holly land - holly money hole

I've a playing several campaigns as HRE and Spain.

In every game the pope calls a crusade to the holy land. I always try to be a good Cristian king and conquer the target. However, the cost of keeping a strong enough force in the region bankrupts me withing 50 - 100 years.

I could easily over run my neighbors and conquer the whole middle east but that no my style. My style of playings is to slowly build up and play with house rules (like only 1 conquest per 10 turns).

has anyone with my style of play find any benefit of conquering the holy land. or was able to avoid bankruptcy.

I find there is very little to do in turns.

What do you do in the 10 turns you don't make conquests? lol

I've been trying a few games with a similar play style and I've found one surefire way to keep my new acquired holylands in relative safety. You'll find initially that, naturally, the previous owner (In my case always the Egytians) simply dont like you that much, in fact they seem to act as if they'd prefer you'd never been born, which is simply quite rude.

In order to convince them to be more neighborly, I'll send out a well rounded half stack compromised of my very best Infantry and archers (2-3 of each), at least two units of turkopoles, and at least one or two units of my best heavy cavalry. I then place them within my enemies territory in the best defensive location possible. I then allow my enemies to send wave after wave of hapless idiots to assault my pretend invaders. Each time you should be able to win against far greater numbers, or at least give them such a bloody battle that even if they win they wish they'd stayed home that day. Keep repeating this and eventually your new neighbors will decide its a much better idea just to make friends, or at the very least not to try and kill you anymore, or, well, at least not as often.

Spelled 'Holy' Land. ;)

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Originally Posted by Chuffy

Spelled 'Holy' Land. ;)

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good point.

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Originally Posted by Maizel

What do you do in the 10 turns you don't make conquests? lol

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merchant wars, assassinations, spying, building up my cities.

Darius

Don't know if you got this far. but after the Mongols attack, they push on the turks, who push on me.
So by this time i find my self fighting the Turks in the north, the Egyptians in the south, and the Mongols in the west. So i need 3 full stack armies. Which cost me twice as much as i make from all the cities the holy land.
Do you have a strategy for dealing with this? The only one i could think of is retreat.:embarassed:

Personally I Crusade to Jerusalem via Antioch and Acre. In my experience if you go on an early Crusade (and a Crusade to Jerusalem has been called early in the campeign every time) then the Egyptians have no expanded far.
Use your 3 full stacks and take the Saini, Cairo and Alexandria :egypt: . This means you can leave your Southern flank weak and concentarte 2 stacks on the Turkish frontier.
However when the Mongols come along if they turn South your boned:skull:

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Originally Posted by Mahrabals apprentice

Personally I Crusade to Jerusalem via Antioch and Acre. In my experience if you go on an early Crusade (and a Crusade to Jerusalem has been called early in the campeign every time) then the Egyptians have no expanded far.
Use your 3 full stacks and take the Saini, Cairo and Alexandria :egypt: . This means you can leave your Southern flank weak and concentarte 2 stacks on the Turkish frontier.
However when the Mongols come along if they turn South your boned:skull:

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My first 50 turn campaign had an early Jerusalem crusade. My second campaign, turn 100, has not had a Jerusalem crusade yet and probably won't as the game is getting late.

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Originally Posted by Mahrabals apprentice

Personally I Crusade to Jerusalem via Antioch and Acre. In my experience if you go on an early Crusade (and a Crusade to Jerusalem has been called early in the campeign every time) then the Egyptians have no expanded far.
Use your 3 full stacks and take the Saini, Cairo and Alexandria :egypt: . This means you can leave your Southern flank weak and concentarte 2 stacks on the Turkish frontier.
However when the Mongols come along if they turn South your boned:skull:

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Nah. Just keep a strong garison in Arce and Jerusalem. I currently have Acre as Citadel with Cannon Towers and Jersalem upgraded to the heaviest city walls with balista towers. I keep a pretty strong garrison in each. I dare the Mongols to come at me. :whip:

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Originally Posted by Ice

Nah. Just keep a strong garison in Arce and Jerusalem. I currently have Acre as Citadel with Cannon Towers and Jersalem upgraded to the heaviest city walls with balista towers. I keep a pretty strong garrison in each. I dare the Mongols to come at me. :whip:

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playing as Spain. I'm considering rebuilding all the cities to castles. Jerusalem in particular is hard to keep under control.
Do you think it better to keep Jerusalem, and other cities in the holy land as cities or change them to castles?

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Originally Posted by USMCNJ

playing as Spain. I'm considering rebuilding all the cities to castles. Jerusalem in particular is hard to keep under control.
Do you think it better to keep Jerusalem, and other cities in the holy land as cities or change them to castles?

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Keep Jerusalem a city. One of the problems with keeping order is the religion. Make sure you continue to upgrade your churches and build priest. Also, a strong garrison is needed inside the city.

Make sure Acre and the place below are both castles.

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Originally Posted by Chuffy

Spelled 'Holy' Land. ;)

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I agree. But if even if I didn't, it would still be spelled "Holy" Land.

"Caesar non supra grammaticos."
"Caesar is not above grammarians."
-Cassius Dio

I have been playing the game with the timeframe set to 0.50 (each turn is 6 months instead of 2 years, characters age correctly, like Rome). One of the benefits of this, other than the fact that the game is longer, is that when your crusader army gets stranded somewhere, there is still plenty of time to get rid of them and build your economy back up.

I am playing as England in my first campain. After 113 turns, the year is 1137I have been on 3 crusades to the Holy Land and only reached my target once before the end of a crusade. Both times that I failed to reach, I was at sea.

The first time (1094-1099) I was able to get to Rhodes and conquer it before disbanding a large portion of the crusader army (by this time, I was over 20000 florins on the negative side, ouch). I kept just enough of the army to garrison the city it few years (to get the tax income) until the people got antsy and then tore down the buildings and game Rhodes to the Pope as a gift (which greatly raised my Papal standing) before bringing my general back home. Inidentally, he died of old age right before we got him home, bummer.

The second time(1108-1111), pretty much the same thing happened, but I didn't bother to conquer anyone else. And just dodged the French to get my family member back home. It didn't take as long this time, but I still managed to get my economy into serious trouble (@-16000).

Both times, I was able to pull myself out of it and I now control the 4 lower English provinces. Scotland has all of its stuff (I plundered Edinburgh way back when and it set them back a lot) + they have Ireland.

I also have a lot of land in France, but just acquired it recently through peace treaties after the Pope made us stop fighting. The French are in no danger of being eliminated. Again, it is 1137 (113 turns)and the balance of power seems to be even, the Germans are weak, but Fr and England are neck and neck. In fact, the most powerful forces seem to be the Muslim factions. Only 2 factions have been eliminated (Portugal and Milan).

I like it set at this timescale because I think the pace of the game doesn't make me feel rushed. It doesn't effect gunpowder units, I think I am still 100 years or so away from that, as I am just getting Feudal Kinghts and lots of upgraded infantry now (I think the gunpowder trigger is based on a year rather than a turn). I like the way people age. I think the economy might also be based on years rather than turns, so that you have less money than you would during each turn to balance it out.

Anyway that's little rant.

I found a good thing to do with those stranded Crusaders once they've finished their job. I sack the city, destroy every building and set taxes for very high then abandon it. A pretty big stack of Rebels will take over when it revolts, and I move onto a new city and repeat the process. Egypt still hasn't fully recovered.

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Originally Posted by Ice

Keep Jerusalem a city. One of the problems with keeping order is the religion. Make sure you continue to upgrade your churches and build priest. Also, a strong garrison is needed inside the city.

Make sure Acre and the place below are both castles.

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Make sure you EXTERMINATE every muslim city to keep it under control, and spam priests into the area.

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Originally Posted by Mahrabals apprentice

Make sure you EXTERMINATE every muslim city to keep it under control, and spam priests into the area.

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i do that. However, they turn heretic every other turn. On the plus side, those that don't turn heretic turn into cardinals (or what ever rank are the priest who help to elect the pope) so i always have my pope in power.

Any reason why my priest (only in the holy land) keep on turning away from Christ? Da Vinci code?

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Originally Posted by Mahrabals apprentice

Make sure you EXTERMINATE every muslim city to keep it under control, and spam priests into the area.

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On my H/VH game as England I control pretty much all of most the Holy Lands and find that the large populations is really not that big a bother... Squalor is just not the problem it was in RTW and Antioch as a huge city with a population of 40K+ can be controled with a max garrison a spy and a priest... And it makes a ton of cash, especially if you put a halfway decent governor in there...

I found that after taking Jerusalem things calmed down and the Egyptians agreed to peace... But after completing the second crusade to Antioch (and taking the lnads in between) they never got over that... And the Jihad against Jerusalem brought the Moors and the Turks into the mix as well...

Maybe it is the Hard campaign choice, but it is nothing but trouble everywhere... The Holy Lands is constant war, border skirmishes and sudden attacks. I pretty much destroyed the Egyptian's armies but then the Turks started giving me problems. I pushed into Turkish lands and then gifted them to the Byz in a hope to improve relations and use them as a buffer as they where fighting the Turks as well. But I failed to notice the Byz where allied to the Egyptians and as soon as they shared a land border with me they declared war and attacked!

Nothing but trouble the middle east but any priest you have there is almost guaranteed to become a Cardinal and thus give you control over the choice of Pope in the future which is nice...

And the cities of Jerusalem and Antioch are real money spinners...

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Originally Posted by Mahrabals apprentice

Make sure you EXTERMINATE every muslim city to keep it under control, and spam priests into the area.

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I didnt exterminate any of them, and all the cities are well under control.

it is usualy not too hard to totall eliminate the egyptian faction when you go with your crusader armies. try and do this as quickly as possible and you will be in a much stronger position.