Crusades?

[EatYerGreens]

. Give us more yummy details and maybe a pick or three if you can

I keep meaning to join in the Pics & History... thread properly (so far I've only been commenting in it, here and there) but haven't done so yet as mine seems rather pedestrian by comparison to what's there already. Also it's a lot to type up, so maybe I can do it in stages.

If it's just the pair of crusades you're interested in, I can post here instead. I think I have a screeny where you can just about make out both crusade markers in the same shot.

I set up a photobucket account a while back but have yet to convert the TGAs (I've accumulated a few hundred of them so far ) to JPGs and haven't uploaded a single one of them yet. This will be an ideal test item, so stay tuned...

In my current game I attacked Spain, mainly being
greedy for Castille and Aragon for some reason. I am HRE and this is after
knocking out France . Since then they will NOT give me a ceasefire even
though I have tried almost every turn. I have kept just barely more troops
in all the borders with them, but it is a heavy toll on both of us and if I could
go back I probably would think twice for attacking them so early...... but
it has made things more interesting for sure .

Quite recently this thing about not accepting ceasefire came up in another thread. One of the more senior members reckoned it had something to do with AI never accepting ceasfire as long as any of its homelands (even in WorldDom campaign) were in your hands. So they could be down to their last province and still they won't accept.

I think your only chance is a gradual withdrawal back to the Pyrenees. Let them attack and win (abandon province, to avoid casualties, sieges & ransoming) but obviously not so fast that loss of two provinces in two years (or whatever it is) sets off a Civil War in your lands.

There will still be a heavy influence hit but finishing France will likely prop it up enough to avoid trouble. Shortening the front line to Navarre/Aragon will help you relax garrison sizes and relocate excess troops to another front, where you can soon get the lost influence back by attacking in another direction.

'Scorched earth' before you vacate Spanish homelands will hurt their economy as they invest in rebuilding (extra buffer against their restored income levels) and give you a few years' breathing space before they're back to producing quality troops in those areas.

And, when they've built sufficiently to make those provinces appealing to you once more, you can go back and steal it all off them again

[EatYerGreens]

Not quite 'full story and pics', but here's the pics...

One of the pics earlier in my TGAs folder shows the completion of the Gold
Mine Complex in Serbia, with the French crusade (red banner and all) looming
menacingly in the background, as it was in Hungary at the time, to nick a
bunch of their Szekeley's... great timing guys.

Their destination was Constantinople and I figured Bulgaria was their first
stop, so I garrisoned accordingly.

SIDEBAR
(After putting in the VI pack, recently, I had started a Byz campaign on
Expert but ended up dumping the gamesaves in a zip folder until I know what
I'm doing a bit better. A large HRE crusade, also to Constantinople, had
broken into Bulgaria, via Hungary, just like this. I so nearly pulled off a time
limit win but persistent Szek-fire and growing piles of foot reinforcements
broke my last 100-odd men, who had been lurking in the woods, with mere
minutes to go. After that, I had barely a stack left to defend the capital with
and was at a loss for how to continue with my best province gone, so soon
into the campaign).
END SIDEBAR

I was totally wrong, of course. The greedy sods went for Serbia instead,
even though this NOT the shortest route to the destination, from Hungary.

The result?



Keep your eye on the 48-man VG unit as they reappear in the next results screen.

I forget if they waited a few years to soak up more Hungarians or attacked
again the following year but, either way, the next pic is 12 screenshots
further on in the sequence....

French attack number 2



And that's the last we heard of them...

[EatYerGreens]

This pic should show both crusade markers at once. The French one has
been static for a few years by this time and you can see how depleted it is.
I'm now up to 1186 and it's STILL floating around.

The thing about exponential decay is that the rate of loss actually slows
down as the quantities in the stack approach zero. There are also plenty of
Piety-9's in there.



The disposition of my forces reflects my expectation of them using Italian
ships to go straight to it by sea. A storm in the Aegean at around this time
stopped me from being able to ship spare troops from Nicea, and
Constantinople. I could still 'shuffle' overland to Serbia and move equivalents
out of there to Sicily but I'd put no archer units in my garrison there (other
than HAs) specifically due to all the Cavalry over the border. This made
things awkward to arrange as I'd have wanted - such as swapping generals
around now that the threat of the French was passed.

Since they were 'stoopid' enough to come over land, via Papal States, I had
a couple of years in which to reconnect my sea lanes and shuffle units as I
pleased.

P.S. The units in the info window are one of the 5 stacks of re-emerged
Sicilians, stuck on Malta with no ships. The highlight was on them at the
time, whilst the mouse pointer hovered on their crusade, to bring up that
banner. I have another screenshot showing them more clearly but it cuts off
the view of the French crusade, so I used this one.

[EatYerGreens]

Moving on a couple of years, here's the results of Spain's attack on Naples.
As mentioned peviously, it's actual destination was Sicily. An abject lesson
on not setting your sights more than one province deep into enemy territory...



And they didn't come back for seconds...

Here's a close up showing the remnants of both crusades.



Now a funny thing happened on the alliance front. I have a screeny of the
Italians accepting a marriage proposal I made to them, very close to the
screeny of the Spanish declaring Crusade on me. I think it was regarded as
being just before Spain went from being allied to both me and the Italians to
being at war with me. That must have been the marriage of my Emperor,
Constantine XI.

It was some years before the Crusade marker finally appeared, in Venice.
During this time, the Italian doge proposed a marriage of his daughter to the
Emperor's younger brother. Take a look at this next screenie and note the
flashing icon indicating the Italian proposal conflicts with their alliance to
Spain, while I'm at war with Spain.


EDIT: Sadly, the flashing red border around Spain's shield doesn't show here,
due to the timing of the F2 keypress.




Spain's African army had finished off the re-emerged Almos, hitherto next
door to my forces in Egypt and neutral to me. Being allies, they stopped
there. Once they had declared war on me with the crusade, I waited a while
but eventually attacked Cyrenacia and it was not until that point that the
Italians cancelled our treaty and went to being neutral with me. I think this
was little more than a year after the second of the two marriages, so that
was a close shave for my younger heir. I continue to trade with them in 4
ports and they have ships in key locations, so I was lucky things didn't turn
nasty. We don't share a land border yet and they're probably third-last on my
conquest list. Sicily second last (see above), Pope last of all.

So, in summary, while a state of war existed between Byz and Spain, thanks
to Crusade declaration but with years to go before forces meet, Italy could
marry off a Princess to me, even though it conflicted with the existing Italy-
Spain alliance. Seems to be the only situation where one side can have two
allies who are at war with one another.

Not until a province was conquered (Cyrenacea) did the Italian stance
become invalid and oblige them to cancel the treaty.

[dgfred]

Nice info and pics EYG! . Very interesting.

[Geezer57]

Had an eventful but unusual end-of-turn last night: my Crown Prince was leading some outdated units in a siege assault against the French, who were a Papal ally. The French King came into the province, leading a force attempting to relieve the siege - only the battle turned out to be a bridge crossing.

I blocked the bridge exit with an upgraded Armored Spearmen unit (+2 weapon, +3 armor), and lined the banks on either side of the bridge with a couple of Pav Crossbows backed up by plain Archers. The rest of my army consisted of a couple of CMAA, some Irish Horsemen (this is XL Mod), three tiny remnants of various muslim cavalry (bribed), and the Prince's Royal Knight bodyguard.

With the bridge blocked, and under strong fire from the missle troops, the French made no headway and melted under the fire - including one dead French King. Once they broke, the rest of my army went into pursuit - almost the entire French force was killed or captured, even though they originally outnumbered my Irish.

At the end of the turn, the old Pope passed away due to illness and my excommunication was lifted. The French, who had no heirs, devolved into Rebels. And the new Pope instantly called for Crusades against the Irish (me)!

Has anyone ever seen the Pope call for Crusades against an unexcommunicated Catholic faction, one that's not at war with the Papcy (we're neutral)? It's never happened to me before, my experience has always been that Crusades are only called against excommunicated Catholic factions, non-Catholics, or ones at war with the Pope.

[Advo-san]

If a non-cahtolic faction is allied with the Pope, no crusades can be launched against it.
I 'm sure this doctrine apply when you try to crusade against a papal ally, but I strongly believe it also applies when you are the non-cahty ally of Rome.

[edyzmedieval]

It applies to every ally of the Pope, even if it's Muslim or Pagan!!!!!

[dgfred]

@ EYG- I am one of those bargain buyers without a manual and I did struggle with crusades without a manual- but you guys saved the
day . Now I am pretty good with them and have studied and
tested them alot.

At first I suffered large casualties with alot of sorry troops included, but now
I either drop many strong units in with the crusade or send a massive army
or two to follow along with the crusade . A small crusade with several
big, strong army groups can be devastating to the AIs, especially when included with naval superiority .

[Ludens]

EYG, I apparently forgot I play a modded version of the game that gives more crusade troops. Yes, in vanilla M:TW crusader knight are indeed in short supply.

However, Order Foot are stat-wise the second best spear unit in game, together with Italian Infantry. Only Gothic Sergeants are better. So for a spearunit, OF are pretty impressive.