Playing as the English on VH/VH, turn 105 (using excellent Ultmate AI, Darth and BigMap mods).
The year is 1195AD. In a scenario familiar to most English players, Mighty England is about to wipe out both the French and HRE after nearly 75 years of bloody attrition - checked only by Papal intervention.
But I'm struggling to hold onto my Jerusalem-Cairo foothold won during the 1st Crusade, because the supremely powerful Turks have joined the Egyptian Jihad to retake Cairo (the Turks now pass southbound through Acre and Jerusalem frequently with 2 full stacks moving at blitzkrieg pace, and my beleaguered garrisons fight them off with huge casualties on both sides). Sensing a shift in regional power that will see the colonisers evicted from the Near East, the Muslim populations of Jerusalem and Acre are in revolt. Only veteran tribal Sudanese mercenaries, Christianised during the First Crusade, are preventing an all-out Islamic rebellion, while the pink-skinned English with their absurdly long bows and oven hot armoured knights are strung out in a defensive line along the rugged badlands of the Sinai, holding back the Ottoman onslaught.
With the bulk of my European armies tied up in fighting in southern France and east central Europe against the last remnants of the Franco-Imperial forces, after decades of espionage and counter-espionage, and mercantile hostility, the Danes and Venetians seize a golden opportunity and declare war on me, and threaten to link up on a Innsbruck-Hamburg axis of advance, cutting off my forces beseiging the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna and threatening my rich interior. My allies the Spanish are tied down in a war of survival in the western Med with Venice's key ally, 5-Cardinal Sicily, with whom I've managed a shaky neutrality since I seized Egyptian Malta from right under their noses during the First Crusade while there was an English Pope, and it's taken untold thousands of Florins to keep goodwill with the successor Venetian Popes for the past 25 years.
(Long live the modder who made Ultimate AI!!! I'll post a link to it later). [Edit: the link is http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=301 and the modder is Mesut aka GrandViz).
So the last thing I needed was a Veneto-Danish alliance on the offensive. The prospect of Norse War Clerics dining on the Antwerp waterfront in 2 years' time seems very real indeed.
To make matters worse, Henry the Watcher, most authoritarian king has died. His nephew Prince Harry the Mad - referred to by many nobles as Harry the Adulterer - has ascended to the throne at the ripe old age of 58, heirless. Luckily he is fairly dreadful and has been training spies and assassins in Rennes for decades, so perhaps he can keep things together in this difficult time.
My raising of three huge armies in Europe to fight the new invasion and two massive defensive forces in the Levante of the best units available from fortress colonies in Gaza and Acre (over 30,000 Florins per turn for these 5 stacks alone) has run me into serious debt (total Army upkeep = 75,000 per turn; Corruption = 48,000 per turn), to the point where I am losing 1 Cross of Papal favour per turn due to my inability to lavish my customary gifts on His Holiness. What's more, the (for now neutral) Scots stand with 3 stacks of Highland Nobles on my northern border (they've been the junior partner in the Venice-Denmark-Sicily pact since turn 18), have inundated my northern cities with their agents, and are licking their chops with the spires of York almost in sight.
Luckily my valourous forces smash the Danish armies in the snowy forests north of Hamburg (Norse War Clerics cut down by Feudal Knights from Anjou) and my men now lay siege to 2 cities on the Danish peninsula.
To counter Venice, I divert a former Crusader army from Malta (just refitted with troops from Tolouse and originally meant to relieve my harried Levantine garrisons) up the Adriatic and land them in eastern Bologna, a turn's march from the Venetian capital.
All's going according to plan and the day looks saved until the good Pope tells me on successive turns to stop hostilities against Venice and the Danes or I will be excommunicated (great first move for a new king). To boot, the Venetians march a huge host northwest from Dalmatia and south from Innsbruck (which rebelled and was seized by Venice when the HRE was excommuniated) to protect their capital, just upgraded with Ballista towers, my spies tell me. So any seige will result in the loss of probably half my Eastern Relief Force, not a quick rush to the Doge's Palace wth carpet-bags as I'd hoped.
So there go my plans to sack Venice and the jewels of Denmark and use the plunder to get back into the black, finance long overdue upgrades to my bursting settlements and buy Papal favour. While burning and pillaging and being excommuniated would probably have been more fun, my 20+ lightly defended, 100% Catholic settlements, the true economic engine of my empire, would probably have rebelled against the successor king, making the campaign all but unwinable (in fact I saved it just to go back and see later on what might have been).
Facing -20,000 Florins per turn, the Turks bearing down on me with hordes of Sipahis and Ghazis, the resurgent Eyptians with their Mamluk armies marching west out of the Arabian desert against my chronically corrupt Nile colonies of Cairo and Alexandria (-3,000+ Florins of corruption each since 1110 AD), the situation looks bleak. What do I do? (Of course the lesson learned is not to expand too quickly next time).
I decided not to negotiate or withdraw or offer back territories won with English blood in exchange for a truce...I do what every sensible Christian King would do in my situation...I request a Crusade against Antioch!
Despite my declining sway with the Papacy and His Holiness' abhorrence of violence, Pope Stephanus the Peaceful of Venice agrees! (He owes it to me for not bulldozing his beloved hometown or its newly built huge cathedral into The Lagoon).
Immediately I turn my 5 full stack armies into Crusader armies (no money left to hire Crusaders), and take my 2 best manager-generals from Antwerp and London and add them to the Crusade along with several other high cost units of knights raised to fight the Danes (the managers, 42 and 46 years, will whip Alexandria and Antioch into shape), and immediately set off for the Narbonne coast. A total of 7 English Crusader armies now march eastwards, some 42,000+ Florins of free manpower.
All of a sudden I'm at +10,000 Florins of profit per turn and all of Christendom has declared war on the mighty Turks, destroying all the hard work the Ottoman diplomats and their treasury had engaged in to buy good will in the West over the prior century. My spies in Anatolia tell me he's already diverting forces westwards.
The HRE, still excommunicated, apparently can't Crusade, and has lost their Emperor to my downsized force in the assault on Vienna, and my army in Italy has moved to take Bologna, the HRE's last city. The Scots have marched their threatening armies to the ports of Edinburgh, allowing me to disband a few units stationed in my border forts north of York.
Now the still powerful Byzantines - engaged in a bitter struggle with Papist Venice for domination of the Eastern Mediterranean - have Crusader armies marching across their lands and it remains to be seen what comes of the lasting peace they built with the Turks in an effort to secure their eastern frontier while concentrating on fighting expansionist Venice. Perhaps they will pursue an alliance with England? Perhaps the Orthodox bloc of Byantium and their allies, the booming Russians, will seize on the opportunity to attack westwards against the burgeoning Polish empire? Perhaps the Hungarians, already at war with the Turks over influence in the Black Sea, and recently allied to Venice, will benefit from this whole affair?
Whatever happens, I am now bent on racing my *free upkeep* armies into Turkey, sacking their cities and taking their capital. And Venice and Denmark will be forced to stand down in Europe. Of course the Mongols may already be on their way westwards...and we may yet need a strong Ottoman presence to counter their mounted hordes...only time will tell.
So at the end of it all, I don't know if Crusaders fight for free during a Crusade or if the Church picks up the bill. Either way it's a grand solution if you're in a situaion like mine!
P.S. The Ultimate AI mod has probably contributed significantly to the ejnoyability of this campaign, and helped it get to this exciting crux.