CRUSADES! WE NEED PROPER CRUSADES!

[Have At Thee]

Because the ai is completely incapable of managing travel and coming in with allies or managing supply limit which is always really damn low (supply limit needs buffing), the crusades never work.

They near always fail because the ai just can't communicate at all. It's really irritating. The NAME of the game is impossible to achieve lmfao.

[brownacs]

It's been an issue since the game launched. They're usually a bit more successful if they're closer to Europe but the AI just doesn't seem to be able to cope with moving that many troops from dozens of different starting locations properly when it has to take them to the Middle East. The devs have said they were looking at it several times but the problem persists to this day and I'm a bit cynical that they can fix it (would love to be proven wrong but still). You can usually win them on your own if you get involved though.

[Hermóðr]

The Crusades had very poor communication, co-operation, logistical and economical problems in real life too. The Crusades mostly were disastrous and literally created more long-term harm for the christian world than good. Millions of people were lost for nothing and division and schism would forever break any unity among the christian branches. Not to mention the crusaders fatally crippling Byzantium which would never recover which made it easy pickings for the Ottomans. So CK3 Crusades being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is historically accurate. If anything it's not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enough.

[Have At Thee]

Originally posted by Hermóðr:

The Crusades had very poor communication, co-operation, logistical and economical problems in real life too. The Crusades mostly were disastrous and literally created more long-term harm for the christian world than good. Millions of people were lost for nothing and division and schism would forever break any unity among the christian branches. Not to mention the crusaders fatally crippling Byzantium which would never recover which made it easy pickings for the Ottomans. So CK3 Crusades being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is historically accurate. If anything it's not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enough.

The first one was fairly successful and a coordination between multiple lords. It wasn't a free for all where they just decided let's do whatever, they planned to meet up at certain points and sailed together, pulled funds for supplies, food, building materials, specialists among other things, else if by your logic they were all fumbling in the dark, the states would never have formed.

No it's not historically accurate for multiple armies to just completely fumble.

Most of the "fumbling" happened AFTER they arrived or due to unforeseen circumstances.

In case of the third crusade they only failed due to a breakdown of trust. The crusade was first called upon in 1187 and agreed upon in 1188. The first arrivals came in 1189 with James of Avesnes, the consuls of Pisa and Genoa, Ludwig of Thuringia, Henry of Champagne and eventually Richard of England and Phillipe of France.

Frederick of the HRE died drowning on his way through Armenia causing most of the Germans to scatter and Phillipe returned to England after the death of the Count of Flanders to oversee the succession among other probable reasons leaving Richard alone.

The reasons of failure begin AFTER they arrive, not before any of them even bother making it. Even then, they don't all arrive ALREADY starving and broken down because they're completely incapable of planning or logistics.

[Hermóðr]

Originally posted by Have At Thee:

Originally posted by Hermóðr:

The Crusades had very poor communication, co-operation, logistical and economical problems in real life too. The Crusades mostly were disastrous and literally created more long-term harm for the christian world than good. Millions of people were lost for nothing and division and schism would forever break any unity among the christian branches. Not to mention the crusaders fatally crippling Byzantium which would never recover which made it easy pickings for the Ottomans. So CK3 Crusades being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is historically accurate. If anything it's not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enough.

The first one was fairly successful and a coordination between multiple lords. It wasn't a free for all where they just decided let's do whatever, they planned to meet up at certain points and sailed together, pulled funds for supplies, food, building materials, specialists among other things, else if by your logic they were all fumbling in the dark, the states would never have formed.

No it's not historically accurate for multiple armies to just completely fumble.

Most of the "fumbling" happened AFTER they arrived or due to unforeseen circumstances.

In case of the third crusade they only failed due to a breakdown of trust. The crusade was first called upon in 1187 and agreed upon in 1188. The first arrivals came in 1189 with James of Avesnes, the consuls of Pisa and Genoa, Ludwig of Thuringia, Henry of Champagne and eventually Richard of England and Phillipe of France.

Frederick of the HRE died drowning on his way through Armenia causing most of the Germans to scatter and Phillipe returned to England after the death of the Count of Flanders to oversee the succession among other probable reasons leaving Richard alone.

The reasons of failure begin AFTER they arrive, not before any of them even bother making it. Even then, they don't all arrive ALREADY starving and broken down because they're completely incapable of planning or logistics.

> Says it's not historically accurate for the crusaders to fumble, then list examples of complete disastrous fumbles. Lmao. Just lmao

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Hermóðr:

The Crusades had very poor communication, co-operation, logistical and economical problems in real life too. The Crusades mostly were disastrous and literally created more long-term harm for the christian world than good. Millions of people were lost for nothing and division and schism would forever break any unity among the christian branches. Not to mention the crusaders fatally crippling Byzantium which would never recover which made it easy pickings for the Ottomans. So CK3 Crusades being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is historically accurate. If anything it's not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enough.

Maybe, but the actual problem is how the Crusades as a feature are a complete misrepresentation of history.


First off, how did the idea of a "Crusade" even happen?

The Great Schism between the Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church in Rome happened in 1054. Before that, the East was at least formally a subordinate to Rome. While there's over forty years until the first Crusade, this was clearly something that was still in people's minds, and something Rome needed to fix.

So the idea was a diplomatic move - Byzantium was under heavy pressure by the Seljuks, and the offer by the Pope was to have the Catholic world launch an attack on the southern flank in order to give the Byzantine Emperor a relief.

The actual Crusade could not have been pettier - an armed mob marauded through the Holy Roman Empire, murdering Jews and other "infidels" they found in the towns along the way. The military part of the expedition met a disorganized Palestine which was neither under Fatimid nor Seljuk control, so the city of Jerusalem was captured without notable resistance and its 50,000 inhabitants slaughtered on the spot.

And even in the later Crusades - for example the Sixth Crusade, the expedition was actually too small for an actual war, so Jerusalem was seized by a diplomatic treaty between HRE Emperor Frederick II and the Egyptian Sultan. Both sides were suffering under severe internal conflicts at that time, so the affairs about the Crusader Kingdoms were barely a sidenote in their homelands.



While in this game, the Crusade feature is working as a World War, in the spirit of extreme-right "culture war" ideas that have spooked around in people's heads since 9/11. Occident against Orient, white against slightly-less-white, Christian against Muslim. Something like this never happened in history, though.

It is a massive misrepresentation of history, and this is also why it doesn't work. You can't really expect a mobilization of mostly vassals from between Iceland and Sicily to be effective against an organized defense by the entire target faith in any way. Defenders can easily gather the same amount of troops (the game always evens out the numbers of participants), and they are always there first and rallied to crush whoever tries to land first.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

-snipped for brevity's sake-

To add a bit more context to this, Jerusalem was actually under the control of the Shia Fatimids of Egypt when the First Crusade got there in 1099. The Sunni had conquered it in 1077, in a really quite chaotic manner mirroring in some ways the shifting objectives of the First Crusade (a Fatimid governor of Al-Sham/Syria had hired Turkmen mercenaries to fight Bedouin tribes and instead the Turkmen, or some of them, had allied with the Bedouin and formed their own principality in Jerusalem with nominal allegiance to the Seljuk), but they then lost it in 1098, although their control was always kinda tenuous. This at least partly explains the lack of much unified Sunni resistance (could also point to the chaos within the Seljuk following the death of Malik Shah), but is very unlikely to happen in the game, especially if we're starting in 867 when the Fatimids almost certainly won't exist.

[Baran]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Originally posted by Hermóðr:

"The actual Crusade could not have been pettier - an armed mob marauded through the Holy Roman Empire, murdering Jews and other "infidels" they found in the towns along the way. The military part of the expedition met a disorganized Palestine which was neither under Fatimid nor Seljuk control, so the city of Jerusalem was captured without notable resistance and its 50,000 inhabitants slaughtered on the spot."

I agree with you regarding the People's Crusade, but the Princes' Crusade is actually different from what you said. Saying the region was some kind of leaderless mess is simply wrong, Syria and Palestine were being fought over by the Seljuk Turks and the Fatimid Caliphate, and Jerusalem itself had been retaken by the Fatimids from the Seljuks in 1098, just before the crusaders arrived. When the crusaders reached the city in 1099, it was under Fatimid control and defended by a proper garrison led by the governor Iftikhar al-Dawla. Also The Crusaders did not advance easily through it. In several major encounters they faced well-organized armies, sometimes comparable in size or larger than their own forces

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Baran:

I agree with you regarding the People's Crusade, but the Princes' Crusade is actually different from what you said. Saying the region was some kind of leaderless mess is simply wrong, Syria and Palestine were being fought over by the Seljuk Turks and the Fatimid Caliphate, and Jerusalem itself had been retaken by the Fatimids from the Seljuks in 1098, just before the crusaders arrived. When the crusaders reached the city in 1099, it was under Fatimid control and defended by a proper garrison led by the governor Iftikhar al-Dawla. Also The Crusaders did not advance easily through it. In several major encounters they faced well-organized armies, sometimes comparable in size or larger than their own forces

I tried to roughly summarise the situation from the native point of view in my response, and while I agree Crusher's summary was a little exaggerative, I'd say yours swings the other way a little much.

Al-Dawla did prepare the city for a siege, and there was a garrison, but they were hopelessly outnumbered, and the only reason the siege lasted the five weeks it did is because the Crusaders don't seem to have planned for the lack of wood with which to construct siege equipment in the surrounding area, which meant they tried once with a single ladder (supposedly they found the wood for it in a cave after Tancred received some kind of vision, but I'm a little cynical of that), and then delayed their assault to wait for supplies, which arrived about a month later. This isn't suggestive of brilliant planning on their behalf.

I can think of two encounters where they faced armies of comparable size (or greater), one being the Siege of Antioch against the Seljuk and the other being the Battle of Ascalon against the Fatimids after capturing Jerusalem. In both cases, it seems like they were outnumbered about two to one. I'm struggling to get to several; the best I can do is a couple. If we're being generous, we could include Dorylaeum, but the accounts of a Seljuk horde of 300,000+ are unbelievable to say the least, and the more conservative estimates have the Seljuk being slightly outnumbered. That's three then, which I suppose barely scrapes by as several.

Well organised might also be a bit of a stretch. They won at Ascalon by ambushing the Fatimids - who supposedly hadn't guarded their camp very well - at dawn, leading to a slaughter, which isn't exactly brilliant organisation, and at Antioch, for some reason, the Seljuk commander (Kerbogha) decided to wait and try to attack the entire Crusader army, instead of picking them off one detachment at a time (allegedly against the advice of his advisors), and the Seljuk force also experienced several desertions by notable generals once it became clear things weren't going well.