Jihad Generals

[Agent Miles]

Like most players, my usual Jihads have a few good units and a bunch of "filler" peasants and desert archers. In my last game, however, I made it a point to use Grand Imams to raise zeal to 80-100% in the provinces where I made Jihad icons. When I launched the Jihad, I noticed that every one now included a four star general! I launched about two dozen just to be sure and every single one of them had such a general. Has anyone else had this experience?

[caravel]

The higher the zeal the better quality the Crusade/Jihad in my experience yes. With 100% zeal you should get a decent sized army consisting of good troops and Nizaris, if you spam two dozen of them, then you'll pretty much have your quota of Nizaris for the rest of the campaign.

Lord Martok frowns on jihad spamming however, and has never spammed jihads in his life, so don't let him see you spamming two dozen!

[jadast]

I love spamming Jihads. I use these masses of cheap troops to swarm the opponent before moving in for the kill with my professional army.

[Agent Miles]

I didn't really need them. However, an extra 24 four star generals helped.

[Martok]

Well as Cambyses II pointed out, there's definitely a correlation between the quality & size of Jihad armies and the zeal of the province in which they originate. I admittedly can't say I've noticed having received good Jihad generals on as consistent a basis as you have, Agent Miles; but then I'm generally not very scrupulous in making sure my provinces are at max zeal before launching a holy war (i.e., I'm fairly content so long as zeal is higher than 60%). As a result, the quality of my Jihad generals tends to vary somewhat.

Lord Martok frowns on jihad spamming however, and has never spammed jihads in his life, so don't let him see you spamming two dozen!

[choke, cough] Excuse me a second, I just snorted and almost spit water on my keyboard....

Uh, no, of course not! I've never spammed Jihads, ever -- those 36,000 men that showed up to fight the Horde in Khazar were all regular army units, I swear! Scout's honor!

[Lord Cazaric]

When me and my friend were playing as the Turks, we wanted to recapture Silesia from the French (an absolutely enormous country), so we build a Jihad in Rum and filled it with 2000 soldiers, before heading off into Trebizond to get to Silesia (it was the only way there).

However, this was both of our first Jihad (I have used crusades, but he has done neither) and we had no idea that Orthodox nations don't allow Jihads to pass through (Trebizond and Constantinople were held by the Byzantines) and so when we tried to march, it asked if we wanted to declare war. Well, being already in a constant war with France, and having the threat of a huge Almohad force in the Middle East, we decided not to, so our Jihad slowly lost numbers as it stayed in Rum.

Bugger.

[Martok]

Yeah, the Orthodox factions are friendlier towards Catholics than Muslims, at least in that respect. Don't worry, though -- you're not the only ones who learned that the hard way.