Need advice on running successful English crusade

[econ21]

I'm trying an early game on normal as England with glorious achievements. I am supposed to do a fair number of crusades and would welcome some advice. I've read that crusades suffer from attrition and tend to pick up mainly peasants and low grade volunteers. I figure attrition will be a big problem for England, as it is far from the Holy Land. I've read that the best thing is to add your own army to the crusade. How many troops should I add? I am reluctant to put a lot in if they will just fritter away in attrition.
Can crusades get more than 16 units? I like the idea of piking up some French or HRE volunteers along the way so would like to leave a little room for them if I can't exceed 16 units.
Can anyone tell me how they have done a successful crusade?
I've heard that it can be good to send them by sea and add your own army at the end (to avoid attrition) but half the fun would seem to be depleting your neighbours forces and that requires land movement.
thanks for any advice!

[MonkeyMan]

I suppose the first thing with a successful crusade is not to be too ambitious, i.e. trying to fight your way all the way to jerusalem getting in 10 fights on the way. They can amount to as many units as will fit although only 16 can fight at one time as per usual. I tend to start one, two or thre provinces in to muslim territory, and supply it with a hard core of good troops that i supply, and a good general that you can spare (an heir is usually ok). then i just let it go and hope for the best, not lingering for too long in one province unless it's early on and you can suck up a load of troops. All in all crusades are great and can make you a lot of money and even troops if you do them right. Never had one go over sea myself.

[Magraev]

If you want to send a crusade to jerusalem I'd suggest sending it by sea - you'll never make it on foot from Wessex.

You could send a crusade on foot, and try to disrupt HRE/Hungarys garrison as much as possible. You might be forced into a war with a friendly faction (especially the byz seem uninclined to let crusades through).

[ltj]

i sent a crusade from wessex to antioch. it got past constantinople and ran into egyptian forces. it did alright, but since it was composed of three good units (two order foot, a chiv knight) and the rest were TERRIBLE, i only managed to siege the castle in antioch.

i lost a really good general, too, as he did in combat :[

so don't put a good leader in if you dont think you can win...or something...

it was a pussy crusade, so maybe you'll have better luck. 100% zeal where it started, too. hrm.

[Galestrum]

yeah, crusades are a huge waste of money and time IMO. The pathing of crusades should help marginally when it is patched, but im not so sure its gonna be a huge help.

as england (or any faction) i find the best way to have a successful crusade is too:

(a) have a fleet in the med to allow a quicker deployment
(b) build a large army of elite units and place them in the crusade
(c) send the crusade to the closest objective province in the holyland with the weakest castle, which you can use as a foothold for future crusading operations

but as i said, crusades launched from any faction other than the italians early on (on expert) are pretty much doomed for failure, and are a waste of time and resources

crusades have been one of the big disappointments in this game for me, in an otherwise good game

[macdaddyo]

According to the strategy guide, you send inquisitors out along the path yoru crusade will take to pump up the zeal of your opponnents provinces. This allows your crusade to remain together and grow at the expense of your opponents.

Of course, once you hit infidel territory, you will begin bleeding, so you sould make sure you arent tooo ambitious with your destination.

[Durendal]

I've had success with crusades mainly because I make them big. Really big. I hade a 5000 man crusade from England to palestine and nobody even tried to fight it.