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Supreme_leader

Second Lieutenant
19 Badges
Mar 5, 2018
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I guess I shouldn't be surprised that by 1248 the Muslim is being sandwiched between the Mongols and the Crusaders. Seeing the Pope's Personal Army of 20k utterly scored 40% of war score later just 5 months later, the Armies of Europe arrived to carpet siege the rest.

And then I looked at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Crusade. Only France participated with the strength of 15000 men.

The issues are:
  • After 2 centuries of seeing Jerusalem constantly switching ownership back and forth between Christians and Muslims, combining with the struggles at the time (for example: Frederick II and the Popes), the only ones left that still committed to the fight are the Holy Orders and 1 monarch (6th crusade is also called Frederick's Crusade cause mainly he was the participant, 7th Crusade is Louis' Crusade).
  • Papal State's shouldn't be sized of 19k. No mercenary army even larger than 4000 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...re_medieval_mercenaries_companies_structured/. Historically the Swiss Guard were only about 150 men, the rest are regional recruitment of merely 2-3 regiments. Being powerless was what prompted the Papal State striving to gain influence to become a de-facto monarch that can defend himself. Being powerless is also what prompted absolutism and Machiavellian later on.
So these are my suggestions:
  • Increase the likeliness Crusades being cancelled in later start date and add holy war's CB to only 1 monarch as big as France, England and Holy Roman Empire.
  • Tone down mercenary bands bigger than 4000 (mounted or not)
  • Decreased Swiss' Guard down to 200 men.
 
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Historically accurate, but in-game, Swiss Guard of 200 men is completely useless, you might delete it as well.
I do however agree that Crusades are very powerful, and need to be toned down a bit. I would like to see limited number of spots available, or monarchs less likely to join in as you suggested. Maybe it could be influenced by the success of the previous crusades, moral authority and so on.

More plausible, I would like to see higher attrition for the armies so far from home, but I guess that would have to sort out stupid AI-first, to stop sending troops to walk all the way from France to Portugal. I just witnessed a Crusade won (Christians would win it anyway, they had overwhelming numbers) because Fatimids decided to send their 20k stack from Egypt through Levant and Byzantine into Europe. Meanwhile, 20 European states send their armies to Egypt. But while it is historically accurate, as most Crusader armies walked all the way, they never group together but send a few hundred or few thousand troops separately...
 
Historically accurate, but in-game, Swiss Guard of 200 men is completely useless, you might delete it as well.
I do however agree that Crusades are very powerful, and need to be toned down a bit. I would like to see limited number of spots available, or monarchs less likely to join in as you suggested. Maybe it could be influenced by the success of the previous crusades, moral authority and so on.

More plausible, I would like to see higher attrition for the armies so far from home, but I guess that would have to sort out stupid AI-first, to stop sending troops to walk all the way from France to Portugal. I just witnessed a Crusade won (Christians would win it anyway, they had overwhelming numbers) because Fatimids decided to send their 20k stack from Egypt through Levant and Byzantine into Europe. Meanwhile, 20 European states send their armies to Egypt. But while it is historically accurate, as most Crusader armies walked all the way, they never group together but send a few hundred or few thousand troops separately...

Swiss Guard should never be a thing in the first place. Their foundation is out of this game period. What should existed instead is A LOT more severe effect of excommunication. Basically it means: "Hey, you don't have to pay homage to this dude anymore." (In 1076 Gregory responded by excommunicating Henry, and deposed him as German king,[10] releasing all Christians from their oath of allegiance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_Controversy#Henry_IV_and_Pope_Gregory_VII) Although harsh, but I feel the game still downplays the effect of excommunication compares to the actual consequences in history.

In regard Crusade, I can see why it's hard to model the crusade. I mean trying to model AI-behaviour would be hard. But not so much for the event, I already seen a Crusade being cancelled in one of my game. So it's easy to increase it's likeliness of this event in later start date.

For mercenaries, the alternative I suggest is decrease the size but adding a lot more mercenary bands. Commonly from 1000-2000 and up to 4000 at most. And decreases the upfront price of mercenaries to make them look more appeal.

I get the game is mean to be fun, but fun doesn't have to be making artificially big armies to be crushed on the field. After all CK2 was all about politics then let's flourish in its traditions. BY JUST ADDING MORE EVENTS AND TRAITS.
 
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Pope shouldn´t even fight in Crusade, it´s absurd that every pope comes personally into Holy Land with 20k troops.

I don´t know if it´s possible to code it, but the game would be far more historical if the strongest of participants (army size, prestige, piety combined) became leader of Crusade after it starts and be the one who decides what to do with those titles. And there should be fewer participants at any given time. Of course, defensive mechanism should also be reworked, because it doesn´t make sense that someone from east Persia will come to defense of sultan in Palestine. When did that happen?

Overall, Crusades and Jihads are far more massive than they ever were in history and they turn what should be one of the most interesting areas to play in (especially from roleplay point of view) into endless bloodbath where stuff switches sides every 30 years and the only way to prevent that is to abuse the system until you become so strong that you roflstomp the other religion all by yourself.
 
Pope shouldn´t even fight in Crusade, it´s absurd that every pope comes personally into Holy Land with 20k troops.

Overall, Crusades and Jihads are far more massive than they ever were in history and they turn what should be one of the most interesting areas to play in (especially from roleplay point of view) into endless bloodbath where stuff switches sides every 30 years and the only way to prevent that is to abuse the system until you become so strong that you roflstomp the other religion all by yourself.

Personally I just type event hfp.41012 in console to cancel the crusade and pretend that it never happened.

I want to mod the mercenary bands, send papal's guard back to the abyss of fantasy. Then making excommunicated trait more much severe. Something like -70 opinion, -35 diplomacy (Only being genius, having genius wife and genius chancellor can save you for a while).
 
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Personally I just type event hfp.41012
Does this work for Jihads too?

I really want to do Jerusalem RP run (starting before First Crusade) and no Crusades/Jihads would really make it much more fun.
 
It's something I have noticed since I am always in the later periods of the game working on sub modding usually on the SWMH map. I don't know if the EMF vanilla-ish map yields different experiences and I can't speak for earlier periods.

Decreasing or outright removing the Papal Guard is something I do generally but doesn't really alleviate much. You can easily have by about 1250 a Crusade coalition totaling in excess of 100,000 from every corner of Christian Europe. I have rarely if ever seen an AI Egyptian ruler beat back a Crusade during these periods rendering these eras unplayable in my opinion.

The issue ultimately is a combination of the sheer number of Catholic powers joining and the dim defense AI. As Egypt the defenders lack the boats needed to try and do the annoying fictitious Italian mainland counter invasions (which editing the defines does nothing to stop). Instead they just camp in Sinai or Alexandria while the Crusade doom stacks made up of every Tom, Dick and Harry with a crucifix build up and siege holdings. An easy way to lessen this is a more discriminating AI Crusade event joining chain with a very keen eye for distance, neighboring powers etc. Hungarian apparent doom stacks should not dive into a Crusade for Jerusalem if they have Batu snuggling up next to them. Irish chiefs shouldn't happily disembark at Damietta if Longshanks and his vassals are gobbling up Ireland etc.

Starting as Egypt in preset bookmarks any time after the mid-later 1200s, should be a punishing mortal struggle against angry Mongol Khans of Persia, who don't seem to do much apart from attack an unusually weak Delhi Sultanate before quickly collapsing to independence factions. The Mamluks were overwhelmingly concerned with their existential Ilkhanate foes. Potential and real Crusades against them being a complete sideshow or just an annoyance.
 
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Does this work for Jihads too?

I really want to do Jerusalem RP run (starting before First Crusade) and no Crusades/Jihads would really make it much more fun.

No, I don't think so. Holy Fury is all about Christian crusade.

This is taken from HFP.crusade_events file

#Written by Joachim
#HFP.41000-HFP.41999

## Official Crusade Recipient
# Set Official Recipient
character_event = {
id = HFP.41000
hide_window = yes
is_triggered_only = yes
border = GFX_event_normal_frame_religion

religion_group = christian

See the underlined part, it only works for christian I'm afraid

What you can do instead is play type yes_men and just white peace and pretend the jihad never happened.
 
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I think if you start in later start dates rulers should be less likely to join the Crusade due to the failures of the rest with less pressure from the Pope on vassals. Independent catholic kings and emperors however should be asked to participate. This would prevent 500 christian rulers attacking you, along with the counts of Iceland. Another modifier could be sheer distance from the Pope so the northern realms and Eastern Europe if Catholic does not participate. Perhaps even in games starting earlier once the Fourth Crusade event happens the behaviour of the Pope and Catholics towards the Crusades should shift.

However this does have the disadvantage of Christendom not being able to react to Muslims expanding in Spain/France or the ERE. Maybe it only applies to Crusades in the Middle/Near East, not the traditional Christian kingdoms.
 
One issue I noticed with Crusades is that I almost never saw defenders pop up. I fixed that though by just taking the old script and placing it back in the file and there were actually muslims defending each other from the deathstacks again while also slightly reducing the likelihood of Christians joining the Crusade since it shouldn't be 80% of Europe marching their armies to Jerusalem.
 
One issue I noticed with Crusades is that I almost never saw defenders pop up. I fixed that though by just taking the old script and placing it back in the file and there were actually muslims defending each other from the deathstacks again while also slightly reducing the likelihood of Christians joining the Crusade since it shouldn't be 80% of Europe marching their armies to Jerusalem.

A bit of archeology on my part, but could you tell which script are you mentioning here? I would glady tinker with crusade code myself.
 
it's op on every date, after playing on 1337 date i ended up on just turning it off by modding the mod files, even tho i tried to nerf it for a long time i came to conclusion that it takes too much effort...
 
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I believe the main problem is that catholic rulers are too eager to join crusades. I wonder if it is possible to limit this by modding. Maybe removing or tweaking some events would help?

For example the event in which pope nags youto join the crusade - is it valid for AI too? Maybe throwing it away would make crusader participation lower.