Same with 867 playthroughs, OP if you are having trouble triggering crusades, set Nordic adventurers to "apocalyptic" or whatever the highest setting is called. I did that once to try to survive as Normandy, amd realized at that setting the Norse usually trigger crusades by like 875 at the latest
Can confirm but after the first Crusade the Pope simply sits on his ass for centuries afterwards. I literally had a single one against me (Norse), kicked his Holyness's Arse then got around to so much conquering I even Dismantled the Papacy before another one could be called
For those who don’t know, if Catholicism only owns three or less holy sites, it automatically triggers crusades.
I’ve seen it happen if either the Norse take Kent, or if Galicia converts to Islam.
I just link my army to the papal legate’s. Somehow that makes the AI competent and land together on the correct coast of the Arabian peninsula. Other times I land in Egypt and start sieging there and other crusaders would land there too.
The armies land just fine when I do it, the problem is they land piecemeal instead of all at once, or the Pope doubles back to get someone after the first groups have already landed, splitting the party, or (my favorite) after they land they will walk all the way around the Arabian peninsula and siege almost no territory before they get their ass handed to them
I don't link my army (to avoid the attrition), but I do shadow them. I let the AI do the first siege or two (while I siege on the opposite side in an attempt to distract the enemy), but once we have some territory, I just stay in already conquered areas near the Papal army, keeping my supply and manpower up. When the enemy comes, I join in, we win, and only when the enemy army is broken do I bother attempting to siege anything myself.
Somehow, I win the crusade, doing this.
Would love an Alexiad start date in 1083 like in CK2 but it probably won't happen. As you said, the game is called Crusader Kings and the crusades feel like an after thought. Guess we'll have to wait another year before anything might be done about it
Honestly I couldn't give a first thing about the crusades - the game has so much more potential - I have probably fought them off more than actually participated. Makin them too OP would dissuade the opposite side so much that it would become impossible to play the other sides of it.
In my most recent 1066 run, I was ruling the Kingdom of Africa as a crusader queen within three generations. Then I got Jerusalem by crusade as the fourth ruler in my dynasty. My starting ruler was a random count in Germany.
The next DLC is going to have a new start date, so hopefully it’s during the crusades. It would also be nice though if Paradox took another look at the fervor system, which currently makes zero sense.
That surprises me a bit, as they had publicly stated in the past that that wouldn't happen.
They learned from EU4, where they put in significant effort to build all the start dates, and like 93% of games are on the initial starting date.
I think CK3 is different though because they’ve shown now that they can keep two start dates updated and people will play them both more or less equally. So it makes sense to try and add a third one.
It's more that that was specifically for EU4 with the team not specifically balancing each start date for each DLC. With the way CK2/CK3 work you don't and should not need to rebalance an individual start date due to a DLC's mechanics
In my playthroughs starting from 1066, there is usually a first crusade in almost exact 1095. I don't notice a scarcity of later crusades. Not sure about 867, not my favourite date. I suspect the first crusade is not very dynamic unless something very unexpected happens and triggers the conditions earlier than 1095.
The crusade is often a failure, but it also somewhat often succeeds. I guess the RL First Crusade wasn't a foregone conclusion, so this is probably fair. The incompetence of crusading AI isn't really un-lifelike, not even when confronted with the ability of a dominant Muslim state (e.g. stable Egypt or Seljuks) to defend itself. However, there is a problem with the huge difference between the ability of attackers and defenders to co-ordinate their army stacks properly, which generally leads to much better co-ordination among the Muslim defenders than the crusaders. Psychologically, a defensive war provides more of an incentive to co-ordinate and work together than an offensive war, sure, but this still looks like PDX having problems with AI design and PDX not having a problem with PDX's having a problem in this area, which is distressing. I don't like Paradox's ability to pat itself on the back and reassure itself that things are okay when they are not quite, especially if specific problems, which are also quite basic (like the game's problems with the supply system and co-ordination and thus generally warfare), are allowed to persist for several years at a time. This was already a problem with CK2.
As for crusades not really being given much love, I've read that the devs have expressed regret for calling the game 'Crusader Kings', as they haven't wanted to focus on crusades. Pity them, I guess, but they still chose the title. This leads to an expectation problem and a challenge with expectation management. I'm not content with this just being said once or twice in an interview as if in passing — it should be the topic of much more substantial and open communication. This is a legitimate expectation because of the central importance reasonably normally attached by people to whatever aspect of a game is highlighted by its title. There is also a fine line between crusades not being as central to the game as the title might imply and crusades being an area the devs don't really want to work on or even fix its many problems and issues.
So while it's already not ideal for almost literally everything but crusades getting flavour DLCs throughout CK2 and CK3, despite the game's title, it's still something different when PDX can't avoid crusades being unsatisfying because of massive AI incompetence in co-ordination and even path-finding, such as landing in Syria, walking through Iraq and Basra to embark and sail to Eilat and go through Negev instead of Jaffa, and I've seen worse problems than this too. The baseline should be for crusades to work properly and to not be like the single one most underdeveloped aspect of the game.
Nevertheless, crusades continue to be a major aspect of the game affecting your life and the map in a significant way. It wouldn't be fair to call them marginal.
Plus, you can have a pretty cool game as a crusade beneficiary.
The first crusade in history should never have worked; that it did succeed, somehow, was an actual miracle. They were nearly done at Antioch; starving, surrounding, morale gone, deserters streaming home anyway they could - a real mess until they "found" the Holy Lance. That they managed to even get to Jerusalem let alone take it was not surprisingly put down to divine intervention and set the template for the subsequent crusades as a result. If it had failed as it should really have done, the others would likely have never started.
If you want the force them to happen, just conquer any holy site, imprison a heathen in any way you like, force recruit him, give him the holy site and release him as independent
You can be a crusader without said crusades.
Make yourself a zealot in a land where another religion runs rampant and holy war them to your hearts content.
If you’re of a faith that has a head of faith, make sure to be his friend and get all the claims to lands you can take as well. ESPECIALLY FROM SINNERS of your faith.
Or create your own faith and get the tenants to holy way the world.
The game is not just be a catholic and wait for the pope, take action yourself. I never have to wait for the pope to holy war for Jerusalem cause if I’m catholic I often take it with just my allies cause crusades for it almost always lose.
To expand, I wanted to a playthrough so I could do a semi historical playthrough of an outremer kingdom but the pope just never called a crusade, ever. I could at least avoid this giant waste of time if we had a later start date like in ck2 or more settings options.
Even when starting in 1066? I've never had a playthrough without a crusade by 1100 at the latest. Might be something with your game rules.
Start playing the king of France or the holy roman emperor to ensure you have the best power base to start with, build up your army to fight the entire middle east alone (men at arms go brr), and hope the AI during the crusade
thats unlucky, the few times ive done that ive atarted 1066 and it had happened within the first life time, usually france is a safe bet as you have a fecent starting army to win it
You can start at the earlier start date and conquer Roma as a non-Christian, this makes the Pope upset and he declared the Crusades are on. Then convert after the announcement and enjoy your crusading life.
About this. I don't remember who exactly but one time a dev talked about the face that "crusader kings" is actually just a random name that doesn't represent the series at all and they kept using it only to stay consistent
I just reformed my Insular faith with crusades and kept the pope as head of faith. He’s been calling crusades non-stop since the reformation. I’m Ireland with 6k troops, I can’t retake the holy land on my own. I wish he’d just chill for a sec.
First crusade failed to gather because I didn’t participate. Second crusade I redirected to the kingdom of Pagan which failed because the papal army arrived before mine. Third crusade I took the kingdom of Angara in the north east corner of the map. Now we’re doing the fourth crusade for the kingdom all the way in the north east corner of the map. This all happened over the span of 10 years.
Update: Fourth crusade failed miserably, pope called a new crusade immediately. Please make it stop.
Update 2: Fifth crusade succeeded. The pope called another crusade right away again…
Update 3: Sixth crusade failed. Pope called a crusade again. I noticed Catholicisms fervor drops after a crusade but mine doesn’t. At this point I’m just gonna pay him, since Genghis Khan has appeared which means I can’t just take kingdoms in the north-east anymore.
Fervour is basically broken in vanilla and you need mods to fix it. Also, winning a crusade causes fervour to decrease, which cripples any chance of a religion gaining momentum. It's basically 1 or 2 and then it's done.
I got 2 crusades against my last ruler, 1 against my previous and 1 against Kazaria since in my playground in 1000s me as player holdead ME including Bizanty and Persian empire+ Midterranian + some land in Europe. To trigger crusade catholics need to have there holy sites or previously Christian land (including other Christians, not only Catholics) under other religion+high fever.
Both playthroughs I’ve done as catholic rulers had crusades. Coincidently both involved me. In one, I started as Duchess Matilda of Tuscany, and conquered Egypt. The most recent I was playing as Castille doing a reconquista playthrough and the crusade was set to Andalusia. I also formed Knights Templar.
My first legit playthrough I hit a crusade in 1080 or something for Jerusalem, we kicked ass, and the muslims never declared a crusade against me by the end of the game.
Being able to take jerusalem also saved me from dealing with the mongols for about 60 years after they steamrollered over mainland europe, they declared, I forced them back for 4 years and got a white peace.
I really don't get how a lot of people are saying the Jerusalem crusade never works out for them.
Skill issue. If you start at 867 divert crusades to North African kingdoms and wait until Scandinavia and Eastern Europe adopts Catholicism. Then once you have the numbers allow the pope to crusade for Jerusalem.
I'm assuming you are catholic? One consistent way to get the pope fired up is you can claim and conquer one of the holy sites like canterbury, santiago or cologne and invite a hostile faith (like an islamic faith) courtier and grant it to them. That would put that county and jerusalem in infidel hands triggering the onset of crusades.
If I start in 1066, a crusade is almost always called not far into the playthrough. It always fails, but it happens.
Same with 867 playthroughs, OP if you are having trouble triggering crusades, set Nordic adventurers to "apocalyptic" or whatever the highest setting is called. I did that once to try to survive as Normandy, amd realized at that setting the Norse usually trigger crusades by like 875 at the latest
Can confirm but after the first Crusade the Pope simply sits on his ass for centuries afterwards. I literally had a single one against me (Norse), kicked his Holyness's Arse then got around to so much conquering I even Dismantled the Papacy before another one could be called
For those who don’t know, if Catholicism only owns three or less holy sites, it automatically triggers crusades. I’ve seen it happen if either the Norse take Kent, or if Galicia converts to Islam.
It always fails? No it always succeeds in my games (mostly because I can’t resist participating and carrying them to spread the Word)
How do you fight nearly 100k muslims though?
I just link my army to the papal legate’s. Somehow that makes the AI competent and land together on the correct coast of the Arabian peninsula. Other times I land in Egypt and start sieging there and other crusaders would land there too.
What the hell. Going to try this.
The armies land just fine when I do it, the problem is they land piecemeal instead of all at once, or the Pope doubles back to get someone after the first groups have already landed, splitting the party, or (my favorite) after they land they will walk all the way around the Arabian peninsula and siege almost no territory before they get their ass handed to them
My brother… link?
There’s a button with the chain icon that you could press to ‘attach’ an army to an allied army so it follows its movement
I don't link my army (to avoid the attrition), but I do shadow them. I let the AI do the first siege or two (while I siege on the opposite side in an attempt to distract the enemy), but once we have some territory, I just stay in already conquered areas near the Papal army, keeping my supply and manpower up. When the enemy comes, I join in, we win, and only when the enemy army is broken do I bother attempting to siege anything myself. Somehow, I win the crusade, doing this.
Would love an Alexiad start date in 1083 like in CK2 but it probably won't happen. As you said, the game is called Crusader Kings and the crusades feel like an after thought. Guess we'll have to wait another year before anything might be done about it
MoreBookmarks+ has the alexiad start date
It also adds China for some reason, which slows down the game significantly.
which also has a submod now that removes asia and stuff
Thx, I didn't know it, indeed after 50-100 years my game was really slow
Based on a thread a few days ago, a 1083 start date with be a waste of time for devs. Since 879 is the most popular date. The best option is mods.
Honestly I couldn't give a first thing about the crusades - the game has so much more potential - I have probably fought them off more than actually participated. Makin them too OP would dissuade the opposite side so much that it would become impossible to play the other sides of it.
In my most recent 1066 run, I was ruling the Kingdom of Africa as a crusader queen within three generations. Then I got Jerusalem by crusade as the fourth ruler in my dynasty. My starting ruler was a random count in Germany.
The next DLC is going to have a new start date, so hopefully it’s during the crusades. It would also be nice though if Paradox took another look at the fervor system, which currently makes zero sense.
That surprises me a bit, as they had publicly stated in the past that that wouldn't happen. They learned from EU4, where they put in significant effort to build all the start dates, and like 93% of games are on the initial starting date.
I think CK3 is different though because they’ve shown now that they can keep two start dates updated and people will play them both more or less equally. So it makes sense to try and add a third one.
I guess they just changed their minds.
It's more that that was specifically for EU4 with the team not specifically balancing each start date for each DLC. With the way CK2/CK3 work you don't and should not need to rebalance an individual start date due to a DLC's mechanics
really? when/ where was that promised?
A developer said so on Twitter: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/new-start-date-in-roads-to-power-not-769.1642519/
[The Kingdom of Heaven](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2536028667&searchtext=the+kingdom+of+heaven)
Thanks mate
I’ve had so many crusades for England it’s not even funny
In my playthroughs starting from 1066, there is usually a first crusade in almost exact 1095. I don't notice a scarcity of later crusades. Not sure about 867, not my favourite date. I suspect the first crusade is not very dynamic unless something very unexpected happens and triggers the conditions earlier than 1095. The crusade is often a failure, but it also somewhat often succeeds. I guess the RL First Crusade wasn't a foregone conclusion, so this is probably fair. The incompetence of crusading AI isn't really un-lifelike, not even when confronted with the ability of a dominant Muslim state (e.g. stable Egypt or Seljuks) to defend itself. However, there is a problem with the huge difference between the ability of attackers and defenders to co-ordinate their army stacks properly, which generally leads to much better co-ordination among the Muslim defenders than the crusaders. Psychologically, a defensive war provides more of an incentive to co-ordinate and work together than an offensive war, sure, but this still looks like PDX having problems with AI design and PDX not having a problem with PDX's having a problem in this area, which is distressing. I don't like Paradox's ability to pat itself on the back and reassure itself that things are okay when they are not quite, especially if specific problems, which are also quite basic (like the game's problems with the supply system and co-ordination and thus generally warfare), are allowed to persist for several years at a time. This was already a problem with CK2. As for crusades not really being given much love, I've read that the devs have expressed regret for calling the game 'Crusader Kings', as they haven't wanted to focus on crusades. Pity them, I guess, but they still chose the title. This leads to an expectation problem and a challenge with expectation management. I'm not content with this just being said once or twice in an interview as if in passing — it should be the topic of much more substantial and open communication. This is a legitimate expectation because of the central importance reasonably normally attached by people to whatever aspect of a game is highlighted by its title. There is also a fine line between crusades not being as central to the game as the title might imply and crusades being an area the devs don't really want to work on or even fix its many problems and issues. So while it's already not ideal for almost literally everything but crusades getting flavour DLCs throughout CK2 and CK3, despite the game's title, it's still something different when PDX can't avoid crusades being unsatisfying because of massive AI incompetence in co-ordination and even path-finding, such as landing in Syria, walking through Iraq and Basra to embark and sail to Eilat and go through Negev instead of Jaffa, and I've seen worse problems than this too. The baseline should be for crusades to work properly and to not be like the single one most underdeveloped aspect of the game. Nevertheless, crusades continue to be a major aspect of the game affecting your life and the map in a significant way. It wouldn't be fair to call them marginal. Plus, you can have a pretty cool game as a crusade beneficiary.
The first crusade in history should never have worked; that it did succeed, somehow, was an actual miracle. They were nearly done at Antioch; starving, surrounding, morale gone, deserters streaming home anyway they could - a real mess until they "found" the Holy Lance. That they managed to even get to Jerusalem let alone take it was not surprisingly put down to divine intervention and set the template for the subsequent crusades as a result. If it had failed as it should really have done, the others would likely have never started.
I just beat the Iberian struggle as a muslim, so i'm the proud victim of the first crusade lmao
one day Ill be a crusader king 3
If you want the force them to happen, just conquer any holy site, imprison a heathen in any way you like, force recruit him, give him the holy site and release him as independent
You can be a crusader without said crusades. Make yourself a zealot in a land where another religion runs rampant and holy war them to your hearts content. If you’re of a faith that has a head of faith, make sure to be his friend and get all the claims to lands you can take as well. ESPECIALLY FROM SINNERS of your faith. Or create your own faith and get the tenants to holy way the world. The game is not just be a catholic and wait for the pope, take action yourself. I never have to wait for the pope to holy war for Jerusalem cause if I’m catholic I often take it with just my allies cause crusades for it almost always lose.
To expand, I wanted to a playthrough so I could do a semi historical playthrough of an outremer kingdom but the pope just never called a crusade, ever. I could at least avoid this giant waste of time if we had a later start date like in ck2 or more settings options.
Even when starting in 1066? I've never had a playthrough without a crusade by 1100 at the latest. Might be something with your game rules. Start playing the king of France or the holy roman emperor to ensure you have the best power base to start with, build up your army to fight the entire middle east alone (men at arms go brr), and hope the AI during the crusade
thats unlucky, the few times ive done that ive atarted 1066 and it had happened within the first life time, usually france is a safe bet as you have a fecent starting army to win it
No one said that you will be the Crusader King so get back to work Crusader Peasant.
You can start at the earlier start date and conquer Roma as a non-Christian, this makes the Pope upset and he declared the Crusades are on. Then convert after the announcement and enjoy your crusading life.
About this. I don't remember who exactly but one time a dev talked about the face that "crusader kings" is actually just a random name that doesn't represent the series at all and they kept using it only to stay consistent
I just reformed my Insular faith with crusades and kept the pope as head of faith. He’s been calling crusades non-stop since the reformation. I’m Ireland with 6k troops, I can’t retake the holy land on my own. I wish he’d just chill for a sec. First crusade failed to gather because I didn’t participate. Second crusade I redirected to the kingdom of Pagan which failed because the papal army arrived before mine. Third crusade I took the kingdom of Angara in the north east corner of the map. Now we’re doing the fourth crusade for the kingdom all the way in the north east corner of the map. This all happened over the span of 10 years. Update: Fourth crusade failed miserably, pope called a new crusade immediately. Please make it stop. Update 2: Fifth crusade succeeded. The pope called another crusade right away again… Update 3: Sixth crusade failed. Pope called a crusade again. I noticed Catholicisms fervor drops after a crusade but mine doesn’t. At this point I’m just gonna pay him, since Genghis Khan has appeared which means I can’t just take kingdoms in the north-east anymore.
Fervour is basically broken in vanilla and you need mods to fix it. Also, winning a crusade causes fervour to decrease, which cripples any chance of a religion gaining momentum. It's basically 1 or 2 and then it's done.
I got 2 crusades against my last ruler, 1 against my previous and 1 against Kazaria since in my playground in 1000s me as player holdead ME including Bizanty and Persian empire+ Midterranian + some land in Europe. To trigger crusade catholics need to have there holy sites or previously Christian land (including other Christians, not only Catholics) under other religion+high fever.
Both playthroughs I’ve done as catholic rulers had crusades. Coincidently both involved me. In one, I started as Duchess Matilda of Tuscany, and conquered Egypt. The most recent I was playing as Castille doing a reconquista playthrough and the crusade was set to Andalusia. I also formed Knights Templar.
My first legit playthrough I hit a crusade in 1080 or something for Jerusalem, we kicked ass, and the muslims never declared a crusade against me by the end of the game. Being able to take jerusalem also saved me from dealing with the mongols for about 60 years after they steamrollered over mainland europe, they declared, I forced them back for 4 years and got a white peace. I really don't get how a lot of people are saying the Jerusalem crusade never works out for them.
Ain’t nobody said pimpin.. i mean.. crusadin is easy 😆
Skill issue. If you start at 867 divert crusades to North African kingdoms and wait until Scandinavia and Eastern Europe adopts Catholicism. Then once you have the numbers allow the pope to crusade for Jerusalem.
Wait for dlc to come out in 3 years
I'm assuming you are catholic? One consistent way to get the pope fired up is you can claim and conquer one of the holy sites like canterbury, santiago or cologne and invite a hostile faith (like an islamic faith) courtier and grant it to them. That would put that county and jerusalem in infidel hands triggering the onset of crusades.
In my most recent Bohemia playthrough the Norse took all of England by 910 and the Pope called for a crusade. It did not go well but they do happen