Crusades howto

[middy]

I create the crusade, add a few units(royal knights,feudal men at arms). Then I make it go through some catcholic countries, to raise its strength. I usualy get close to my target(palenstine and such). But I get wasted by massive amounts of muslim troops.

Whats the strat here?

[The Last Emperor]

Instead of sending a long distance "ballistic missle" into the Muslim lands, try going in step by step. Ur troops died out in the end due to the attrition battles along the way and after they managed to conquer the provience, u will get rebellions and Jihads coming at u.It will be more effective to send crusades to lands nearest to u at first and slowly "eat" into the enemy's land. This way u get to re-enforce ur newly conquered prize quickly and it also takes a while for ur enemy to reach u i.e more reaction time for u. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Lord of the Isles]

Another way to get better crusades is to send them by sea.

Advantages: They don't have to fight their way through lots of Muslim provinces, nor do they lose troops in low zeal catholic provinces. Depending on where you start them from, you can still usually take them through your own provinces to build them up to 1000+ troops. Then a quick jump to Palestine or whereever.

Disadvantages: Having to wait till you've built up a line of ships to your destination province. Keeping that line there: the Italian or Sicilian AI often attacks you soon after your ships have spread out (though keeping 2 or 3 ships in each fleet in their sea areas can prevent this for a while). It's cheesy: some people think that setting up an across-the-board naval trade/transport network makes victory over the AI factions too easy, since the AI itself doesn't do it. And you can't usually use the crusade to take troops in rival's provinces, since (in my experience) you can't use ports/fleets belonging to other factions for transport, even though the AI factions can use yours.

Playing as even England or France on Expert, you can get ships to the Eastern Med before the crusading season ends at the start of the High period, and collect your GA points for crusades. Actually, France and HRE can be tough, since they often have local border problems to deal with, but England, Spain and Italy should be easier to play this way.

[econ21]

Yes, going by sea is definitely the way to travel for some crusading (most?) factions. It does take time for some - eg England - though, so you have to start building ships asap. I really enjoy the crusading battles, as you as a Catholic faction face very different armies and settings from the usual European ones.

[Alrowan]

the sea is the best way... other than that it can be very tough

[Bob the Insane]

A good thing to do is to get a foothold in the Crusade lands and build a chapterhouse there (Palistine is particularly good for the English..)..

Then build loads of little Crusades and unleach them...

It is still a good idea if you can provide reinforcements by sea though. And there is the fact that it appears the further the distance between the Crusade start and target, the better and more troops the Crusade generates..

[Beelzebub]

If you're facing a large army, adding a few units just isn't going to cut it. If they have 3000 guys nearby, you're gonna need more than 1k crusaders. You need to add a real army to the crusade before you send it off, a real multi-starred general doesn't hurt either.

It's too bad there isn't a game mechanic to transport crusades without making a huge sea chain to the meditaranean, cuz i think that's kind of lame. But it isn't cheesy to take an island like Rhodes or cyrpus and build a chapterhouse there (rhodes especially is good, I think templar get a valour bonus there)

[Sephiroth]

personally what i noticed is that crusades have bugger all 'elite units' so what i do is build/hire stacks of em and throw them in cos lets face it,you started the fire...how you gonna put it out?

[NateEngle]

Personally I don't tend to run very many crusades except as a way to fulfill a Glorious Achievement victory condition. When I create a crusade I stack it to the rafters with my own good quality troops (no trusting to the peasants and gutter sweepings of those along the way for me), and I typically send along extra stacks with as good a general as I can afford to send - not as part of the crusade itself but rather in the supporting army.

Then, once I have everything prepared, I send the crusade and supporting stacks directly to the destination by ship. Crusades are like making backups of computer files - anything worth doing is worth doing thoroughly or else not at all.