How would you improve the crusade mechanics?

[smellymummy]

I believe there are at least some improvements in the upcoming update regarding how the pope targets a kingdom and the ability to just siege down Rome

yup I remember reading something to that effect. Crusade targets much improved and no more sieging down the pope's holding for a quick victory.

The patch notes are just so big though, I'm not digging in there again to find it

 

[Silversweeeper]

The Pope being the war leader leads to funny in-game mechanics as well -- if you're the target you can just blitz his holdings in Italy to win the war. Maybe such a counter-attack would draw a response and relieve some pressure, eventually, but not immediately and not if thousands of troops are marching into your own lands unoppsed. Defending against a crusade called by an unlanded Pope actually feels more realistic.

2.8 is supposed to fix the issue with rushing Rome, so hopefully that will work better.

Leader selection could have bias towards variables like ruler power, control of holy sites, cash and piety. So you could see kings in England, Spain, Germany often being chosen, as well as capable rulers with the ability to raise levies, mercenaries, and holy orders -- so that France and the like wouldn't be left out.

Those things certainly could factor in, yes, as could things like controlled cardinals, membership in a monastic order, dynasty members recently given to the faith (as monks, nuns, or holy order commanders), Investiture laws, etc.

 

[DukeDayve]

I'd have it so that when a crusade is successful a new kingdom is created and given to someone who participated in the crusade. First choice should be the most senior participant who is from a great family (one that is on the throne somewhere else) but who isn't landed. Becoming king of Jerusalem should nullify any claims or inheritances he might have coming to him.

I also think a crusader Jerusalem should be elective rather than primo or any other type. Like a grandmaster order. Children should never hold it.

It should also have way more interaction with the Christian world. When it gets attacked by a non-Christian power, the pope should demand that powerful realms come to its aid. Refusing ought to cost a hell of a lot of prestige and make certain vassals hate you, like the clergy and any other vassal who has certain traits, like zealous or whatever. Non-inheriting children from the Christian world should also sometimes leave your court to join the kingdom as a knight or something.

 

[Nussor]

The actual crusades and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were so messy that its hard to replicate them in a game. Hell, a possible, even likely, outcome of the first crusade would have been the reconquest of Northwestern Turkey or even Antioch by the BYZ, a region that is usually never conquered by the Turks in CK 2, meaning that the Crusade(s!) may have never been triggered in the first place. After all, it was the Emperor's call for aid to the Bishop of Rome that started the whole thing.

 

[USAF_777]

How formalized were the actual wars, fighting, treaties and such at the time? Maybe this thought would be more outside the larger actual capital-C Crusades, but part of me wonders whether Christian-Muslim relations couldn't be better simulated by something like how the Treaty of Tordesillas lands worked in EU2. That set aside segments of the world where Spain/Portugal would just always be hostile to other Catholics, and could absorb provinces without a war after sieging them down. "No peace beyond the line," basically.

Maybe something where instead of having a formal war against specific participants, an Crusade could designate a target area and right-religion troops can then freely siege down wrong-religion holdings within it (maybe only if they formally join the Crusade?), with some kind of mechanic to create one or multiple states if enough are taken and held. Could cause automatic hostilities between troops of participants and wrong religion realms with holdings in the area as well, regardless of location. Maybe instead of traditional warscore you'd use the same mechanics to reduce time needed to retain holdings to create crusader states, with some kind of reverse for defenders to make the crusade eventually just die out.

This could also open up more flexiblity for implementing things like the Fourth Crusade, because then it's just a matter of switching target location/religion instead of changing who the war is against.

 

[Rags17]

In my current campaign the Pope called a Crusade for Oultrajourdaine and we won, taking out about a half of the dejure k_jerusalem. The coastal duchies of Ascalon and Jerusalem proper belong to Persia, which has exclaves there, in northern Syria and in Baluchistan. I was wondering why they didn't try and get Oultrajourdaine back or why the Pope didn't try and finish the job until I released that the current Shah is Orthodox, AND he inherited from his Shia father ! Looks like the Crusaders will be safe for a while at least . . .

@USAF_777's idea is actually pretty good - if you say that a Crusade or GHW will only target a Holy Site and every heretical or infidel holding up to two zones away you would get a lot closer to what happened IRL.

 

[Planet of Hats]

I've given some thought to this before and my suggestions are as follows.

• Secondary and tertiary Crusader Kingdoms - ie. realm splitting. The wargoal should, by and large, still go to the Crusader with the highest Crusade Contribution. However, revamped Crusades would consider counties adjacent to the wargoal realm, or within a short distance of it, fair game. Capturing counties outside of the wargoal realm won't count towards the warscore and thus can't be used to run up the numbers on the AI, but if you're not the Crusade Contribution leader in the Crusade for Jerusalem and you take, say, Tripoli, you should be able to keep Tripoli as a minor Crusader State, even if someone else receives Jerusalem. As well, if you ARE the Crusade Contribution leader and you siege Sinai and Aqabah, you should be able to keep Sinai and Aqabah.
• No-clear-majority Crusader States. If no Crusader cracks 40% in Crusade Contribution in a successful Crusade, the Crusade is considered to have no clear winner. The Kingdom title is still given to the Crusader with the highest Crusade Contribution, but the second-highest Crusader gets half the duchies in the kingdom as an independent realm as well as a titular kingdom title generated from one of the duchies. Both of these Crusader Kingdoms get strong claims on the other.
• Flavour events for Crusaders. If I'm a Crusader and I take Jerusalem, I should have the option to eject Muslims or Jews from Jerusalem at a severe hit to my tax revenue and a severe spike in revolt risk, and I should get flavour events giving me a choice to hire councillors of the local religion, allow Muslim merchants to continue to mind their business, or open up pilgrimage routes. If I'm a Muslim and I've captured Jerusalem, I should have the option to ban Christians from the holy sites at a severe hit to revolt risk and tax revenue, or I should be able to tax pilgrims, increasing my revenue but raising the risk of a Crusade.
• Any holding not captured should be subjugated. The idea here is to reflect that, historically, Crusades never fully swept away the native inhabitants of the regions where Crusaders went - indeed, Franks were never a majority in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, for example, and Muslims continued to thrive in most places.
• Hijackable Crusades. If you find yourself with a Crusader army near or within your borders and you're not part of the Crusade, or if you send your Chancellor to the court of a monarch involved in a Crusade, you may access a plot to Enlist Crusaders to Overthrow <your liege>. The AI stands a very slim chance of trying this and will mostly do it if they're Deceitful, Cynical, Arbitrary or Ambitious, with a claim on their liege's title. The player, of course, can do it. This stands a chance - especially with a bribe, and especially with a Greedy or Cynical Crusader ruler - of bringing the Crusaders into a revolt against your liege on your side. You'll even get a couple of event doomstacks for your trouble. However, while winning over the Crusaders is intended to make it easy for you to win your revolt, all the vassals in the realm get the option to become independent if you succeed. You get a strong claim on any leaders, but the result is that you win the realm at the cost of fracturing it. You may also get events where you have to find land and titles to give to the Crusaders you hired, and if you run out of gold, they may turn on you. You can also do this with a Jihad, if you're, say, an Emir in Persia and you have the cash to bribe the Jihadis into overthrowing the Seljuks for you. The AI does this maybe once or twice a game because it's such a tough plot to get support for.
• Events to script Enlist Crusaders at bookmarks beginning around the Fourth Crusade.
• More scripted madness for the First Crusade. There should be an event chain in the 1066 bookmark (and others starting around the First Crusade) concerning the People's Crusade heading to the Holy Land, generating a bunch of stacks of mostly light infantry, under Peter the Hermit with a temporary duchy title, and sending them overland through Anatolia to hurl themselves into the teeth of the Saracens. As the event stack marches through allied kingdoms, there is a small chance in any given county that they will trigger an event which results in them Persecuting the Jews in that county, increasing revolt risk and lowering tax revenue. The stack of about 25,000 has 0 tech level in everything and is intended to get devoured by attrition and absolutely creamed by the Seljuks or Fatimids, but on the off chance they waltz into a divided Middle East and somehow succeed in becoming the Crusade Contribution leader, Peter could potentially become King of Jerusalem. You may also get the chance to recruit Peter's doomstack for yourself if you join the Crusade and meet him in the field, mainly if you have high Diplomacy and Piety, and particularly if you're Zealous and Gregarious, but he'll ask you for a fief in the Holy Land if you win.
• Dynamic People's Crusade for starts before 1066. If you have an earlier start, the Peter the Hermit event chain can start with a generated NPC who is not Peter the Hermit but effectively does the same thing.
• Reduction in Christian Holy Orders by recognizing the national holy orders. The Knights of Calatrava should only be allowed to be created by decision by the holder of k_castile, and then only if the County of Calatrava is held and is fully Christian and not of an Arabic culture. The order should always be a vassal of Castile. Similarly, the Knights of Santiago should only be allowed to be formed by decision as a vassal holy order by the holder of k_galicia or k_leon, but only after a certain county in Badajoz is held and fully Latin Christian. Should k_portugal be formed, they should also have the option of creating the Order of Aviz as a national holy order. All of the Iberian Holy Orders should only be formable as national holy orders, only able to be raised by those monarchs, and only able to be created if there are still Moors in Iberia and the Knights Templar already exist (ie. no Calatrava before Templar). They should basically play like the Mamluks do for the Fatimids, or how the Varangians work for the ERE.
• Strengthened North Africa. North Africa should be very difficult to win in a Crusade, with Berber rulers in the area able to call up cavalry doomstacks to oppose you and the counties themselves being stronger and more numerous. Basically Mauretania and Africa should not be punching bags. This should also come with an extra sea zone or two between the northern Mediterranean and the southern; the nexus between North Africa and Europe should pivot mainly around Sicily and Tunis, rather than it mostly just being Pisa or Francia randomly making a play for Alger.

 

[Battle bunny]

CK2Plus has the winner get to decide the fate of the kingdom (rule it personally, give it to a family member, give it to a random guy) and family members of the runners-up get some counties as a consolation prize. Something like that is a good start - just refine the mechanics going on from there.