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Quote Originally Posted by Grog
Fairly brutal blitzkrieging

I look forward to seeing the inward crush from the 4 corners!

On the backstabbing of your catholic friends, I found it best to start on perfect each turn with the pope (as you mention you are), and let it drop 3 ranks before topping it up with a diplomat to perfect. This should allow you around 8-10 offensives/turn without actual excom using 3 diplomats on rome.

I would like to know more about your initial build up and how much you 'wrangled' through diplomacy. Did you buy much land initially? Also, rough estimate of florins gained through diplomacy? I found getting enough stacks launched on first crusade awkward, simply could not recruit enough troops/mercs fast enough in the initial few turns. Although as I stated earlier on the thread, I basically ignored diplomacy and concentrated on military expansion.

Do you think you'll need a second crusade to finish? 45/12 at drop off is very impressive, but still a fair bit of marching to do at non crusade speed for the next 10 turns, esp if turks have yet to build roads.

Taking antioch turn 12 I guess would be well within your first crusade timeframe, I am assuming postioning was at a point to make the second crusade sooner rather than ending the first one late?

Anyway, good blitzing, I shall enjoy the AAR

On a seperate note, I'm having quite a lot of fun with my turkish campaign:

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Turkey 1.3 VH.VH
Objective: 106 province Jihad, military conquest.

Houserules:
-No allies
-No active diplomacy (map info/traderights allowed from AI diplomats)
-No debt
-No assassins
-Passive spies
-Sack/Ransom everywhere
-Massive multiple Jihad armies


lol