Has anyone else defended against a Crusade started by a landless Pope?

[Jia Xu]

It's pretty frustrating. Only Papal holdings seem to count toward occupation war score. The only way to win is to simply wait until you start getting time based war score which will give you 100% after many, many years of sitting around on top of an occupied Europe that's trapped in a war that can't be properly fought because the Pope can't be attacked directly when he is landless. Crusades should definitely be disabled in the Pope is landless, IMO. If you want a crusade, you'll be generous and donate a Bishopric.

 

[unmerged(445219)]

It's pretty frustrating. Only Papal holdings seem to count toward occupation war score. The only way to win is to simply wait until you start getting time based war score which will give you 100% after many, many years of sitting around on top of an occupied Europe that's trapped in a war that can't be properly fought because the Pope can't be attacked directly when he is landless. Crusades should definitely be disabled in the Pope is landless, IMO. If you want a crusade, you'll be generous and donate a Bishopric.

Or, blobbing to the point where the entire power of Europe can't do anything should be fixed instead.

 

[Jia Xu]

Or, blobbing to the point where the entire power of Europe can't do anything should be fixed instead.

You can't fix the issue of the AI not being able to outwit a human player who knows how to play the game. And you don't even need to blob to crush Europe. The initial Fatimid holdings alone are enough to crush the HRE and France at the same time. The AI simply can't get its act together.

 

[Eurac]

Personally I think it's silly that you can defeat a crusade just by occupying the pope's holdings.

 

[shypixel]

You can't fix the issue of the AI not being able to outwit a human player who knows how to play the game.

Sure you can. Can you say "Attrition-less Doomstack"? Because I sure can!



(NOT suggesting this is the best or most savvy way, just that it is a way.)

 

[Jia Xu]

Personally I think it's silly that you can defeat a crusade just by occupying the pope's holdings.

I can see the strengths and weaknesses of basing it off of occupying the Papal State and basing it off of occupying the crusaders. Most crusaders are very weak and the Muslims have large navies. It's not difficult for them to sail up to Christian Spain and crush a crusader in seconds. If there are too many zealous counts in the crusade, then the Muslims would get to 100% with minimal effort. On the other hand, invading the Papal State is only slightly harder. The Pope can sometimes field a mean mercenary army in the 15K range which makes the Papal State a little more durable in a crusade than your average Count of Nowhere, but it's still far from challenging for a Caliph with Egypt, Arabia, and Levant behind him.

Still, anything would be better than what we have now, where a landless Pope can only be defeated by just waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the time based war score to push you to 100%.

 

[unmerged(445219)]

Crusades themselves seem to be quite broken, with this being one of the problems. Seiging the Pope's land is something that almost never happens by the AI to end a crusade and shouldn't add to warscore. Instead, massive battles should count for more in crusades. Richard the Lionheart land his army and promptly get wiped out and executed? Crusade warscore goes down 20%. In the current system, it is very rare for Kings and Emperors to join crusades, resulting in a few minor lords going in one by one to get slaughtered. If you are a small ruler, there should be an option to give your troops to the Crusade, making them spawn in Rome and amassing to a certain size before heading out to crusade.

Crusades are pretty frustrating, hopefully a religious expansion focusing on the Church expands them to work in a better method.

 

[barny]

Personally I think it's silly that you can defeat a crusade just by occupying the pope's holdings.

As the system works now, it is almost the only reasonable way to win against a crusade.

Battles need to influence the warscore more than they do now and so should a comparison between armies. It's quiet silly, that you have to conquer every holding of a count with two counties, even if you have a large empire and attack him with like 20.000 men, while the count doesn't have any army left at all.

 

[Dekent]

As the system works now, it is almost the only reasonable way to win against a crusade.

Battles need to influence the warscore more than they do now and so should a comparison between armies. It's quiet silly, that you have to conquer every holding of a count with two counties, even if you have a large empire and attack him with like 20.000 men, while the count doesn't have any army left at all.

Wait how are yalls crusades with landless popes working? Whenever they happen in my game they fail 20 days later with a 0% warscore

 

[ScreamCZE]

Are you sure that Pope is landless? Because in my every game where Pope lost everything, some bishop gave him his holdings.

 

[Jia Xu]

Are you sure that Pope is landless? Because in my every game where Pope lost everything, some bishop gave him his holdings.

He was definitely landless. I had taken Latium from him in a previous holy war, and when the crusade started I immediately checked to see where I needed to siege him to win. The only title he had was "The Papacy." It's a small oversight on the part of the developers which could be fixed with a simple change to the Crusade CB which adds a requirement that you have land to use it.

 

[dorukdorucu]

He was definitely landless. I had taken Latium from him in a previous holy war, and when the crusade started I immediately checked to see where I needed to siege him to win. The only title he had was "The Papacy." It's a small oversight on the part of the developers which could be fixed with a simple change to the Crusade CB which adds a requirement that you have land to use it.

What about vassals? Did he have any vassals around?

 

[Torngasuk]

If you are a small ruler, there should be an option to give your troops to the Crusade, making them spawn in Rome and amassing to a certain size before heading out to crusade.

Crusades are pretty frustrating, hopefully a religious expansion focusing on the Church expands them to work in a better method.

More than just an option: rally points for Crusades should be the standard, I think. Ten men getting off the boat in front of a ten thousand man doomstack is completely and utterly pointless. It's less of a crusading army and more of a crusader parachute drop behind enemy lines, hoping they'll be able to meet up again before they're wiped out.

Not giving the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem to one guy would be nice, too.

 

[Jia Xu]

What about vassals? Did he have any vassals around?

When does the Pope have vassals outside of the Papal State? He had counts and Barons in Latium but they all became landless after my holy war.

 

[dorukdorucu]

When does the Pope have vassals outside of the Papal State? He had counts and Barons in Latium but they all became landless after my holy war.

Maybe he has them WITHIN The Papal State? Or some other weird thing?

 

[Jia Xu]

Maybe he has them WITHIN The Papal State? Or some other weird thing?

There is no "Papal State." He is landless. If he had vassals, he would have taken their land automatically to re-land himself.

 

[ziamatt]

I thought that a landless Pope will always agree to a white peace during a crusade? Or has this been changed in recent patches?

More than just an option: rally points for Crusades should be the standard, I think. Ten men getting off the boat in front of a ten thousand man doomstack is completely and utterly pointless. It's less of a crusading army and more of a crusader parachute drop behind enemy lines, hoping they'll be able to meet up again before they're wiped out.

Not giving the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem to one guy would be nice, too.

I really like both of these ideas. There are times where I'd like to join in on a Crusade but don't want to have to micromanage a war in the Levant when I'm already micromanaging troops in a war against my neighbors. So I end up joining the Crusade to avoid the opinion penalty but don't make any actual contributions.

And making Crusaded realms into feudal states was a terrible mechanic to begin with because that's not what ever happened. Lands taken over in a Crusade or holy war should establish crusader states because that would have been most likely outcome historically. Maybe the nobility of the new crusader states could be of the same culture (or even dynasty) as the leading contributor, but simply handing the lands to leading contributor is just ridiculous.

 

[SRM]

We'll probably see updates to the Papacy and Crusade mechanics in the Ecclesiarchy DLC, at least. Whenever it's done.

 

[Torngasuk]

What I'd like to see after winning a crusade is something of an "honor roll." Unlanded knights with no inheritance and high martial skills would be first in line for baronies and counties, rather than randomly generating new title-holders. Counts who distinguished themselves in battle might become dukes in the Holy Land, and a skilled duke might be awarded the Kingdom of Jerusalem itself. The composition of the crusader states after a victory could then represent the entirety of the crusade's participants, rather than solely the contributions of the one with the biggest army.

 

[vertinox]

I would agree that the Theocracies should be the next DLC and maybe crusades get modified along with it.

Personally I think landless Pope's should be able to call crusades to get back Rome, but the warscore should be handled differently.

I think the key issue is that if Rome is taken that every Catholic nation should get involved since it is obviously a big deal. If they still can't win then perhaps something should be done to change the way blobs work. Player and AI blobs.