do crusades ever like.. give up?

[nullptr]

i was playing my giant Italy campaign when my emperor had a crisis of faith in which he converted to the one true faith aka karaism and his entire nobility followed.

unfortunately while i did take 2 out of 3 pope lands vassalized him out of spite when he gave someone a claim on me he was still landed which means he immediately called a crusade against the glorious literalist empire of the jews.

the crusaders have been loitering in central italy like hanibaal for a while now, losing a castle on their left whenever they gain one on their right.

will they ever give up? they outnumber me so a another fight isnt in the cards any time soon and attrition strong enough. maybe murder their kings so they get into succession issues ?

[Duilf]

The short answer is no.

A bit more in depth. They will only give up on attacking you when there is a weaker target, or someone that makes them angrier.

The long and involved version is https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Great_holy_war_weights
Note for some of that it is region, and not title.

[nullptr]

is there a cooldown between crusades? maybe i can give this one up and win later

[Yen Lo Wang]

Just for clarification - is the issue one never-ending crusade or the pope sending one crusade after another?

[Talist]

Crusades are rather annoying, especially as the defender. In a crusade (or any other great holy war), there is no bonus for capturing prisoners (not even the Pope), and there is no white peace. It only ends at +/- 100% war score. In most other wars, the AI gets an increasing desire for taking white peace if the war has been going on a long time or they have other things to deal with, but because there's no white peace in a crusade, they will keep attacking until the war is either won or lost. So... how can you win?

The biggest factor imo is battle war score. That can go up to about 120% warscore if you win major battles. You also get score from occupying holdings, but as a defender, you don't have a lot of options to do that. You get 'objective' war score as well. Objective war score ticks in your favor as long as no holding of the targeted kingdom is occupied, but it will get set to 0% if even a single one is occupied. So you can get stuck in a pretty bad stalemate where the attackers have half the wargoal, but can't win any other fights or take more land. However, the amount of warscore you gain for full control of the target increases over time. Eventually, once the war has been going on long enough, whoever has full control (either you or the attackers) of the wargoal first will instantly get enough war score to reach 100%. So, I'd suggest waiting a while for the enemy troops to starve or wander off and then make a consolidated push towards clearing out the war goal. I've had crusades that lasted 10-15 years before, and they can certainly go on longer than that, so you might be in for the long haul.

Alternatively, if the targeted kingdom isn't too important to you, it may be cheaper and faster to just surrender the crusade and take it back normally. Though, if you're in Italy, the new crusader state will have a much easier time getting alliances with nearby Catholics or Orthodox Christians than most crusader states.

[nullptr]

Originally posted by Talist:

Crusades are rather annoying, especially as the defender. In a crusade (or any other great holy war), there is no bonus for capturing prisoners (not even the Pope), and there is no white peace. It only ends at +/- 100% war score. In most other wars, the AI gets an increasing desire for taking white peace if the war has been going on a long time or they have other things to deal with, but because there's no white peace in a crusade, they will keep attacking until the war is either won or lost. So... how can you win?

The biggest factor imo is battle war score. That can go up to about 120% warscore if you win major battles. You also get score from occupying holdings, but as a defender, you don't have a lot of options to do that. You get 'objective' war score as well. Objective war score ticks in your favor as long as no holding of the targeted kingdom is occupied, but it will get set to 0% if even a single one is occupied. So you can get stuck in a pretty bad stalemate where the attackers have half the wargoal, but can't win any other fights or take more land. However, the amount of warscore you gain for full control of the target increases over time. Eventually, once the war has been going on long enough, whoever has full control (either you or the attackers) of the wargoal first will instantly get enough war score to reach 100%. So, I'd suggest waiting a while for the enemy troops to starve or wander off and then make a consolidated push towards clearing out the war goal. I've had crusades that lasted 10-15 years before, and they can certainly go on longer than that, so you might be in for the long haul.

Alternatively, if the targeted kingdom isn't too important to you, it may be cheaper and faster to just surrender the crusade and take it back normally. Though, if you're in Italy, the new crusader state will have a much easier time getting alliances with nearby Catholics or Orthodox Christians than most crusader states.

pretty much what i thought, unfortunately armies rarely starve in ck3
ill just trench war this for long enough for them to have succession issues at home or something

[Talist]

Then you'll probably be waiting a while. Unlike other offensive wars, crusades don't give their participants the stacking "offensive war" opinion penalty with their vassals. If your economy can handle it, you might be able to wait until they run out of money, as usually AIs don't have enough income to field their troops long term. If you kill one realm's troops, then any factions that realm has will be more likely to revolt as they're now more powerful relative to their liege. However, you might get a rotating door effect where one AI decides they need to disband their troops, then they stay out the war for a while, then come back once they have enough money.

[nullptr]

Originally posted by Talist:

If your economy can handle it

well im in italy and half of europe are my vassals so im deep in the green

[Yen Lo Wang]

Which begs the question why can't you beat the crusade in combat? With that many vassals you should easily outnumber them.

[nullptr]

Originally posted by Yen Lo Wang:

Which begs the question why can't you beat the crusade in combat? With that many vassals you should easily outnumber them.

started as 80k vs 50k, didnt get better with time

[nullptr]

well fellas, im here to report that the crusaders won the fight for the kingdom of romanga after 17 years of war

but fear not, 143 counties are already karaite, and im now slowly swallowing back some smartass counts that jumped ship and demanding conversion.

the muslims of iberia have taken Aquitaine during the whole ordeal, so i think the pope and france will have someone else to fight with