All Can Crusade

[bretwalda]

Hi there!

The all_can_crusade_mod. This is v2.

With these two files I enabled the vanilla VI to let all Catholic nations to crusade. Now I'd like to convince VikingHorde to include it in his mod XL, so please whoever tried it and liked it, or thinks it is a good idea, post here. Also any experience on this matter is welcome.

I experienced no problems and the AI seems to handle it fine (it is a very minor modification and I see no reason why it would not work anyway). I don't think it does anything to game balance - especially that the new crusading nations have no crusade goals (GA).

Thanks!

[Mithrandir]

Stickied for a while.

[Dutch_guy]

Good job bretwalda !

Good idea also, always hated the fact the Danish couldn't crusade.

[bamff]

Yeah, that was really the one bit about playing the Danes that I didn't like...

[NodachiSam]

Can the Orthodox factions crusade?

[bretwalda]

Can the Orthodox factions crusade?

Nope. I don't think that happened historically, either.

[Odin]

I am posting in support of this mod. I havent used it, but I think Christian kingdoms should be able to crusade. I play the XL mod exclusively and find it to be a superior expirence as is, adding this feature will enhance the game play options of the human player greatly, and thus enhance the mod.

[NodachiSam]

Do you think it is possible to have Orthodox factions crusade?
I don't think it is likely as it might be that it only works for catholic coding. Theoretically you could give them Jihads, renaming them and giving them the right graphics but it might only work to attack provinces lost from Muslims and only able to travel through yours and muslim lands, which would be utterly messed up. I'll check it out. Can it be uninstalled cleanly too?

[bretwalda]

Do you think it is possible to have Orthodox factions crusade?
I don't think it is likely as it might be that it only works for catholic coding. Theoretically you could give them Jihads, renaming them and giving them the right graphics but it might only work to attack provinces lost from Muslims and only able to travel through yours and muslim lands, which would be utterly messed up. I'll check it out. Can it be uninstalled cleanly too?

I think that would mess up the game engine... OTOH it would not be historically accurate. I don't recall any event that would be anything near like an orthodox crusade...

[Third spearman from the left]

Hi bretwalda,
I remember putting this idea to VH but he told me at the time that he thought it would unbalance the game and give christians factions too much power. After thinking about it I could see what he meant. But your right to think that had a smaller faction in XL built up an empire they were more likely to go on crusade.
I think if you get VH to add this to the game it should be done with certain conditions. To stop crusade fever taking over the game and think crusades should take six rather than four years to build and they should cost 2000 flo's rather than 1000. I think this might prevent crusade overload, while not stopping good empire builders from joining the pope's call. The added cost and time I think would reflect the effort it took to lunch a crusade for any nation.

Also Jihads could be made cheaper and quicker to build to see more muslin responses in a quicker time.

[bretwalda]

I use XL with the slight modification of every Catholic nation CAN crusade and I don't feel that it unbalances the game. However if it is insisted that crusading must be made more difficult to avoid crusade spam (which I think is not so likely because 1) only one active crusade per nation 2) Pope has to approve and money paid to the Pope) so then maybe Chapter house can me moved up the tech ladder

[Marquis de Said]

Also Jihads could be made cheaper and quicker to build to see more muslin responses in a quicker time.

I think that a lot of times, jihads are actually counter-productive for the Muslims, because they don't have enough lands to go through in order to amass enough troops which means jihads are more likely to fail. And the Muslim factions' generals have really low loyalty, meaning a civil war is very likely after a failed jihad (combined with the previous loss of provinces which the jihad was trying to retake).

One solution would be to mod jihads so they create more troops to start with, or make sure the quality of the troops appearing in a jihad is better.

[bretwalda]

I think that a lot of times, jihads are actually counter-productive for the Muslims, because they don't have enough lands to go through in order to amass enough troops which means jihads are more likely to fail. And the Muslim factions' generals have really low loyalty, meaning a civil war is very likely after a failed jihad (combined with the previous loss of provinces which the jihad was trying to retake).

One solution would be to mod jihads so they create more troops to start with, or make sure the quality of the troops appearing in a jihad is better.

I don't think that just crusading would upset the balance: all of the problems of the jihads and crusades refer to a certain game situation which is of course changes from time to time. We have seen the Byz taking over the half map, turning purple or the Papacy or Almohads. There are no set winning factions, nor set winning religion.

It might be suggested that Orthodox religion is underpowered because only a few factions have this faith, they are in the way of the Golden Horde mostly AND they have none of the fancy religious agents and tools, such as inquisitors, jihads, crusades - and yet noone seems to be concerned... I think the game is just well balanced and this small change would not unbalance it more than adding a new faction or slightly changing the map.

[Third spearman from the left]

bretwalda,
I can understand what your saying but I just feel that crusades always seem to slowly kill off muslim factions. In XL I've found the added factions who can crusade just speed up the end of the muslims. I don't think having all christian factions crusading is wrong but it would need to be tested by VH to ensure the balance is not lost.

Marquis de Said,
I like the idea of giving jihad's better troops and more of them. This would provide an edge to the response.

[bretwalda]

bretwalda,
I can understand what your saying but I just feel that crusades always seem to slowly kill off muslim factions. In XL I've found the added factions who can crusade just speed up the end of the muslims. I don't think having all christian factions crusading is wrong but it would need to be tested by VH to ensure the balance is not lost.

Marquis de Said,
I like the idea of giving jihad's better troops and more of them. This would provide an edge to the response.

I understand your concern, but... look at this:

I seem to find that when I am muslim (ie.: The Turks) the Crescent Moon seems to be doing well. When I am orthodox (ie.: Armenians) somehow the steppes remain Novgorod, Kievian, etc and when I play catholics (mostly Hungarians) then Western Europe usually owns Middle East.

What I mean is that YOU as a player have a profound effect on how the game will unfold - especially because YOU as a player and your faction ALWAYS do well - otherwise you would not be in the position to observe... thus promoting your religion and the factions of your belief.

What do you think?

[Third spearman from the left]

YOU are not making sense.

I understand the effect I as a player have on the game and my surroundings, but when I recently played as the Volga Bulgars (muslim faction) my sole aim was to take christian lands only. I supported my brothers to the south and never attacked them even when they asked for it. But after a few crusades the turks done for and the eggies little better off. In that time I never saw one jihad from anyone but myself (its a good campaign I'll post a screen shot).

Overall what I'm saying is Yes to all can crusade but, 1 year Jihad Build time and half the cost of them.

[bretwalda]

YOU are not making sense.

I understand the effect I as a player have on the game and my surroundings, but when I recently played as the Volga Bulgars (muslim faction) my sole aim was to take christian lands only. I supported my brothers to the south and never attacked them even when they asked for it. But after a few crusades the turks done for and the eggies little better off. In that time I never saw one jihad from anyone but myself (its a good campaign I'll post a screen shot).

Overall what I'm saying is Yes to all can crusade but, 1 year Jihad Build time and half the cost of them.

Hehe, maybe I should have bolded the 'you' instead of capitalizing, anyway: it is interesting that we have such different experience with the game. What I was suggesting are tendencies that are influenced by the player using a certain faction - no way a there is sure method to tell what faction will prevail.

I am sure that many players would say no to jihad cost decrease because they already see "jihad-spam". Note, that jihads do not require starting cost paid to the Pope, either and there can be more than one active from one faction.

In my present game with Armenians the Almohads own Spain, France and most of what was HRE and sending jihads towards my lands as well as seen some crusades earlier. Luckily I have the Cumans as a buffer and I own the sea, already

What do you think, maybe you could mod in crusade for all catholics (I can tell you how it is very easy) and see for yourself if there is any difference. Actually I am thinking about modding your 'budget' jihads into the game - my only doubt is, whether I can resist the temptation of jihad spamming when I play the Turks

[NodachiSam]

Admitadly I havn't played over a few dozen campaigns but I couldn't say whether muslim factions get eliminated any faster than other factions because of crusades. It is just an occurance but in my last two campaigns the Almohads got very far north. In one of those two campaigns the turks owned a lot of land to, from Egypt to Hungary to the mid steepes or so. It isn't that it is currently unbalanced is what I mean to say.
I see a lot of crusades fail because the AI often has impossible goals. By the nature of the game each major faction should theorhetically have an equal chance of becomming highly successful (though the AI isn't built to win the whole game, just to challenge or defeat the player) I wouldn't want to see the three or four muslim factions be equal to all the catholic factions combined. It is the same with the orthodox factions. They are more likely to get eliminated than the catholic factions simply by virtue of being so much fewer in number.


On a related matter it theorhetically might be possible to give orthodox factions defensive crusades. Maybe you could duplicate the "machinery" for jihads and replace their visualization with the cross, have them built by an orthodox reliquery and modify their localization. I think you'd have to try to go through the jihad approach because crusades are I think are hard coded in regards to the Pope and being catholic. It would be a lot of work and I'd only give it a 25% chance or working but I'll play around with it. It would be very interesting if it worked.

[Martok]

Overall, I'm opposed to allowing all the Catholic factions to Crusade (although I wouldn't massively object if the Papacy was allowed to, and even then I'd think twice about it). I think VikingHorde has just about maxed the number of Crusading factions with XL, without making it overly hard for the Muslim factions.

I don't really count the Turks or the Volga-Bulgarians, as the former usually gets eliminated by the Byz/Eggies, and the latter generally gets wiped out by Novgord/Kiev/Golden Horde. The Almos don't get steamrolled by the Iberian factions as much as they used to--and on occasion even creep up western Europe like the days of yore, back when they were uber in the vanilla game. Still, that's hardly a ringing endorsement for the strengths of the Muslim factions as a whole. In my experience thus far, the Egyptians are still the only Muslim faction that consistently does well.

Yes, the AI doesn't handle Crusades very well; but then, it doesn't handle Jihads very well either. So I think that part balances out fairly well. Given that the Eggies and sometimes the Almos are the only 2 Muslim factions with which the AI seems to have any kind of success, I'd be very reluctant to make things more difficult for them than it already is.