AI Crusaders using Exploit!!!

[antirelic]

I'm continuing to play my Egypt campaign and am at around year 1200 . I have had 2 crusades to come against me. The first one was a success (and my most glorious sultan was murdered), the second was not. In fact, I was patient and awaited for the crusaders with a big fat stack of defenders. However...

The pope's cousin joined the crusade (weird) and found his way to Alexandria. His stack was full peseants and pilgrims... not capable of even thinking about taking out my garrisoned halberd militia, saracen militia, and brutal skirmishers (kurdish javelins and desert cavalry). So what did the Palpal crusaders do? They just sat outside of Alexandria, turn after turn... never losing a single unit.....

I can understand the logic behind not penalizing the AI for poor manuevering towards to target... but the AI is exploiting this advantage to ruin my cities economy!!!

Can anything be done about this?

[Phil Stanbridge]

Yes, you attack the swine with a large army and send them back to where they came

Only joking, but that is the best and fastest way to deal with the AI in that situation. For some reason the AI likes to camp - what difficulty level are you playing with?

[Máel Coluim]

Actually I've used that exploit before myself. If you are a bit slow getting to the crusade target (as Scotland often is with the early ones unless you've got ships or Crete or Malta) you can camp near to the target and wait as many turns as you like for the AI of another Catholic army to bungle a siege or take down some enemies. Can milk it for some no-upkeep cash bonuses for a few turns and then mop up the target at the end.

[Rugin84]

I was wondering why the buy cost of crusading units are so high. Shouldnt these be cheap liek in Vannilla. Once your general is declared a crusader the men joining him would be mostly volunteer, so why is their recruitment cost so high?

[Caspand]

Crusader units are very cheap.

Crusader seargents are like 100 florings per unit, crusader horses are 200 florins and im not sure on unhorsed knights. That ALOT less then regular mercenarys.

Caspand

[Freedom]

Not in TLR, and I like it better that way. Considering a lot of catholic factions end up using crusader armies that didn't make it elsewhere (even against other un-excommunicated Catholics <_<) anyways as only 1 faction that goes on a crusade "wins" it it helps make crusades a cost effective but not dirt cheap way of getting unit exp and new units.

The Islamic factions do the same things with Jihads, especially if they signed a peace treaty with the Jihad's target before their army arrived. It's pretty annoying, as jihads/ crusades can end up lasting as long as it takes for the army leaders to die because of this peace treaty "bug" thing.