New Faction Leader Question

[Martok]

That's what I thought. Could be done for role-playing purpose though ... Would make the game more challenging as well if you set yourself the rule that your king must always be the leader fo yours crusades ... That being said if I ever set that rule to myself, I am pretty sure that I probably will find very good reason not to launch any crusade ... Shame on me for being such a coward

Heh. I hardly call it cowardly, mate. It's not your fault that the game's mechanics are set up so that it's usually a bad idea to send your faction leader on Crusade. It's a pity, since I like to roleplay my factions a lot -- and sending faction leaders on Crusades certainly qualifies as a solid RP element.


Actually, there are two factions that can sometimes get away with sending their kings on Crusade: the Spanish & Aragonese. Given their starting position, the Almos' territory makes for some excellent early Crusading opportunities....and best of all, it means that the Aragonese/Spanish king won't be away from home for very long.

That said, it's still a risky proposition. I might send my Spanish king on Crusade once or twice into Almohad lands, but no more than that. (And even then, I've sometimes suffered rebellions anyway. )

[Jxrc]

Heh. I hardly call it cowardly, mate. It's not your fault that the game's mechanics are set up so that it's usually a bad idea to send your faction leader on Crusade. It's a pity, since I like to roleplay my factions a lot -- and sending faction leaders on Crusades certainly qualifies as a solid RP element.)

Would not might the risk if the reward was substantial (let's say twice as much prestige and additional piety) Wonder if that could be modified but I fear that kind of mechanism is hard-coded .... As a matter of fact is has never been that a great idea for a king to take part to a crusade historically (Barbarossa got drowned, Saint Louis died, Richard Liohheart made prisonner on the way home ...) So probably the game is somehow accurate in that respect .... Only king I can remember who successfully took part in a crusade is Frederick II who just landed in Jerusalem, made a deal with his good friend the Sultan, crowned himself king of Jerusalme and left .... Not too epic indeed a a bit far away of any kind of total war .... Would be nice though if you could just reach your target province, ask the Egyptians to leave peacefully (cause you are on a mission for god of course) and see them oblige

Actually, there are two factions that can sometimes get away with sending their kings on Crusade: the Spanish & Aragonese. Given their starting position, the Almos' territory makes for some excellent early Crusading opportunities....and best of all, it means that the Aragonese/Spanish king won't be away from home for very long.

That said, it's still a risky proposition. I might send my Spanish king on Crusade once or twice into Almohad lands, but no more than that. (And even then, I've sometimes suffered rebellions anyway. )

Only other possibilities I see would be:

- as the HRE: taking provinces such as Pomerania and or Prussia early in the game (the Poles will probably take the province for one turn just to mess with you) ... Moreover HRE loyalty being what it is you'll probably end up with a civil war almost immediately after your king has joined the crusade so you need to start the crusdade in an province adjacent to your target ... otherwise ...
- as the Italian or Sicilia: taking Crete, Rhodes or Cyprus if you can land therer without having to destroy any enemy fleet first and if no fort has been build there. If there is not fort there, you never destroy the harbour when conquering the province, if there is one you almost always do (so that your king would be cut off for an additional five turns at least - assault the keep + build new port).

A risky (silly ?) move in any case but could probably be done just for the thrill of it ... I am almost tempted to give it a try ... Perhaps I am getting reckless with age ??

[caravel]

Playing as the Spanish you can send your king on crusade to say Cordoba, Granada, Morocco etc, so it is viable. Personally I do send my kings and heirs on a lot of crusades when playing as a catholic. I just make sure that I've got a strong navy in place in order to get them back.

I few times I have sent my king on a crusade to the holy land. Yes loyalty suffers at home but this can be compensated for and it adds an interesting dynamic to the game. [is repeating himself]One of my most memorable campaigns as the English involved my whole kingdom accidentally relocating to asia minor.[/is repeating himself]

[Jxrc]

Yes loyalty suffers at home but this can be compensated for and it adds an interesting dynamic to the game.

Probably hard to do early in the game (too many peasants needed, cannot affor to keep low tax rate for long, ect) but a nice way to make the game more challenging once you've managed to get thing a bit stable.

One of my most memorable campaigns as the English involved my whole kingdom accidentally relocating to asia minor.

Sunnier wheather, no fog, harems left behing by the previous tenant ... Not a bad move IMHO

BTW many thankfs for you tips on CTD in the Apothecary. Would have give my PC the bin without you (so I probaly need to thank you on the behalf of my PC as well) ...

[caravel]

Probably hard to do early in the game (too many peasants needed, cannot affor to keep low tax rate for long, ect) but a nice way to make the game more challenging once you've managed to get thing a bit stable.

Yes you probably need to be in the high era and reasonably stable, with some decent shipping.

Sunnier wheather, no fog, harems left behing by the previous tenant ... Not a bad move IMHO

Easily one of the best and most memorable campaigns I've ever played. I had sent a crusade to one of the eastern provinces (I think it was Antioch, Tripoli or Palestine) and dug in there for several years. A second Crusade resulted in the capture of another. I then made the rash decision to send the King out there by sea with a relief army a few years later. Things got bad back home and war started with the French. Excommunicated by the Pope and many provinces getting overly rebellious. Then the French hit me with eveything they had and slowly but surely I lost all of the homelands. By stark contrast in east my forces had struck out at the weakened Byzantine, established a new capital in Constantinople and had conquered the Turks and Egyptians. I remember fighting off the Mongols in Georgia with Billmen and Longbows. It took a few hundred years for my kingdom to finally re take the homelands from the French IIRC and I seem to remember that after enacting bloody revenge upon them that they reappeared somewhere in Britain.

BTW many thankfs for you tips on CTD in the Apothecary. Would have give my PC the bin without you (so I probaly need to thank you on the behalf of my PC as well) ...

[Jxrc]

Easily one of the best and most memorable campaigns I've ever played. I had sent a crusade to one of the eastern provinces (I think it was Antioch, Tripoli or Palestine) and dug in there for several years. A second Crusade resulted in the capture of another. I then made the rash decision to send the King out there by sea with a relief army a few years later. Things got bad back home and war started with the French. Excommunicated by the Pope and many provinces getting overly rebellious. Then the French hit me with eveything they had and slowly but surely I lost all of the homelands. By stark contrast in east my forces had struck out at the weakened Byzantine, established a new capital in Constantinople and had conquered the Turks and Egyptians. I remember fighting off the Mongols in Georgia with Billmen and Longbows. It took a few hundred years for my kingdom to finally re take the homelands from the French IIRC and I seem to remember that after enacting bloody revenge upon them that they reappeared somewhere in Britain.

Total Exodus can be a fun game too it seems

Only time I did something similar is my first campaign as the Polish (must have been something like my tenth campaign - you know when you think you know it all while you actually do not know that much). Everything that could go wrong did go wrong and I made quite a few obivous blunders as you will see. In a nutschell, the Byz beat me to Moldavia (I did not know then that it was so important to grab that poor province) and started their usual roaming through the Steppes. Basically got stuck between the French (who had destroyed the HRE as usual), the Hungarians and the Byz. Tought I just had to lay low for a while and wait for one faction to spontaneoulsy disintegrate (was still young and boundless faith in the future ) but at the beginning of the high period nothing significant had happened and I was still stuck with IRCC Silesia, Poland, Vo*something (can never remember that name ), Lithuania, Livonia, Sweden and Norway when the GH showed up with a huge army in Khazar, Volga-Bulgaria and Georgia.... Something like 20 stack all in all I guess (but that was the vanilla version so they had loads of ballisas and trebuchets)... since it was indeed my lucky campaign the Khan was deadly set to killing Poles and only Poles .... GH took Kiev and then it was time for an all out assault against me ... Don't know if I could have repelled the GH (probably it was quite doable for anyone with enough experience but I am confident that I would have blown it then since I did not undertsand the mechanics of the game) but decided just to leave the continent for a while and let the Byz and French deal with that S*. Retreated to Sweden without triggering any civil war despite loss of influence and made a "surprise" come-back some 20 years later. GH later on got into a civil war of their own and disappeared. All was well for a few years until the Horde reappeared in the middle of Poland (did not know yet the 120% rule) ... Was already hard pressed by the Byz so that was pretty much the end for me ... Last king of Poland died in battle a bit after 1300 ... Disappointing end but really a fun campaign.

[putts]

Just thought I'd lob my 2 cents at this topic....

I'm currently in a campaign as Poland and HRE was constantly at war with at least 3 different nations. Thus, they are constantly on Ex-com status.

At one point in time the "..HRE has died..." message and then immediately saw the "Pope requests crusades against HRE" next (just like you mentioned) and had to chuckle a bit at the poor HREs.

However, out of curiosity I checked my allies panel to see if Germany was still ex-commed which they weren't.

Now, I'm not super intelligent about MTW but I am a computer programmer so this was my reasoning on it:

While the "off-turn" is calculating, it generates all the events that are going to happen in between your turns. My guess is that these are done in some order and that having the Pope send Crusades at someone is one of the earlier calculations and having a King die is one of the later calculations (probably an oversight on development's part). So.....even though HRE was no longer ex-commed, the calculation to see if the Pope wants crusades ran first and so both messages ended up in the queue.
Now, the messages probably have an order of their own and the Crusades is almost always the last one so that's why, when you see it, it looks like the faction gets ex-commed by their King dying and then gets Crusades sent after them.

So....basically....Crusades won't happen because that Faction is definitely not ex-commed but the developers didn't do their calculations/messages in the proper order so there are confusing messages.