinal holds a Cardinalate, votes for the next Pope in the conclave, and can take orders from the Head of Faith.
• Cardinals exist in all three start dates.
• The College holds up to 70 Cardinals.
• Cardinalate titles are destroyed on succession. A Cardinal who becomes Pope or Antipope gives up their seat.
• Cardinals of a Lay Clergy Rite cannot be elected Pope.
• Added Papabile Score, which measures a Cardinal's standing in the next conclave.
• Added Increase Papabile Score: spend Piety or gold to raise a Cardinal's Papabile Score.
• Added Influence College of Cardinals Vote: pressure a Cardinal to cast their vote for your chosen candidate.
• Added the Renounce the Papacy decision. A clerical ruler who renounces the Papacy is removed from every conclave shortlist. A Cardinal keeps their own vote. The renunciation can be reversed later.
• Added a Cardinal Budget to the church treasury.
• Added the Endow Masses decision. It spends treasury for Piety, and your subordinate clergy gain Piety and opinion of you.
• Added Cardinal interactions:

• Appoint Cardinal: as Head of Faith, raise a cleric to Cardinal.
• Strip Cardinalate: dissolve a Cardinalate. Its holder stops being a Cardinal and loses their voice in the College.
• Give Cardinal Order: as a Cardinal's superior, have them marshal church resources to carry out your will. Costs 50 Piety.
• Request Cardinalate for Court Chaplain: petition the Head of Faith to raise your Court Chaplain into the College.

A new Pope chooses a regnal name in a dedicated interface. Female Popes get the option too.

Added the College of Cardinals window, with candidate shortlists and scoring tooltips. Alt+G opens it.

An Antipope who becomes Pope gains the College of Cardinals.

Papal Bulls​

• Added Papal Bulls, solemn decrees of a Christian Head of Faith backed by the authority of the Church. The Enact a Bull decision costs Piety. The Bulls are:

• Permit a Tenet: endorse a Tenet as Permitted across the Faith and announce it to every ruler of the Faith.
• Forbid a Tenet: mark a Tenet as Prohibited across the Faith and announce it to every ruler of the Faith.
• Declare a Rite Heretical: name a divergent Rite of your Faith a heresy.
• Proclaim the Age of Crusades: adopt Armed Pilgrimages as a Core Tenet of the Mainline Rite, opening the way to Great Holy Wars.

Added Church Authority, four levels of law that measure a theocratic ruler's power over their clergy and vassals. Issuing Bulls requires enough Church Authority.

Added the Send Legatine Mission decision. Spend treasury to send a legate to a County, improving its Development growth and Control for 10 years.

Added the Bend the Knee decision. During the Investiture Controversy, pledge to support the Church's claim to clerical appointments, and stand with the faithful when the Investiture Council is called.

Ecumenical Councils​

• Added the Ecumenical Council, an Activity where the clergy of Christendom and its most influential rulers gather to settle doctrine. It has a 25-year cooldown.
• Guests split into Innovators and Conservatives. Debate phases run one month each. Events let guests sway the other side, duel over a point of doctrine, or bypass the cost with a matching Personal Tenet or trait.
• A Council can change Core Tenets, rule on Doctrines, and set a Tenet's status.
• Clergy, rulers with a clerical Puppet, and the host may vote.
• Councils are a major source of Great Schism progress, for or against.
• Rewards include Tenet and Doctrine changes, Fervor, Piety, opinion, and the Scholar lifestyle trait.
• Added an Activity Planner widget for selecting Tenets and Doctrines.
• Added the Investiture Council activity. It settles an Investiture Controversy on spiritual or temporal terms and decides who appoints the clergy.

Puppets​

• Added Puppets: characters you control and can order to act on your behalf.
• Three Puppet types:

• Realm Priest Puppet, made with Puppet Realm Priest: your Court Chaplain acts for you.
• Clerical Ruler Puppet, made with Puppet Clerical Ruler: a member of the clergy outside your realm acts for you.
• Secular Ruler Puppet, made with Puppet Secular Ruler: a ruler forced to do your bidding.

Puppet Actions cover:

• Excommunication
• Holy Sites
• Faith and Rite creation
• Clerical Title requests
• Cardinal appointments
• Conversions
• Monastic vows
• Claims
• Schemes
• Imprisonment
• War
• Tributaries
• Marriage and divorce
• Alliances
• Gifts
• Decisions
• Great Projects

Puppets tab in the Intrigue window lets you manage your puppets.

Actions a Puppet can perform for you are marked with a Puppet banner on their buttons.

A Puppet pays the costs of their own actions and takes the blame for refusals.

Secular puppeteers have their own requirements for winning a Puppet over, separate from Spiritual Fulfillment.

Mandala God-Kings and the Son of Heaven can manipulate Rites without a Puppet.

The Realm Priest Puppet is disabled for characters with a Ministry or Kurultai.

Monastic Order Management​

• Added decisions and interactions for founding and running Monastic Orders:

• Found Monastic Order: build a temple holding in an empty barony of a chosen County. When it is finished, it becomes the seat of a new order focused on a Core Tenet of your choice.
• Patronize Monastic Movement: found a new Monastic Order at once and transfer another order's leases within your domain to it.
• Reform Monastic Endowment: spend gold for Piety, Spiritual Fulfillment, and the opinion of the orders' leaders.
• Reform Order: as patron, bind an order you patronize to one of your Personal Tenets and to your own Rite.
• Dissolve Order: destroy a Monastic Order.

Added a monastic funeral event chain for funerals held where a Monastic Order holds a lease.

Saints, Relics, and Holy Sites​

• Added Canonization. A Head of Faith can raise a departed member of their dynasty to sainthood and choose where to lay them to rest.
• Added the Promulgate Word of Pious Deeds decision. Taken during a character's life, it spends Piety to either raise your election score for your superior's title or improve your chance of later canonization.
• Added the Consecrate the Saint decision: pick the Cathedral or Holy Site in your realm where a saint is consecrated and laid to rest, so that they draw the faithful.
• Added a Select a Patron Saint decision.
• Added Proclaim the Living Word: become a Herald of your Faith.
• Added saint titles for non-Christian Faiths, with Venerated Ancestor as a fallback. Examples:

• Wali
• Divus
• Siddha
• Kami

Added the Herald trait for living holy persons, with per-religion names. Examples:

• Tzadik
• Arhat
• Sant
• Zhenren
• Sage
• Ashavan

Added the Extract a Relic decision: take a relic from a saint buried in lands you control. The relic can then be enshrined in a Holy Site.

Added Sanctify Artifact: as Head of Faith, bless one of a character's artifacts, making it a holy relic of your Faith. Ask to Sanctify Artifact petitions a cleric to do the same for one of yours. Added a suggestion for it and a buried saint point of interest.

Every Rite can sanctify a baseline of devotional artifacts, so Sanctify Artifact works for Rites with few tenets. Vows of Poverty Rites cannot sanctify illustrious relics. They can sanctify humble artifacts of any quality.

Added Holy Myron, a consecrated oil made with the Prepare the Holy Myron decision. It sends your Court Chaplain to gather rare balsams and consecrate an Ampulla of Holy Myron, an artifact whose charges are spent on anointments.

• Gift the Holy Myron: fill a fresh ampulla for another character, spending one charge for Piety and their gratitude.
• Anoint an Artifact with Holy Myron: spend one charge to sanctify one of your artifacts, regardless of what your tenets would normally allow.

Added the Secure Pilgrim Routes decision, which adopts Armed Pilgrimages as a Core Tenet.

Added pilgrim badges as a new artifact type with their own badge slot.

The Grand Cathedral and the Ecclesiastical Estate​

• Added the Grand Cathedral, a Great Project built in three tiers: Romanesque, Gothic, and Flamboyant. Several characters can fund it, and each investor is rewarded on completion. If the founder dies, the reward reaches their heir.
• The site must be its Archdiocese's capital and must not already hold a cathedral.
• An event chain runs alongside construction: laying out the site, casting the bells, commissioning frescoes, contributing stained glass, building a cantoria, and preaching the first sermon once the west wall is up.
• Added the Ecclesiastical Estate, the domicile of Clerical Title holders, with its own Cathedral Complex.
• The character window uses church backgrounds that change as the domicile develops.
• Added the Mass Conversion Great Project, which converts large swaths of Counties of unreformed Faiths.
• Added the Proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven decision, which makes you holder of a new Hegemony-tier title, the Kingdom of Heaven.
• Added the Establish a Dynasty decision, which lets a theocratic ruler start their own dynasty.

The Great Schism​

• The Great Schism is now a tracked, playable event.
• Great Schism progress comes from Ecumenical Councils, rulers crossing between the Rites, excommunications across the Rites, and County conversions in Holy Site Counties. Every source counts as a single grievance. Progress never decreases.
• Players in the Christian Church Situation are notified whenever Great Schism progress accrues, and the participant groups show which side of the Schism each character is on.
• Added three decisions, all requiring the Saeculum Obscurum Chapter and the progress threshold:

• Cause the Great Schism
• Prevent the Great Schism
• Mend the Great Schism Through Diplomacy

Added the Sway Schism Stance interaction: urge a ruler to adopt your stance on the coming division of the Church.

Mending the Schism gives the mender's dynasty 10,000 Renown and a permanent modifier.

A Crisis Chapter ending only causes the Great Schism if the progress threshold has been met.

Added the Unite the Miaphysite Churches major decision.

Religious Study​

• Added the Religious Study scheme, which lets a character study a Rite in depth. The decision that starts it is named after your Faith's holy text, for example Study the Bible..
• Added the Scholar lifestyle trait and the Renowned Exegete and Doctrinal Clarity outcomes.

Other Expansion Additions​

• Added an important action for excommunicated rulers. It explains how to lift the excommunication.
• Antipopes expansion features:

• An Antipope you declare also becomes your Clerical Ruler Puppet.
• Petition Antipope for Gold: request gold from your Antipope.
• Seek Antipope's Indulgence: pay your Antipope gold for forgiveness and Piety, bypassing the Mainline Head of Faith.

Added a Pastoral Letter event and a Debate of East and West random event.

Added ritual celebration events, secular faith events and memories such as healing the sick with a king's touch, and a discovery event set.

Added decisions tied to specific Personal Tenets:

• Invite Syncretic Exiles, for the syncretism tenets: invite exiles from a religion your personal syncretism recognizes. They settle in your Counties, raising Development and changing the local Faith or Rite. Costs a large amount of Piety.
• Curse an Enemy, for the Adorcism tenet: perform a ritual against a rival or an opponent in one of your wars.
• Seek Aid for War, for the Adorcism tenet: petition the spirits for aid in your current wars.

Added personal devotion decisions:

• Take Confession: confess your sins to your Court Chaplain, losing Stress and gaining Spiritual Fulfillment.
• Stage an Act of Devotion: hold a great public mass, exchanging Piety for Prestige. Once per decade, and only while your Fame is below Illustrious.
• Sacrifice Wealth: spend gold to raise a County's Development growth and gain Spiritual Fulfillment.
• Raise a Khachkar: commission an ancestral cross-stone in one of your Counties.
• Receive Last Rites: prepare your soul as death nears, gaining Spiritual Fulfillment. It opens automatically when a character is close to death, and names a plausible killer.

Bookmark​

• Added the 867 bookmark Fathers of the Faithful.
• Added the Slavic Rite story cycle in 867 for Rostislav. It follows the Moravian Mission and the birth of the Slavic Rite.

Dynasty Legacy​

• Added the Servants of God dynasty legacy for Christian dynasties, with five perks:

• Private Devotions
• Alms and Endowments: Head of Faith petitions are looked on more favorably, and the church treasury is more willing to fund your dynasty members' requests.
• A Faithful Flock: dynasty members gain 50% more Tenet Popularity when evangelizing their Personal Tenets.
• Mitre and Crosier: stronger candidate scores for Christian clerical appointments, a higher chance of being made a Cardinal, and more tax from ecclesiastical vassals.
• Princes of the Church: dynasty members are stronger candidates for the Papal Throne, and can take the Guide the Christian Church decision regardless of rank or clerical office, with double the effect.

Achievements​

• Added 10 achievements:

• Guido's Guiding Light: Starting as Archbishop Guido of Milan, become Antipope and make the Ambrosian Rite the Mainline Rite.
• The Two Swords: Have both the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope as your Puppets at the same time.
• Father's Best Side: Enshrine a relic taken from a saint of your own family in a Holy Site your Dynasty founded.
• The Father, the Son, and the Holy Grandson: As a Theocrat, establish a Dynasty and hold an Archbishopric for three generations.
• Servus Servorum Dei: Starting as a secular ruler of Duke tier or lower, or as a Count-tier cleric, become the Pope.
• Papal Bull: Make your Puppet Pope sleep with your spouse.
• Where There's a Will: Demand Church Succession from another ruler, then murder them and inherit their lands.
• Home See Advantage: As an Archbishop, change a Tenet or Doctrine at an Ecumenical Council hosted in your own Cathedral.
• Cardinal Sin: Starting as a non-Clergy ruler, have five members of your dynasty as Cardinals at the same time.
• Holier Than Thou: Have three Personal Tenets and 100 Spiritual Fulfillment at the same time.

Audio​

• Added 6 music tracks, collected in the By God Alone soundtrack list:

• Anathema
• Sanctos
• The Conclave
• Council's Judgement
• Deus Hoc Vult
• The Shepherd's Flock

Added sound effects for the Grand Cathedral start and completion events.

Art​

• Added a Christian UI skin, including a reworked HUD main tab, letter window, and side buttons.
• Added 836 faith icons. Every religion now has a full set of Faith and Rite icon variants with color options.
• Added new tenet icons, including animated tenet icons in the Faith window, and new doctrine icons.
• Added event window effects:

• Stained glass
• Night scene windows
• Flickering candlelight, in two strengths
• Double vision, in two strengths

Added a character halo effect with its own shader, and a divergent Rites map mode effect with positive and negative variants.