Crusader Kings 3 players have pet their digital cats and dogs over 11 million times

Crusader Kings 3 Best Mods
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

Paradox Interactive has shared some statistics to celebrate the fourth anniversarry of Crusader Kings 3, the historical grand strategy game that puts people in the shoes of ruling families across eurasia during the medieval era. It lets you do immersive historical stuff like die of the black plague, fight a stupid war because of your stupid cousin, and get a nice dog or cat to pet.

People have really pet them puppies and kitties, apparently, because between cats and dogs Crusader Kings 3 players have laid on 11,578,957 pets. That's 6,175,718 for the cates, and 5,403,239 for the dogs.

There are also some great stats in here, like the most popularly started-in regions of the map: Brittania (by a lot), France, Scandinavia, Byzantium, and Spain. It's interesting to see that Brittania is so played-in, with nearly 10 million more starts than runner-up France. Meanwhile France at 14 million is relatively close to fifth place Spain with 9.1 million. It's also kind of wild that Byzantium, which won't even get unique mechanics relating to its empire until later this year, is in the top five regions to play.

Of the pre-selected starting characters, Paradox has also shown that Petty King Murchad of Ireland is the top choice—kind of funny to see that over a decade after Murchad was the pick for player character in PC Gamer's Crusader Kings 2
chronicles
.

The last time Paradox shared these kind of statistics we learned that players are about 45% more likely to do a murder than fall in love.

This has been a pretty good year from Crusader Kings 3 fans, with a hotly anticipated expansion coming in September to let them play as landless adventurers and greatly expanding the landowning family system within the Byzantine empire. They also got male pattern baldness and a comic book.

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
Mongolian throne room
Crusader Kings 3 saddles up for a long-awaited return to the east with its first Asian DLC, Khans of the Steppe
Dry Devil holds a torch, illuminating a creepy rictus grin on his face.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 rockets past the first game's peak player count as it pips into Steam's top 100 most-played games
Hans with his hands in the air
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 sells more than 1 million copies in just 1 day
A medieval merchant in a small village
Manor Lords, the best city builder of 2024, hits 3 million sales as players continue to fill its maps with muddy medieval towns
Key art for the new Age of Empires 2 expansion showing an angry Viking and Japanese warlod.
Age of Empires 2 team continues to cook while delivering 'legendarily long' 8,000-word patch notes about 'the biggest updates' the 26-year-old game has ever had
Jagged Alliance 3 keyart
Paradox is the new owner of Jagged Alliance 3 and Surviving Mars developer Haemimont Games
Latest in Strategy
Civilization 7 Great Britain - Modern Civ art (via YouTube)
As Civilization 7 struggles to keep up with Civ 5 player counts, a new patch is coming tomorrow with still more UI changes and gameplay tweaks
Battle Brothers
Nearly 2 years after its last update, the excellent Battle Brothers gets 'a bucket load of fixes' and free new content
King wielding his axe against would-be assassins in Norland.
Medieval colony sim Norland is getting a 'damn big update' that completely overhauls the game's mechanics: 'We're rolling out some radical changes to the core gameplay'
Age of Empires 2
Former Age of Empires 2 dev claims Microsoft demanded its first expansion should have a Korean faction, because 'StarCraft sold 3 million copies in Korea'
Endless Legend 2 Kin faction reveal
It's turtle time: Endless Legend 2's first faction is the fortification-loving Kin of Sheredyn
A massive beachhead assault in indie RTS Beyond All Reason
Over 110 players and 10,000 units clash as this free RTS celebrates its growing multiplayer scene with some of the biggest multiplayer battles ever fought
Latest in News
Ciri in The Witcher 4
The Witcher 4 won't be out until sometime in 2027 at the soonest, CD Projekt says
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode art
After 23 years of making Dwarf Fortress, even its creator is still 'terrified' of drowning all his dwarves with aquifers: 'Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames'
A unique aspect of Japanese architecture turned out to be a key reason the Like a Dragon games can reuse assets so effectively—and deliver more compact, memorable open worlds than western cities
Pacific Drive Endless Expeditions spring 2025 update trailer still - a sexy, tricked-out 1980s station wagon being blasted with magic healing electricity
Pacific Drive developers change their mind: A year after refusing to give it mid-run saves, it's getting mid-run saves
Starfield's companion robot giving a thumbs-up
Former Bethesda dev who quit Starfield to go solo says it's 'much less stressful as an indie' without daily meetings or 'office politics': it's 'very refreshing to just care about the game'
Schedule I drug deal going down
Forget REPO, Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin's Creed Shadows, Steam's current global top seller is an early access game about managing a drug empire