how to crusade...

[Brandy Blue]

If you want to use evil fanatical zealots inquisitors to pump up zeal, that's fine. Just remember that an idle inquisitor sometimes gets bored and starts burning people at random. Then zeal drops when people start wondering if it was really necessary for that nice young man who is trying to make the world safe for Catholicism to burn their old granny for being nice to cats.

In other words, inquisitors normally raise zeal, but if you leave one without a job to do, he may cause a massive zeal drop. The way to prevent that is to keep the inquisitors busy trying generals, heirs, kings, even the pope if he's in that province. If you own the province, put some poor clueless zero star leader of peasants there, so your inquisitors can try him (and his sucessors) without harming your real generals. Helps the inquistors earn stars too.

If you've been excommunicated, you can follow the opposite route. Put your inquisitors in a province that you think enemy crusades might pass through, and give them nothing to do. With luck, they might wreck the local zeal.

Personally, I don't like inquisitors. (Wow, what a surprise.) So I like to send my crusades by sea as far as I can, or build a chapter house close to the target, if possible. This has the advantage that you can pump out more crusades, because in most cases you can only have one at a time, so less time in transit = more crusades. Unfortunately, you won't get much of a chance to pick up troops from zealous catholic provinces en route.

[Fagar]

Wow such vehemence towards inquisitors.
I basically never use them to burn people, is a bit of a cheap way out in my book but as stated in my previous post I do use them for their other intended purpose of raising the zeal of a province.
Clearly if I am using them as a forefront to crusades then they are also on the move everyturn and not left to just burn populations.
To do that unintentionally is a newbie mistake.
I will always take the overland route if my target province is near catholic borders because I enjoy that it maximises numbers in the crusade and also strips potential enemies of many men and leaves them without complete units.
If my target province is deep in Muslim territory then the sea route is clearly the way to go.

[caravel]

Inquisitors are a horrible, horrible feature of the game. In the mod I'm working on I made them a Papacy only and I also set them as invisible like spies/assassins. I removed the "Grand Inquisitors" altogether. The advantages are as follows:

1) Inquisitors are now almost like a natural disaster, instead of something that is targeted. They are very random and because you cannot see them you never know where they will strike next, this seems dangerous but...

2) You don't need to send assassins chasing around the map looking for him, instead your security forces will deal with this pesky foreigner when he crosses the border. Or if he does get through he won't last so long and will no doubt meet with an "unfortunate accident".

3) You can no longer exploit them.

4) They no longer raise zeal - this is now the job of cardinals whom function much like Imams.

I also removed border forts, so the counterspying is now down to the local spies and assassins. They gain valour from this whereas with a border fort in place they do not as the fort always gets the kill.

[drone]

2) You don't need to send assassins chasing around the map looking for him, instead your security forces will deal with this pesky foreigner when he crosses the border. Or if he does get through he won't last so long and will no doubt meet with an "unfortunate accident".

So the Border Fort/Counterspying function is based on the visible flag in the unit prod file? Learn something new everyday, this one goes into the wiki.

[Fagar]

The AI crusades never cease to bemuse me.

I am currently as war with the Spanish and have the provinces of Portugal and Valencia.
The Spanish have wiped out the Almohad and own all the rest of the peninsula all the way to Egypt.

The Spanish launched a crusade against the Egyptians from Castile bound for Arabia.
Now as we all know out player Crusades are required to take the shortest routes to the goal province well I wasn't too suprised when on the first turn the AI crusade attempted to march through valencia.
I denied it access and turned it away.
Next turn it moved forward into cordoba so I thought yep that is better go to your target.
Well I was most suprised when next turn it went backwards into castile, picked up more men from the high zeal province, and the following turn moved into Portugal, where by the way there is no port or current shipping lanes of any nation for the Spanish to use.
I have turned away the crusade again for it to retreat to Castile.
I haven't played for a few days but am wondering what next and is this circular crusade to continue.
I was looking for similiar experiences or insights as to how the AI is justifying it's crusade movement?

[caravel]

The crusade may be calculating distance to target based on any non blockaded shipping lanes? So perhaps the crusade is simply heading out to a port province in order to "jump" part of the journey? Thus the route calculated the year before may not exist the following year due to the shipping lanes being blockaded, ships being lost or the Spanish fleets moving around; this would cause erratic behaviour such as the AI suddenly changing it's mind on the route. Or perhaps the AI is simply not as restricted as the player...? The AI can see which moves you make when you end turn, so it would not surprise me if the AI also had more flexibility with it's crusades.

[cambovenzi]

No flamebaiting please ~ Asai Nagamasa 22/02/09

[oz_wwjd]

I frequently used to have my allies crusades crossing my territory as the Byzantines. After one of them looted my treasury,and made off with money that I could off put to better use myself, I now deny all crusades to cross my borders,not that many dispute the issue,given that my border forces are usually quite sizable...

[Fagar]

Sounds fair and reasonable Asai.
As there never was a port in Portugal, nor ships off the coast then the second half of your post would seem to make more sense.

[bamff]

I frequently used to have my allies crusades crossing my territory as the Byzantines. After one of them looted my treasury,and made off with money that I could off put to better use myself, I now deny all crusades to cross my borders,not that many dispute the issue,given that my border forces are usually quite sizable...

This raises a query for me, having also suffered from passing Crusaders helping themselves to my treasury, wine cellar, and dry goods store after being granted passage.

It does not appear to matter if the crusading faction is allied to mine or not.

Are there triggers for such actions, or are they just random events like earthquakes?

Also - I do not recall seeing any of my crusades doing this, but has anyone else witnessed one of their own crusades liberating a few florins en route?

[caravel]

Catholic crusades tend to loot Orthodox provinces. Constantinople is commonly looted if it lets a crusade through, mainly because it tends to be on a main route from Europe to the holy land, which is quite annoying if you're playing as the Byzantine of course. I don't think alliances have a bearing on this. As far as i know the looting happens regardless.

[Fagar]

I am almost positive alliances do not have a bearing.
As the Byzantines I have been looted almost inceasantly by my allied factions as they pass through.
To the extent that now I just say no and turn the crusades away rather than losing so many good men and florins to a crusade that does not reflect my beliefs.
Plenty of time for remaking alliances later

[caravel]

I am almost positive alliances do not have a bearing.

Well you were looted by your allies. That's what I mean by "alliances have no bearing". So alliance or not those thieving crusaders are going to loot your province.

Personally I think it's a great part of the game. All of these irritating things that many new players hate I am still in awe of to this day. The annoying pope, civil wars, horrible heirs, ugly princesses, hilarious vices and crusades that loot you on the way through! And I still think the voice-overs in battle by Sean Pertwee are classic. "Craven son that he is, the enemy general flees!". Superb stuff.

[gollum]

"The courage of a goat herd the enemy general flees"

[caravel]

Good one!

The mingled dismay and disgust in his voice as he bellows: "Your vile and ignoble general is running away from the enemy!?"

[gollum]

Or the classic "More foooolish than a thousand fools the enemy Sultan has thrown his life away" and the "The enemy Sultan runs back to his Haaarem women"

But ihmo, none compares with the one from Shogun that isnt used in battle really

"The enemy is in full retreat, pursue them now, and we shall gather many he-eads!"

(Notice the excitment and anticipation in the punctuation of he-eads)

[caravel]

Another great one gollum, the interesting pronunciation in some of the voice clips in Shogun is pure genius. Dare I say it, but it's so bad that it's good?

Another one of my favourites from MTW:

"The enemy king is dead, a vain and foolish villain 'til the end!"

Back to crusades though. I am trying to remember if on entering Orthodox territory the crusade loots only the first province, or does it loot all that it passes through? Also I seem to remember that there is somewhat of a random factor. I think the amount looted is based on the provincial income, but that the looting does not always occur?

[gollum]

Looting doesnt always occur in my experience. Its either random or dependent on an under the hood factor like say (my guess) the zeal that spawned the crusade. The crusade doesnt loot all the provinces it may loot one, one or two or none. Dont remember to see a crusade ever looting more than two in a row (playing none others as the Byz or looting none other than the Byz).

[Knight of the Rose]

Nah - looting is random - to that I'm quite sure. But I'm always thrilled to see this message, not only because of the tribute to the war efford, but also because the turns crusades loot the province, not a single man leaves the crusade. Which otherwise could be quite high numbers in the very low zeal byzzie provinces.

/KotR

[caravel]

I prefer playing as the Byzantine, denying the crusade entry and then chasing the filthy beggars back to their own lands.

[gollum]

Or turtling as the Egyptians and "let" the crusade reach its goal by retreating garissons to the walls and finally wiping it from the face of the MTW map with a regular and a jihad armies (no retreat) gaining in a swift swoop influence and selling the surviving crusaders in some slave shop (not a very chic one) in India