Crusades/jihads are almost nonexistant, there's no holy wars in this game.

[Axe-Battler]

I simply do not feel a medieval atmosphere to this game.

Mainly, because crusades, jihads, and the holywars are nonexistant!

Why did CA not bring back the multiple crusading ability from mtw1???

That was the greatest feature in that game... and I believe that was why it was so much more medieval.

Factions were able to call a crusade anywhere that was owned by a majority of either pagan, orthodox, heritic, jewish, or islamic.

Now you can only crusade against a settlement that is either pagan or islamic.

There's about two crusades total throughout the campaign, what is that? That's just pathetic... what kinda holy war is that?

in mtw1, Multiple factions could start crusades all at the same time against any settlement they pleased, that means 6 catholic nations could have a crusade going simultaneously at a different target that was religiously dominated by something outside of catholic.

That had such a hateful, religiously bloody, and holy war like feel to it.

Now I simply look at crusades as not even a crusade, it's as if the pope just wants to pick on the catholic factions.

We need to inform CA to change this! No kidding! For the expansion pack they need to allow this to be moddable, especially if one of their campaigns is going to be based on the teutonic knights struggling against pagans, it won't work out too well if only one crusade will be allowed for every 40 years!!!

[Vander]

Well, for starters crusades are a part of the mechanics of intergration of the pope in the game. If everyone would be able to start a crusade whenever they wanted they aren't forced to go either, which would imo make the pope and christianity a lot less important in M2TW.

[Templar king]

he is right it makes the game more realistic and anyway you can call crusae but u have to have good standings with the pope

[eggthief]

he is right it makes the game more realistic and anyway you can call crusae but u have to have good standings with the pope

Right, this topic was created and passed away more than a year ago, was your post so important that it just had to be ressurected?

[Dreiko]

I think that crusading is a matter of the Pope, not every catholic leader. I mean what Pope would approve of 5 different crusades against 5 different settlements and 5 different factions at the same time?

Yes the crusading system could use some improvement, but the situation is not as bad as some think... IMO.

[Kaiserjagen]

I usually get on the Popes good side when I play as a Catholic faction (and in turn get a popes from my own clergy). Then I can pretty much pick my own crusades.

[snuggans]

eh, one time the pope declared a crusade against a Mongol owned city, and that single crusade took about 300 game turns because northern greece became HELL.

[dad_savage]

CA clearly had nothing but contempt for designing this feature. Would anyone have the audacity to deny this? It was clearly a feature designed solely to adorn to box cover and sell games to people who don't know any better because as an addition to the game, it's utter garbage.

- You can't bring preists with you, because they'll actually take away your movement bonus and your army will probably wind up deserting. That is one of the worst things, apparently it's counter-productive to bring Preists on crusade. Wtf?

- Desertion is stupidly employed. If you start a crusade in England, your army should understand that it's going to take a while to get to Jerusalem. Desertion working as it stands makes 'epic' crusades impossible.

- Nobody 'catches the fever', the game should have been designed so that nearby christian armies and agents have a chance of defecting TO the crusade.

- Crusade mercenaries are half-assed, it claims Crusader knights won't fight other Christians, but there is absolutely nothing in the game preventing them from doing so, and they do so all the time. I mean wtf, CA couldn't even be bothered making seperate unit cards for Pilgrims and Religous Fanatics.

- Orthodox factions can never be crusade targets, even when their regions were in reality subjected to crusader attacks (Constantinople for example) yet any Catholic faction, no matter how many preists, or huge cathedrals they have, no matter how much they convert the masses, no matter how rightous their king, any Christian faction that becomes excommunicated is IMMEDIATELY a crusade target. Way to kick mud in the eye of history; you can Crusade against Paris, but not Constantinople.

- There is often absolutely no reason to bother keeping the target of your crusade, and nobody cares what you do with it once it's yours. You can take Jersalem, and in the very same turn trade it back to Egypt for a ceasefire, and the Pope doesn't care.

- Crusade armies can't join forces against their target unless the factions that own them are already in an alliance.

- The Crusade can fail, and if it does the Pope, and everyone else acts like it was never called in the first place. No multiple crusades to retake objectives, nothing.

- The AI, when Crusading, behaves no differently to its normal retarded self. As the Turks I catch crusade armies, all the time, between the land bridge into Asia minor (blocking it with ships) and a large army. The AI will just stand there like a moron if it doesn't think it can beat my army, not even trying to fight it's way out, until its entire army deserts.

In the real world crusades were huge campaigns, many nations joining forces, crusade armies would fight many battles before even reaching their goal. In MTW the engine makes it impossible to do this. The only effective, and worthwhile, way to crusade is to literally make a crusade army (it can be complete crap, doesn't matter because the AI never garrisons crusade targets with any priority) jump on a ship, move DIRECTLY to the crusade target, jump out, seige and take it. Oh, yay.

There should have been emergent Crusader state factions that appear when you take places like Antioch and Jerusalem. There should be about five times more cities and castles in the holy land (so as not to overpower the Turks and Egyptians you could simply make them start very underdeveloped and with sloooow growth rates) so that it can be a hotbed of conflict.

The actual objectives of Crusades (things like the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre) should have been represented on the campaign map in the same way wonders were in RTW.

and so on and so on.

Do Crusades need to be the greatest thing ever? Not really, they just need to not suck.

I mean, come on, you guys know me. I'm not a whiner-type, and I enjoy this game. I don't think CA are some kind of evil swindlers, and I can see the effort put into many areas of the game, effort that makes it an incredibly fun game to play, but I can still see things wrong with it, and I don't look at the game with rose colored glasses just because I've been playing TW since Shogun. I mean, CA did NOT do me a favor by making these games, I, and everyone else who did, did them a favor by buying them. Does it ruin the game? Not really, but the bottom line is, when CA act like Crusades are a major game feature, when in reality they're so simplistic and half-done they could have been added in a patch, I can't help but be insulted.

[Centurio Pax]

- There is often absolutely no reason to bother keeping the target of your crusade, and nobody cares what you do with it once it's yours. You can take Jersalem, and in the very same turn trade it back to Egypt for a ceasefire, and the Pope doesn't care.

I do agree with everything you say, except for this bit. I have seen my papal favour points being lowered by 2 when i gave a just conquered crusade target to the moors.

[Dolbster]

i'm running vanilla 1.1 and i don't know what you guys are talking about, i've gotten some massive crusade/ jihad action

i agree with what kapow32 said, crusades imo are fine, but sure they could be improved

[Pinky333]

I do wish that they could have better features with the holy wars, but not any one can just call it, like poland paid the tuetonic to destory the pagan so i whs you pay money for it or something, bewcause if you could call them any time it would be op because ai doesnt take advantage of the wars. But having a twist to were you could make them more often!

[MunichRules]

First of all everybody is after money !!!!

Bill Gates, MacStupid and CocaCola !

So thats life goes, if money makes you happy is another point .

Concerning the crusade:
I find it OK. When you or the pope declares a crusade all catholic can join it. That ressemble a lot historical facts. The desertion system is ok. You just have to move quick forward to the target. Sure if you plan to conquer or besiege cities on your way, you will loose some units by desertion. The best ist to have besiege weapons with you so you can immediatly attack the city or fortress. Akso if you taking priest or heavy weapons with you, the maxium rage you can use is provinding that no desertion is happen. I never had the problem that landbridges are blocked. Just buy a fleet and everthing is ok. Or instead of passing through byzanz go the landbridge a lit more south.
By the word crusade we should focus on the main area of the holy land. Minor crusades against pagans is good for a specific campaign but not concerning global gameplay.

Ther were 7 major crusades between 1096 and 1270. So a crusade every 40 is ok, better would be every 20-30 years depending on turns-per-year system. To make it historically acurate you could mod crusade events. But this very difficult to apply to gameplay. If you take for example 1. Crusade 1096-1099, suggesting a 4seasons-a-year-turn there only 16 turns left to reach and conquer the target, this i little bit to hectic.



Concerning crusades against orthodox factions:
I think that you could mod an single event wich is dealing about the decision to conquers byzanz by the crusaders. Historically it was conquered twice by the christian (1203/04 during the 4. crusade). This is also a good starting point for an emerging faction (latin empire). It could end 1261 by an modded event. Like it happened when destroyed faction reappeared !
I think russian and byzantine have yet enough trouble with islamic faction and nomadic hordes (mongols/tumirids). Imagine when you playing byzanz having turks and mongols on one side and 5 or 6 crusade nations attacking you on the other side!!! Really heftig!!
Also considering to have a super power nation emerging you can fight in the end it is better to have no crusades on orthodox factions.

So the major clash is between Christian and Muslims !!!

[Germanicus75]

Is it possible for someone to mod in Crusades against Orthodox targets?

[Axe-Battler]

dad_savage I never thought of it like that, but you are right crusades are simply garbage, and alot of those things you mentioned could've been added in.

But all I simply wanted to be able to do was have every catholic faction be able to call their own crusades, against any non-catholic region, and have as many crusades going on as possible, (1 per faction at a time though)...

and in mtw1 that's how it was, it created the most medieval, holy war feeling that there was.

Mtw2 is awesome, but the crusades and "holy wars", they are not even garbage, they just don't exist in this game.

Well, for starters crusades are a part of the mechanics of intergration of the pope in the game. If everyone would be able to start a crusade whenever they wanted they aren't forced to go either, which would imo make the pope and christianity a lot less important in M2TW.

Have you ever played mtw1?

The AI used to LOVE going on crusades in mtw1, they did it every single minute that they... didn't already have one going. lol

And also, in mtw1 you still had to request a crusade, you had to usually give the pope about 500 florins for an islamic target to start one, and about 3000 florins for a orthodox target.

And other times the pope actually gave you a message saying "start a crusade against the turks(or egypt or whoever)" if he felt they were becoming a threat, and he would even if he was at war with byzantium order you to go on one against them.

And now that jihads can be used as an offensive weapon, like they should've been in mtw1, that could've made it even better!

In mtw1 the crusades really overpowered the islamic factions, bigtime, but now with them being able to jihad to a catholic faction that would've just been the coolest thing seeing crusader armies going one way, and jihads going the other, tons of armies all heading for a different target... that's my biggest disappointment in mtw2 I think.

[Germanicus75]

Would also be nice to see Crusader or Jihadi armies get attacked more by other armies or factions (even ones of the same faith) en route to their targets. I used to love the 3-way battles in M1 you could get when an enemy attacked a 3rd party Crusading army and you stuck your oar in at the same time.

[Axe-Battler]

OOH! Or how bout' when you were the crusader army heading for say tripoli in the mideast, and you would go through like 6 huge stacks of the egyptians all attacking you at once!

then your army wins and you have like... 9 units left, that are all low in numbers but with like 7 valor each, and another three stacks of turks decide to attack you and you win because of your superior valour...

ahh...that's another thing that doesn't exist in mtw2 and rtw - the importance of valour.

Or when you were the egyptians, and like two crusading armies attacked your province, and you utterly destroy them and execute them all, and then you see the message "being away from all resources, this crusader army has died and the rest deserted" and the picture would be a bunch of starving and dehydrated knights on the dirt floor...

I miss that game.

[Janissary]

CA is after money that's all.

[Axe-Battler]

CA is after money that's all.

lmao!

that's a mean statement.

[Towelie]

Agree with everything ramtha and dad_savage said!

When AI sends crusade, they'r so stupid, they'll just go to a targeted city!? So as mentioned, if's land bridges in Constantinople blocked, they will, or stuck there, or go all way round Black see.. they wont bother to attack actually!?!? I sterted some Turkish campaign, just conquered Antioch, when pope called crusade against it.. so i made 2 FULL stack of armies, and placed 'em on those 2 bridges near Antioch.. and what AI did.. they gone south trough that passage between river and mountin and attacked city again!? You just cant have epic crusade (feild) battles, except you're leading crusade or jihad! All end's up on bisieging settlements.. And maby i'm wrong, but i though jihad is defensiv war (well it was in m1tw)? You could call it all the time, but on settlements which you, or some other muslim faction lost recently?

And i remember that message in m1tw, playing as byz, when crusades was passing trough my lands, that they pillaged some ammount of florins.. think smething like that should be added, since ai is stupid to sack some city while passing.. And sacked citys, when abandoned should be automatically returned to faction they belonged for last 10-20 turns (remember in mtw, there was.. dunno how to call it, but faction rebels.. you know, when destroy city, and move on, it rebel, but rebels holded colors of their previous owner), and not just to stay rebel city. Now i jumped on another subject, but this game lack of... nacionalism.. Its just to easy to destroy a faction.. just make crusade army (or 2, or 5), and sack every single city you can, buy some mercenaries in meantime to replace loses, and voila... I mean, if i.e. Paris was holded by France for 100-200 years, then what are those people in it? They cant become English or Germans in 1 turn.. like: duh.. we are speaking francais, but we are Germans now!? WTF!?

[William the Bastard]

Why did CA not bring back the multiple crusading ability from mtw1???

That was the greatest feature in that game... and I believe that was why it was so much more medieval.

No the greatest feature of that game was the ability for knights to dismount before a battle. So you don't have to buy dismounted knight units. How silly is that?