Crusading tips please

**Shika_mech** · September 30, 2014, 05:01 PM

How does one go on a crusade as Denmark or Britten or Northern European for that matter. Ive tried and my general either dies at sea some how or the men leave on my way to the crusade by boat. really irritating because vikings are awesome

**Vipman** · September 30, 2014, 05:13 PM

Going by sea around Iberian Peninsula, the game considers your army is moving away from the crusade instead of going towards it so units will start to disband. Better just go by land.

**Shika_mech** · September 30, 2014, 05:31 PM

so i just walk through others people areas? How would I cross the Mediterranean?

**Silverheart** · September 30, 2014, 06:25 PM

The best strategy is to do what the English did historically: send the army by land to Italy, then sail from there.
Simply have your army walk to the southern tip of Italy or some coastline in Greece, then recruit a mercenary ship and sail straight to the Levant. Since attacking crusading armies brings about a huge penalty in relations, they are almost never attacked, and if you´re worried of naval attacks, just make the voyage shorter (like, sail only a short distance, and have the army land somehwere just west of Egypt, or in Turkey, and then walk from there).

**Shika_mech** · September 30, 2014, 09:03 PM

perfect thank you very much

**Celsius** · September 30, 2014, 10:58 PM

and Crusading armies don't get a relation penalty for walking through a nations land without proper access iirc.

**John Doe** · October 01, 2014, 05:52 PM

Make sure the general that leads the army isn't too old, like below 50, that'll give you about 20 turns since they all dies around 60.

**UndrState** · October 01, 2014, 07:03 PM

Dont forget, sending your Faction Heir or Faction Leader will bring a greater boost to your relationship with the Pope. Reaching, and taking, your crusade target gets you nice traits with high Piety - and while high Piety will increase the income of your average Faction Member whilst they are governing a settlement, the Piety of the Faction Leader increases your income globaly, so kep that in mind.

**Delvecchio1975** · October 02, 2014, 05:40 AM

Originally Posted by UndrState

Dont forget, sending your Faction Heir or Faction Leader will bring a greater boost to your relationship with the Pope. Reaching, and taking, your crusade target gets you nice traits with high Piety - and while high Piety will increase the income of your average Faction Member whilst they are governing a settlement, the Piety of the Faction Leader increases your income globaly, so kep that in mind.

Now THAT is news to me. Grazie!

**UndrState** · October 02, 2014, 09:21 AM

I should clarify. Piety increases the income of the settlement that Faction Member is governing; the Piety of the Faction Leader increases the income of all settlements.

**Vipman** · October 02, 2014, 01:14 PM

Saay whaaat? You mean faction leader's piety increases all admin income in all settlements? Are there any other mentions/tests/proof of this?

**UndrState** · October 02, 2014, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by Vipman

Saay whaaat? You mean faction leader's piety increases all admin income in all settlements? Are there any other mentions/tests/proof of this?

Whelp, real easy to test, just cheat your Leader to zero Piety and then up to the max, and see how things change.

My source is from the Gospel of Kobal2fr :

E.1] Piety, a.k.a. "We'll need priests. Lots of them."

Piety is fairly easy to come by. First of all, any and all generals start with 3/10 piety barring any bad trait like Superstitious, Feck or Public Atheism, and there are five main ways you can get more : crusading, ReligiousActivity, PublicFaith, ForcedReligious and TouchedByTheGods.

Crusading is fairly straightforward : answer the call, ship off to whatever den of cursed heretics has earned the wrath of the man in the funny hat and hopefully conquer it will get you the Grand Crusader trait, for a whopping 3 Piety and assorted Chivalry. Muslim factions have an equivalent trait for successful Jihad leaders.

PublicFaith has 4 levels, each giving one point in Piety. It can be gained by sitting around in a town that has a religious building (15% chance for 1 point every turn), by having a father with the trait (20% for 1 point) , by being born with a cathedral or better (or jama or better) anywhere in your empire, and lastly simply by being born (4% flat, with increased chances if you're playing as HRE, Spain, Milan or Poland, and always one point for all Muslims). This cannot really be trained, you'll have to rely on that 15% chance each turn. Expect 2 or 3 points from that over a governor's lifespan.

ReligiousActivity also has 4 levels, and is gained through building all kinds of churches as well as training priests, one point for each. Note that you'll also get chivalry by building churches. The max level is reached with 12 points, meaning you can get there by building 4 small chapels, training the 4 priests, then upgrading all 4 to small church. You can also build a small chapel, destroy it then rebuild it on next turn but beware if you're playing a catholic faction, as the pope is not too keen on destroyed churches.

ForcedReligious you get by getting tried for heresy and surviving. A general can also get it randomly by surviving a disaster, and a bug in the game somehow makes generals check that trigger each and every turn, albeit it's a very low chance (5% of 4% IIRC). Sadly, the same trigger can also make them Superstitious, which is bad, and can pass down to their offsprings, which is why you want the Rational trait. All in all, this trait cannot really be trained, but welcome the sight of an inquisitor in your region : in 1.2 they very, very rarely succeed their trials, so if one gets close to your governor, you can gamble on it and evict every other possible target for the inqui and hope for the best.

Lastly, you can only get TouchedByTheGods at birth, but not only is it a very good trait (giving +2 to +4 Piety), it's also self propagating, meaning it gets better all by itself over time. The bad news is that having it means you can get neither Rational nor Sane, and you could very well wind up with a Superstitious or even mad governor.

EDIT : pete101 has found out that the King's piety influences the income of EVERY city/castle you own. Send him on a crusade already !

Who got it from this guy on the comments of the same article:

06-08-2007, 04:15#49 pete101

Member Member

Join DateMay 2007Posts14

Re: Kobavelli's The Prince : a guide to breeding the perfect statesman.

Originally Posted by pete101
does your king's piety have a global effect, (like acumen did in medieval 1)

***

i did a test and king's piety does have a global effect, increasing the income of all settlements slightly

noticed that a governor's chivalry increases loyalty, but i haven't tested the king's chivalry yet

someone said that authority increase's loyalty (globally), is that true ?,
i thought it influenced diplomacy, is that also true ?

what about a general's stars, in previous games i recall it increasing attack and defense, in the manual it says that it increase morale (the same thing chivalry does), is that all it does ?

(just to be clear my understanding of morale from the manual, is that it keeps your soldiers in the fight, nothing else)

**D@gget** · October 03, 2014, 09:50 PM

Also: never let your crusading army without a general. If your general leaves the army or dies, the entire army will disband in a turn or two.

**Kaiser Nonsense** · October 09, 2014, 01:20 AM

Originally Posted by UndrState

Dont forget, sending your Faction Heir or Faction Leader will bring a greater boost to your relationship with the Pope. Reaching, and taking, your crusade target gets you nice traits with high Piety - and while high Piety will increase the income of your average Faction Member whilst they are governing a settlement, the Piety of the Faction Leader increases your income globaly, so kep that in mind.

That was new to me as well, many thanks.