Abandoning Crusades

[Lorenzo_H]

No, you cant get units (dismounted Knights etc) to leave a crusade.

I can only recruit pilgrims in the holy land, Religious Fanatics are better stat wise (and since the only difference is stats) they look the same, maybe you got confused?

My pet hate about crusades is at any time, you can get Dismounted Crusaders.

I hate that.

No I recruited some Pilgrims in the middle of Spain.

Dismounted Crusaders? How do I get those?

[Doighiuil]

I find the Dismounted Crusader Knights nearly 90% of the time only in the holy land or on the Island of Cypress and usually only 2 units (vh/vh). "Unique" Crusader mercs are generally region specific, e.g. the Great Cross is found in Italy.

[seneschal.the]

What happens when you leave a crusade is that you lose 3 points of CrusaderHistory trait (the crusader, grand crusader etc.) You also lose 2 points if you are in the crusade REGION and withdraw from battle, no matter the odds (8000 egyptians vs your 600 troops = deduct 2 crusading points, heathen).

Does not affect piety in any way except if you already had a crusader trait (giving 1-3 points of piety) and you lose levels.

The thresholds are 3, 6 and 9 points for crusader, great and grand.

If you have 0 points or less in Crusading, you get 2 points for joining. You get 2 points more for arriving in the region. You get 2 more points for assaulting the target, and another 3 if you conquer it.

The interesting thing is that you get points in StrategyChivalry ("fair in rule", "noble in rule" etc) everytime you JOIN. But these points do NOT get deducted when you leave. So you can have all of your leaders join, leave and rejoin a crusade to max out the trait and be "Saintly ruler", giving you +5 chivalry and +3 authority. Requires 16 points, so join and rejoin 16 times.

Sons of fathers who have 4 or 7 in chivalry get 1 and 1 point of chivalry legacy automatically, giving them +1 and +2 chivalry at birth. (same with dread)

[FactionHeir]

It should be noted here that the assault and conquer points for crusader history are only gained for the general leading the assault (commanding officer)
So if you have multiple armies with different generals attacking, only one will get the assault and conquer points.
Exception is having multiple generals in 1 army. Those all get the conquer points but only the leading general gets the assault points.