Crusades?

[yesdachi]

Welcome erik - you will find that the game's crusades are difficult
to master, both the actual assaults and the developing situations after-
wards . It took me many questions here to understand. We will
be lurking for your questions and will help as much as possible .

i have one... do you have to pay support costs for a crusade?

[dgfred]

You have to pay for the crusade originally, sometimes 500, 750 or 1000fl is
what I have seen. According to another post you don't have to pay support
cost while the crusade is in action, but you will when the crusade is disbanded . This is why some say to hire mercs, since you don't have
to pay them when they are in a crusade.

[EatYerGreens]

I'd refine that to say that it costs 1000fl to 'train' the crusade marker but you must pay a second time (you pay the Pope) when you launch the crusade at a target and the Pope approves of the target. However, you do get a certain number of 'free' troops in return for this payment.

I can't say that the free troops are of the best quality though, at least not as good as first impressions of the unit descriptions led me to believe. I found the Order Foot troops to be rather disappointing at assault, being spear-equipped and thus better used for defending against cavalry. Better than plain spearmen, anyway. See the forum unit guides for details.

It will probably help if you build the swordsmith and train some sword troops, which can be dropped into the crusade marker after it's been launched and improve its attacking potential, saving the OF troops for defence once you've won the province. You'll have to manually add archers too.

The only decent free units you get are the Crusader Knights (which you can't even train for yourself) but 20-40 free high-quality horses isn't going to be enough for most battles, so you'd better also stock up on additional cavalry prior to launching the crusade.

If your economy can't support maybe 10 years of troop stockpiling, to make the Crusade itself 2000+ men strong and thus highly likely to succeed, then consider it too early to be launching Crusades just now. Stay on good terms with the neighbours and build your economy and defensive garrisons instead. Just don't let them spot the stockpiling, or they'll get the idea it's being directed at them. Your Crusade may need to march across their lands and a war will halt its passage or oblige you to fight your way through, losing men all the time.

Make sure your Chapter House is not in a province at risk of loss to an invading neighbour faction, since demolition of that building will cause any incompleted Crusade to disband. Failed Crusades are bad for your King's influence rating and reduces loyalty of provinces and generals, making rebellions or full-scale Civil War more of a risk.

Finally, failed Crusades take literally years to die, by slow desertion of the troops trapped within them (you don't get the 'disband' button on the units within the marker, until they successfully take the target province and complete the siege). As the Byz, in my latest campaign, I've repelled one French Crusade and one Spanish. Both had about 750 men in them at the point they stopped further attacks and it's taking them years to decay down to nothing.

This is good for me but bad for the would-be Crusader player. You can train a stockpile of un-launched Crusade markers but you're only allowed one active Crusade at a time. If it fails to win or even reach its target province, you will either have to make repeated suicide attacks until they're all dead or wait years for it to naturally decay before you can launch any more.

I've only limited game experience, so I don't know if the Pope will approve a second Crusade against a target province you've chosen before, when the previous attempt failed.

Good Luck!

[dgfred]

As long as the previous Crusade is still 'alive', the game will not let you make
another try. So it really sucks to either let the Crusade die out, or suicide
attack it toward the destination and suffer a loyalty/etc.. hit.
Probably the best thing if one is beat back is to send reinforcements asap
and use them to attack toward the destination and maybe take it with the
Crusade tagging along.

[EatYerGreens]

@dgfred,

I've read that using an accompanying regular stack works well and doesn't stop the Crusade from being given credit for the province conquest.

However, I wonder whether the general in the crusade is regarded as being in charge, even when the support stack has a better one? Similar to when your king's command rating is inferior to that of a general in his stack and the king's command (and, hence, his valour bonus) overrides that of the better general for the purposes of any battle.

Of course, there are some permutations where you can't bring in a reinforcement stack, such as the Crusade attacked out of neutral, or allied territory, is repulsed and forced back to where it came from. Depending on the geography and availability of sea access to the target, you can't bring your supporting stack into position alongside it without triggering a war with the ally, or neutral.

Crusade markers get explicit permission to travel on other factions' lands without automatically starting a war, plain stacks do not.

(Some of us wish that the alliance model permitted normal stacks to have similar freedom of movement as Crusades, so that we can bolster an ally's border defences and/or strike at a mutual opponent whose border is out of reach of our own but, sadly, it's not possible).

So the only feasible option would be to synchronise moves such that the Crusade marker crosses the land border to attack and, in the same move, the support stack arrives by ship.

In the (seemingly unlikely) event of another defeat, the Crusade marker has a valid path of retreat but the support stack cannot retreat with it, onto neutral/allied lands. The only way it can come back is via ransom...

Incidentally, I note that the game message which warns "if the army has no friendly territory to retreat to, it is lost" has been carried over, unaltered, from Shogun TW days, where there was no ransom element in the game and this was indeed true. It should have been updated, but wasn't.

I haven't suffered this problem myself but I did recently inflict it on the AI by hitting the Eggies in Palestine and Antioch in the same year, with Syria in my possession. Antioch resolved first and they calmly withdrew off the back of the map after relatively light casualties to archer fire plus my cav into their exposed archers and in spite of them having three full stacks to draw upon. I barely moved from my opening position and only two HA's gave pursuit. They acted as if they had a valid path of retreat. Then Palestine resolved itself with them abandoning without a fight, due to having too small a force to fight with. Result? I get the 'ransom refused' message and 2488 prisoners get whacked, whereas I only caught about 60 on the battlefield. So, when it says 'army will be lost', this is what it means - a ransom bill you might not be able to afford.

[Martok]

@dgfred,

I've read that using an accompanying regular stack works well and doesn't stop the Crusade from being given credit for the province conquest.

However, I wonder whether the general in the crusade is regarded as being in charge, even when the support stack has a better one? Similar to when your king's command rating is inferior to that of a general in his stack and the king's command (and, hence, his valour bonus) overrides that of the better general for the purposes of any battle.

If you have your own separate stack accompanying the Crusading army, whichever general has more stars will take command of the battle. I've done this a few times as the Spanish: I'll take a crappy prince and put him in charge of the Crusade, but then I'll dispatch a good general (usually El Cid) with a separate army to "chaperone" the expidition. As long as I move both stacks into the target province, El Cid will be the man in charge of the battle.

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks for confirming that, Martok.

See, that's why I like this place. No matter what obscure, speculative question I come up with, someone, somewhere, has actually tried it already and has the answer!

[Ludens]

However, you do get a certain number of 'free' troops in return for this payment.

I can't say that the free troops are of the best quality though, at least not as good as first impressions of the unit descriptions led me to believe. I found the Order Foot troops to be rather disappointing at assault, being spear-equipped and thus better used for defending against cavalry. Better than plain spearmen, anyway. See the forum unit guides for details.

What dou you mean? Order foot are one of the best spear units in the game, and you can get them in early. You also get fanatics, which I use as battle fodder. (Hey, if they want to do for their religion, who am I to deny them that pleasure? ) Order knights are the equivalent of Chivalric knights (with the exception of Templars, that have a worse charge), but available in early. So crusade troops are far from bad, as you seem to think.

I do agree you get too few of them to be interesting, but I always add extra troops, a royal prince or two, some mercenaries and several siege engines. Increasing the cost of crusades and decreasing the cost of these units improves the likelyhood you get them. Also upping the zeal of the provinces were the crusade passes through gets you more troops. Once in foreign provinces, your army will start to dwindle however. I think this especially bad when my siege crews disappear, even while the Crusade is succesfull. Bloody deserters...

Deus Ex, Bushface's pack is wrong. In fact, the pack I downloaded contained a corrections file that states that the Sicilians can crusade. There are a couple more errors in it that have not been corrected by my knowledge (but I downloaded the pack ages ago, so maybe Bushface's had sorted it out already).

[Deus Ex]

Deus Ex, Bushface's pack is wrong. In fact, the pack I downloaded contained a corrections file that states that the Sicilians can crusade. There are a couple more errors in it that have not been corrected by my knowledge (but I downloaded the pack ages ago, so maybe Bushface's had sorted it out already).

Thanks Ludens - I was hoping I would eventually be able to complete my GA goals as Sicily...

An update: My king was living to a ripe old age, and the pope was staying healthy too. I kept waiting for one of them to die...

Finally my king got absolutely fed up with this coniving politcal pope who had excommunicated him for purely 'political' reasons - one evening he must have taken leave of his sense for he gathered up select loyal troops and rode off to the papal states to have it out with the bastard pope - decimated the pope and his troops - left the papal states razed and empty. Returning home to Sicily, he died in his sleep.

His heir is a good strong leader and we are not excommunicated any more - however we must wait for the new pope to emerge before we can crusade...

So I am STILL waiting for a chance to try my first crusade - LOL

DE

[EatYerGreens]

What dou you mean? Order foot are one of the best spear units in the game, and you can get them in early. You also get fanatics, which I use as battle fodder. (Hey, if they want to do for their religion, who am I to deny them that pleasure? ) Order knights are the equivalent of Chivalric knights (with the exception of Templars, that have a worse charge), but available in early. So crusade troops are far from bad, as you seem to think.

You're right to take me to task over this but, if you'd also quoted the paragraph which followed the one you chose, you'll see that I was saying that the Crusader Knights are decent units, but added the rider that you rarely get enough of them to really swing a battle and will likely need to add some of your own cavalry.

I had a feeling that the way I wrote that, as well as what I was saying, would set off some comments. I just didn't want the comment about Crusader Kights to become only a minor sidebar comment, buried in a para which basically said that I thought the crusader foot troops weren't that amazing.

My problem is that, on the limited number of occasions when I've been Crusading, the Order Foot seemed to lose more men than the plain spears, in like-for-like situations. (It could be the AI makes them missile targets preferentially). Equally, when I'm on the receiving end of a Crusade, they also tend to die a lot.

The main thrust of my argument was that they failed to live up to my expectations of their abilities, based upon what I'd been led to believe by their info parchment. My advice to take proper sword units too was intended as advice to someone who had stated they were unfamiliar with how to make Crusades work and I wanted to help them avoid the disappointments I'd suffered. Hence, add your own swords and Cav units and get the numbers over 2000 men to ensure that it stands a good chance of working.

If I hear correctly that the latest budget release doens't even come with a proper manual then I guess those newbies, who haven't discovered any of the MTW forums yet, may not realise that they can even add extra troops to the marker and thus will be struggling to get these things to work with just the default troop offerings!

Of course, what I've forgotten to point out is that the high losses I've suffered is primarily down to low valour level which, in turn, was likely down to not including a quality general in the stack to begin with. Valour boost really makes all the difference in how well units perform.

The warning about units put into a crusade being irreversibly 'locked in', unless and until it takes its target province, probably made me reticent about using anything better than 2*, when I had so few available at the time for conventional defence purposes. So my first few attempts, although they did succeed, suffered uncomfortably high losses in the process, with lots of routing and rallying going on. I could do without the worry factor.

[yesdachi]

You have to pay for the crusade originally, sometimes 500, 750 or 1000fl is
what I have seen. According to another post you don't have to pay support
cost while the crusade is in action, but you will when the crusade is disbanded . This is why some say to hire mercs, since you don't have
to pay them when they are in a crusade.

That is great to know. If I have an army ready to crusade and a crusade marker ready to go but no good target I could just pick an easy target and stack my expensive troops into it to save some serious $.

I have noticed that the higher the zeal the lower the cost of the crusade. In my 90% zeal Spanish provinces I can have $0 or sometimes $250 cost crusades and the other day I got 4 units of knights with one.

@ EYG re: post #8
You are right on the money about what should go in a crusade (and other points). What comes with the crusade is usually only a nice starting point but needs some extra support.

And there is definitely nothing good about a failed crusade.

[dgfred]

That is great to know. If I have an army ready to crusade and a crusade marker ready to go but no good target I could just pick an easy target and stack my expensive troops into it to save some serious $.

I have noticed that the higher the zeal the lower the cost of the crusade. In my 90% zeal Spanish provinces I can have $0 or sometimes $250 cost crusades and the other day I got 4 units of knights with one.

@ EYG re: post #8
You are right on the money about what should go in a crusade (and other points). What comes with the crusade is usually only a nice starting point but needs some extra support.

And there is definitely nothing good about a failed crusade.

I am finding lately that a small crusade is not such a sorry thing, mainly if you
can 'pile on' with alot of good/veteran troops or send a large stack or two to
accompany the crusade . It seems the AI is rarely prepared for such a
move .

[Dutch_guy]

@ EYG :

I've only limited game experience, so I don't know if the Pope will approve a second Crusade against a target province you've chosen before, when the previous attempt failed.

Well I crusaded to Egyptian held Antioch , succeeded , then got beaton out of the province the turn after.
So I didin't -wel at least I think I didn't - get my 3 GA points.

However some turns later I get a message that my people want to try crusading ( to Antioch ? ) again, so I got a crusader mark for free.
So I don't think the Pope 'll deny you your ''revenge'' so to speak.

[dgfred]

Yeah, If a crusade fails all the way, the game will replace the crusade marker
in the province it originated from. But if one is only defeated and not destroyed you have to figure another way for it to succeed, such as sending
reinforcements/etc... Check out the other crusade threads here, the only
way I have found to get the pts for the Crusade is to retreat to the castle,
then it gives you the points --- you just have to be prepared to
recapture the provence the next turn, and I do mean 'be prepared'.