For "Crusader Kings" Crusades sure are weak ass things without the player involved...

[Dearmad]

4 crusades in my latest game... ALL FAILS. Massive fails. Meanwhile the ERE (of which I am a part as a Doux) is happily "crusading" on its own and is pretty huge.

Seems the failure rate of crusades is soo high- I know this is historical, somewhat, but perhaps the AI could timed them better and finance them better?? Wait until the Muslims are more fractured? Or have more of them- they are pretty rare.

 

[Wezqu]

In my game Jerusalem was conquered three times. So thats three success in five different crusades for Jerusalem.

 

[Grifen88]

My own experiences are quite different.

Four crusades. First two was against Acre/Jerusalem I believe. No idea what had happened but it resulted in a foothold in the region. Third one resulted in the hefty capture of Jerusalem and its surrounding. (HRE took control and has never been dislodged since. Two jihads failed spectacularly.) Fourth one reclaiming Sicily I won personally, though I could see Christian nations AI had no problem beating the muslim hordes on its own. I just sped things up.

 

[Gatkramp]

I've seen Crusades succeed almost as much as they fail. Its very reliant on the current position the of the Caliphate. If they are weak, obviously the Crusade will succeed. When they are strong, I see no reason to force failure on them. As a player, I don't find myself participating in the Crusades that often anyway. They're normally counter to my goals.

 

[Isaios]

I've seen more failures than successes, rather like history did in fact.

And in my experience they succeed for the same reasons as the First did, instability and division among the Muslims.

 

[The_Blind_One]

I rather enjoy the fact that they aren't as succesful.

If they were more succesful, it would probably topple the power balance. Every succesful crusade results in an entire kingdom switching sides. And each subsequent crusade is therefore even easier.

In one game I saw the AI crusade the muslims away in just 100 years. First the fatimids had a failed invasion of greece (lol) and were subsequently crusaded for jerusalem, which they lost because they lost all their troops in greece. No biggy, however, after another failed invasion of greece and another crusade for...egypte this time, they were completely out of the picture. The romans were happily eating into persia whenever it broke into civil war. Sicily was rampaging across the african coast and turning it christian. The french had reached marocco and the castilians were happily picking up whatever wasn't already conquered. Since I was playing as muslim medina, I just quit at that point...

 

[monsterfurby]

Crusades in the Outremer... yeah, those are fairly shaky things. But Mongols beware once the Pope calls a crusade for one of your occupied kingdoms at just the right time when the HRE, France and England are not otherwise busy.

 

[Gingerninja]

I agree and disagree with OP as it all depends on the surroundings of the crusade(who joins and the Muslim's degree of fractioning). However, what is a bit foolish is that as soon as a crusade has been won, it takes about five years for the local muslims to retake the land. Due to the religious different recently occupied modifier.They need some extra modifier to make them survive. Like "reinforcements from home" or something to make them capable to stand up against the Muslims without just getting steamrolled.

 

[SRM]

I've seen a game where every single Crusade ever launched succeeded thanks to HRE intervention. The resultant blobbing was ludicrous. I should've grabbed a screenshot.

 

[Hackworthy]

One problem is that the Fatimids are just too powerful at this point. Furthermore al-Mustansir is -as per usual- far more competent than he should be, interestingly he was also depicted as being a skilled leader in Medieval II: Total War as well. The Fatimids were in a miserable state throughout most of al-Mustansir's reign, but instead they're in a pretty sweet spot in-game. I was able to conquer most of the de jure Arabian Empire in just about 10-15 years playing as the Fatimids, they shouldn't be that powerful. I think the Mamluks should either be nerfed or be much more expensive.

 

[Jeltz]

Yeah, I think the only reason Crusades sometimes do not seem strong enough is due to the Fatimids being way more stable in the game than in reality. Very rarely does the Fatimids collapse. The reason the First Cursade was successful was the Fatimids inability to do anything. And the that the Seljuks had split into many tiny nations. Seljuks splitting happens in most of my games but a Fatimid collapse is rare.

From Wikipedia: "While the crusaders were marching towards the Muslims, the Fatimid section of the army deserted the Turkish contingent, as they feared Kerbogha would become too powerful were he able to defeat the Crusaders."

 

[justin6477]

I think the Fatimids need a higher starting decadence to help them collapse.

It'd also be nice if (as someone suggested in another thread) high decadence lead to break aways (actual decay of state) rather than just swapping out the ruler. It'd force the Muslim AI to look inward after a new family takes charge, and it'd leave them exposed for Christians.

 

[Jeltz]

Agreed, the problems the Fatimids suffered at the start of the game were debt and what would be modeled in the game as high decadence. Their armies were not interested in fighting their enemies.

 

[Lwantssugar]

or the game decides to be a scumbag steeve and not give you victory even though you contributed about 70K men and captured the most land...
and Id like to think most of the crusades thus far would have failed had I not entered, because in my current game the Fatimids are scarier than the Golden Horde; they have Egypt, part of the Holy land, and all of what used to be the ERE and Hungary. the HRE just took Hungary from them in a crusade because the pope thought it would be more fun to give it to who was in reality the second highest contributer (ie not me)

 

[unmerged(519337)]

My current game has had a 100% success rate for Crusades (and Jihads but there's only been one and it was against me ). Sicily, Greece and Jerusalem all got successfully crusaded. Strangely Jerusalem ended up falling to the Byzantines while Greece is still going strong.

 

[delra]

Typically AI crusades start winning when all three Holy Orders become available. It's a question of time, they just need to hit the lucky point in time when Fatimid AI is occupied elsewhere and they are all set tearing Levant from under their rule.