Abandoning Crusades

What are the consequences for abandoning a crusade, especially for family members?

Hypothetically *cough* speaking if you'd thought you were being clever joining a crusade on the last possible turn, having checked the venetians were about to take said city anyway, for all the bonuses and then..they didn't. And now there's a 20 unit Egyptian army in it. And you're in Brittany. And they're in Antioch. And you have no navy capable of fighting past pirates.

So will..er would... everybody desert/gain bad traits/get excommunicated, ESPECIALLY Family Members if I...I mean they...abandon the cause? Relations with the Pope are presently outstanding thanks to 200fl/turn and alliance.

All hypothetically speaking. Of course.

This may be off-topic.

But I was playing as Egypt and 3 factions (Hungary, Spain and Milan) launched crusades against me.

My spy at Constantinople sighted all 3 stacks crossing into Asia Minor. Strangely, my armies only encountered Spain and Hungary. Milan's crusade stack went walkabout and when my spy at Constantinople sighted the Milan stack again, it had dissolved into the general only.

I have no idea what happened.

Did the Milan crusade get defeated by my Turkish allies?

Or did Milan get ex-comm and did this directly result in the failure of their crusade.

Im sure you'd-er they- take some piety hits but his holiness the Bishop of Rome is very fond of florins so your faction rating can always be maintained. Or Their faction rating of course in this case

You have 2 turns from the time you join the crusade for it to be victorious or your units disband.
Generals do not disband, only units do and not all of them but all over time

So If Milan are excommed I could just destroy them and soak the desertions and I don't have to worry about losing generals?

*cough* I mean they...

If your family members deserte the crusdae, no bad stuff happens, but if they stay in the Crusade stack, once you press end turn, any unit in that stack will become a crusade unit. Ships/units/generals will all turn to crusading. But if your genereal leave the crusade nothing bad happens. Nice way to take over some islands there, take an extra general, hire merc, island = yours.

Is there any way to make units leave a crusade?

Also, is there any bonus to getting Pilgrims to the Holy Land? They seem to be utterly useless in all other regards, except maybe for making siege equipment...

No, you cant get units (dismounted Knights etc) to leave a crusade.

I can only recruit pilgrims in the holy land, Religious Fanatics are better stat wise (and since the only difference is stats) they look the same, maybe you got confused?

My pet hate about crusades is at any time, you can get Dismounted Crusaders.

I hate that.

According to the manual, you are allowed to split crusade stacks to leave behind a garrison. But you get the talk of desertion message doing that currently so I'm not sure if you really want to try that. I usually don't have people deserting ebcause I go close to the target before even requesting the crusade. Gives the AI less time to hire crusader mercs and you less trouble.

Pilgrims do nothing from what I've been told when I asked the same question way back.
They are better than fanatics due to the 2H bug though.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

You have 2 turns from the time you join the crusade for it to be victorious or your units disband.
Generals do not disband, only units do and not all of them but all over time

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Eek, 2 turns? How are you supposed to get a crusade from Europe to the Holy Lands even mostly intact at this rate? Or do you march the army all the way there, join the crusade, buff up with mercs and immediately attack?

I meant for units you let join the crusade in your home land for pure XP and florin gain and not moving of course ;)

there are no "bad crusader" traits or anything like that. if your general has any of the "crusader history" traits then the chances are he will lose them when he abandones the crusade but nothing else will happen to him.
nor will you get excommunicated.
any soldiers hired as crusaders will eventually desert if they're not moving towards the target.

And if you move away, they will threaten (with a nifty pop up) that if you dont get your arse moving, they will all desert.

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Originally Posted by pevergreen

No, you cant get units (dismounted Knights etc) to leave a crusade.

I can only recruit pilgrims in the holy land, Religious Fanatics are better stat wise (and since the only difference is stats) they look the same, maybe you got confused?

My pet hate about crusades is at any time, you can get Dismounted Crusaders.

I hate that.

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No I recruited some Pilgrims in the middle of Spain.

Dismounted Crusaders? How do I get those?

I find the Dismounted Crusader Knights nearly 90% of the time only in the holy land or on the Island of Cypress and usually only 2 units (vh/vh). "Unique" Crusader mercs are generally region specific, e.g. the Great Cross is found in Italy.

What happens when you leave a crusade is that you lose 3 points of CrusaderHistory trait (the crusader, grand crusader etc.) You also lose 2 points if you are in the crusade REGION and withdraw from battle, no matter the odds (8000 egyptians vs your 600 troops = deduct 2 crusading points, heathen).

Does not affect piety in any way except if you already had a crusader trait (giving 1-3 points of piety) and you lose levels.

The thresholds are 3, 6 and 9 points for crusader, great and grand.

If you have 0 points or less in Crusading, you get 2 points for joining. You get 2 points more for arriving in the region. You get 2 more points for assaulting the target, and another 3 if you conquer it.

The interesting thing is that you get points in StrategyChivalry ("fair in rule", "noble in rule" etc) everytime you JOIN. But these points do NOT get deducted when you leave. So you can have all of your leaders join, leave and rejoin a crusade to max out the trait and be "Saintly ruler", giving you +5 chivalry and +3 authority. Requires 16 points, so join and rejoin 16 times.

Sons of fathers who have 4 or 7 in chivalry get 1 and 1 point of chivalry legacy automatically, giving them +1 and +2 chivalry at birth. (same with dread)

It should be noted here that the assault and conquer points for crusader history are only gained for the general leading the assault (commanding officer)
So if you have multiple armies with different generals attacking, only one will get the assault and conquer points.
Exception is having multiple generals in 1 army. Those all get the conquer points but only the leading general gets the assault points.

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Originally Posted by diablodelmar

Also, is there any bonus to getting Pilgrims to the Holy Land? They seem to be utterly useless in all other regards, except maybe for making siege equipment...

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My Pilgrims turned into Fanatics after I conquered Jerusalem. That didn't help them, unfortunately.

THe pilgrims and fanatics serve good for garrisons since if u r crusading in the holy land, it will be far away from your captial and there will be a religion penalty. Just throw ten units of pilgrims in their and happiness is just fine

I have a crusade going from Nottingham to Jerusalem. I put my guys on ships to lessen the threat of desertion and no good. I am now just off the coast of Portugal and down to three stacks. How do you desert in the Atlantic? If I'm on land and it happens because the Pope decides he doesn't like me but even then it shouldn't happen until I set foot on solid ground.

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Originally Posted by irishron2004

I have a crusade going from Nottingham to Jerusalem. I put my guys on ships to lessen the threat of desertion and no good. I am now just off the coast of Portugal and down to three stacks. How do you desert in the Atlantic? If I'm on land and it happens because the Pope decides he doesn't like me but even then it shouldn't happen until I set foot on solid ground.

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Why you swim, of course!

Seriously though, desertion happens primarily when you travel in any direction that isn't right at your target, or else if you fail to make sufficient progress toward your destination. If you intend to take a crusading stack for a ride with your navy, make sure you don't have to go away from the crusade target ever - if you do, desertion is guaranteed. I recommend taking the army by land in that case, and picking it up at some point where you have a straight shot by sea. Also I recommend taking a big enough armada that you can fight your way through if need be - there can sometimes be a lot of AI ships in the way, and if you can't wail on them you can suffer a lot of desertion waiting for them to move on so you can get through. Often you want to avoid those unnecessary wars though, in which case you are probably best advised to again beach the crusade and send them a-marching until sea travel is again a viable (read: unimpeded) option.

you know i never abondon crusdes so this isnt my problem with the whole crusade thing...my problem is the total lack in variety of units for the crusade, once again!

Lack of CRUSADING units?

Why, they have it all! Heavy spearmen, heavy cavalry and both light and heavy infantry as well as a cross! That's a good and broad selection of troops, not a bad one. You can do fine without having some of your own faction units. Only three types away from perfect - missiles, light cav and horse archers. And you can get all of those units when you're going through the balkans and turkey!

Lack of jihad units on the other hand... Two different types of light infantry...Not very good at all...

All I ever get as the English, playing M/M are religious fanatics, pilgrims and occasionally some spearmen. I don't know how people are getting all these swell crusading units, because I just pick up rabble and rubbish.:furious3:

Crusader Seargents show up in northen HRE/Denmark, So do Crusader Knights. Unhorrsed Knights turn up east of Constantinople, and the Great Cross rears it's head in Italy.

See the descr_mercenaries.txt file in the campaign map. There you have a list of where you can get the different crusader units.

A good crusade route to build an army for england, is starting out around belgium, then heading south through germany to the alps, into italy and getting ships to greece, moving across greece on land, buying ships to get to western turkey, and then just moving towards the target. A quick route giving you a good army as well.

If you start a crusade in the Holy lands, you get a bit of everything with crusader seargents, pilgrims, fanatics, unhorsed knight, and knights

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

Lack of CRUSADING units?

Why, they have it all! Heavy spearmen, heavy cavalry and both light and heavy infantry as well as a cross! That's a good and broad selection of troops, not a bad one. You can do fine without having some of your own faction units. Only three types away from perfect - missiles, light cav and horse archers. And you can get all of those units when you're going through the balkans and turkey!

Lack of jihad units on the other hand... Two different types of light infantry...Not very good at all...

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ok let me rephrase, there is still a lack of knight order units. dismounted knights? crossbowmen? sergeants? get my drift now:wall:

I tried starting a crusader army near Florence, and still got the same rubbish units (well, I did get a Monster Mercenary Ribault too, which was entertaining once it got close enough to actually do something). What do you have to do to get a True Cross?

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

I tried starting a crusader army near Florence, and still got the same rubbish units (well, I did get a Monster Mercenary Ribault too, which was entertaining once it got close enough to actually do something). What do you have to do to get a True Cross?

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IIRC you get that on the Italian penninsula.

So you have to go farther south than Florence? Maybe I needed to be in Rome?

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

I tried starting a crusader army near Florence, and still got the same rubbish units (well, I did get a Monster Mercenary Ribault too, which was entertaining once it got close enough to actually do something). What do you have to do to get a True Cross?

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i dont know i usually take the longest route since the AI really isnt too fast, and the cross shows up around italy some times others i cant find it:inquisitive: