Crusades?

[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!

[Martok]

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!

You're welcome. Just happy I could help.

Yeah, I found that out when I first started playing MTW. I hadn't done any Crusading yet at that point, but I wanted to start one to kick the Almos off the Iberian peninsula and into the wastes of north Africa (I had set Morocco as my target province). As my best attacking general, I wanted El Cid to be in command, but I didn't want to actually put him in the Crusade stack and risk losing him as a result, should the Crusade fail. (This was in original Medieval 1.1 when the Almos were still badass, so the Crusader army failing to take its target province was a real possibility back then.) So I just had Cid and some of his boys parallel the Crusaders as they fought their way south, and he was in command of every battle. Worked like a charm.