Crusade - target province back in catholic hands

[Jxrc]

This week-end findings (playing VI with patch)

• playing as the Sicilian - launched a crusade after the French (who had been excommunicated after launching their own crusade) - manage to get to Antioch first thanks to navy - French Crusade not disbanded and keep on going until it reaches my province of Armenia - Easier to stop it there so I refused passage - Got excommed for not allowing and excommed faction to crusade ....
• playing as the Sicilian - sent a crusade to Crimea - target owned by rebels, those were not muslim but pagan or jews -they handed over the province peacefully.

More next week ...

[Martok]

@Jxrc: Wow, that's definitely odd. Very ironic to be excommed by refusing to let another excommed faction to take over the province!

My own experience was more straightforward. I loaded up an old Spanish campaign this weekend, and launched a Crusade to Palestine after the English had already done so. The English Crusade arrived in Palestine three years after I conquered it, requesting I turn over the province to them. I told them no, and was promptly excommunicated (although I defeated the English Crusaders in the ensuing battle).

I then reloaded the same game. I waited until I could see the English Crusade was only two provinces away from Palestine before declaring a Crusade myself. I then had my Crusade just sit there in Leon, not moving. Two years later, I received a message saying that Palestine was safely in Catholic hands, and my Crusade automatically disbanded.

[CountMRVHS]

Not that you need it, but thought I'd add my voice to this: my experience is exactly as Martok here has described it. It's always the dastardly Spanish who try to steal my successfully-Crusaded provinces, curse them . Although, to be honest, it doesn't really strike me as that unrealistic, even the problem of ransoming back tons of your own ex-Crusaders: think how nigh-impossible it must have been for a medieval ruler half the world away to get back thousands of soldiers once power in Jerusalem had changed hands.

Incidentally, I've come back to MTW after a long RTW/BI stint. Heard about this M2TW, got interested, then decided to try MTW again. Playing the French, Early, GA, Expert, and having a blast with the best TW game ever (well, I haven't tried Shogun...) So I'm getting reacquainted with the fun of Crusades all over again!

CountMRVHS

[Martok]

Not that you need it, but thought I'd add my voice to this: my experience is exactly as Martok here has described it. It's always the dastardly Spanish who try to steal my successfully-Crusaded provinces, curse them .

Well it's a good thing we can't play an online campaign against each other then, because you'd hate my friggin' guts. (The Spanish are my favorite faction, and I often gun for Crusading to the Holy Lands when playing as them.)

Incidentally, I've come back to MTW after a long RTW/BI stint. Heard about this M2TW, got interested, then decided to try MTW again. Playing the French, Early, GA, Expert, and having a blast with the best TW game ever (well, I haven't tried Shogun...) So I'm getting reacquainted with the fun of Crusades all over again!

E-e-e-e-xcellent! Welcome back to the dark side, CountMRVHS.


(Ironically, I myself am still deeply into my Shogun campaign at the moment. Clan Takeda is about to be smashed by my fearsome Hojo warriors! )

[caravel]

I haven't had a chance to test this, as I've been wrapped up in some minor modding lately.

[Zild]

This sounds a little bit worse than 'AI advantage' to me - being confronted with either losing your army or being ex-commed sounds almost like a design flaw or bug!

Fortunately however, there is an alternative - the armies left by your successful crusade could instead (try to) invade a neighbouring province, so that you can at least hand the province to the other crusade and still have your forces withdraw to a neighbouring province.

This brings up another thought - there is no advantage for keeping a province after a crusade is successful, is there? (Aside from the inherent advantages of owning provinces.) So you could capture a province (and any castle present) then lose it the next turn yet still not lose the bonuses of having had a successful crusade? As well as being potentially exploitable, this just seems a little off in terms of both realism and gameplay (having to fight tooth and nail to hold onto that province or risk a major influence loss could be interesting!)

[CountMRVHS]

As I said, I've been away from MTW for a bit, but Zild, I think it's not possible to invade another province immediately after an AI faction asks for you to hand over your province to their Crusading army. You get a pop-up message which occurs during the AI's turn, so at that moment you can only click the check (I believe "tick" for you British types?) or "x" button.

Of course, if you meant that you could invade another province several turns *before* the AI Crusade reaches your province, then of course you're right & disregard the above.

The only other advantage you might have to keeping a Crusade province is if, like me, you play GA all the time. There it's not enough to take, say, Palestine once -- you have to hold it until 1205 or so, until that GA goal disappears from your sheet. Don't be fooled by those red "fulfilled" pips on your GA sheet! Once, as the French, I had completed the Krak des Chevaliers objective with plenty of time left, but foolishly built a barbican on my requisite Citadel: the red pips became empty and I lost those points because on the building panel for Tripoli, there was NO CITADEL -- just a barbican. And of course, you can't destroy only the barbican; you end up destroying every core castle-building, from Citadel all the way down to Fort. *That* experience was burned in my memory, alright.

But I digress.

CountMRVHS