Jihad bug. Crusade annoyance.

[olaf]

I thought Jihads could only be declared against territories that an islamic power had previously held? Well, I had the bastard moors declare a jihad against Saxony, a province that I am quite certain they have never held in this game. Bug?

On Crusades, I find them very annoying. The English declared one to Valencia...and then spent 15 years loitering about my lands trying to suck up my troops. What determines how many of your armies will join a crusade? I know zeal has something to do with it, but what else?

Thanks
olaf

[Furtrapper]

Apparently the Crusade thing is a bug - they should lose soldiers if they hang around too long and shouldn't be able to track all over the place sapping your armies.

The Jihad thing certainly sounds like a bug though - bummer too.

As it stands in my game, the Crusades are a total pain and utterly unbalance things. I'm playing the Italians c1211, with just the French and the remnants of the HRE to the West, the Almohads in Spain and the Byz owning the rest. Novgorod and Egypt hold NE corner and SE corner respectively. The French, with ludicrous piety and massive influence keep launching Crusades which soak up all my superior troops as they cut a swathe through my provinces. They hang around, track my armies if I try to move them out of the way and constantly move back and forth as if magnetically drawn to high troop concentrations.

If I launch Crusades, I'm trapped into a single track to my destination, and if I hang around, the army loses people.

One of the moderators says it's a bug, so hopefully will be fixed soon - they'll probably tidy up your Jihad business too!

[Pachinko]

Just wait...the patch will help it. I hope!

P.

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Crush your enemies, see them driven before you on the field of battle, and hear the lamentation of their women.

Dev quote>>Sigh, ye of little faith. Don't assume everything is a bug.

[Protoman]

Bump, yes it's annoying that the comp doesn't play by the same rules.

[Spino]

Join the club, it's a well known fact that the Crusade/Jihad AI is in need of serious tweaking.

I had a campaign as the Danes ruined because of the Crusade bug. The mighty French decided to launch a crusade to Antioch and it wound up marching to DENMARK instead!!! Someone please explain that detour! I let it enter the country the first time but it inexplicably came back the turn after it left! This completely ruined my invasion force intended for Novgorod and for the next five minutes I must have let loose with every curse and epithet I knew. Reloading to an older saved game didn't help because the French launched another Crusade that did the same thing! The French were simply too powerful to take on directly and upon refusing and defeating the Crusade in battle the subsequent war with mighty France simply overwhelmed my provinces and destroyed my vast longboat trade fleet, thus ruining my mercantile based economy. Great, roughly 200+ turns down the drain because of a bug.

[This message has been edited by Spino (edited 10-11-2002).]

[scipio spinx]

I agree there's a problem with Crusade pathfinding.

Here's my situation:

Playing as Italians, the French declare crusade to Palestine. Crusade moves to province bordering Venice, obviously moving in there on the next turn. I take risk of being invaded by HRE (currently an enemy) and move all forces except obselete (spearmen, basic archers, etc) out of Venice.
Crusade comes in, sucks up some sucky units, then departs next turn for Palestine.

Crusade takes Palestine 1st turn, and I move my main forces back into Venice.

But then! Egyptians counter-attack Palestine, with smaller force than Crusade army AND CRUSADE ARMY RETREATS BACK TO VENICE!!! Even though the port in Palestine was destroyed when then army landed.

WTF!!!

So, I reload. This time, after the Crusade leaves Venice, I sever the sea link between Palestine and Venice by moving my ship (the ONLY ship) out of the Adriatic Sea.

No matter, the Crusade STILL retreats to Venice, even though they have to swim the Adriatic Sea to do so.

As Vanya so eloquently puts it: GAH!

[The Green Knight]

i was playing turk and the egyptians launched a jihad against aragon. they entered syria and i gave permission for them to pass and the next thing i knew i was at war with egypt.

[Pragmatic]

For the crusades, is it possible to remove crusades altogther by editing the faction types? For instance, change Catholic_Expansionist_Crusader (which is what I believe the English are) to Catholic_Expansionist?

That might get rid of that, at least until the patch comes out.

Don't know what to do about the Muslim factions, however.

[hrvojej]

Crusade pathfinding should be fixed in the patch. The problem stems from the fact that they can either choose a land route or a sea route to their destination, and they also want to get more soldiers along the way I believe. The wobbbly pathfinding happens because the crusade makes a choice each turn, and is switching between the possible routes.
Possible remedies for now that I use:
- sever your naval routes; you probably have the best routes there, and they are the target; you'll lose some trade income, but that's better than half of an army
- move your troops from the neighbouring province to the province where the crusade is now; it will suck up only units that happen to be in the province where it moves to, and not the units that are in the province where it was; next turn it will have to move to a different province, and you follow, until you get rid of it
- move your troops to, let's say, Corsica; I just love that solution of sending my soldiers to vacation; the enemy will hestiate to attack, especially if you're allied with the country whose crusade this is, which means they'll help you in battle

To try to answer the question about the "teleportation": upon the resolution of the turn, that ship is still counted as being in that region. The movements that you make are better considered as the movements that you would *like* to make, instead of completed acts. The sequence goes something like this: 1) you make your plans 2) the ai makes its plans 3) resolution in accordance with 1) and 2). The same thing happens when you want to move your ship out of the seazone, and it gets attacked during the ai turn. You wanted to move it out, but it didn't happen, because it was attacked before that, so it's still "technically" there all the way untill the begining of the next turn. BTW, in the similar scenario I even tried *disbanding* ships in terror of a teleporting crusade, but it would still move to its desired location.