Crusades in XL mod

[MJF]

gday folks

was wondering, what sort of knights are available to the the factions that didn't use to have them in normal VI (e.g. poles, danes, hungarians). just started a new campaign as Hungary and every time i crusade all i get is about 12 units of fanatics. not even some order spears :(

cheers

[caravel]

I'm not familair with XL nor the units available to factions that previously weren't able to crusade, but a crusade full of the worst types of units and nothing much else was also quite common in vanilla MTW. The better types of units have a certain chance of appearing. This is lower than units such as Order Foot Soldiers or Fanatics.

[Norkus]

Doesn't the piety of your monarch influence this?

[MJF]

im not sure. but this monarch had about 8 piety so i dont think thats a problem.

is there any pattern to what units you get. i know that as french, launching a crusade from palestine cf Ile de France granted many Templar units.

similarly, launching several crusades in quick succession, the latter ones seem to have worse units (as though all the knights have buggered off in the first ones and theres only scum left).

[macsen rufus]

I'm not sure exactly which factions get which knights, but I guess they should be pretty obvious ones: there are Templars (French, English), Hospitallers (Malta/Knights), Teutonic (German, Teutonic Order) and Santiago (Spanish, maybe Aragonese and Portuguese too, but don't quote me). The Crusader States can TRAIN them all, including the Foot Knights (ie not just in Crusades).

Generally, the Crusades improve in numbers and quality as the piety of the starting PROVINCE improves. I don't think the King's stats affect Crusades too much. Also after testing I've found that the mix of a Crusade varies from year to year, and the target province doesn't influence it. To test this, quick save your game, launch a crusade to one province, check the units. Then reload and launch to a different province - exactly the same units. But wait a year then launch to the same province - different units. So, I'd suggest save your game, suck it and see and reload/wait a year until you get a good vintage ~D

[Sensei Warrior]

All that saving and reloading to get good Crusading Units makes my head hurt, so I've opted for a slightly different strategy. I spam Crusade after Crusade, after Crusade. I hardly fight a Catho Faction without a Crusade. In each of these Crusades I send my own armies to fight as well. I'll actually fight every single battle. The trick is I won't use any of the 'cool' Crusade units I've gotten. After the Crusade is won I ship them back to a holding Provence. Pretty soon I have tons of Knights, and Order Spear and the what not.

This is where the real fun starts. When I want an uber Crusade, like to put down the nasty Mongol heathens, I dip into the stash. I cannot descibe how visually impressive it is to field a full 15 units of Templar Knights, Order Spears, Longbowmen, and a dash of CMAA. The effect is quite engaging, especially when lead by the Heir apparant.

What do I do with the trash units of fanatics? I use them exactly as intended, shocktroops, where they valiantly die defending the Catho faith right down to the last man. The few that live get combined with other survivors, and I get a good laugh towards the end of a game as my pathetic fanatics have been whittled down to a couple of units of uber-valoured, high powered, nastiness that chew through lots of things before they ultimately die as well. Course I have the tendancy to do this with Clansmen, Celtic Warriors, Swabian Swordsmen, and lots of other units that no one cares about.