How to Survive as Crusader States with BGR IV?

[TheBard]

It has been a long time since I used BGRIV. I did a CS campaign with Gracul AI and BGRIV, which was already a challenge. I agree with Legourou: conquering is the best way to survive and make money.
In my CS campaign, I left the northern settlements and focused first on the Fatimids, more specifically in Egypt. Once you have conquered their cities and castles in Egypt, they're not that dangerous anymore for you and you can make good money.Then, once you have secure Egypt, you should be able to move North and East again to face the Turks. Beware that if a jihad is called, Moors will come from Egypt. Byzzies can also land in Egypt sometimes. Don't leave it without protection.

I do think this is probably the way to go. I'm rereading Thomas Asbridge's excellent "Crusades" book, though, and it would be so ahistorical to go for Egypt first. That wasn't attempted by any of the Crusades/Crusaders until into the 13th Century. I guess maybe I'm trying to hard to stick to what happened in real life (generally, at least, though not on a city by city or year by year basis, obviously).

[the man, the myth, the legend]

Well, if you tried to stick to what happened in history, you will obviously inevitably lose.

[TheBard]

Well, if you tried to stick to what happened in history, you will obviously inevitably lose.

Ha, fair point. Although if I can somehow survive into the late 1200s, I'd be content with that. I'm not actually looking to conquer the world or achieve the victory conditions in this campaign. I'm hoping to survive and maybe take most of the Middle East. I'll consider that victory enough. So far, not looking great.

[TheBard]

Well, that didn't go well. The Seljuks completely overran my northern coastal cities (Antioch and Tortosa), and the Fatimids mopped up the rest once I was out of money. I didn't quite make it to the Defeat screen this time, but it was clearly coming.

I restarted (again!) with M/M this time. I'm hoping Medium battles might help against the ridiculously overpowered Fatimid generals. At least the enemy should rout easier, which may mean I won't need to try to kill their generals every time (especially when being besieged).

So I decided to try to take advice from everyone here, particularly Lifthrasir and Legourou. This time, I abandoned Edessa and Antioch, bringing Joscelin and Bohemond and their armies down south. I also took the Prince's army and swapped him with the King in Jerusalem. The King besieged and conquered Gaza, and I sacked it (I gave in to this idea). Then I made Joscelin governor there after a few turns, and took all available troops and split them into two armies, one with the King, one with Bohemond. The King went northwest and conquered and sacked Damietta, on the coast. Bohemond went west/southwest and conquered and sacked Cairo.

So now I own Jerusalem, Gaza, Damietta, Cairo. The Fatimids are greatly weakened, though obviously far from conquered.

The problem I have now is money. Because it takes Bohemond and Joscelin forever to make their way south (Maybe I should have tried to recruit a ship on the first turn when I had money), and there are tons of expensive upkeep troops (Miles, Cilician Archers, Crusader Sergeants, Crusader cavalry), my treasury is in disarray. I'm currently 29000 florins (!) in debt. That might be ok if I was raking in the money now, but I'm really not. Because I need the expensive troops that are remaining to help me garrison and hold the newly taken cities, and I have no money to replace any of them with cheaper troops, I can't just disband all expensive troops. For that reason, it's very hard for me to see a way out of this financial mess.

I think I'm digging my way out at only 2000 or so florins a year, and that's without accounting for the King eventually having to buy supplies for his Supply Train. I only have the one merchant trading Gold south of Al Aqaba, which is getting me 200-300 per turn, but that's a drop in the bucket. I can't get more merchants (even if I had money) because I have no more markets.

Jerusalem and Gaza are nearly bereft of troops right now, because I swept them all up into the armies going west.

So there are a few options open to me, none of them particularly wonderful:

1) Just dig in and hang on and hope that my treasury slowly starts to work itself out. If am eventually besieged and have to defend, I can try to have the expensive troops be the ones taking the brunt of the fighting.

2) Give up one city (Cairo?), which would allow me to consolidate my armies a bit and then disband some of the horribly expensive ones. I could try to give or sell it to one of the western factions or the Byzantines.

3) Just start disbanding some of the expensive troops now in the hopes that I can get by with a skeleton garrison in most of the cities.

4) Leave most/all of the cities almost undefended and continue to push west and south, hoping to wipe out all Fatimid cities and armies on that border. I'm not sure if this is possible, because I don't exactly have a lot of troops and the Fatimids have multiple generals hanging around down there.

5) Other?


So, does anyone have any suggestions? Which, if any, of these is the best option? Even on Medium battles, I still lose a fair number of troops because of the Fatimid Generals and their archers. In all, though, I've been able to mostly protect my best troops (which may be why my treasury is so screwed). My king is having to rely on 3 units of mercenary Numidian Infantry (I think?), which is also not helping my treasury, as they cost 300+ each per turn in upkeep.

I'm not sure that I'm in way better shape than before, but this campaign is definitely different and interesting. Thanks so much for the ideas so far. Keep them coming, if you can! Maybe I'll post some screenshots when I get a chance. If survival seems possible, maybe I will write another AAR (it's been a long time since I did one).

[Melooo182]

I've never played with BRGIV, but I've successfuly asked for "loans" to my allies (they make a single payment of ~1000f in return for a long standing tribute of some 50f a turn and other favours), of course I ended paying them much more than what they gave me but it allowed me to get out of thighs situations....however i've never been that far debt xD.

Use your diplomat in Italy to lobby around the pope, venetians and genoese (HRE and Byz too) which more often than not have huge money surpluses and might give you a hand. Also try to summon a crusade to your way, it might lift some of the pressure, so you're able to disband some expensive units.

[Duck of Death]

Ok... relocating to Ireland was extreme
If things get to hairy though, you could make a tactical retreat to Greece.
Greece often stays in rebel hands for awhile.
Make freinds (or allies) with Sicily and the Roman Empire.

With a nice city and fortress in southern Greece, you can plan your retaking of the holy lands and have a fair amount of time, likely, to build up your forces.

[Ichon]

I did that with BGR and SS 6.2 where rebels a few other things are a bit easier than in 6.4 but my general strategy was to avoid taking rebels in the north to leave a buffer and carefully expand south growing economy for awhile before alot of armies though I tried to use the expensive mercenaries up quickly to avoid upkeep.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...rusader-States