Crusades and bonus troops

[Knight of the Rose]

Hi all!

In my resent game as the English, I'm currently sending crusades through Europe towards the Holy Land. While passing through Germany I came across a couple of provinces that almost didn't have any troops. Expecting my crusade to dwindle in those sparesly occupied provinces, it instead grew adding a lot of Tutonic (sp?) sergeants to my cause. I had compleately forgotten this aspect of crusading - that is, not only taking soldiers from the AI stacks.

Do you know other forms this concept can take? IE - what if I was passing through Italy - what would I have got?

/KotR

[Drunk-Monk]

Never had that happened to me, must be one of those things which after several years of playing MTW and reading the manual you just happen to find out.

[caravel]

Crusades fill up with troops in rival provinces depending on the catholic percentage and the zeal factor. The more zeal the more of the AI's units will desert to join your cause. It's been a while since I've played the game, but I'm sure that your crusade specific units are spawned as soon as the crusade is declared. No more are usually added afterwards. Are you sure that the AI province did not have some of these units there already?

[Knight of the Rose]

Yeah - I'm absolutely sure the AI didn't have them, as they cannot be trained, but are crusade specific. When my crusade was declared I got 200 order foot and 400 fanatics.

/KotR

[caravel]

Yeah - I'm absolutely sure the AI didn't have them, as they cannot be trained, but are crusade specific. When my crusade was declared I got 200 order foot and 400 fanatics.

/KotR

Hmmm... now I'm trying to remember if your crusade does pick up whole extra units that are not pulled from the AI. It may be that when zeal is very high...? :juggle2:

[Martok]

Hmmm... now I'm trying to remember if your crusade does pick up whole extra units that are not pulled from the AI. It may be that when zeal is very high...? :juggle2:
As a matter of fact, I believe that's the case. I've had experiences similar to KotR's, where I somehow picked up crusade units in province that had very few troops (and none belonging to knight orders). It's not a frequent occurrence -- at least not for me -- but it has happened. :yes:

[Roark]

High zeal provinces WILL generate troops of that faction/nationality for your crusade regardless of the garrison composition. Taxing existing rival garrisons as you pass through is a different function altogether.

[Knight of the Rose]

Hi Roark,

Do you know what kind you'll get? Passing through Italy, would I be getting Knights Hospillers (sp?). I thought (and that is just an assuption) I noticed I got Sczekly passing through Hungaria, so maybe it isn't limited to crusade-type troops? :book:

/KotR

[jadast]

I have had similar incidents in my crusades and not only crusading troops. I have picked up woodsmen, armoured spearmen, etc. I thought it was an accident of the XL mod because I do not remember this happening with the vanilla game.

[Roark]

KOTR: Ironically enough, I've never picked up Crusade-specific troops in this way (eg: Knights Hospitaller, Templars etc), but the troops that are generated tend to be faction-specific, ie: as you have already pointed out - Szekely, as well as things like Italian Infantry, Longbowmen etc. Of course, you will often get your generics like Spearmen, men-at-arms etc.

[cambovenzi]

yeah i remember that happening a few times in the past, adding some nice units.

[Knight of the Rose]

It can't be a too uncommen a phenomena, as I've done it three times now with three crusades in one game. All pickups where made in a almost deserted province (40 royal knights) with 76 % zeal. I picked up roughly half the knights and a lot of other stuff. It wasn't only tutons, it was also other units, as Roark so precisely pointed out.

So I guess it is a feature made not to punish your crusade when you travel through an empty or near empty province with high zeal. After all, you can't (always) choose the direction of the crusade.

/KotR

[Yoyoma1910]

It's all about the zeal baby!

So make sure you send out some inquisitors to kick it up before traipsing across the land. And Teutonic sergeants are sometimes randomly generated by rebellions in German provinces as well. So I think that has more to do with it, they being faction specific, more than crusade based. As far as I know, you can only get actual crusade nights from opponents lands if they already exist in a stack.

[Ironsword]

It can't be a too uncommen a phenomena, as I've done it three times now with three crusades in one game. All pickups where made in a almost deserted province (40 royal knights) with 76 % zeal. I picked up roughly half the knights and a lot of other stuff. It wasn't only tutons, it was also other units, as Roark so precisely pointed out.

No it's not. It happens quite a lot in my campaigns too. I've received swiss armoured pikemen on a crusade due to this quirk.

Also, I always get a lot of vikings; it seems they are always spoiling for a ruckus. :viking:

[Caliburn]

I actually once got some Saxon Huscarles in an English campaign...

High zeal allows you to create even full stacks this way, be it your own region or a neighbors. Crusades seem too strong even, when you get loads of Pavise Arbalests and other very nice troops. Jihads are the same.

Sometimes I've dreamed about getting some Swabian Swordsmen this way, but I've never managed that. Oh well...

[caravel]

Sometimes I've dreamed about getting some Swabian Swordsmen this way, but I've never managed that. Oh well...
Well, as they're only available in early then you'd have to get crusading very early on in order to see any. Also IIRC as they're only trainable in Swabia then your crusade would need to be in Swabia during the early era while zeal is very high in order to have a chance of picking any up.

[cambovenzi]

is there any special tricks to using the inquisitors or getting zeal up?
ive never really been a big fan of crusades, but i thought id ask in case i use some more.

[caravel]

Yes in general the Inquisition must be deployed for short periods. Generally once zeal get's quite high the inquisitor has the chance of getting bored and going on a mass bunring spree. If this occurs then zeal will drop again, quite drastically. As the Inquisitor is still in the province zeal will slowly being to rise again, and so on. The higher zeal gets the more chance it seems that the Inquisitor will start burning people.

In short this is a mechanism that is contrived to prevent catholic provinces going up to 100% zeal and staying there. It adds more of a random factor to the game.

If you want to "cheat" you can train a peasant unit in your own province and leave it there for as fodder for the inquisitor. This means that every year you should give the Inquisitor a new target in that unit to ensure that he's kept busy and not burning your population (note: There is no actual "population" it simply means that while the Inquisitor is sitting idle he may suddenly start a mass Inquisition which will suddenly cut zeal right down). While the Inquisitor is burning generals he cannot start a mass Inquisition, so zeal is allowed to rise.

[Roark]

Caravel has, as always, hit the nail on the head.

Your inquisitor has important work to do, but he needs to be kept occupied. Burning the populace hurts zeal BAD.

[Ironside]

Can add that if one inquisitor burn one general, the other 19 in the same province won't do anything even at 100% zeal, but they will almost always burn people instead if the prosecution fails.

Keeping all 20 working on the same poor general will keep them busy though, even if there's some failures.

[Caliburn]

To go back to the Swabians and crusades, plus a few other things.

Yeah, the time frame is a big limitation. A bigger one though is that even if you start crusading early, Swabia is not exactly in a good position for the crusade to pass through (depending on where you're going, of course). Cutting through to the east will take a loong time, not to mention if you're trying to pass to the Holy Lands... I usually prefer to have the crusade within 2-4 years from its target, often "cheating" (or at least taking shortcuts) by using fleets...

Seems that when you're using the Crusade/Jihad marker to get troops from your own regions (at least), the quality of these troops is limited to the tech level available; i.e. you can't get Pavise Arbalests if there aren't any of the buildings linked to PAs in existence on the map (or at least in your regions). I'm not sure exactly what the limitations are, though. It's not limited to the specific region, as you can get good quality troops from an undeveloped region as well.

Reappearances on the other hand seem to be at least somewhat region-specific in the later versions, excluding royal units. Hard to say, though, but quite often I see huge stacks of Urban Militia and Cataphracts in Cyprus when the Byzantines reappear...

[caravel]

I'm not 100% certain as to whether other factions will be able to pick up Swabians in their crusades as bonus units. It might be that only the HRE can as they are listed as the only unit able to train them in the unit prod.