Zeal and Crusades

[Kulgan]

Another question about Crusades

What is the role of a province's zeal in the whole thing?

In the province where you start the crusade form as well in the provinces you pass through?

And, how do you get your zeal higher? my highest is about 50% only http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-confused.gif

Finally, how important is the Piety of the commanding general leading the crusade? Because mostly my real good leaders don't have good piety so I'm curious what to choose, the good soldier or the good prayer-kind-of-guy

Thanks already http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-happy2.gif

Kulgan

[Phatose]

I don't know that piety of a crusade leader has any effect whatsoever. I know piety can affect the chance any particular general will join the crusade if it passes through.

Zeal determines how many units will be added to a crusade when it passes through a province. It doesn't effect what the crusade it built with - but if you leave the crusade in it's province of origin for a turn after you declare it, it will pick up troops like it would from any catholic province. A higher zeal will get you more volunteers, both peasants and fanatics from the local population, and a higher amount of the troops in the local garisson will be willing to join the crusade. The typical way to raise zeal is to have inquisitors pay a short, but meaningful visit. Just don't leave them around too long - if they start barbecueing the local population, zeal will drop sharply.

[fruitfly]

As far as I know, the zeal of the start province only matters if you leave the crusade there the year after you start it to gather more troops.

Basically the higher the zeal of a province, the more troops will join the crusade as it passes through. These new troops can be created from thin air and stolen from whatever armies happen to be present in the province at the time. If a province has a particularly low zeal, or is a different religion, then men will actually desert the crusade and it'll reduce in size as a result.

To raise the zeal of a province you need to build a monastery and train inquisitors. These will increase the zeal by about 1-2% every year they're present in the province, but be careful as if the zeal gets too high an inquisition will start and the zeal will drop massively meaning you have to raise it all over again. You can also boost the zeal of a province instantly by installing a governor with a zeal-boosting V&V.

Passing a crusade through four or five 90-100% zeal provinces before shipping it straight to its destination can give you anywhere from 3000-5000 troops to play with. Northern Italy and Spain tend to have the highest zeal naturally.

As for generals and piety, all I've really noticed is that the general put in charge of the crusade initially tends to have very high piety. If I want to use one of my existing generals instead due to their high command stat, I tend to ship them to the destination separately rather than sticking them in the crusade and having them trapped there until it's completed.

[Gregoshi]

A warning about inquisitors, they usually start an inquisition when zeal hits around 70%. The inquisition drops the zeal down to about half that when they start burning people at the stake.

Also, if you put a bishop or cardinal in the province with an inquisitor, they negate the inquisitors impact on zeal.

[motorhead]

zeal increase = inquisitor's valor, up to about 90%, then it seems to slow down. Two 5 valor inquisitors can juice province zeal very rapidly.

[Gregoshi]

motorhead, are high valour inquisitors less likely to start an inquisition? I'm curious what the trick is to get zeal up to 90%. My guys start torching things around 70%.

[Meisterdieb]

The key to zeal boosting is to keep the inquisitors busy.
Just put them into the province which zeal you want to raise and have them accuse a general of heresy.
Since they are busy working they won't start burning the populace; but their presence counts towards increasing zeal.

I once had an inquisitor burning his way through hungary ( I was Italian) and after some years zeal there was in the high 80s

[Gregoshi]

Thanks for the info Meisterdieb...and welcome aboard. Have you been lurking here? Registered in May 2003 but only posting now. Thanks for breaking your silence. It was at least helpful to me. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

[Ironside]

Atleast in version 1.1 you only needed one inquisitor to trial people, the rest was only zeal raising unless you failed with your trial, then they burnt people. It was annoying to trial one general with a dozen grand inqiusitors every turn.

Modern Turkey went from 0% to 100% zeal in my grand inquisitor campaign http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif. Too bad for the Sicilians http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif