Crusade Pathfinding

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

Also, AI crusades, I have found to my cost, are able to teleport across sea zones - not the type traversed by a 'landbridge'. (So maybe that should be 'walk on water'.)

Very annoying when you have ships in the sea zones in question, are already at war with the crusade's sponsor who does not have any fleets, and have been excommed for having denied passage through one of your provinces elsewhere on the coast.

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

[Gilrandir]

Hi

Also, AI crusades, I have found to my cost, are able to teleport across sea zones - not the type traversed by a 'landbridge'. (So maybe that should be 'walk on water'.)

Very annoying when you have ships in the sea zones in question, are already at war with the crusade's sponsor who does not have any fleets, and have been excommed for having denied passage through one of your provinces elsewhere on the coast.

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

It is still more annoying when you let it through and the crusade sucks in the best of your troops, uses your fleet chain to get to the destination and is proud to announce urbi et orbi that it was the protector of Christian faith and promoter of it to the lands of infidels (and gets influence, piety and what not, very probably).

[drone]

It is still more annoying when you let it through and the crusade sucks in the best of your troops, uses your fleet chain to get to the destination and is proud to announce urbi at orbi that it was the protector of Christian faith and promoter of it to the lands of infidels (and gets influence, piety and what not, very probably).

Great risk, great reward.

Again, when playing as the Danes, I usually reject crusades through my lands. I can usually fight them off, and being excommed tends to be the natural state in most of my games anyway. The best part is when you beat back the crusade, then use your superior navy to invade the province with the Chapterhouse, burn it to the ground, and sit back to watch the resulting civil war with glee.

Come to think of it, I wonder if it's my superior navy that attracts the crusades in the first place. The Baltic Sea->Lithuania->Kiev->Black Sea/Khazar. I'll have to pop up the map and count the steps...

[white lancer]

Can Crusades use other factions' ships to get to its destination? The Spanish didn't have a fleet when I waltzed through their territories, but even though I did I wasn't able to use my own fleet to get to my destination (and yes, the Spanish did have ports).

[Gilrandir]

Can Crusades use other factions' ships to get to its destination? The Spanish didn't have a fleet when I waltzed through their territories, but even though I did I wasn't able to use my own fleet to get to my destination (and yes, the Spanish did have ports).

The same question was in my mind too, white lancer!!
I remember a crusade which I let through my territory. After zigzagging a bit across my lands it reached a coastal province of mine and got transported to the destination. But I don't recall whether I had a chain of ships to Outremer or there were other factions' fleets on the way there.
The historic logics (mixed with my beliefs about medieval crusades) tells me that any fellow catholics are to be relied upon in assistance in that matter, i.e. they would allow you to use their fleets.
But logics of the game tells me that in letting the crusade through your lands it got your acquiescence to use only YOUR lands, ports and ships at their discretion.
Which logics is at work here? Drone, help us!

[drone]

You are asking the wrong person here. I rarely crusade, most of my experience with crusades is with thwarting them. My best guess is that they can use your ports/ships once you have given permission, but I cannot verify that.

[Haccapelite]

Ahoy guys, long time no post!

This conversation caught my eye, since one of the last games of MTW I played before taking a break (damn Civ IV, so addictive) was with the French in XL, and I specifically decided to try to complete the crusade-related GA's (krak des chevaliers etc, I can't remember them all from the top of my head) and did actually manage to launch some succesful crusades. Before that I wasn't too well informed about the aspects of crusading but I learned something from that game plus the related topics on the .org at that time.

The first thing to remember is that the game treats human player and computer crusades differently: Human controlled crusades must always use the shortest possible route to the destination province, eg. the route that will take the least amount of turns. On the contrary, computer controlled crusades have the freedom of choosing their own route, which sometimes leads to them taking special interest in your high-garrisoned provinces, sucking up those valuable chivalric foot knights you've been stacking up to swipe the damnable germans off the face of the earth. (no personal experience related...)

As for crusades crossing water regions and using other factions' ships, the observations made here are correct. Once a crusade is given permission to pass through a players lands, it can use its ports and ships, but it can also use any possible link of ships that can be used to transport the crusade across the sea. If you for example are playing as the Italians, and you allow a German crusade to pass through your lands to Venice, and there is a link of French ships leading straight from Venice to say, Tripoli, the crusade can use those ships as long as it's not in war with the French.

Personally I found amphibiously conducted crusades to be most effective: first I made sure I had a chain of ships from the starting province to the destination, (or as close as I could get) then I simply created the crusade, dropped my pre-arranged crusader army to the crusade and slammed the lot in the middle of the holy land to cause as much turmoil as possible. While not maybe the most sportsmanlike maneuver, it did really save me some grey hair from battling with the limited route options, and i actually got a pretty intact army all the way to the destination. (And once my line of ships was cut off shortly afterwards, my little crusade army really got to see some serious action too...)

PS. Good to be back again, it's nice to see the community still active! I have been playing MTW occasionally lately, had some fun with the Warlords-mod, and also gave a go at Redux (pretty damn great btw, really loved the balance it offers) and I have a rather interesting campaing going as the Picts in Viking Invasion atm.