Will the military orders be included?

Will the military orders such as the Templars and Hospitallers be included in the game in otherways than just crusades like in MTW?

I would like to see them with the castles that they had as non-playable factions attacking muslim merchants etc.

like in Kingdom of Heaven.

kingdom of heaven sucked!!!!!!

but i hope they will be included...

Only in the mods that are sure to follow.

...I thought at least the Hospitallers would be in?

:no:

The vanilla game will only include the most essential factions, and that means nations. But it's not that bad. Mods make everything better.

Well there has been a dev mentioning they will try to cross the 30 faction mark. Mind you he said try.

In any case I doubt the military orders will be left out, but besides the Teutonic Order I think they will be abstract, in the sense they will be represented by units or something like that. After all they were private organizations and not (Teutonics excluded) true factions until the timeperiod was nearly over.

I don`t believe that this factions are playable. It would surprising me if they did this. Let`s see, perhabs on some screenshits we will see some units