MTW: Early Crusading

[sbroadbent]

This message would be posted as a reply to the "1099" thread in the MTW: Main Hall forum, but because I'm still a Junior Member, I'm not able to reply to the thread. If there is any regular member in here who would like to repost this reply there, you have my permission. On the other hand, if any mods want to move this message to that thread, feel free to (and just delete this paragraph).

The thread is dealing with the issues of trying to send a crusade over to Palestine by the year 1099.



Is it possible to take Jerusalaem by 1099 for any faction? I can't use MTW at the moment but the idea just popped into my head (reading some chronicles of the Crusaders at the moment)
Is it even possible to get a crusade up and running that quick, never mind the slog across the world, the Chapter House is a Castle-level building I think.

Anyway, if they ever make a seconf MTW, they'll have to include a treaty that could be negotiated, allowing the Crusaders to pass through a Kingdom in a single year or something to make this possible.

It is actually very possible to launch a crusade by 1099, in most cases though it probably won't arrive until well after the year 1099.

There are a couple factions/provinces where this can be built from. First off, a crusade requires a Chapter House. To build it all you need is a church. As long as you have a church, no other buildings are required. There are a few provinces that start off with a church already. According to the Early Startpos file, these are: Castile (Spanish), Constantinople (Byzantine), and Rome (Papacy). Obviously the Byzantines can't launch crusades, and unless you mod the game to enable you to play the pope, Rome is out of the question (or is it). That leaves the Spanish (under normal circumstances).

Build order
1087 Order Chapter House
1091 Chapter House Complete. Order Crusade.
1095 Deus Volt (Message from Pope saying to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem)
1095 Crusade Marker Complete. Launch Crusade. Move into Cordoba
1096 Move into Morocco
1097 Move into Algeria
1098 Move into Tunisa
1099 Move into Cyrenacia
1100 Move into Egypt
1101 Move into Sinai
1102 Arrive in Palestine

Unless you have an existing alternate route, you're forced to travel through Africa, but for the most part you may only have to fight once or twice.

On the other hand, if you're the italians you may just be able to pull it off just as fast if you can take Rome in 1088 and hope that the church doesn't get destroyed. You'd also likely need to figure out a way to get recomm'd otherwise you likely won't be able to launch a crusade once you've taken Rome and built all the buildings. Assuming you do get recomm'd (I suppose you can assassinate your king or send him off to fight a hopeless battle) it's likely that you could launch into Palestine early. You do start with 2 Galleys.

1087 Launch Attack into Rome. Build ships in Venice.
1088 Storm the castle if necessary. Take control of Rome (and hope the church survived).
1089 Build Chapter House
1090 First ship built. Ship chain extended to Mirtoon Sea.
1093 Chapter House Complete. Order Crusade. Second ship built. Ship chain extended to Sea of Crete.
1096 Third ship built. Ship Chain extended to Nile Coast.
1097 Deus Volt (Message from Pope saying to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem)
1097 Crusade Marker Complete. Launch Crusade. Move into Tuscany.
1098 Move into Venice
1099 Land by Sea into Palestine.

Interesting, the italians get there 3 years earlier.

The Spanish way is a long difficult struggle. You likely have to fight the Almohads and Egyptians at a couple points (Morocco for Almohads, Egypt for Spanish). The Italian way on the other hand is quick to arrive there, but you do have a few steps you have to make and succeed in those steps.

[lugh]

Nice!
Both methods, as you say, are fraught with risk. The small Spanish crusade probably won't be able to fight too many pitched battles and remain combat effective. And you'll face at least one since odds are the Almos will retreat as far as they can and then there is a final face-off with their entire African force.
The Italians might be a bit easier, but no doubt the damn Sicilians will do the wrong thing and declare war blocking the trade route!

I'll have to try both of 'em when I get MTW back. Should be soon.....

[sbroadbent]

Nice!
Both methods, as you say, are fraught with risk. The small Spanish crusade probably won't be able to fight too many pitched battles and remain combat effective. And you'll face at least one since odds are the Almos will retreat as far as they can and then there is a final face-off with their entire African force.
The Italians might be a bit easier, but no doubt the damn Sicilians will do the wrong thing and declare war blocking the trade route!

I'll have to try both of 'em when I get MTW back. Should be soon.....

I tried the Spanish method twice just to verify. What tends to happen is that the Almohads will retreat to their fortification. You don't lose any troops and from there you just move the Crusade to the next province. If a province doesn't have a fortification, the troops will simply flee to the next province. Sometimes the Almohads will stand their ground (it usually happens in Morocco of all places which is useful), but otherwise they'll either retreat to the garrison or to the next province. I was able to easily defeat them even auto-calcing it, so handling the battle personally should reduce the loses even greater. The problem will be the Egyptians. They can mass a force of 1600 or so, and when I auto calc'd both times I lost. A general who handles the battle personally should be able to do better.

Likely you will gain lots of offers of alliance.

With that said, I was able to create a spanish crusade numbering 1600+. From the start you train Jinettes in Leon (you can only produce peasants there otherwise), and javelins or archers in Castile (there are a few additional troops you can produce if you want others). By the time you launch the crusade, you should be able to produce a few heirs. I did include the king into crusade primarily for the additional units and the starting King has something like 7 Command. Sending the King off shouldn't be a concern as some heirs will come of age after the crusade has left. You'll therefore have a new king and can carry on. All initial units likewise got added to the crusade. You're able to produce about 8 Jinettes from Leon and 4 Javelins from Castile before you can send off the Crusade.

There might be a question then of what happens once your crusade has arrived and taken the province. You might be hit by a big expensive maintenance cost, but more than likely you will lose some forces, and the egyptians will attempt a series of attacks against Palestine, reducing your forces further or losing the province. Chances are you will not be able to get reinforcements there very quickly and Palestine is not worth keeping... maybe for the large farm income and if you have a high acumen govenor it can make upwards of 1000+ from farming. If you're playing GA, Palestine is one of the provinces they need to defend. Chances are in the years that it takes the crusade to get to Palestine, you can rebuild additional troops in your provinces. When you can launch a new crusade (this time to say Tripoli), you should have a decent sized force to send again.

In addition, for being such good Christians the Pope will start sending you cash rewards. I got something like 3x1000 florin rewards the first time I tried it, while only 1x1000 florin reward the second time.

I didn't bother trying the Italian option because I didn't want to have to deal with the pope. One method to ensure that nothing gets destroyed in Rome is when you invade Rome, if you can push the troops into the garrison, bring in a emmisary along with you, and if you have the cash (unlikely at the beginning) bribe the garrison. This will save your troops to use in the crusade and not to mention you get additional recruits for the crusade from the bribed armies (unless there is a loyal general in that army (or the pope moved in there), it'll likely be yours for a reasonable price. There is a unit of Spearman and Urban Militia in there though, so you may want to ensure you have enough troops.

The Sicilians shouldn't be a problem and unless they move one of their ships in the Ionian sea and immediately attack your ships or happen to invade Rome themselves after you take Rome you shouldn't have to worry about them since your chain of ships won't normally pass through Sicilian waters. Since you need to launch from Venice (Venice having your port) your other two links are the Adriactic Ocean and the Ionian Sea. I have seen the Sicilians preemptively attack my ships on the higher difficulty levels so it's possible (but unlikely) the Sicilians will interfere. If you can send an emissary or princess off to gain an alliance that should hopefully help things.

[EatYerGreens]

Good post - and good working out too!. (the mods can merge threads, so all of this can be tacked onto the end of lugh's thread).

Anything successfully bribed in Rome can be dropped into the crusade marker before it makes its first move, saving you the maintainance cost straight away. Instant Excom is still the biggest headache, when it comes to stealing Rome.

I checked again and Chapter House is a keep-level building but I forget which other factions start with one. Shouldn't the Tower of London be a keep on turn one? (The English would still need the church built first, though).

Historically, Chapter Houses were monastic-type constructions, out in the back of beyond, not in the heart of big towns. They probably got off the ground using money donated by pilgrims and other benefactors. Their land-holdings earned them rental income, which sustained them thereafter and were not a possession of any king. Personally, I'd mod them to be buildable without any pre-requisites, not even the church. The church trains agents, so the prerequisites for that should be kept as-is.

Even better would be modding the startpos to have a Chapter House ready built for each Catholic faction but remember to also change the prerequisites to nil, because all the see-saw European hostilities have a habit of smashing the infrastructure and stopping them ever being built and/or rebuilt.

[sbroadbent]

Good post - and good working out too!. (the mods can merge threads, so all of this can be tacked onto the end of lugh's thread).

Yeah, though I might just prefer to keep this here to give new members an opportunity to post to ask questions about crusades. Atleast I don't want it moved until after I become a regular member ~:cool:


I checked again and Chapter House is a keep-level building but I forget which other factions start with one. Shouldn't the Tower of London be a keep on turn one? (The English would still need the church built first, though).

Unfortunately Wessex starts out as Fort+Motte+Bailey, so it'd need to add 8 years before crusading.

The Chapter house is a Keep level building, but the only requirement for a chapter house is the church. That means everything else in the province can be destroyed except the church and you can still build it. Of course, you still need a Fort in order to even build the crusade marker.

The provinces that start out Keep level (or better) but don't have Churches are: Cordoba (Almohads), Sicily (Sicilians), and Venice (Italians). This would add 4 years to the building time. Building a keep requires 8 years, so for the purposes of this exercise all other provinces would send a crusade too late. The First crusade marched between 1096 and 1099, which is what is the task that is attempting to be accomplished.

Venice actually poses an interesting example where the Italians would reach Palestine regardless of whether they had first conquered Rome or not. The time savings is not having to attack and siege Rome, as well as move the Crusade for two years from Rome through Tuscany and then finally to Venice to be launched, in addition to building the church right away.

1087 Build Church in Venice. Build ships in Venice.
1090 First ship built. Ship chain extended to Mirtoon Sea.
1091 Build Chapter House.
1093 Second ship built. Ship chain extended to Sea of Crete.
1095 Chapter House Complete. Order Crusade.
1096 Third ship built. Ship Chain extended to Nile Coast.
1097 Deus Volt (Message from Pope saying to recapture the holy city of Jerusalem)
1099 Crusade Marker Complete. Launch Crusade. Land by Sea into Palestine.

Based on what you get in Sicily, the Sicilians can likewise reach Palestine at 1099 as well with the same build order above. The Sicilians on the other hand only require 4 ships (they start with two as well): Straits of Sicily, Malta Channel, Gulf of Sidra, and Nile Coast.


Historically, Chapter Houses were monastic-type constructions, out in the back of beyond, not in the heart of big towns. They probably got off the ground using money donated by pilgrims and other benefactors. Their land-holdings earned them rental income, which sustained them thereafter and were not a possession of any king. Personally, I'd mod them to be buildable without any pre-requisites, not even the church. The church trains agents, so the prerequisites for that should be kept as-is.

Even better would be modding the startpos to have a Chapter House ready built for each Catholic faction but remember to also change the prerequisites to nil, because all the see-saw European hostilities have a habit of smashing the infrastructure and stopping them ever being built and/or rebuilt.

Quite true, but it definately seems like CA needed to balance the historical accuracy with what would be playable. An early series of coordinated crusades between Spanish, Italians and Sicilians could devastate the Egyptians and Almohads (of course, this is unlikely to happen as the Spanish is the only faction the AI is likely to use to crusade very early on because they mostly have their specific war with the Almohads).