I'm currently Playing Godfrey of Bouillon and I’m currently Holding the kingdom of Jerusalem (Yup I went full historical while trying to achieve the “Defender of the holy Sepulchre”, now I’m going for the Deus vult achievement.) I started as Eustache since like I mentioned I was trying to get Defender of the holy Sepulchre, I first became a duke then a few years later I fabricated a claim on france and then I became the king of france, along the way I also founded the warrior philosopher bloodline as eustache. The cruzade era was announced rather late, around 1098, so Eustache 1 died and was suceeeded by Eustache 2 (Which was a mostly useless sucessor, except for his 15 stewardiship.) before the cruzades I had to revoke the republic of mallorca from badwin ( Yeah I turned him into a merchant republic and Godefrey was the successor I had to revoke the republic since I wanted to play as him, after the cruzade.) The reason that I decided to choose to play as Godfrey aside of the flavor and rp reasons there are two other simple reason 1. He has awesome stats, specially shrewd and diligent. Second and even more important: His son is a genius ( Its actually his brother, since when I was playing his father I Cucked him.) so after a successful cruzade, I transferred all of my artifacts and wealth to Godfrey , Eustache II became incapable at the end of the last battle of the cruzade, just before I transferred to Godfrey all of the gold that I got with the cruzade and all of my artifacts, wich where the crown jewels, a book of war and some religious artifacts. After that I started to play as eustache as the king of Jerusalem, I spent most of my first year passing laws, setting ambitions and getting an alliance with milan and with Saxony(Since nobody else wants to ally to me or cant ally to me cuz I only have 2 sons or cuz they are out of diplorange) after that my brother died, and left france for his 8 years old (Mediocre) son. So I decided to press a claim war, I called both Saxony and Millan, and I will hire some mercs as well send my troops to france. I doubt my nephew will resist the attack as I belive his troops must be still crippled by the crusade and his regency. Now some of the more Hardcore players might say that I should have not done that because this takes away of the whole Cruzader state experience. However I don’t think I wont have any chance otherwhise… like I said, nobody don’t want to ally me cuz “Political concerns” or they don’t have a daughter. Also and even more important, for some reason I’m out of the diplo range of most Christians rulers, the most far Away I can go is france and the HRE, cant make deals with England, castile or Sweden , so I think my only choice was to press my claims in hopes of gaining diplo range and more importantly getting some much needed extra levies and extra income, as I doubt I will survive with only the kingdom of Jerusalem…The Fatimid sultanate looks pretty stable and ok despite it loss at the cruzade. Their decandence is only 17. While on the other hand, the Seljuk sultanate seens to be on the verge of the fall, as their decadence currently is an alarming 84( and If I want I can put a decadent caliph on the throne) So considering the current state of my campaing, I wanted to know what I should do after I conquer the kingdom of france ? Should I go on the offensive against either of the sultanates? Should I keept on the defensive until the next cruzade ? aside of those matters, I would really appreciate if any of you could just in general give me some extra advice on how to play as a crusader beneficiary. I don’t want to mess up and don’t get the empire of outtremer !
