Crusades

[BrianBoru]

i was playing with the germans last night in early, and the french had launched a crusade against egypt. they come marching through my lands with about 1000 men. 2 provinces later, still in my territory, the crusade diminishes to 170 men without fighting any battles. i find this confusing, were did they all go??

[Leo]

Crusades gain men from units with high piety that come across and peasants from high zeal provinces. On the other hand every unit in a crusade looses a few men each turn unless when in enemy territory. So it gets bigger if there are great stacks in the provinces it passes by but can loose many men when crossing low zeal or non-catholic provinces. The lower the zeal, the more men will desert, but dropping from 1000 to 170 in two turns without a battle seems odd to me.

Also it seems not to get bigger than about 2000 men unless you actively add units.

I may be wrong about those things but thats my observations so far.

[BrianBoru]

the provinces they were crossing were very low garrisoned, that could explain some of it, and i doubt they were very holy that early in the game, but still as you said it does seem weird for the army to just all but disappear

[SpencerH]

Probably fairly realistic though since the crusades crossed thousands of miles in some cases and the conditions were pretty horrendous with disease and starvation rampant. Its actually a wonder that anyone reached 'the holyland'.