Crusade

[seireikhaan]

1st of all, never underestimate a crusade/jihad(s). These can be quite powerful, diverse, and LARGE armies. In the case of crusades, you can use other people's navies to capture provinces you would otherwise be unable to obtain.

One big thing with crusades/jihads, however, is the impact they can have on your king's influence. If a crusade/jihad fails, your king's influence will decrease, in some cases triggering a civil war. If it succeeds, it will boost your king's influence, on top of any influence gained from taking the province. In the case of Jihad's, you can do a cheap little trick(which I've only done once. Honestly!) called jihad spamming, where you intentionally let an enemy kingdom take one of your border provinces, and build up a lot of jihad's(I had 26) and unleash all of them upon the poor, unsuspecting opponent. Also, my Sultan's influence went from nine to about 35. Yes, it won't actually say 35 when you check the stats, but really, is there any other reason why all the mercs I was hiring from that point onward all had maxed loyalty?

EDIT: Don't ever try jihad spamming to the point that I did, if you plan on winning the game. Trust me, you don't need the extra 46,000 troops, and it bankrupted me in 7 turns once I had to start paying for all those troops. Bear in mind, I had about 180,000 Florins in the bank.