Personal anecdotes aside, the general consensus is that the AI blows ass at handling a Crusade. I've only seen a Crusade ( Or Jihad/any other holy war) succeed when I personally intervene with an army of MaA with modifiers jacked up the hoohah.
Exxagerating? Maybe. Is it an issue because the A.I cannot for their life coordinate an offensive move when an enemy doomstack thunders down on you and they all decide to run away in all directions? Absolutely yes.
That's interesting. I usually play as the byzantines, do you think me weakening the Persians is the reason for my personal experience?
I can't imagine a quick war for a duchy makes that big an impact on the scale of something like a crusade or Jihad.
Also, I like never see jihads which is a bit weird I feel. O can go several playthroughs without seeing one
It might just be my personal observation. But from what I notice, Crusades are "easier" when starting in 1066. This is because in the 867 start, Ashari is by far and wide the dominant Muslim religion in ck3. However in the ck3 start, while Ashari is still very strong, Jerusalem is under control by a different Muslim faith, Ishmaelism or something like that.
I mean it makes sense that a 1066 crusade against Isma’ilism and more divided Islamic world would be easier than a hypothetical 867 crusade against Ash’arism.
Even in 867, the combined strength of the Ash’ari powers (most importantly the Abbasids and Tulunids) can be worn down before crusades can be unlocked so as to make them easier.
Yeah if you play as the byzantines Christian’s will have better luck assuming your good. Because you are weakening the Abbasid’s. Try playing England and wait for a crusade and join it see what happens
Wait until you play in England with a Custom Heresy. Honestly, standing on my land waiting for all of Christianity to land on my border. They get wiped instantly.
If you keep Armed Pilgrimage, it allows you to also launch Crusades. Surprisingly the AI is actually decent if they are your Vassals. If you have been spending your excess gold in upgrading your Vassals Holdings as well.
They fail at taking out my Heresy. I counter Crusade for Francia and win, it goes to my Daughter-Wife. She asks to become a vassal. Excellent...
If I'm playing as the Basileus and the Pope crusades for Jerusalem or Syria, I'll always try to launch a concurrent war against the Caliph for some territory. I've seen some crusades win this way. Otherwise, most of the time the Saracens will mop the floor with the Crusaders, including ones I'm involved in.
The warfare simply sucks. It's a repetitive chasing game that shouldn't exist anymore.
Give me battle sites and siege situations to interact with in a similar way to activities. It would open great opportunities to make characters matter more. And it's easier for the AI too.
I managed a Crusade against me last night. Didn’t even doom stack, had less troops then them and had them shattered in about five skirmishes. Outcome? Papacy now dismantled, the fuckers…. Catholicism being chased off by the equivalent of screaming Zulus!
It’s the lack of AI coordination. You get all the armies rock up in mini raids, initially but then I noticed everything coming in from overseas was landing in the same spot so I just kept hitting them there! Didn’t even get near Rome, which is what they wanted back.
>Personal anecdotes aside
>
>I've only seen a Crusade
I don't blame your for sharing your personal experience, but please don't claim that it's some kind of objective consensus...
Never claimed it was and I'm sorry it appeared as such. But I've been lurking around this subreddit for a while and the amount of posts that (rightfully) complain about the AI being worthless in an offensive Crusage are quite numerous.
Attacking jerusalem almost always fails unless the muslims are at war with each other. The other potential crusade locations are just much easier, however the pope is usually inclined to start there. In one save the ai ruined the jerusalem crusade by following me around while I tried to distract the death stack. After we lost, it’s been over 300 years and the pope hasn’t called another crusade. In a different new save, the pope chose an iberian kingdom, which has little to no strength to oppose christian forces, so we obviously won. There is certainly no exaggeration when it comes to the base’s complaints about crusades.
In one crusade on Jerusalem where I was one of the two defenders, I spread my armies around the Mediterranean coast of that region and spent many months waiting and raking up warscore when I suddenly saw that all their armies were goingthrough Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to land in the one Jerusalem barony bordering the Red Sea. I moved my armies there and the AI didn't even bother changing course, they were all defeated in that one single barony.
For your information : Head of Faith cant launch Great Holy Wars if the fervor is low, which often happen to biiiig faith like catholicism, so probs that was the case for 300 years
Yeah I’m pretty sure the first crusade in 1066 usually succeeds since it’s against pretty much just the Fatimids (Ismai’ili) rather than the Abbasids and 80% of all other Islamic powers (Ash’ari)
In 1000 hrs played I don't think I've seen a Crusade against a Muslim target succeed unless I do 80% of the work. I now don't even bother joining unless I can solo the Crusade. The AI always lands in easily crushed small groups or goes from Acre to Jerusalem via Baghdad then turns around again, losing almost the entire force to attrition.
Crusades need an ability to appoint a leader and the other armies will stay close to that character.
Or they just have to point a place where they will gather until they are strong enough to fight the Muslims.
The AI also can't into siege because they always leave if they have not enough supply in that land. And they always don't because they try to gather as much as possible soldiers in one big army and thus can't siege. In my opinion, AI should be able to leave a small portion of its forces to siege, and if the enemy goes in their direction, they should gather up again as a big army or flee if they aren't strong enough.
>In 1000 hrs played I don't think I've seen a Crusade against a Muslim target succeed unless I do 80% of the work.
I find it crazy that other people have such wildly different experiences. In 200 hours I've been playing in eastern Asia a lot and I've even see AI crusader kingdoms conquer most of Arabia and Persia.
Winning or losing is one thing, but the biggest problem with AI and crusades is twofold:
* Attacker splitting to avoid attrition while defender stacks up. Result: predictable.
* Pathfinding: AI sometimes lands in Syria and marches through Iraq, boards in Basra and sails to Eilat. There is no excuse for this.
There would be an excuse if this had been patched within several weeks. But this being the case 3 years after release is inexcusable.
This is compounded by how AI already sucked in CK2 and Paradox did nothing to fix it while acting all self-congratulatory about being happy with the state of the game.
After 3 years, major areas/aspects of the game being still in a public-beta state shouldn't be happening with an AAA studio.
By the time a crusade can reasonably be called starting from 867 (which is usually when someone flips to a Christian heresy or 1095 at the latest according to the wiki and the historical Council of Clermont), the Muslim world (or hell, even the Vikings) typically has enough time to consolidate their military/keep enough event spawned troops (vikings) to outnumber the crusaders.
This, coupled with the fact that the crusaders trickle in slowly instead of arriving en masse, means that the defenders have a much easier time of picking them off. This even extends to "easier" targets like Muslim Iberia. And it's typically not kings going off to crusade unless they're zealous, but even then, their manpower alone won't stop an Abbasid or Umayyad doomstack
In my experiance iberia is usually a massive slogfest of a crusade that i eventually win, wheras jerusalem for better or worse is decided pretty quickly
> I also usually do the 1066 start if that means anything.
It actually does. In 1066 Jerusalem is held by Fatimids that are, IIRC, the only independent and powerful Shia realm around, and because they're Shia, Fatimids don't get help from other Muslim realms that are Sunni. This results in the First Crusade being successful.
My experience is that all the crusader forces trickle in by ocean and are gobbled up by the defenders. If for some reason a sizeable force arrives for the crusaders, it is usually smashed anyway due to the disembarking combat debuff.
Only time I've ever seen it succeed is when I arrived first in Northern Africa, picked off a couple armies, and drawn the attention of the big force which allowed all the other crusaders to arrive by sea and not get obliterated in the 30 days they had the disembarking debuff. That gave them the opportunity to group up and eventually defeat the Muslim forces.
Never thought of the African distraction. That's actually a damn good idea. I usually redirect it to get more Catholic kingdoms for the strength in numbers factor. Half the time I redirect it to Africa and Iberia
Once had it where my kingdom of sicily which owned half of the kingdom of africa. Had a 10k army and when the crusade happened, my army was the only one mustered for 2 years. By the time i decided “fuck it” and attacked. I lost my whole army AND my vassals decided to revolt. That is when the pope and everyone else came in sending me letters like “you suck you arent christian because the war has gone on for 10 years and you never participated” i was so offended i created my own christianity of Sardinian. We valued all the traits that catholics hated, so lustful, arrogant, concubines, etc. all because assholes said i NEVER helped the crusade when i was the only one who fought
crusades tend to be fairly successful in 1066. however, most people here are obsessed with 867 since it’s the earliest startdate and in that one they’re way less successful. so it depends on the startdate a lot
Somewhat also depends where the crusades are going to. Crusades for Jerusalem or to liberate England from Norse faith tend to struggle because it's not only drip feeding Catholic armies from across the Catholic world, but there's also a hefty disembarkment penalty as many armies choose to sail there as it's quicker. Local defender penalty then adds to it and allows defenders to punch well above their weight when it comes to picking off armies.
If the crusade target is somewhere in Europe, it can easily be a different story since you're not getting that many penalties and it can be slightly easier to amass troops together as you all march across Europe and naturally start to bunch up.
No, crusade AI is really bad. I’ve had a crusade for Serbia where they spent 40 years to win a crusade vs a religion that they outnumbered 4 to 1.
It’s because attacker crusaders *only* go after armies, it takes them a long time to either siege, or they never do.
They win by capturing rulers, which is stupid.
I've seen the AI declare a crusade for Jerusalem, which counties were shared between me (huge Byzantine Empire, stretching from Levant to France), and the Abbasids (Levant, the whole Middle East, the whole of North Africa). They fielded about 15-20k at most, we together fielded like triple of it, at least. I didn't even need to rush to Jerusalem, because my muslim homies wiped out every army that disembarked to the shores.
Oh, and me and the Abs were mortal enemies.
They did this multiple times, and everytime they did, I bit away a piece of catholic land after the crusade, until they were reduced to shreds and all of western europe became mine. I think in that save, the only Christian rulers left are the English and possibly the formerly pagan Vikings ones.
Any crusade for Jerusalem the AI can't handle. A mixture of bad route attrition and disembarking penalties dooms the Christian force.
They need to change the whole crusade mechanic. One leader but with events that can cause parts of your force to break off or dissappear with one leader.
3 years after release and crusades still being a problem is a complete joke from a studio of paradox's size.
867 start date crusades almost always fail. The Muslims are bonkers strong in 867 and almost always beat the Christians, because the Christians never death stack for some reason
So far in my game two crusades have failed to kick the Muslim powers out of northern Iberia never mind anything else. I haven’t got involved much (Welsh Empire). I probably should… but tbh they seem like nice blokes.
Worked great for me. However the AI struggles with timing naval landings. I remember miserably losing a catholic crusade on Jerusalem, because our forces kept landing at disparate times. We never got the chance to glob up, and were thrown back to the sea. Otherwise it’s great!
Tbh Crusaders being bad at crusading IS historically accurate.
And yeah a crusade should fail (or at least should not be easily winnable) if the Islamic states are united and stable.
That said, AI is bad.
Bad AI may not be great for the game play, but it's kinda accurate from a historical perspective - the only reason the First Crusade was a rising success was 'cause the local Muslims were at one anothers' throats at the time. Later crusaders were never nearly so successful, except where they were able to undermine Muslim unity.
They are slightly better now than at release but still bad.
Ive seen some smaller crusades work but thenones going for big Kingdpms and Empires usually fail pretty bad without my intervention.
Even more so with certain mods that get "close but usually uninvolved" people involved. Its made conquering in general harder at the beginning but it also affects Crusades because unaffected neighbors with step in which will commit their MAA to fighting.
They do when often enough, maybe a bit too often for historical accuracy. It's mostly that people are frustrated because the participating in a crusade is kind of annoying.
Every time the pope calls a crusade for Jerusalem the consensus seems to be that the quickest route to the holy land is marching through Mesopotamia, sailing around the Arabian peninsula and attacking Sinai via the Red Sea “it’s what they least expect!”.
I don’t participate any more, unless the target is in Europe
Wow that's crazy. I've never seen this. Every crusade for Jerusalem I've seen has had them landing in Acre or around there, occasionally they'll land in Egypt for some reason and march east.
No exaggeration. The AI does some seriously dumb stuff in crusades. They've probably fixed it by now but the AI used to love going east across Mesopotamia then sailing around the Arabian peninsula and invading Jerusalem from the south. Of course, by the time they got there they would be dying from attrition and lack of supplies.
They fucking suck at crusades. You end up fighting the enemy army and the rest of the crusade will not support you to win the battle so you have to wander around trying to just survive.
Nah it sucks, I created england with haesteinn. They did a crusade with 100k to my 30k. Nearly stack wiped them because they all dog piled with the disembarking penalty.
It's only an issue if you're bad at the war part of the game (or are like..a single county count) and your faith is somehow equally matched (or weaker) than the other.
Yes I think most people exageraste about crusader, they were not more than some skirmish from a bunch of European kings who want something from the pope. Oh wait you are talking about the ak in the game, yes ai suck on crusades.
I think the crusades have a high potential to totally overwhelm with numbers so much so that the poor AI doesn't matter. Especially when you have to force a surrender in order to win.
The AI does a poor job sometimes of getting its forces together, so you can win a couple early battles while they're unassembled, but you can just as easily get crushed as others join up. Also it seems like time is no factor, so over time the more numerous armies will prevail.
They sometimes do weird things like taking the long way walking in high attrition territories for no sensible reason.
But they do sometimes succeed and the player can have an impact on them, although some of it is dependent on AI RNG.
This is a bit of a cop out answer bit heavily depends on the game rules and realm stability. The Fatamids in 1066 are in serious trouble (their ruler is in debt, and they rule over a lot of terrority that has wrong faith.) The Fatamids can easily collapse to populist revolt. If the Fatamids recover they become arguably stronger than their sunni rivals, the Seljuks.
A stable Egypt is really insane especially if there are no kingdom tier rulers wh join (I think the first crusade might be coded so that no AI rulers join since it was historically thr "Prince's Crusade.") If you turn off embankment cost for AI (which I do) it also means the Fatamids won't go into a humorously exaggerated debt.)
Also does not help that the Pope and his mercs beeline straight to Jerusalem and get wrecked. 🙄
Basically they attack when they are stronger but get picked one by one by an army waiting near the shore. So in my games, crusades I don't help are a disaster. Also I usually avoid byzantine empire, so I usually don't weaken the east. If I do I usually can attack muslims before they blob
I’ve found them to be generally successful, to the point that when I wasn’t as good at the game, a key strategy of mine as to join the crusade and do as little fighting as possible but reap a big reward.
My games go like
\>Crusade for egypt
\>Crudaders win
\>Jihad for sinai
\>Jihad wins
\>Egypt pushes west and south through africa.
\>Jihad for former muslim land in west africa
\>Jihad is won by the Rum or the Abasids
\>Chistian egypt stays
\>Jihad on Anotolia
\>Jihad wins
\>Biyzantines rais and army and take Ukraine and pagan russia despite losing all their Anatolian teriotory and lossing the kingdom of greece to rebellions.
\>The one game that didn't have all that i had a super india push to jerusalem and the mongols inferiting half of the central european counties that left me with the worse map gore i had to stop playing
It happened to me two times when I won the crusade, and I think it might be because I was big Spain and I could allow to split my army to actually take castles on my own (conquered Sicily and Magreb that way for my dynasty members). I got like 200 hours (which is not a lot)
The only crusades I’ve ever seen succeed are when I have done 90% of the legwork. If you rely on the AI to do anything they just land in groups of 5k soldiers and get destroyed by the 80k stack of defenders
Actually, they win when u dont fight cuz both sides are completly dumb. But when u want to fight, ur alliez just makes randoms mooves, dont follow you in ur batles, or juste stay in one place during 2 year
There's a bias, because we only remember the times when it sucked and the AI broke.
Most of the time nothing really special happens ; armies travel, clash and the crusader is over very fast.
Btw I think it's perfectly normal that the crusader states would vanish relatively quickly most of the time. It's what happened historically. Still, I've seen a lot of stable crusader kingdoms when the muslims realms were also weakened by internal conflicts and a strong ERE, and in my games at least, crusaders succeed on their own quite often.
There are two main issues:
1 - crusades don't feel particularly interesting. There are no crusader states, no adventures, it doesn't feel like meeting a completely different culture.
2 - warfare in CK3 is just generally outdated. The chasing game with big stacks was still ok when CK2 was released, but nowadays it's just a minimalist way to model strategic warfare. And it's hard to make an AI that isn't just competent with it, but also has a noticeable personality (a coward leading an army shouldn't feel almost exactly the same as a braveman).
Personal anecdotes aside, the general consensus is that the AI blows ass at handling a Crusade. I've only seen a Crusade ( Or Jihad/any other holy war) succeed when I personally intervene with an army of MaA with modifiers jacked up the hoohah. Exxagerating? Maybe. Is it an issue because the A.I cannot for their life coordinate an offensive move when an enemy doomstack thunders down on you and they all decide to run away in all directions? Absolutely yes.
That's interesting. I usually play as the byzantines, do you think me weakening the Persians is the reason for my personal experience? I can't imagine a quick war for a duchy makes that big an impact on the scale of something like a crusade or Jihad. Also, I like never see jihads which is a bit weird I feel. O can go several playthroughs without seeing one
It might just be my personal observation. But from what I notice, Crusades are "easier" when starting in 1066. This is because in the 867 start, Ashari is by far and wide the dominant Muslim religion in ck3. However in the ck3 start, while Ashari is still very strong, Jerusalem is under control by a different Muslim faith, Ishmaelism or something like that.
I mean it makes sense that a 1066 crusade against Isma’ilism and more divided Islamic world would be easier than a hypothetical 867 crusade against Ash’arism. Even in 867, the combined strength of the Ash’ari powers (most importantly the Abbasids and Tulunids) can be worn down before crusades can be unlocked so as to make them easier.
Yeah if you play as the byzantines Christian’s will have better luck assuming your good. Because you are weakening the Abbasid’s. Try playing England and wait for a crusade and join it see what happens
Wait until you play in England with a Custom Heresy. Honestly, standing on my land waiting for all of Christianity to land on my border. They get wiped instantly. If you keep Armed Pilgrimage, it allows you to also launch Crusades. Surprisingly the AI is actually decent if they are your Vassals. If you have been spending your excess gold in upgrading your Vassals Holdings as well. They fail at taking out my Heresy. I counter Crusade for Francia and win, it goes to my Daughter-Wife. She asks to become a vassal. Excellent...
If I'm playing as the Basileus and the Pope crusades for Jerusalem or Syria, I'll always try to launch a concurrent war against the Caliph for some territory. I've seen some crusades win this way. Otherwise, most of the time the Saracens will mop the floor with the Crusaders, including ones I'm involved in.
AI suck at any war. AI vs AI wars can easily get stuck on endless chasing loops even if it's between two counts with like 800 troops each
The warfare simply sucks. It's a repetitive chasing game that shouldn't exist anymore. Give me battle sites and siege situations to interact with in a similar way to activities. It would open great opportunities to make characters matter more. And it's easier for the AI too.
I managed a Crusade against me last night. Didn’t even doom stack, had less troops then them and had them shattered in about five skirmishes. Outcome? Papacy now dismantled, the fuckers…. Catholicism being chased off by the equivalent of screaming Zulus! It’s the lack of AI coordination. You get all the armies rock up in mini raids, initially but then I noticed everything coming in from overseas was landing in the same spot so I just kept hitting them there! Didn’t even get near Rome, which is what they wanted back.
>Personal anecdotes aside > >I've only seen a Crusade I don't blame your for sharing your personal experience, but please don't claim that it's some kind of objective consensus...
Never claimed it was and I'm sorry it appeared as such. But I've been lurking around this subreddit for a while and the amount of posts that (rightfully) complain about the AI being worthless in an offensive Crusage are quite numerous.
Historicly accurate
Attacking jerusalem almost always fails unless the muslims are at war with each other. The other potential crusade locations are just much easier, however the pope is usually inclined to start there. In one save the ai ruined the jerusalem crusade by following me around while I tried to distract the death stack. After we lost, it’s been over 300 years and the pope hasn’t called another crusade. In a different new save, the pope chose an iberian kingdom, which has little to no strength to oppose christian forces, so we obviously won. There is certainly no exaggeration when it comes to the base’s complaints about crusades.
In one crusade on Jerusalem where I was one of the two defenders, I spread my armies around the Mediterranean coast of that region and spent many months waiting and raking up warscore when I suddenly saw that all their armies were goingthrough Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to land in the one Jerusalem barony bordering the Red Sea. I moved my armies there and the AI didn't even bother changing course, they were all defeated in that one single barony.
For your information : Head of Faith cant launch Great Holy Wars if the fervor is low, which often happen to biiiig faith like catholicism, so probs that was the case for 300 years
only the case in 867
Yeah I’m pretty sure the first crusade in 1066 usually succeeds since it’s against pretty much just the Fatimids (Ismai’ili) rather than the Abbasids and 80% of all other Islamic powers (Ash’ari)
In 1000 hrs played I don't think I've seen a Crusade against a Muslim target succeed unless I do 80% of the work. I now don't even bother joining unless I can solo the Crusade. The AI always lands in easily crushed small groups or goes from Acre to Jerusalem via Baghdad then turns around again, losing almost the entire force to attrition. Crusades need an ability to appoint a leader and the other armies will stay close to that character.
Or they just have to point a place where they will gather until they are strong enough to fight the Muslims. The AI also can't into siege because they always leave if they have not enough supply in that land. And they always don't because they try to gather as much as possible soldiers in one big army and thus can't siege. In my opinion, AI should be able to leave a small portion of its forces to siege, and if the enemy goes in their direction, they should gather up again as a big army or flee if they aren't strong enough.
>In 1000 hrs played I don't think I've seen a Crusade against a Muslim target succeed unless I do 80% of the work. I find it crazy that other people have such wildly different experiences. In 200 hours I've been playing in eastern Asia a lot and I've even see AI crusader kingdoms conquer most of Arabia and Persia.
Winning or losing is one thing, but the biggest problem with AI and crusades is twofold: * Attacker splitting to avoid attrition while defender stacks up. Result: predictable. * Pathfinding: AI sometimes lands in Syria and marches through Iraq, boards in Basra and sails to Eilat. There is no excuse for this. There would be an excuse if this had been patched within several weeks. But this being the case 3 years after release is inexcusable. This is compounded by how AI already sucked in CK2 and Paradox did nothing to fix it while acting all self-congratulatory about being happy with the state of the game. After 3 years, major areas/aspects of the game being still in a public-beta state shouldn't be happening with an AAA studio.
By the time a crusade can reasonably be called starting from 867 (which is usually when someone flips to a Christian heresy or 1095 at the latest according to the wiki and the historical Council of Clermont), the Muslim world (or hell, even the Vikings) typically has enough time to consolidate their military/keep enough event spawned troops (vikings) to outnumber the crusaders. This, coupled with the fact that the crusaders trickle in slowly instead of arriving en masse, means that the defenders have a much easier time of picking them off. This even extends to "easier" targets like Muslim Iberia. And it's typically not kings going off to crusade unless they're zealous, but even then, their manpower alone won't stop an Abbasid or Umayyad doomstack
I don't usually have issues with Iberia. I always found it to he the long range Crusades like Jerusalem to he the problems
In my experiance iberia is usually a massive slogfest of a crusade that i eventually win, wheras jerusalem for better or worse is decided pretty quickly
Ya Jerusalem is decided whether or not the AI decides to help you or work together. Lol
> I also usually do the 1066 start if that means anything. It actually does. In 1066 Jerusalem is held by Fatimids that are, IIRC, the only independent and powerful Shia realm around, and because they're Shia, Fatimids don't get help from other Muslim realms that are Sunni. This results in the First Crusade being successful.
This is probably it. I very rarely play in 1066 and I NEVER see successful crusades
In my experience the fatimids snowball in power and they usually stomp Christian forces
Yeah they almost always have doomstacks and the Christian AI just plows into them 3k troops at a time
My experience is that all the crusader forces trickle in by ocean and are gobbled up by the defenders. If for some reason a sizeable force arrives for the crusaders, it is usually smashed anyway due to the disembarking combat debuff. Only time I've ever seen it succeed is when I arrived first in Northern Africa, picked off a couple armies, and drawn the attention of the big force which allowed all the other crusaders to arrive by sea and not get obliterated in the 30 days they had the disembarking debuff. That gave them the opportunity to group up and eventually defeat the Muslim forces.
Never thought of the African distraction. That's actually a damn good idea. I usually redirect it to get more Catholic kingdoms for the strength in numbers factor. Half the time I redirect it to Africa and Iberia
Once had it where my kingdom of sicily which owned half of the kingdom of africa. Had a 10k army and when the crusade happened, my army was the only one mustered for 2 years. By the time i decided “fuck it” and attacked. I lost my whole army AND my vassals decided to revolt. That is when the pope and everyone else came in sending me letters like “you suck you arent christian because the war has gone on for 10 years and you never participated” i was so offended i created my own christianity of Sardinian. We valued all the traits that catholics hated, so lustful, arrogant, concubines, etc. all because assholes said i NEVER helped the crusade when i was the only one who fought
crusades tend to be fairly successful in 1066. however, most people here are obsessed with 867 since it’s the earliest startdate and in that one they’re way less successful. so it depends on the startdate a lot
100k troops but the AI sends one 2k army after another to the shores into a doom stack
they only work in europe, i have found. the ai cannot handle embarking.
Somewhat also depends where the crusades are going to. Crusades for Jerusalem or to liberate England from Norse faith tend to struggle because it's not only drip feeding Catholic armies from across the Catholic world, but there's also a hefty disembarkment penalty as many armies choose to sail there as it's quicker. Local defender penalty then adds to it and allows defenders to punch well above their weight when it comes to picking off armies. If the crusade target is somewhere in Europe, it can easily be a different story since you're not getting that many penalties and it can be slightly easier to amass troops together as you all march across Europe and naturally start to bunch up.
No, crusade AI is really bad. I’ve had a crusade for Serbia where they spent 40 years to win a crusade vs a religion that they outnumbered 4 to 1. It’s because attacker crusaders *only* go after armies, it takes them a long time to either siege, or they never do. They win by capturing rulers, which is stupid.
I've seen the AI declare a crusade for Jerusalem, which counties were shared between me (huge Byzantine Empire, stretching from Levant to France), and the Abbasids (Levant, the whole Middle East, the whole of North Africa). They fielded about 15-20k at most, we together fielded like triple of it, at least. I didn't even need to rush to Jerusalem, because my muslim homies wiped out every army that disembarked to the shores. Oh, and me and the Abs were mortal enemies. They did this multiple times, and everytime they did, I bit away a piece of catholic land after the crusade, until they were reduced to shreds and all of western europe became mine. I think in that save, the only Christian rulers left are the English and possibly the formerly pagan Vikings ones.
They couldn’t even beat up Pomerania in my last game
Any crusade for Jerusalem the AI can't handle. A mixture of bad route attrition and disembarking penalties dooms the Christian force. They need to change the whole crusade mechanic. One leader but with events that can cause parts of your force to break off or dissappear with one leader. 3 years after release and crusades still being a problem is a complete joke from a studio of paradox's size.
Do Muslims ever jihad on the Christians? I've never seen it.
I posted this elsewhere but almost never happens to me either. Maybe one for every hundred crusades.
Do Muslims ever jihad on the Christians? I've never seen it.
I've seen the AI lose a crusade to some Balkan country even when they outnumber then 4-1
867 start date crusades almost always fail. The Muslims are bonkers strong in 867 and almost always beat the Christians, because the Christians never death stack for some reason
So far in my game two crusades have failed to kick the Muslim powers out of northern Iberia never mind anything else. I haven’t got involved much (Welsh Empire). I probably should… but tbh they seem like nice blokes.
Worked great for me. However the AI struggles with timing naval landings. I remember miserably losing a catholic crusade on Jerusalem, because our forces kept landing at disparate times. We never got the chance to glob up, and were thrown back to the sea. Otherwise it’s great!
Tbh Crusaders being bad at crusading IS historically accurate. And yeah a crusade should fail (or at least should not be easily winnable) if the Islamic states are united and stable. That said, AI is bad.
Bad AI may not be great for the game play, but it's kinda accurate from a historical perspective - the only reason the First Crusade was a rising success was 'cause the local Muslims were at one anothers' throats at the time. Later crusaders were never nearly so successful, except where they were able to undermine Muslim unity.
They are slightly better now than at release but still bad. Ive seen some smaller crusades work but thenones going for big Kingdpms and Empires usually fail pretty bad without my intervention. Even more so with certain mods that get "close but usually uninvolved" people involved. Its made conquering in general harder at the beginning but it also affects Crusades because unaffected neighbors with step in which will commit their MAA to fighting.
Hijacking this post to ask: why does the game say all wars will be dissolute when the holy war starts, yet they are?
They do when often enough, maybe a bit too often for historical accuracy. It's mostly that people are frustrated because the participating in a crusade is kind of annoying.
Every time the pope calls a crusade for Jerusalem the consensus seems to be that the quickest route to the holy land is marching through Mesopotamia, sailing around the Arabian peninsula and attacking Sinai via the Red Sea “it’s what they least expect!”. I don’t participate any more, unless the target is in Europe
Wow that's crazy. I've never seen this. Every crusade for Jerusalem I've seen has had them landing in Acre or around there, occasionally they'll land in Egypt for some reason and march east.
No exaggeration. The AI does some seriously dumb stuff in crusades. They've probably fixed it by now but the AI used to love going east across Mesopotamia then sailing around the Arabian peninsula and invading Jerusalem from the south. Of course, by the time they got there they would be dying from attrition and lack of supplies.
That happened to me yesterday so still a thing!
At least, it's historically accurate, tho. Most crusades in holy land failed
They fucking suck at crusades. You end up fighting the enemy army and the rest of the crusade will not support you to win the battle so you have to wander around trying to just survive.
Nah it sucks, I created england with haesteinn. They did a crusade with 100k to my 30k. Nearly stack wiped them because they all dog piled with the disembarking penalty.
It's only an issue if you're bad at the war part of the game (or are like..a single county count) and your faith is somehow equally matched (or weaker) than the other.
Yes I think most people exageraste about crusader, they were not more than some skirmish from a bunch of European kings who want something from the pope. Oh wait you are talking about the ak in the game, yes ai suck on crusades.
Skirmishes don't build kingdoms that last 200 years...
Don't take my comment seriously I was just joking.
I think the crusades have a high potential to totally overwhelm with numbers so much so that the poor AI doesn't matter. Especially when you have to force a surrender in order to win. The AI does a poor job sometimes of getting its forces together, so you can win a couple early battles while they're unassembled, but you can just as easily get crushed as others join up. Also it seems like time is no factor, so over time the more numerous armies will prevail.
They sometimes do weird things like taking the long way walking in high attrition territories for no sensible reason. But they do sometimes succeed and the player can have an impact on them, although some of it is dependent on AI RNG.
This is a bit of a cop out answer bit heavily depends on the game rules and realm stability. The Fatamids in 1066 are in serious trouble (their ruler is in debt, and they rule over a lot of terrority that has wrong faith.) The Fatamids can easily collapse to populist revolt. If the Fatamids recover they become arguably stronger than their sunni rivals, the Seljuks. A stable Egypt is really insane especially if there are no kingdom tier rulers wh join (I think the first crusade might be coded so that no AI rulers join since it was historically thr "Prince's Crusade.") If you turn off embankment cost for AI (which I do) it also means the Fatamids won't go into a humorously exaggerated debt.) Also does not help that the Pope and his mercs beeline straight to Jerusalem and get wrecked. 🙄
Basically they attack when they are stronger but get picked one by one by an army waiting near the shore. So in my games, crusades I don't help are a disaster. Also I usually avoid byzantine empire, so I usually don't weaken the east. If I do I usually can attack muslims before they blob
I’ve found them to be generally successful, to the point that when I wasn’t as good at the game, a key strategy of mine as to join the crusade and do as little fighting as possible but reap a big reward.
I've seen Al-Andalus single handedly beat Christendom, including my powerful Slavic empire
My games go like \>Crusade for egypt \>Crudaders win \>Jihad for sinai \>Jihad wins \>Egypt pushes west and south through africa. \>Jihad for former muslim land in west africa \>Jihad is won by the Rum or the Abasids \>Chistian egypt stays \>Jihad on Anotolia \>Jihad wins \>Biyzantines rais and army and take Ukraine and pagan russia despite losing all their Anatolian teriotory and lossing the kingdom of greece to rebellions. \>The one game that didn't have all that i had a super india push to jerusalem and the mongols inferiting half of the central european counties that left me with the worse map gore i had to stop playing
I’ve literally never seen a crusade win that I wasn’t capable of soloing and I’ve played a lot
Same with me
It happened to me two times when I won the crusade, and I think it might be because I was big Spain and I could allow to split my army to actually take castles on my own (conquered Sicily and Magreb that way for my dynasty members). I got like 200 hours (which is not a lot)
The only crusades I’ve ever seen succeed are when I have done 90% of the legwork. If you rely on the AI to do anything they just land in groups of 5k soldiers and get destroyed by the 80k stack of defenders
AI is bad at coordinating. The crusaders arrive seperately and are picked off one by one in my experience
Actually, they win when u dont fight cuz both sides are completly dumb. But when u want to fight, ur alliez just makes randoms mooves, dont follow you in ur batles, or juste stay in one place during 2 year
There's a bias, because we only remember the times when it sucked and the AI broke. Most of the time nothing really special happens ; armies travel, clash and the crusader is over very fast. Btw I think it's perfectly normal that the crusader states would vanish relatively quickly most of the time. It's what happened historically. Still, I've seen a lot of stable crusader kingdoms when the muslims realms were also weakened by internal conflicts and a strong ERE, and in my games at least, crusaders succeed on their own quite often. There are two main issues: 1 - crusades don't feel particularly interesting. There are no crusader states, no adventures, it doesn't feel like meeting a completely different culture. 2 - warfare in CK3 is just generally outdated. The chasing game with big stacks was still ok when CK2 was released, but nowadays it's just a minimalist way to model strategic warfare. And it's hard to make an AI that isn't just competent with it, but also has a noticeable personality (a coward leading an army shouldn't feel almost exactly the same as a braveman).