Another HRE-Rush

[Askthepizzaguy]

The first sentence leads to an other possibility.
You can march with a crusading army to a city held by a not excommunicated catholic faction and than leave the crusade. Your General can now attack the city. Yet, he can not build many siege equipment and if he can not recruit mercenary infantry, he can not initate the siege battle.
Now comes the flaw/bug in to play.
Place your whole cruasding army adjacent to a city, leave the crusade, select your general and attack/besiege the settlement. Now you have the full siege points of your army and you can initate the siege battle with your crusading troops. After you captured the city join the crusade again and go on.

What version?

As far as I know, that's not doable in my version. Believe me, I've tried.

Any time crusading troops join a 'catholic-city-seige', that seige is lifted automatically by the game.

Example: attack city with non crusaders. Then have crusaders join the stack. The crusaders cancel the seige by default on version 1.2. In the interest of fairness, all my blitzes have been on VH/VH 1.2 version. Otherwise my magic wand of unlimited chivalry and total control over all diplomacy using the infamous 'gift offers to attack you've already gifted for the same effect leading to perfect relations with AT WAR factions and despicable reputation' trick would make the game exceedingly unfair. I wouldn't even have to spend florins to make the pope my...

...'ancillary'.

The way I could conceivably do what you're suggesting in my version:

Seige the city using only the non-crusading generals, with the crusader stack reinforcing in the city ZOC, adjacent to the generals in case of relief forces attacking your general, in which case they reinforce. I think they reinforce in case of a sally as well... maybe?

Enemy sallies, and you win the battle using only your generals.

Take the city, rejoin the crusade, move to next city.

How to win using only your generals:

Have like 3 or more of them and just keep making the idiots rout. Not particularly easy if the enemy has their king in the mix.

Use the old 'chase me, chase me.... oh you left your city undefended charge back to the city square and hold it for 3 minutes because you idiots dont have horses' scam.

If you have proof of what you're suggesting on version 1.2, I'd love to see a screenshot. Thanks for the tip, I will attempt it.