The History of MTW

[Cowhead418]

About Crusades and the Pope: You can only build a crusade if you have built a Chapter House and only Catholic Factions can do this. Crusades take 4 turns to build and then become a cross icon in the province they are in. When you want to start a crusade simply click the icon and drag it onto the province owned by rebels, orthodox factions, islamic factions, or excommunicated factions.

The Crusade will start with about three troop units you can only get through Crusades (Order Foot Soldiers, Teutonic Knights, Fanatics, etc). You must move the Crusade in the shortest path to its destination. The AI, however, does not have this restriction and can move anywhere they want, even in circles. In my Hungarian campaign the English sent a Crusade to Morocco from Brittany but instead of moving through Iberia it went all the way to Kiev to fight the Cumans until it eventually withered away from desertion. As a Crusade travels through another faction's province you must ask permission to pass through. If a Crusade is refused then the province is attacked. With permission granted the Crusade will take units from the province, some from the armies present in the province and some from the population. How many you get depends on the zeal of the province. The higher the zeal, the more troops you get. This leaves your Crusade with many units ranging anywhere from 2-100 men. However, every turn the Crusade loses men to deserters. I'm not sure what factors determine the amount of deserters per turn but it is usually about 50-100 men per turn. The desertion will stop if the Crusade has taken the destination province (even when you have a several turn siege). Once the destination province is taken the men in a Crusade turn into regular army stacks. Crusades can also jump from one port from the next as long as their is a clear line of allied/neutral fleets to that port.

A victorious Crusade will give your King lots of influence while a failed Crusade will do the opposite. I've had several Civil Wars in a row after a failed Crusade. Occasionally the Pope will ask for Crusades against a certain faction. This will usually be an Islamic faction but can also be a recently excommunicated faction. Before you can start a Crusade you have to pay the Pope. The amount you pay depends on how the Pope feels about that faction. The less he likes them the less you pay. There can only be one Crusade at a time. Crusades can be disbanded if the Chapter House that created them is destroyed. When this happens the armies will go back to the nearest friendly province and become regular army stacks. You don't have to pay upkeep for the troops in a Crusade until this happens. Crusading to a specific province is also a GA goal for many Catholic factions. I'll let someone else explain Glorious Achievement mode.

A note about Jihads: you can have as many Jihads as you want but they can only be used on provinces that were once owned by an Islamic faction and currently owned by someone else. Only Islamic factions can use Jihads and they work almost exactly the same way as Crusades. Unfortunately there is no Crusade or Jihad equivalent for the Orthodox factions.

Excommunication: Only Catholic factions have to worry about this. If you attack a fellow Catholic you will often receive a warning from the Pope. You must withdraw your troops within two turns and not attack for another ten. The Pope has a short memory though and can only keep track of one warning at a time. This allows you to attack as many other Catholics as you want during that time. The Pope will only issue a warning if you are more than twice as large as the other Catholic faction and if you attack them. Defending is perfectly fine as long as you win the field battles, relieving sieges is a big no-no to the Pope. Not letting Crusades pass through also results in excommunication. Being excommunicated is bad. You can't Crusade, you are hated by all the other Catholics, and there will be lots of enemy Crusades headed your way. Excommunications are voided when either the Pope dies or the King of the excommunicated faction dies. Being a good Christian will result in you occasionally getting 1000 florin gifts from the Pope.

Note on the Pope: Taking out the Papacy and taking control of the Papal States and Rome is generally not a good idea. After you take out the Pope a puppet Pope is put on the throne and no more Crusades and excommunications can happen. However, in about 10-20 turns the Pope will return (you cannot control this) with usually an army of many full stacks. No matter how many times you take out the Pope he will come back. This is why many players leave the Pope for last when conquering all of Europe.

This leads me to a note on faction re-emergences: if you take out a faction, it doesn't mean they are gone for good. If any of the provinces they used to own has population loyalty below 120%, there is a chance they will re-emerge. An unknown heir will raise an army of varying sizes and if they conquer a province they will act like any other faction. Unfortunately, your own faction cannot re-emerge.

I hope I covered everything on this subject.