Crusades

[middy]

I have trouble. pope keeps declaring them btu how the hell do I use them?

[R3dD0g]

You have to build a Chapter House before you can build a Crusade.

[Cabal]

First of all you you need to play one of the catholic parties (spanish, french, german etc.), then you need to build ...ummm.. just forgotten the description... well.. the thing you can build after you got the church.

After that you can start a crusade ( after 4 years).. just drag and drop the crusade to the region you want to send your crusade....

Have fun..

[Basileus]

Catholic faction except poles and danes..church/chapter house

[Gregoshi]

Hello Cabal. Thanks for stopping by and lending a helping hand...kind of.

[Cabal]

my pleasure.. just had those problems at the beginning too

Fight on...

[SmokWawelski]

Yes, they are quite usefull, these holy crusades. I just learned that while playing Polish

[LadyAnn]

Just repeat the info you got. To start a crusade, you must:
1. Be a catholic faction, except the Dane and the Pole;
2. Have a chapter house (buildable after you have a church, and church is buildable after you have a keep);
3. Train a unit called crusade. After you have the crusade unit, drop it on a region where it is allowed (highlighted). That usually are non-catholic faction provinces, or an excommunicated faction.
4. You cannot declare crusade if you yourself is excommunicated by the Pope. And you can only have 1 crusade at a time.

Now some strategic advices, from your friendly nooble.

1. Crusade is a powerful tool available to you as a catholic faction. Crusade has units that you normally couldn't train yourself. For example, in early era, I could get Orderfoot Soldiers, Templar Knights, and other powerful and well armored units while my best units are still in the dark age. So, be a good catholic and avoid being excommunicate by the Pope. It is annoying to have your hand ties like that, but it has some fun too.

2. Only crusade to a province you can hold and reinforce. If the crusade succeed, the province is yours to keep. It would be too expensive to declare a crusade just to have it wiped out later. So, crusade to a close-to-home coastal province, where you link it with your homeland easily with ships. The province is preferably having exportable goods and rich (like having gold mines, etc.)

3. You don't have to crusade against a target the Pope declared. [EDIT: crusade against a target the Pope declared wouldn't cost to bribe the Papacy, so it is cheaper to attack that target. Otherwise, plan to have a few thousand florins ready in case you need to Pope support if you crusade against a target the Pope had not asked for]. You can crusade to non-catholic rebel provinces too. This allows you to get the province without hurting trade. For example, if you are Italy and having a lot of trade with Egypt, declaring crusade against Egypt would remove many of your income source.

4. Plan your crusade rout wisely. This also mean plan where you build your church/chapter house. Crusaders suck men from your units, so if they pass through your land, your units got suck into it too. You want to pass through your neighbor as regularly as possible (and suck their blood like mosquitos, to paraphase someone else advice).

Enjoy the crusade, until the Muslims respond with their Jihads.

Annie

[middy]

aah that explains it.. I play the danish... Bah no reason to not get that pope then. He keeps telling me what todo or not todo

[king steven]

you need 2 build a church then a chapter house then
crusade