Worst off path Crusade ever!

[Weebeast]

I always think of it as they're recruiting people.

Well, yeah, basically I like it this way. It'd be boring if the AI's always aim for their main goal.

Oh ya, last time I emptied my province and they sack something thousand florins from me lol.

[matteus the inbred]

they looted you? i've played 'chase the army' with a crusade before, in a desperate attempt to avoid losing my men without offending the Pope, and left a number of frontier provinces undefended as a result, but never noticed any looting...ah, but i did have a peasant garrison. so, if there's no garrison at all, they loot the province, even a fellow Catholic province?

[Weebeast]

I was Byzantine and the crusade was of Germans. I wasn't sure whether or not they could take away my orthodox troops (still am not sure as I never tested it) so I emptied my province anyway. It's a habit I picked up from playing as catholic lol. Well, I didn't like them at the time but I was too weak to fight them.

[matteus the inbred]

aha, right. yeah, i've noticed my crusades looting Orthodox provinces (some times for quite a lot, heheh), but not Catholic ones.
i don't think you can take Orthodox troops as the province has no Catholic Zeal, but you can certainly lose men at a vicious rate, a nasty shock when you arrive in Antioch with 500 worn out guys and there's 3000 eggies sitting there going 'if your name's not down you're not getting in'.

i've been joined for a crusade battle in Antioch by a Byzantine allied army (! not that historically innaccurate really) but never tried to pinch their troops. anyone tried sitting half a dozen Catholic bishops in an Orthodox province for a while and then marching a crusade through? do you get any Byzantine troops joining you that way?

[Microwavegerbil]

IIRC Catholics can be looted by crusades as well, if the crusade sits in your province long enough. I remember a game from a long time ago where I was one of the smaller Catholic nations (may have been Poland) and a crusade was aimed at a province on my eastern border. The crusade arrived, got beat back, and then never attacked again, eventually disbanding after a dozen or so years and looting thousands of florings. The worst part was that once I agreed to let it pass I couldn't do anything about it but sit there and watch it eat my florins.

This was on vanilla MTW, I've never noticed a crusade just sitting outside it's target on VI (it always seems to attack, regardless of the hopelessness of the situation in VI).

[m52nickerson]

Heres one. in my current campaign a Spanish crusade has been sitting in Switzerland (which I own) for almost twenty years. It soaked up a bunch of troops, and then started to die out slowly. The worst part is, it is surrounded by other Spanish provinces. No enemies. They came to Switzerland, liked the chocolate and skiing, and never left.

[matteus the inbred]

wow, never seen that before, a crusade refusing to move despite not having any enemy provinces next door...perhaps they had to give up all their weapons upon entering Switzerland?
package holiday crusading tourism! i recently had a German crusade from Burgundy attempt to get to Syria via Aragon, unfortunately as i was Spanish, this involved it pinching my very expensive royal army in Toulouse first...

[Lars Jorgensun]

they looted you? i've played 'chase the army' with a crusade before, in a desperate attempt to avoid losing my men without offending the Pope, and left a number of frontier provinces undefended as a result, but never noticed any looting...ah, but i did have a peasant garrison. so, if there's no garrison at all, they loot the province, even a fellow Catholic province?

It depends on the province. Faction capitals (ie Byzantium or Egypt) will usally get looted by a crusade. Most other provinces don't have to worry about the plunderers.