Any way to make this first Crusade an auto-win??

[Archer the Bowless]

The first crusade has been launched and it was a mess. Wondering if there's a command I can use in the debug to auto-win the Crusade. Starting in 1066 I really wanted at least for the first crusade to follow history and have them take Jerusalem. There's simply no hope for it though in this playthrough. The Pope is the war leader obviously, and I can't figure out a way to make this a win.

[ironyuri]

Originally posted by Tiffany DEATHADDER:

The first crusade has been launched and it was a mess. Wondering if there's a command I can use in the debug to auto-win the Crusade. Starting in 1066 I really wanted at least for the first crusade to follow history and have them take Jerusalem. There's simply no hope for it though in this playthrough. The Pope is the war leader obviously, and I can't figure out a way to make this a win.

I don't believe you could auto-win a war/crusade without getting lucky or without turning on console (and thus turning off achievements) -

for discussion of console route see here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/how-do-you-cheat-to-instantly-win-a-crusade.1545281/

A smarter workaround than some of the suggestions there would be (if you want to use console to cheat), to simply go to the enemy war leader, right click his character with console enabled, and find the button to quick imprison him. Once the enemy war leader is your prisoner, the Pope should have 100% war score to end the war.

If you don't want to use the console or cheat, this is not a reliable method but it has worked for me in the past:

You need to get your army to the Holy Land early and act as bait for the multiple stacks of enemies:
-drag the enemy stacks around in circles til they start running out of supply, keep in mind you'll lose troops going through red territory to do this and you might get stuck in a battle and captured.
-pull the enemy as far away from other war participants as you can until the Christian forces have a critical mass of armies/troops
-If you see that the Christian troops have enough combined forces but are running away from the enemy in different directions you need to bait a battle and try to draw the Christian forces into it
-this takes a lot of trial and error but if you bait a single large battle against a depleted enemy, usually that battle will bump warscore to 80-90% which then goes to 100% after a siege or two

Risks: you might lose a battle if you get caught out and your leader might be captured, but this has its benefits because losing a large battle where you are stack-wiped usually generates enough warscore to make you #1 crusade contributor regardless of what anyone else does for the remainder

[Сааребас]

Why not just redirect the crusade towards a more favorite place?
That's 500 piety (one pilgrimage).
The closer the target near your own religion the more assistance you'll get and the less they have to travel.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by ironyuri:

A smarter workaround than some of the suggestions there would be (if you want to use console to cheat), to simply go to the enemy war leader, right click his character with console enabled, and find the button to quick imprison him. Once the enemy war leader is your prisoner, the Pope should have 100% war score to end the war.

In GHWs, prisoners do not contribute any warscore.

[Razorblade]

Assuming you're not playing Ironman, you can just switch your character to the leading enemy through the escape menu and surrender, then switch back to your previous character.

[jordop]

Try again