Crusade

[Tony Furze]

Whens the best time to launch a Crusade? The ideal economic/military/ rulership conditions are what I mean. Does a faction have to be somehow "secure" before embarking on a Crusade?

(Guess what aspect of the game I m interested in these days...)

[Noir]

Hallo Tony,
i guess it depends:
1. Which mod are you playing (or is it vanilla)?
2. Do you have sea connection to the destination?
3. How far is the destination?
4. How large your neighbours are and how many are they?
5. How strong militarily is and what alliances the victim has?
6. What's your kings influence?
7.How much florins are you making/turn and how much of these comes from trade?Will declaring the Crusade affect yout trade?
8. What is the zeal on the possible route of the Crusade?
9. How easy is to defend the chapter house province?

*edit* If you play GA launch crusades taking calculated risks - don't wait too long for the perfect conditions - they won't come!

Noir/excetchzebe

[macsen rufus]

Permit me a Zen moment, and advise you to "unask the question". The Crusade should be seen as a means to an end rather than an end in itself (unless, of course you are playing in GA mode, in which case it is an end in itself )

What is it you are trying to achieve strategically? Do you just want an influence boost? In which case go for something easily achieved. Are you after a particular province and see a Crusade as the best means? Or maybe your catholic neighbours have big armies that you want to hoover some men out of

Maybe the most important point with Crusades is that a failed one is REALLY bad news for your empire, possibly resulting in civil war, as your king will be rightly embarrassed by the whole affair...

The points Noir raises are good ones to ask before starting a Crusade. Route planning is a must, and if you can send a few inquisitors along first to raise zeal your Crusade army will suffer less attrition and gain more recruits. It's also a good way to "use up" mercenaries, as whilst they are on Crusade they have no upkeep costs, so it can be a handy way of freeing up some of your income for other things. Make sure your Chapter House is safe and secure - lose that and the Crusade will fail disastrously. Generally the shortest route is best, unless you are trying to hoover up neighbours' armies, in which case take a leisurely route through as many of their (high zeal) provinces as possible, and get loads of free troops of exciting and exotic new varieties. Remember though once the crusade has achieved its objective, then you will have to start paying their upkeep again. It's easy to gather together such a big army that this alone will bankrupt you when it's all over (or at least knock your cashflow well into the negative).

Bear in mind that declaring a crusade is a declaration of war on the receiving faction so watch out for their ships in your trade routes as well. It's probably a good idea to launch a massive naval attack at the same time as launching the crusade, just to be on the safe side

Happy Crusading

[Roark]

Couple of points off the top of my head, Tony:

- Pump the zeal in your starting province. Prepare this before you've even built the Chapter house.
- Protect your Chapter House at all costs once the crusade has been launched.
- Have some troops sitting in the starting province ready to join the crusade as soon as it is launched. Crusades often do not survive on zeal alone. Siege equipment is always a good idea. Ditto a pious high command general.

[King Kurt]

I always use crusades as part of an overall plan. I always check that my King can take the influence hit if it goes wrong. I top up the crusade with mercs and the odd prince to ensure a good leader and I always support the crusade with other armies. If I can hoover some other factions troops up, all well and good.
From a role playing point of view I try to avoid unhistoric Crusades, so they are mainly aimed at the middle east - but I have been known to visit other parts!!
If you are a Catholic faction and especially if you are a Holy order or historically a crusading nation such as the English or French, then I think you should indulge as soon as possible, it is all part of the game.
The one thing I don't tend to do is whip up Zeal in front of a Crusade, but that is because I tend to not put a lot of effort into the religious side of the game.

[random_pipings]

Question: if you put troops into a Crusade manually, will they melt away when you go throw provinces with low zeal?

[Martok]

Question: if you put troops into a Crusade manually, will they melt away when you go throw provinces with low zeal?

Yes. When it comes to Crusade defections, it doesn't matter where the defecting soldiers came from -- they're all equally likely to defect.

[Tony Furze]

Thanks so much,Noir, Macsen, Roark,King Kurt, random_pipings and Martok! I m toying around with re inventing the first Crusade using the XL (light).

Whats the largest no of units you can get in a Crusade?

[macsen rufus]

I have never yet reached the maximum number of units in a crusade, and I have stacked up some pretty massive ones at times - at least 5 "flags" worth - ie five regular stacks (takes off socks and shoes to count....) that would be 80 units plus and still accepting more I don't know if there even is a limit. I'm sure you could put your entire military resources into one (then watch the empire crumble, of course )

[Martok]

Whats the largest no of units you can get in a Crusade?

As macsen rufus has indicated, there doesn't seem to even *be* a unit limit on Crusades/Jihads.

However.... I remember reading about one gentleman who had a Crusade packed with over 50,000 troops, but then his campaign crashed. It was never determined for sure whether or not the CTD was caused by the Crusade's massive size, but it's probably worth keeping in the back of your mind.

[General Dazza]

While I'm only on my 4th or so campaign, as yet I have never done a crusade. Maybe someone could show me the righteous path, but I don't really see the value in doing one.

Rather than send front-line troops to a far off land to take a province that would then be surrounded/isolated, I'd rather have them on my front lines taking a neigbhouring province.

Also, I have a philosophical position re the way I play. I don't use mercs or bribe because I like the idea that every solider I deploy is one of that I've trained through the facilities I've built or captured. So I don;t like that you can suck up troops from other factions.

Is there a good strategic reason for crusades, or is it more a role playing thing?

[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.

[caravel]

However.... I remember reading about one gentleman who had a Crusade packed with over 50,000 troops, but then his campaign crashed. It was never determined for sure whether or not the CTD was caused by the Crusade's massive size, but it's probably worth keeping in the back of your mind.

I wonder who that was...?

There must be a limit, if only because of the data type used in the program. The variables that store this kind of data are usually limited for obvious reasons. jihads/crusades have a main banner on the map piece that fills up then turns red and moves back one level, then a second banner is used. This goes on until you have several full banners. I'm not sure of the limitation on the number of banners, or whether that would that would effect the crusade/jihad. I would say not. It would probably continue to fill up until you would get the "no more room" message, but if that never appears and it continues to increase in size, then I would say that eventually it would overflow and crash the game.

[Tony Furze]

Well...I tried getting a Crusade launched by 1096, but I had to use .worksundays. to get the Crusade marker any where near on time. Then there s the problem of Baldwin, who is stuck out in Britanny and he s supposed to go on the Crusade, and eventually take Edessa.

This was all on vanilla.

I switched to XL light + patch and was pleasantly surprised to see a keep already in Ile de France. So that made things a little easier...but still difficult to keep on schedule. I launched the Crusade OK, but France suffered multiple invasions and rebellions due to the fact that Bouillon, and Baldwin had gone.

Then I consulted the history book (I ve only got one here in the back of beyond) So I discovered it would be best to crank back the starting date. At first I tried 1071-the Battle of Manzikert. It was too long a run-up. Now I ve settled on 1080 a year before Alexus I. It s a better choice.

(By the way when I did that I expected no messages at all about world events, but in 1085 got a message about William I and the Domesday book.)

Now I ve not used .worksundays. but Europe gets quite hectic with invasions by the English, and the Aragonese. I ve launched the Crusade travelling overland with Bouillon and Baldwin on board.

[Caerfanan]

As I haven't played with GA yet, I never used crusades (well, I haven't played much "normal campaign, though, maybe 10?). I shall try one one of these days. I'm playing the french, and am at war with the byzantines (it wasn't my fault)...

Thanks for all the precious advices there!

[Roark]

Rather than send front-line troops to a far off land to take a province that would then be surrounded/isolated, I'd rather have them on my front lines taking a neigbhouring province.

What if it's Constantinople?

Surely you want Constantinople, as ANY faction, in ANY period!

*heavy breathing*

My addiction is clear to me now.

[History Geek]

Well, the problem - perhaps rather the challenge - with Constantinople is the fact that your next king is crowned in the province with the highest number of buildings. Typically that will be Con. and your young king will be cut off from your homelands. And if you don't have ships providing a connection you'll recieve "king-is-out-of-sight" penalties to your subject's loyalty.

/HG

[caravel]

Well, the problem - perhaps rather the challenge - with Constantinople is the fact that your next king is crowned in the province with the highest number of buildings. Typically that will be Con. and your young king will be cut off from your homelands. And if you don't have ships providing a connection you'll recieve "king-is-out-of-sight" penalties to your subject's loyalty.

/HG

One of my most epic campaigns was based on such a Scenario. It was as the English/Early/Hard Vanilla MTW. I had crusaded to Antioch and on the way there got caught up in a war with the Byzantine. The result was an English occupation of Asia Minor taking the place of the Byzantine and Turks, wiping both out, and maintaining an uneasy border with the Hungarians in the west and Egyptians in to the south east. Then disaster struck when the King died and his heir succeeded to the throne in Constantinople. This cut off the homelands causing massive revolts. The French took advantage and to cut a long story short the homelands were lost. The campaign proceeded from there with my displaced English in Anatolia fighting off the Golden Horde with Billmen and Longbowmen. I don't recall if I ever regained the homelands or not, but I doubt the English were worried as they seemed to be rather enjoying holidaying in Turkey.

[Caerfanan]

I was surprised when I tried to launch a crusade against those filthy Orthodox yesterday. The pope told me not to. but the province was "highlighted" when I wanted to move my crusade.

I must sound weird but I haven't launched any single crusade, yet!

Has this something to do with me being at war with the Pope, or is it that catholics can only crusade muslims at will and whoever is designed by the pope?

[caravel]

You cannot crusade against the Pope's allies.

[Caerfanan]

You cannot crusade against the Pope's allies.

Oh, I see. That makes sense then! Cheers!