Bridge to Venice solution?

So in my AAR I'm at the point where I need to give away Venice, but the bridge is held by a German crusading army. When I give the city away, the army I have inside becomes broken because they have no way out of the city. They show up as stuck on top of the city sometimes, but they're unselectable. They still drain me for upkeep, of course.

I can't go back far enough in save games to try to block the Germans, who are my allies when they move onto the bridge, but become neutral 2-3 turns thereafter. I can't attack them because they're on crusade, it would be diplomatic suicide and unjustifiable within the bounds of the AAR. I've sped ahead a number of turns, but none of the AI will complete the crusade and it takes so long to fail that it's far better to dismiss those men than wait on them. As if that isn't enough, my AAR rules won't permit me to perform the crusade myself.

Is there any way out other than disbanding those troops (I just spent the last 15 turns or so retraining troops there) and letting the agents age out?

My first real breaker of a bug. Obviously very rare, and normally not a big deal, but quite annoying in this context. :furious3:

Can you send a ship there and have them board the ship?

I believe you can send a ship to the tile just north of the bridge, which allows you to board the ship even through enemy zone of control. You are allowed to move one space through zone of control, which would be onto the ship.

he cannot even select the stack, meaning there is nothing he can do but to prevent it from happening. I honestly never had this happend.

assasinate the crusader's general, they will disband.

Why do you have to give up Venice?
"Doctor, it hurts when I do this"
"Then don't that"

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention, no ships either. Them's the rules (So, in other words, I did it to myself). I haven't had the opportunity to train any assassins, though I did have my princess marry the general leading the stack two turns ago. The AI auto-spawned a replacement general, and I have to justify that in the AAR too. :wall:

I also have to give Venice away because of the rules I set up, so I'm thinking I'll be stuck disbanding those troops. They're pretty far behind my main migration line now anyway, but it's absurd that I spent all those florins retraining them with Venice's sweet armourer only to flush them down the drain because the Germans can't conduct a proper crusade. I'll just have to write it into the AAR somehow, it can't make things much more unbelievable than the rules I've put out already.

Thanks for the ideas. :)

Can u please post a screenshot???
And why cant u disband them like in usual??? just click on the unit u want to disband and press the disband button...

As Devils Advocate,

You could recruite a ship to remove your troops and immediatly disband the ship after unloading the troops. You could comment on it as "Hired local ferry service" or something.

Forgive my ignorance... but why can't you use ships for just this instance? In reality, a crusading army wouldn't just sit there and block a bridge. So if you are doing an AAR, why not simply hire a mercenary ship and drop them off outside venice, and then disband the mercenary ship, and pretend it didn't happen, and comment on it as "paid bridge toll"?

Just out of curiousity, can you please answer the following.

Why did you give up Venice? If it rebelled that would be different but to just "GIVE UP" a territory like that seems kinda odd.

Do you have a General in the stack, make him join the crusade and watch as you lose the troops in the stack or at least get a few turns of free upkeep.

The Germans are on a crusade, why aren't they moving at all. Are they blocked as well?

Could you retake Venice?

To select it use the lists scroll or click on another army and use the arrow keys for next army, if theres a named character in the army you can buy a merc ship to move it out.

Screenshots:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Before the surrender:

http://lh3.google.com/RosDalton/Rqu_.../s800/0098.jpg

After:

http://lh3.google.com/RosDalton/Rqu_.../s800/0099.jpg

The AAR thread is here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=88090

And the save game, if anyone is interested, is here:

http://www.filecram.com/viewfile/5214075.htm

(Use the princess near Constantinople to gift Venice to the Byzantines, then experience the bug. Sometimes the army will show up on top of Venice, but trying to select them by clicking just shows the Byz garrison there.)

I probably could've justified the ferry thing, but all my generals are at the front, and this is the far back end of everything. I assumed the army would pop out somewhere to the south or north, but evidently they actually have to have a path. In further news, using the arrows to select the army I can then attempt to use them to attack Venice again, at which point they, the spy, and the priest all fall over dead with no battle.

As far as why I have to give up Venice, I'm doing an 'over-land' migration. Since I have to have provinces to be in the game, I've taken provinces in an arcing line from Arhus to Bordeaux to Thessalonica now, on the road to Jerusalem. I can disband these troops before giving the city away, but it's rather annoying that I have to do so, and they represent a good chunk of florins invested. Rules also disallow me joining a crusade, since crusades are one of the most powerful player favoring aspects of the game. As to why the Germans won't move, I have no idea. There are 2 or 3 AI crusade stacks wandering around, despite the fact that the crusade is for Tunis. I've skipped about 10 turns ahead, and no one even gets close to the crusade target.

Thanks again for the suggestions. :balloon2:

This may sound a bit stupid, but you could try clicking on the crusade army, then using the 'move character this [location,location]' cheat to get it off the bridge, replacing it once your army was out of the way?

Ooh, a cheat, hadn't thought of that. Does it mess up your save game though? I went ahead and disbanded the army and played on, no turning back now, but I've still got the save game so I could test it out. Have too look up the command tomorrow.

Good idea. :)

It shouldn't mess anything up if done correctly ~:)

Well maybe u could wait the crusade over or join the crusade with another stack and finish the curasde so that the germans will leave the bridge.
(or u could just use sapi's cheat)

The reposition cheat works fine for this, FYI. I never considered 'cheating,' even when it's to get around a bug, because I'm a prancing boy scout or something. :clown:

:idea2: I assume "AAR" has something to do with presenting the story of your game in The Citadel?? Where does AAR exactly stand for?:embarassed:

AAR = After Action Report