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I was surprised again in my current English expert campaign (now up around 1300). I sent a crusade to near Khazar, a BYZ stronghold with a current Spanish crusade that had almost semi-collasped. I landed with some 970 men, and the next turn my crusade was attacked by the BYZ and the Spanish (previously my allies:dizzy2: )! Neither of them attacked each other, instead electing to attack me, yet I was given a choice of a crusade aganist the BYZ by the pope!.
Any one seen this happen before?
I think what happened was that while you were besieging the province, you hadn't actually taken it. The Spanish has to take the province or suffer the loss of influence to their king, therefore they attacked you. It's never happened to me though.
Hmm, but it seemed unusual that the BYZ and the Spanish would work together (they're not alllies) and not try to engage each other. Originally, I thought I was in an ideal setup as the BYZ and the Spanish were much closer to each other and I thought they would engage at the begining of the battle, and then I could come and pick on the survivor (or both if they were both weakened). Instead, they worked tag team and both attacked me, almost simultaneously, the BYZ with infantry and missile types, the Spanish with lancers and other cav. Not a pleasant ending:furious3: .
Though, the only thing I can think of was, maybe the Spanish planned to crusade to another province (where the horde was), and the BYZ were letting them through, but no warning came up that I was attacking a crusader army.
Had the spanish formed an unlikely alliance before you attacked? Just the other day, I saw something similar. I saw 2 factions launch crusades against the Golden Horde (or Egyptians, I forget), which seemed to fail. The 2 crusader armies were seemingly stuck and unable to take their target. I had a medium sized force nearby so thought I'd attack whilst the 2 crusader armies were still in 'hostile' territory, thus setting up a 4 way free for all - 2 opposing crusader forces, the current owner of the territory (who was victim to the crusade itself) and myself. So imagine my surprise when all 3 of the other armies lined up against my far inferior and much smaller force. I fled the battle and saw that within the last turn or two, the 2 crusading factions formed alliances with one another and the faction who's territory they'd been invading. I'd never seen anything like it. I was looking forward to a bit of a crazy melee.
Ah - found a screenie: https://img178.imageshack.us/img178/...inksit4.th.jpg
I find AI crusade armies annoying at times. More so when you attempt to help a doomed crusade that has been withering away for years by taking the region for them, only for them to pluck up the courage to come along (all 3 of them), thus forcing you to flee before the battle or become excommunicated. So much for allies and Christian unity.
I think Crusades are hardcoded to automatically attack any army that tries to interfere with them, no matter how well-inentioned their would-be saviors are. (I'm obviously excluding cases where you're allied with the Crusading faction.)
Of course, I can't say with certainty that that's the case since I'm no programmer, but it's consistent with my experiences thus far. Unless you're allied to the Crusading faction, it appears the Crusade will automatically attack you if you try to help it out. (Yeah it kind of sucks, but what can you do? :shrug: )
Incidentally, the same principle seems to apply to Jihads as well. In one of my Egyptian games, I tried to help the Turks out in Rum (which they were trying to take back from the Byz via Jihad), only to have both them and the Byz gang up on me. I was forced to retreat, as I'd dispatched only a relatively modest army of ~800 men. ~:rolleyes: