Crusadeing We Will Go

[UglyStrike]

I join a crusade and have my merry English Crusader army headed East. I am currently at peace with France and am passing thru their lands when "Blam" 3 French armies try to mug my poor boys. I win but my army is a shadow of what it once was.

NOw here is the weird part. I am now at war with France, The Pope is telling me to leave the poor French alone, and nothing negative happened to the French. Where is the justice here?

[Patricius]

The Crusader armies will usually get enough low cost Crusader merc recruits to make up for battles losses. I always prefer taking a naval route. It is perfectly historical too. I suppose that the Pope in that instance is French or the French are in high favour with him, as might be seen under the Pope tab. The Pope can be a very biased arbitrator at times.

[Wizzie]

Funny, I thought a faction got immediatly ex-commed if they attacked a crusader stack.

[Forward Observer]

The Crusader armies will usually get enough low cost Crusader merc recruits to make up for battles losses. I always prefer taking a naval route. It is perfectly historical too. I suppose that the Pope in that instance is French or the French are in high favour with him, as might be seen under the Pope tab. The Pope can be a very biased arbitrator at times.

There is a small problem that I have encountered in using a boat to transport crusading armies to the Holy Land. Regardless of being able to hire cheap crusader troops after one gets there, one must still start with at least 8 units to join in the first place, and these units must stay attached or they will simply disband.

If my army left from any point already in the Med or south of the western most part of the Iberian peninsula everything has gone fine since my fleet was always heading in an easterly direction.

However if they depart from any where north of the western tip of Spain in the Atlantic, the Channel, or the North Sea, they must first travel west for at least a turn or more. Every time I have tried this, all of the units I started with have deserted because my boat was forced to travel in a direction opposite of the Holy Land and of course I got the message pop up that hinted that my commander might just be a bit of a coward.

Oddly, I also have to assume that all of these deserting troops committed suicide by drowning, since my fleet was always at sea when this happened.

Personally, I think this is a bug or more correctly a minor programing oversight on the part of the developers.

[baron_Leo]

It is very strange. In my games attacking a crusading army ALWAYS resulted in excommunication, no matter how good the relations with the pope were...

[katank]

Same here, it's automatic excomm. Are you sure your units were actually on crusade? ie. have the little red cross with white flag above the stack?

[sapi]

Sounds like they weren't actually on crusade (or that you got that funny thing where one or two units that joined the stack late haven't got the crusader property yet - that might let the ai attack the whole stack)

[supadodo]

Maybe you don't have military access with the French. Even if you have an alliance, if you move an army through their lands without permission, your relations will plummet and they will retaliate. If you really don't have access, then of course you will be seen as the aggressor and the Pope has the right to Xcomm you.

[sapi]

supadodo, that doesn't apply if you're on crusade

[supadodo]

Oh. Well I'm always at war with everyone anyway whenever I go crusading or jihading.

[Scotsmanforlife]

Easy fix for not losing troops while on a crusade. Start moving the stack you plan on using towards the objective, just don't actually join the crusade until the last turn they give you. That way you should be close enough to the objective and hopefully won't lose any troops due to desertion. :end:

[sapi]

^^ But you can't move through catholic faction's lands without a transgression

[Scotsmanforlife]

My post wasn't aiming towards what happens by trangression. Simply how not to lose troops that might be lost through desertion. :rifle:

[sapi]

I never really get desertion, unless i make the mistake of sieging a town on the way.

The only time i've lost a lot of troops was when the only general in the army got killed :(

[Kien]

supadodo, that doesn't apply if you're on crusade

I'm new to the game but I had something similar happen to me last night. My crusader army moved through North African territory controlled by another Catholic faction (Milan I think). Milan declared war on me as my army moved through the area. The conclusion I came to was Milan declared war because I didn't negotiate military access to their territory.

[nameless]

I thought that catholic nations weren't allowed to attack crusading armies? I remember one time I was trying to move an army and moved my mouse over a french army and it said, "cannot attack other catholic nations" or something like that.

[katank]

You can't attack another Catholic faction using a crusading army. Attacking an orthodox faction with a crusading army drops Papal relations.

You can attack a crusading army at the risk of instant excommunication. OP reports his crusader army was attacked by the French but he gets threatened with excomm while the French weren't excommed like they were supposed to. Hence, either he's not crusading properly or we have a bug.