Will the Punic Wars be Crusades?

[Tenebrous]

I'm going to guess their will be some use of the crusade function, but will it only be for one or two factions, a sort of call to arms of a people (I'm thinking the Germanic or Gaulish tribes), perhaps some kind of decree from the senate, or is it soft coded and can be used for something different than to give the player a better ability to capture a given settlement?

I can't see any situation where more than one faction would repsond in any historical manner, unless the KH was divided into Rhodes, Athens and Sparta and this is how they would wage war as a unified force.

[Blxz]

They are much more likely to use the Jihad function rather than the crusade function. They are slightly different game mechanics. Crusades need a pope faction (seperate, unplayable faction) while jihads just need an agent. Although it might even be moddable to move that button somewhere else. Who knows what can and can't be done?

So you guys might be right about the use...or not. But it won't be done with crusades.

[Atilius]

I'm going to guess their will be some use of the crusade function,...

No.

[Darius]

My semi-educated guess would be that in order to have the ability to launch crusades, one would require their to be a "Papal Faction" present, which would of course take up one of the slots that could otherwise be used to include one of the other factions that will be present. The problems with having a "Papal faction" would be a huge headache, especially seeing as it would mean only one faction would really be able to call a crusade, as otherwise it would be really odd for several factions with very little or nothing in common culturally were vying for approval from a faction with whom they also share little in common with culturally. I'm not even going to get into how much of a migraine it would be to make the "Papal faction" playable.

So in conclusion, I can't see how they could possibly make it possible to allow crusades while remaining in the spirit of historical accuracy as of this point in time.

Jihads on the other hand I'm not so sure about.