Ahoy guys, long time no post!

This conversation caught my eye, since one of the last games of MTW I played before taking a break (damn Civ IV, so addictive) was with the French in XL, and I specifically decided to try to complete the crusade-related GA's (krak des chevaliers etc, I can't remember them all from the top of my head) and did actually manage to launch some succesful crusades. Before that I wasn't too well informed about the aspects of crusading but I learned something from that game plus the related topics on the .org at that time.

The first thing to remember is that the game treats human player and computer crusades differently: Human controlled crusades must always use the shortest possible route to the destination province, eg. the route that will take the least amount of turns. On the contrary, computer controlled crusades have the freedom of choosing their own route, which sometimes leads to them taking special interest in your high-garrisoned provinces, sucking up those valuable chivalric foot knights you've been stacking up to swipe the damnable germans off the face of the earth. (no personal experience related...)

As for crusades crossing water regions and using other factions' ships, the observations made here are correct. Once a crusade is given permission to pass through a players lands, it can use its ports and ships, but it can also use any possible link of ships that can be used to transport the crusade across the sea. If you for example are playing as the Italians, and you allow a German crusade to pass through your lands to Venice, and there is a link of French ships leading straight from Venice to say, Tripoli, the crusade can use those ships as long as it's not in war with the French.

Personally I found amphibiously conducted crusades to be most effective: first I made sure I had a chain of ships from the starting province to the destination, (or as close as I could get) then I simply created the crusade, dropped my pre-arranged crusader army to the crusade and slammed the lot in the middle of the holy land to cause as much turmoil as possible. While not maybe the most sportsmanlike maneuver, it did really save me some grey hair from battling with the limited route options, and i actually got a pretty intact army all the way to the destination. (And once my line of ships was cut off shortly afterwards, my little crusade army really got to see some serious action too...)

PS. Good to be back again, it's nice to see the community still active! I have been playing MTW occasionally lately, had some fun with the Warlords-mod, and also gave a go at Redux (pretty damn great btw, really loved the balance it offers) and I have a rather interesting campaing going as the Picts in Viking Invasion atm.