Crusades?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.