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PeteAce
11-28-2002, 10:31
ok this is my first post but I've been reading the forum for quite some time.

A thing that's bugging me is whenever some crusaders pass through my lands, my generals and troops got sucked up in it. I have lost my good generals and troops. It's pissing me off a lot, everytime I have to reorganize my troops or reload to get my generals back when it happens.

Is there a way to modify it so it doesn't do that anymore?? I love to have crusades, but as long as it doesn't take away my troops and generals i'm really happy with it. Please help.

Azrael
11-28-2002, 11:10
Hey Pete,

Your Crusades have the exact same effect on the provinces they pass through.

You have two options. Either do not allow the Crusade to pass, which will often get you in trouble with the Pope, or move your generals and best units out of the Crusades way for a turn or two.

Hope that helps.

Azrael

PeteAce
11-28-2002, 11:37
Azrael, you know I have reloaded numerous times to try to avoid that. I have tried to move away my troops and generals out of the crusaders way but then my state is left vunerable to enemy attack for one or two turn. Sometimes I get sick of reloading and trying to guess what the crusaders going to go next. Of cos, I don't want to stop the crusaders when they're my allies, if I do, then I'm in trouble, all of them seem to want to break ally with me and start attacking me. Plus, I don't like to cheat and reload the game for the cause, but it's bugging me a lot.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif I rather not have the same effect when my crusaders pass thru other provinces, I just think that's a way to cheat when you have a lot of money, keep on crusading and take away enemy troops and at the same time getting some free troops. It's especially annoying when the crusading army is attacking the province next to me, if they lost the battle and they would get pushed back to me and collect more of my troops and generals. That alone is taking away the fun of the game for me.

Pharaoh
11-28-2002, 11:59
Tell me about it. I played French on Early and had two English crusades walz through Toulouse, which is an isolated province with nowhere to run. They swiped one half of my 1900-man garrison.

MonkeyMan
11-28-2002, 12:21
Unfortuantely the AI's crusades arre still far too random. The thinking behind them is that the AI wants to take the province it is targeted at, and so tries to amass an army of greater numbers and power. To this end it sends the crusade after the largest and best catholic stacks in the game (usually you unfortunately). This happens until it has sufficient strength and the goes to the target. Of course if it has less troops than the defending province it will then often sit on the border of the enemies land and slowly waste away with no attempt to take the province.

I've seen spanish crusades work their way by land through france, up to england, stopping in wales, scotland, ireland and sweden before progressing by 'my' ships to north africa.

One tactic i havn't tried is to have a few stacks of peasants and battle damaged units in reserve ready to throw in it's path. Of course once i get into the game i am usually powerful enough to fight crudades off and then kill the pope. you can train some seriously good generals by sitting them on rome with 2000 of your best troops.

As for your re-loading tactic, if one of yours is the first province it goes into you are screwed, but you can move troops out of the provinces it is yet to visit. Units moved out from a province it is already in, count as spending their turn in that province. Also if it really wants your army, you could ship them off to another remote province and break the chain of ships until the threat dissappears.

If i had my way AI crusades would work like human ones, by having to head to the target province by land or sea, and the AI would actually build a force that it would add to the crusade to ensure it's success, like i have to when crusading.

TheLastEuropean
11-28-2002, 13:40
The best solution is one MonkeyMan suggests and is something I used to do all the time pre-patch. Just get a stack of peasants (or indeed depleted units) and put them in the crusades way, or replace your good troop stack with the peasant stack to prevent provinces being empty and open to attack by enemies. Once the crusade reckons it has enough troops to succede it goes off on its merry way. Another benefit of this is that the crusade will be full of peasants and thus is unlikely to achieve it's goal. Then your crusade, stuffed with choice troops, can grab that objective http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Buliwyf
11-28-2002, 14:40
One Italian campaign had a Spanish crusade targeted for Morocco knocking on my border. It came via a land route picking up French and English troops. The only chapter house they possessed was in the province with a direct link to Morocco.
What bugs me is when I pick up the crusade army only provinces that have a direct route to the target province become highlighted. Other faction’s provinces stacked with troops but not in direct line with my crusade target are sitting happy.
As you have stated the AI is allowed to take a cruise around Europe to collect troops.

Qilue
11-28-2002, 15:30
There's a number of strategies you can use against AI crusades. The following is what I usually do.

First, get big, get powerful and have a huge navy. Then refuse entry to crusades. If you have a huge army on the AI's border and they don't have an opposing force, an emissary or a priest will be on route to your king to get a ceasefire asap. If not, then invade.

If you've trained up your assassins and have a few lvl 6 ones standing around doing nothing. Send one or two to the pope to convince him to lift the excommunication. However, if your playing Italians, or you own a province or two bordering Rome, then invade and have your army convince him. If your playing English, then you can ignore the pope.

Anecdote - Once when I was playing Spain, I was looking at a general's stats and the crosses looked unusual. I then realised that's what they look like when your not excommunicated.

Another option.
Change the Chapter House in crusader_build_prod13.txt so that it's a unique building and then change Crusades to Early and High eras only. This is mostly historically accurate too.

HopAlongBunny
11-29-2002, 17:16
Crusades have got to be one of the biggest pains in the game. One game as the Danes, English crusades would move from Aragon to Brittany (using my ships I guess) suck up 50% of my troops and move on to Flanders. One turn in Flanders and I would take 75% losses (very high zeal) As soon as I replaced those losses the French would take much the same route with their crusade. This went on for about 150 years til I finally opposed a crusade => immediate excommunication => war of all against Danes

Sometimes the game aggravates the (*&%($* outta me I love it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

PeteAce
11-29-2002, 18:49
Thanks for the replies.
All I want right now is to just disable the crusader feature in the game totally so that noone can use it. Anyone knows how to edit that in the crusader_build_prod13.txt file?

MonkeyMan
11-29-2002, 23:37
Just go into crusaders_unit_prod11.txt

find crusade and the line

LIMIT(0) { CHAPTER_HOUSE } ALL_PERIODS NO

delete the build requirements

so you get

LIMIT(0) ALL_PERIODS NO

make sure you don't delete the tabs either side.

The other thing you could try is to go into build _prod13 and remove the requirements for the chapter house. I don't know if this would work though.

The best solution if you really don't like them is to

in the stuff after the requirements like for chapter house and crusade like:

ATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST(80), CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST(80), CATHOLIC_TRADER(80),


set all the values to 0 to set the ai likelyhood of building one. This should be done in the entry for crusade as well incase the ai starts with one. This means the AI will not waste money on chapter houses and won't build crusades. However you will still be able to. I leve this choice to your own conscience of course.

Jxrc
12-12-2002, 22:25
An easy trick to avoid your general going on a silly crusade is to give him a title. Once given responsability they will stuck with you.

I am not sure that marrying them with a princess is good enough. To be checked again.

Hope it helps http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif