Successful Crusade then Financial Ruin

[jeff00seattle]

Hi

I did a Crusade that was successful, but then I regret it because it led my faction into financial ruin.


I started with the Scottish faction, took all of England, and established a hardy revenue stream per turn of 4000+.


I joined the Scottish faction into the first crusade to Antioch. The Scottish crusade procession picked up crusade knights and crusade foot soldiers, plus crusade ships in the Adriatic Sea.


Got to Antioch first and successfully sieged it and then sacked it. Immediately after the sack, I repaired all building, started all basic construction projects (farm, church, road), and retrained troops.


I did not disband any of the troops (neither the initial Scottish troop nor purchased crusade units) after occupying Antioch.


This is when my Financial Ruin began…


Antioch was red with riot and it sucked the Scottish revenue from 4000+ to barely 500+ per turn; and no matter what I did, Antioch would remain red for many turns.

I tried to set taxes to Low, and that did not appease the people of Antioch.


To amend the problem, I could:

1. Disband my units to cut costs? But this would make Antioch more red with riot AND vulnerable to attack by Egypt and Turkey.
2. Quit Antioch and attack something or go home back to Scotland?
3. Quit Antioch by trying to find a buyer (Egypt or Turkey)?
4. Should not have sacked Antioch and just occupied it?

Besides not joining the crusade at all, what would you have done to avoid this financial ruin?

[... where did it run?]

I ussaly give up antioch to the pope. You won't make any profit from it anyway. Corruption will be simply to high. Also, disband the cursading knights and such.

[PoleCat]

Remember that crusading units require no upkeep. After you took Antioch the Crusade was ended and those units then had to be paid again. Disband the higher-upkeep mercs, train basic militia to guard Antioch for the time being, recruits Priests to tame the religious unrest and look to cut any unnecessary units back home.

Or give Antioch to the Papal States for Papal favor and bug the hell out of the Holy lands altogether.

[Ishan]

Always going prior to crusade, send priests in advance for conversion of that land to catholic. The region is rioting coz of religion unrest and the conversion rate is slow to remedy it quickly.
Lower your taxes and see if that helps.

Otherwise sell the territory to some catholics or attempt a ceasefire if in war with someone else using it.
Or you could disband them, all this depends on the campaign itself and your future planning otherwise this army can be used to sack nearby settlements for quick recovery of your sinking economy.

Good Luck!

[Scelesticfish]

Well, actually exterminating it would have been a good idea if you were intent on keeping it. At this point you may as well try to find a buyer. Be ready to give up that city for a price or you could just train loads of priests and have them be around the Antioch so they become less angry with you. It's probably a religion thing.

[jeff00seattle]

Well, actually exterminating it would have been a good idea if you were intent on keeping it.

I never have exterminated a settlement. Does not exterminating a settlement make it go "poof" and then no more?

Please explain, what benefit would it have been to exterminate Antioch if my intent was on keeping it?

...Or give Antioch to the Papal States for Papal favor...

How would I give Antioch to the Papal States? Via a diplomat directly petitioning a Papal settlement, or can I do it indirectly via some other means?

Always going prior to crusade, send priests in advance for conversion of that land to catholic. The region is rioting coz of religion unrest and the conversion rate is slow to remedy it quickly.

Sending priests prior to joining a crusade? How much prior?

And sending priests by foot from Scotland is long long ways, since they do not have the means of purchasing sea transport when they get to the Mediterranean Sea.

[Ishan]

I never have exterminated a settlement. Does not exterminating a settlement make it go "poof" and then no more?

Please explain, what benefit would it have been to exterminate Antioch if my intent was on keeping it?

Exterminating settlement is nothing but an option that reduces the local populace of that region and nothing else and the amount of money that you get from it is less than sacking.
It restores public order, reduces squalor etc.
When attacking settlements having a different religion then exterminating is a good option.

How would I give Antioch to the Papal States? Via a diplomat directly petitioning a Papal settlement, or can I do it indirectly via some other means?

Use a diplomat to give that settlement and there is no other option as all diplomatic missions are carried out by your diplomats or AI's approaching diplomats.
Princesses also.

Sending priests prior to joining a crusade? How much prior?

It all depends on your gameplay if you have a high ranking with papacy and launch a crusade by yourself on request then you can send them in advance like 5-6 turns before via navy or land(faction dependent).
If you are a crusade oriented player then occupying Ajaccio and Cagliari is a good move.

And sending priests by foot from Scotland is long long ways, since they do not have the means of purchasing sea transport when they get to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yes i know that it's something that one needs to work on in advance and like from the start i focus on sending stacks of priests in the holy lands and northern Africa.

And don't double, triple post. Edit your previous post if you have something to add.

[Gunodd]

Well, actually exterminating it would have been a good idea if you were intent on keeping it. At this point you may as well try to find a buyer. Be ready to give up that city for a price or you could just train loads of priests and have them be around the Antioch so they become less angry with you. It's probably a religion thing.

This. In my latest campaign, I decided to leave the good people of Alexandria alone, to establish a peaceful rule - free of religious repression and other unpleasantness. They rioted. They killed the Doge's men and set fire to the industry. This is how they repay me? Never again. (That last part is unintentionally ironic.)

My new motto is "CRUSH. KILL. DESTROY."

[John Doe]

Exterminating population does also force a nice portion of the survivor into your religion, you still have to carry on converting, but it give you a few turns riot free. Also note that all destructible buildings will be downgraded by 1 level, and that's expensive and time consuming to rebuild.

The other option to sent priest prior to taking the settlement is to sack it, leave with all your troops (but the crapiest) to the nearest city/castle, and during the 3 turns before the city becomes rebel, you can built the church and train 2 priest, so while it will go rebel, the population will be slowly converted until you come back later and sack it again, but this time you won't have so much religious unrest.

[painter]

It's very difficult to send priests beforehand, particularly so if you were still in the early stages of the game. Priests walking over land will take forever to reach the Levants. Also, I would not recommend sending priests with your crusaders, as your movement range doubled by the crusades will drop to match the priests' slow movement. You will almost certainly need to send the priests down separately at the same time and recruit more priests on the spot.

If you have not established a foothold prior to the crusade, that will allow you to send priests in to convert the local populace, you will almost certainly have to exterminate the populace of a large city to maintain peace. Extermination will kill a large number of the populace and you will suffer some loss in reputation, so do not exterminate often. You can cover your reputation loss by releasing more than 80 prisoners from one battle and any number of prisoners from another battle.

Do not occupy a large or huge foreign city that is not of your religion. The public order will almost certainly be 0% or close to it, even with low taxes. Sacking helps as a number of people are killed, but extermination would be far more effective and expedient. Having reasonable public order will free your units to take bordering regions.

There are two ways to deal with your Antioch problem. One, let Antioch fall to the rebels and then move in once again, this time with the intention to exterminate the populace into pacification. Be forewarned that the new garrison may be much more difficult than the original one.

Two, give Antioch to some distant faction that you would like to have better relations with or can wrangle a tribute for the land. The pope is an option. If their capitals are far away from Antioch and Antioch's public order is 0% or close to it, then there is a good chance they will loose the city to rioting and rebels. You can then swoop in again and take the settlement from the rebels and this time be sure to exterminate them.

You may choose to sack it once again, instead of exterminating, if the public order was just a little short of disillusionment.

Since you have Antioch, I would also recommend taking Adana, Acre, Aleppo, Gaza or Mosul. They're castles, so you might even just Occupy them as keeping public order will be much easier and will give you a stable position in the Middle East. Try to avoid even sacking them, as you will want the population to grow as fast as possible so you can improve the castles to citadels with cannon towers.

Another way of increasing public order is to move your capital closer to Antioch. Don't simply move your capital however, as then your older holdings will increase in corruption as they are further away from your new capital and you can lose considerable income to corruption. You can check your Finance scroll for that, under Corruption. Move the capital and see how the Corruption changed, then move it again until you find an acceptable compromise. I was loosing over 20,000 florins per turn until I realised this.

In any case, having a good foothold in the Middle East is important, so you can prepare a large force to receive the Mongols when they arrive by about turn 60. If the Mongols appeared in Siberia, you have the option of reloading the previous save and hope they come out in Baghdad. Once they appear in your lands, preferably at the foothills of Baghdad, you can postpone your war by quite a number of turns with the Mongols by blocking them at the river crossings.

You will need a few full stacks and the experience in fighting them to stop the Mongols cold. A task made much easier if you have ample number of units that can deploy stakes. Stopping the Mongols cold here will save you the headache of dealing with Mongols backed with dozens of captured settlements. Many games are lost to the Mongols or the Timurids because your fellow AI factions will almost certainly be trampled over by the Mongol hordes.

The Mongols are powerful but not unbeatable. With a properly staked river crossing, I have annihilated an entire Mongol stack at the cost of loosing only one man, and that was to friendly fire.

[Avatar]

When you capture a crusade target (assuming its not against an excommunicated catholic nation) the very first order of business should be to build a small church. Even if you have priests in the area, you should still do this because the faster you get the religion converted, the sooner you can move your troops out of the city and possibly take another nearby settlement. You would normally expect to have a couple of turns riot free anyway, since the stat bonuses a general gets from making a successful crusade tend to lead to a fairly content settlement while he stays there.

That last point is why I never make a crusade with a general that is likely to die of old age shortly after capturing the target.

[goro]

exterminating antioch is the smoothest way to go.Then you have all the time you need .Always check the settlement details where every factor that influences public order is can be seen there.As most people said the main problem in middle east cities is religious unrest.Bring priests and build churches as soon as possible.with 4-5 of them in 3 turns you will be at 20-30 % catholic

[FriendoftheDork]

Antiochia Delenda Est!

OK IMO your mistake was not to send a crusade, remember that in the turns you took the reach Antioch you have saved thousands of florins that would have been spent on upkeep of whatever troops you sent. There might have been a mistake to recruit that many crusader mercs, as these have (like most mercs) high upkeep when the crusade is over.

Especially (mounted) Crusader Knights costs 300 per turn which is more than your own faction's knights. Dismounted crusaders are also pretty expensive, but they are far more valuable since you can't train dismounted feudal knights at the start of the game, and these guys take down spearmen with ease.

Now I won't say you should always exterminate settlements as this will cause you to lose reputation quickly (I think you must Occupy at least one settlement per exterminated one just to keep reputation at status quo), but Antioch is probably a good choise since it is usually heavily populated (meaning your garrison bonus will be less and squalor will be higher), extremely far away from your capitol, and of course mostly muslim/heretic/orthodox.

Sending priests in advance will take too long, better to get there, build churches and train alot of local priests. It will take time, and you might have to fight a rebellion or two, but in the end it's quite possible to pacify it.

So now what to do right now:

1. If you can, disband some crusader units. You shouldn't need more than 2 of each of dismounted knights, crusader knights and crusader sergeants. Fanatics are cheap so keep em.

2. Move out of Antiock and capture Acre, Damascus or that castle nearby (preferably the castle). This will increase your income (remember to sack or exterminate if needed). If Antiock revels right away go back and this time finish the job properly and show them who is the master. So more cities/castles means more income, more fighting means more casualties and less upkeep, and whatever you can loot is a bonus.

3. After some time you should have your own little crusader kingdom. Depending on your lands you can either move the capitol there (the holy land might be alot richer than scotland), or just try to keep it profitable (real profit is income from the settlements minus upkeep of whatever units stationed there).

Have fun! I love crusades personally and it can be a great way to make tons of money in a short time, as you can send as many crusades as you have generals, and you can siege the target to prolong the crusade. The important note to consider is to not spent too much money to compensate for the unavailability of your units on crusade, but rather use it to invest in larger ports, castles, mines and other expensive but necessary buildings.

In my Sicily game I used this to get dismounted Broken Lances (plate-armored swordsmen) before nations had access to fedual knights High Chivalry generals+castle=Über units.

[shikaka]

The move out, let it rebel, exterminate way should do it.


After it is done, you could just pack your things in Scotland and move to your new home in the Levant
A much busier and more fun region

[zcylen]

never ever surrend even a meter of your territory!
sacrifices are needed.

the unrest as someone said above is due to religion and corruption
low your takes, build churches, convert citizen to the real faith
and disband some units to save some monet from the upkeep.
some times you have to make wonders with few troops.

when situation is like this, I have to keep faith that my 500 army will
resist against any enemy

if it took me so much time and effort to get a terrotiry, I dont give it up so easyly

[ChivalrousKiller]

In my experience, Antioch is the worst city in the game. You need to spend so much money and troops to prevent it from rebelling.

[Double A]

In my experience, Antioch is the worst city in the game. You need to spend so much money and troops to prevent it from rebelling.

Really?

In my games, it's up there with Venice and Constantinople, making tons of money.

Just get a high chivalry general (shouldn't be hard to find after a Crusade), build a church, get some priests, and I concentrate on trade. Jewel of Outremer.

[Ishan]

Really?

In my games, it's up there with Venice and Constantinople, making tons of money.

Just get a high chivalry general (shouldn't be hard to find after a Crusade), build a church, get some priests, and I concentrate on trade. Jewel of Outremer.

^I Concur.

[Pericles of Athens]

Really?

In my games, it's up there with Venice and Constantinople, making tons of money.

Just get a high chivalry general (shouldn't be hard to find after a Crusade), build a church, get some priests, and I concentrate on trade. Jewel of Outremer.

ya the citys to have for money (lots of it) are Antioch, ciaro, Venice and Constantinople(the best is Constantinople)

[SturmChurro]

Disband troops and replace them with militia, make priests (for the riots) and if you really have trouble with the rioting exterminate every crusade target.