It wasn't a huge piece of the puzzle. The goal was to give Lothar a favor he could present Siegfried, but as Chancellor my motivation was to reduce the "active" borders of Outremer.

At that time the Greeks were our allies and the Turks were our main concern, at least to the north and east. I had engaged the Turks in the north to try to goad the Greeks into striking at Caesarea, but it turned out that they needed to be spoon fed. When I saw a small Turk force outside the walls opposite a Greek force, I saw an oppurtunity and attacked, drawing both the Greeks and the Caesarea garrison into a battle. With the victory, a fun battle by the way, the garrison was gutted and the Greeks eventually took the Citadel. I guess they needed a clear path to it and superiority in numbers for the AI to siege the Citadel.

With the Greeks taking Caesarea and an existing fort in the pass northeast of Adana, the northern border of Outremer was secure, and resources could be shifted to the east. I didn't trust the Greeks completely however, due to difficult pathfinding in the mountain passes Greek units often ended up around Adana. I didn't want those units to disrupt our own movement or be around if the Greeks backstabbed us, so I built a series of forts northwest of Adana to keep them off our land. As soon as my term ended, however, they were disassembled in the lead up to the Cataclysm.

In hindsight, all this is a tad ironic, but it made sense at the time.

On the plus side, this reinforced in my mind the importance of Adana as a key to the defense of Outremer, particularly Antioch. Taking it back, in contrast to Damascus or Edessa, became a priority in the reconquest.