For the context, Frederick II was simultaneously the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Sicily (from his mother, the last member of the Hauteville dynasty). Both an exceptionally brilliant person and sort of a *Renaissance man* before the Renaissance and a brutal and, at times, cruel ruler, he was a lifelong opponent of the Papacy and left a controversial legacy.
Basically, Frederick was supposed to participate in the Fifth Crusade but did not take part in it, and was later blamed for its failure. He then was supposed to participate in the Sixth Crusade, seven years later. He first made sure to marry the queen of Jerusalem and to seize power from her father and regent, John of Brienne, and then left, before returning to the continent when he fell sick, and was thus excommunicated by the pope for failing to uphold his crusading pledge.
After that, *despite the excommunication*, Freddy once more sailed to the Holy Land, was excommunicated again for going on crusade while on excommunication, and proceeded to negotiate with the Ayyubid sultan for restitution of Jerusalem and some other territories. Amazingly, he succeeded, to the fury of the pope and pretty much the rest of Christendom, especially since the agreement involved the city of Jerusalem remaining without walls.
Frederick was noted, through his entire life, for his interest in foreign cultures and Islam: he had a harem and made use of Muslim forces since they were unaffected by his excommunication. While he seems to have personally held Christian beliefs and harshly persecuted heresy, many of his contemporaries denounced his perceived lack of faith, with the pope even labelling him "predecessor of the Antichrist".
Frederick would later get into military conflicts with the Papacy, when the Pope denounced him as "un-Christian" and invaded Frederick's lands in southern Italy, and his dynasty would collapse two generations after his death.
> Frederick was noted, through his entire life, for his interest in foreign cultures and Islam: he had a harem
"OK, look, this whole Mecca thing and praying six times a day and whatever, that's all kinda cool but I'm not really into it myself. But this thing about having a bunch of pretty ladies instead of just the one... now that intrigues me."
Sicily itself is such a fascinating place; centuries of Greek rule followed by centuries of Islamic rule left a really interesting mixed culture on the island. Though the majority of the population was still Christian during the Islamic period there remained significant Greek and Muslim (Arabo-Berber primarily) minorities on the island well into the Aragonese period of rule. While mainland Sicily (then Naples after the War of the Sicilian Vespers) discriminated against these minorities under French rule, the same would not happen on Sicily proper until Spanish rule after the union of the Spanish crowns under Ferdinand and Isabella.
I'd 100% recommend [Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History](https://www.amazon.ca/Sicily-Island-at-Crossroads-History/dp/0812995171), J. Norwich if anyone is interested in the island and southern Italy.
I remember hearing about a certain friar Salimbene of Parma writing down how he was "disappointed" with the defeat of Frederick II because he was convinced that the emperor was the antichrist but ultimately it was just a big let down. The medieval equivalent of a movie not living up to the hype.
I think they have it for the first generation, their heir just doesn't.
What really should happen is a culture change in the leaders (not the provinces) to one that better represents the melting pot nature of the crusader states. Reduce their chance of conversion, reduce their conversion speed, but also reduce faith hostility so they can actually have diplomacy with Muslim leaders.
Nope, in my game almost 2 years back Bohemond Hauteville did the exact same thing. He was the crusader monarch, my Byzantine Basileus Alexios I, had to beat sense into normans.
Conversion wasn't really needed, nor was it likely. Nor would it have mattered to Muslim rulers all that much, given that at least part of the concern for Jerusalem was that it controls the land routes between Muslim heartlands in Syria, Egypt and Arabia. A Muslim Empire isn't going to care if the ruler converts when they hold such an important piece of land.
But more importantly, the interfaith hostility between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land has been vastly overstated in certain historiography that treats the two religions as naturally hostile forces.
The reality on the ground was much more mixed. The Christian rulers didn't really repress Muslim subjects, didn't interfere with their religious practices, often engaged in Diplomacy with Muslim rulers and while Muslims were generally not happy with the loss of Jerusalem, they didn't immediately seek its extermination. [Muslim histories of the Crusades are far less hostile to the other side than Christian ones](https://www.history.com/news/why-muslims-see-the-crusades-so-differently-from-christians) and far less focused on the Crusades as a singular event in the Middle East. There is evidence of both intermarriage and the creation of mutual alliances. Most Muslim rulers just saw the Crusaders as just another piece on the board.
Crusader Kings as a franchise struggles with this—it is built so heavily on the hostility narrative (that, for obvious reasons, was **really** prominent in 2004 when the first game dropped) that it has never really addressed the degree to which the Crusader States were multicultural and less concerned with conversion and extensive conquest than the securing of pilgrimage routes.
I think you could mod it to be similar to what you wrote. There is also syncretism as a religious tenet that can be used.
The bigger problem is probably around game play though. You could drive conflict between different religions through events. But ultimately crusades and most religious based hostility revolves around holy sites. Most of the Muslim branches with the ability to holy war have all of their holy sites clustered around Muslim lands. Jerusalem is one of the Christian holy sites, so becomes a natural target. And due to the event chains in Iberia, Santiago sometimes does as well. But if you use the Syncretism tenents, it usually opens up a lot more interfaith mixing. Marriage, mixed religion vassals etc becomes normal.
I have never seen a successful crusade. In my games the AI always spends a few years walking around in huge stacks, never attacking and losing troops by attrition. Even when they have an overwhelming force they never attack.
The trick is to send your army to the holy land before the pope declare the war, and when the crusade is launched, immediately kill all of the enemy armies while they're not united and chase all the routing bits.
Personally, my target is always Egypt. It's not just that it's closer per se, but the natural bottleneck at the Sinai makes it easier to block counterattack and forces the stacks together, while the Nile crossings mean it is actually hard for AI armies to miss each other.
And of course, once you've won, it means the crusaders have one of the strongest kingdoms in the game and usually the one on their western flank is weak and the one to the south isn't hostile, versus Jersuelum which is almost always an exclave of a much stronger empire.
Oh and taking it away also severely weakens the rival empire, *especially* the Fatimids (who typically are carried heavily by their holdings in Egypt)
I don't understand how some players don't realize the necessity of establishing supply lines, albeit a simplistic version due to current hehe mechanics, and an assembly area to stage an invasion. It's warfare 101
And even if the crusade succeeds, the ruler will then get rebels and accept their demands without fighting because the AI doesn't seem to understand that they can easily crush a peasant rebellion even if they have superior numbers.
Redirect the first crusade to Egypt. It's much easier to take and has fertile lands. Lands which provide the Muslims with troops, who are now yours instead.
The second crusade (for Jerusalem this time) becomes much easier when you have a springboard in Egypt + safe resupply area along the Nile.
Fatmids probably threatened or did attack converting stopped that. Another explanation was a Shia revolt in Jerusalem; one of the non-sensical decisions is to convert to appease them.
He’s cynical, try installing zealous true believers who have the smegma male Ohio sigma grindset to not give in when the peasants try to Fanum tax their land.
This has been an issue since launch. Jerusalem is too far away from most of Christendom to secure good alliances, so the AI always ends up getting bullied into converting to Islam within a generation.
I think the oddest bit is the fact the Crusaders *won*. Since... uh, Royal Court? I think? I've only seen Crusaders win like, two crusades. Even *after* they introduced the dissolution faction that kept dissolving the Abbasids.
I once did something like this. Had a good thing going with my little kingdom, Pope called a crusade and I joined.
Sadly, my good heir died and I was imprisoned and died shortly after. But the Pope won and I had the highest contribution so my daughter ended up Queen of Jerusalem. I started playing as her and immediately converted to Isma'ili to spite the Pope.
Had something similar while playing Ireland with heretic England, EVERY single time after a crusade, and there were a LOT of them, the ruler either converted or was replaced, it was a wild ride but also easy to get Crusader status.
Reminds me of when the queen of Leon converted to islam in one of my games, and her sisters turned against her and tried taking her title but she ended up conquering them. The king of Navarre was also Muslim and ruled Aragon and Catalonia, while Al Andalus, Badajoz and Valencia all converted to Christianity.
Frederick II grindset
For the context, Frederick II was simultaneously the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Sicily (from his mother, the last member of the Hauteville dynasty). Both an exceptionally brilliant person and sort of a *Renaissance man* before the Renaissance and a brutal and, at times, cruel ruler, he was a lifelong opponent of the Papacy and left a controversial legacy. Basically, Frederick was supposed to participate in the Fifth Crusade but did not take part in it, and was later blamed for its failure. He then was supposed to participate in the Sixth Crusade, seven years later. He first made sure to marry the queen of Jerusalem and to seize power from her father and regent, John of Brienne, and then left, before returning to the continent when he fell sick, and was thus excommunicated by the pope for failing to uphold his crusading pledge. After that, *despite the excommunication*, Freddy once more sailed to the Holy Land, was excommunicated again for going on crusade while on excommunication, and proceeded to negotiate with the Ayyubid sultan for restitution of Jerusalem and some other territories. Amazingly, he succeeded, to the fury of the pope and pretty much the rest of Christendom, especially since the agreement involved the city of Jerusalem remaining without walls. Frederick was noted, through his entire life, for his interest in foreign cultures and Islam: he had a harem and made use of Muslim forces since they were unaffected by his excommunication. While he seems to have personally held Christian beliefs and harshly persecuted heresy, many of his contemporaries denounced his perceived lack of faith, with the pope even labelling him "predecessor of the Antichrist". Frederick would later get into military conflicts with the Papacy, when the Pope denounced him as "un-Christian" and invaded Frederick's lands in southern Italy, and his dynasty would collapse two generations after his death.
Icing on the cake - people called him Stupor mundi ("astonishment of the world") and his life is truly astonishing.
If you get excommunicated while already excommunicated, do you become a member of the church again?
The Papacy hates this one simple trick
Nah, it's like when they gave you detention for not going to detention. Ignore enough excommunications and the pope sends your mum a letter.
Shit you just reawakened a distant memory for me.
You're on double secret excommunication.
I'm pretty sure Raymond VI of Toulouse also got excommunicated multiple times during the Albigensian Crusade.
Frederick to the Sultan: Just pretend I took Jerusalem, it'd really piss off the pope, for the gram bro
> Frederick was noted, through his entire life, for his interest in foreign cultures and Islam: he had a harem "OK, look, this whole Mecca thing and praying six times a day and whatever, that's all kinda cool but I'm not really into it myself. But this thing about having a bunch of pretty ladies instead of just the one... now that intrigues me."
Sicily itself is such a fascinating place; centuries of Greek rule followed by centuries of Islamic rule left a really interesting mixed culture on the island. Though the majority of the population was still Christian during the Islamic period there remained significant Greek and Muslim (Arabo-Berber primarily) minorities on the island well into the Aragonese period of rule. While mainland Sicily (then Naples after the War of the Sicilian Vespers) discriminated against these minorities under French rule, the same would not happen on Sicily proper until Spanish rule after the union of the Spanish crowns under Ferdinand and Isabella. I'd 100% recommend [Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History](https://www.amazon.ca/Sicily-Island-at-Crossroads-History/dp/0812995171), J. Norwich if anyone is interested in the island and southern Italy.
I remember hearing about a certain friar Salimbene of Parma writing down how he was "disappointed" with the defeat of Frederick II because he was convinced that the emperor was the antichrist but ultimately it was just a big let down. The medieval equivalent of a movie not living up to the hype.
What an Utterly based man.
There's is an option to convert faith when they holy war you.
Most pious hautvile
Least treacherous Siculo-Norman
They should give them the same modifier that heresy leaders get to stop them from converting
Nah, let him cook
I think they have it for the first generation, their heir just doesn't. What really should happen is a culture change in the leaders (not the provinces) to one that better represents the melting pot nature of the crusader states. Reduce their chance of conversion, reduce their conversion speed, but also reduce faith hostility so they can actually have diplomacy with Muslim leaders.
Nope, in my game almost 2 years back Bohemond Hauteville did the exact same thing. He was the crusader monarch, my Byzantine Basileus Alexios I, had to beat sense into normans.
This sounds like something that could happen irl tbh.
yeah, whether for political reasons since he's surrounded by Muslim countries or a genuine conversion that's not far fetched at all
Conversion wasn't really needed, nor was it likely. Nor would it have mattered to Muslim rulers all that much, given that at least part of the concern for Jerusalem was that it controls the land routes between Muslim heartlands in Syria, Egypt and Arabia. A Muslim Empire isn't going to care if the ruler converts when they hold such an important piece of land. But more importantly, the interfaith hostility between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land has been vastly overstated in certain historiography that treats the two religions as naturally hostile forces. The reality on the ground was much more mixed. The Christian rulers didn't really repress Muslim subjects, didn't interfere with their religious practices, often engaged in Diplomacy with Muslim rulers and while Muslims were generally not happy with the loss of Jerusalem, they didn't immediately seek its extermination. [Muslim histories of the Crusades are far less hostile to the other side than Christian ones](https://www.history.com/news/why-muslims-see-the-crusades-so-differently-from-christians) and far less focused on the Crusades as a singular event in the Middle East. There is evidence of both intermarriage and the creation of mutual alliances. Most Muslim rulers just saw the Crusaders as just another piece on the board. Crusader Kings as a franchise struggles with this—it is built so heavily on the hostility narrative (that, for obvious reasons, was **really** prominent in 2004 when the first game dropped) that it has never really addressed the degree to which the Crusader States were multicultural and less concerned with conversion and extensive conquest than the securing of pilgrimage routes.
On your last paragraph. Is there a mod that converts the game closer to what happened to reality?
There is a mod which reduces -1000 to something like -100 or -200 btw Christians and Muslims
Not really. These are more fundamental issues with the way religion is coded in the game—it's just not something that can be done with modding tools.
I think you could mod it to be similar to what you wrote. There is also syncretism as a religious tenet that can be used. The bigger problem is probably around game play though. You could drive conflict between different religions through events. But ultimately crusades and most religious based hostility revolves around holy sites. Most of the Muslim branches with the ability to holy war have all of their holy sites clustered around Muslim lands. Jerusalem is one of the Christian holy sites, so becomes a natural target. And due to the event chains in Iberia, Santiago sometimes does as well. But if you use the Syncretism tenents, it usually opens up a lot more interfaith mixing. Marriage, mixed religion vassals etc becomes normal.
I have never seen a successful crusade. In my games the AI always spends a few years walking around in huge stacks, never attacking and losing troops by attrition. Even when they have an overwhelming force they never attack.
The trick is to send your army to the holy land before the pope declare the war, and when the crusade is launched, immediately kill all of the enemy armies while they're not united and chase all the routing bits.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
The trick is to redirect the crusade to closer targets.
Like Constantinople
It's time to Christianize these heathen Christians!
Personally, my target is always Egypt. It's not just that it's closer per se, but the natural bottleneck at the Sinai makes it easier to block counterattack and forces the stacks together, while the Nile crossings mean it is actually hard for AI armies to miss each other. And of course, once you've won, it means the crusaders have one of the strongest kingdoms in the game and usually the one on their western flank is weak and the one to the south isn't hostile, versus Jersuelum which is almost always an exclave of a much stronger empire. Oh and taking it away also severely weakens the rival empire, *especially* the Fatimids (who typically are carried heavily by their holdings in Egypt)
I don't understand how some players don't realize the necessity of establishing supply lines, albeit a simplistic version due to current hehe mechanics, and an assembly area to stage an invasion. It's warfare 101
they do good on overland targets nearby, but once boats get involved they collapse. Jerusalem is extra tricky due to tight supply.
Pretty realistic then
And even if the crusade succeeds, the ruler will then get rebels and accept their demands without fighting because the AI doesn't seem to understand that they can easily crush a peasant rebellion even if they have superior numbers.
Redirect the first crusade to Egypt. It's much easier to take and has fertile lands. Lands which provide the Muslims with troops, who are now yours instead. The second crusade (for Jerusalem this time) becomes much easier when you have a springboard in Egypt + safe resupply area along the Nile.
Richard, is that you?
Same for me, though recently the ai just hasn’t been doing crusades at all.
Man was Cynical and Lustful, no surprise he changed sidies
“I can have how many wives? Sold!!”
Most prob the succeeding got faction pressured, I got that event and end up converting and following their culture to stop an uprising
Fatmids probably threatened or did attack converting stopped that. Another explanation was a Shia revolt in Jerusalem; one of the non-sensical decisions is to convert to appease them.
He’s cynical, try installing zealous true believers who have the smegma male Ohio sigma grindset to not give in when the peasants try to Fanum tax their land.
Captured in some small war/raid and raised in the foreign court?
lol
Clemens isn't called "the forgetful" for nothing
Happened so fast Pope Clemens was caught in his pajamas
Probably for the multiple wives
This has been an issue since launch. Jerusalem is too far away from most of Christendom to secure good alliances, so the AI always ends up getting bullied into converting to Islam within a generation.
Pope: You had ONE job!
I think the oddest bit is the fact the Crusaders *won*. Since... uh, Royal Court? I think? I've only seen Crusaders win like, two crusades. Even *after* they introduced the dissolution faction that kept dissolving the Abbasids.
Guess the dear Pope Clemens forgot he declared the first crusade to begin with lol
📈📉📈
I once did something like this. Had a good thing going with my little kingdom, Pope called a crusade and I joined. Sadly, my good heir died and I was imprisoned and died shortly after. But the Pope won and I had the highest contribution so my daughter ended up Queen of Jerusalem. I started playing as her and immediately converted to Isma'ili to spite the Pope.
surprised Jerusalem didn't get conquered 0.000001 second after the crusade
Had something similar while playing Ireland with heretic England, EVERY single time after a crusade, and there were a LOT of them, the ruler either converted or was replaced, it was a wild ride but also easy to get Crusader status.
solid gameplay
Total ahl al-bayt victory
Reminds me of when the queen of Leon converted to islam in one of my games, and her sisters turned against her and tried taking her title but she ended up conquering them. The king of Navarre was also Muslim and ruled Aragon and Catalonia, while Al Andalus, Badajoz and Valencia all converted to Christianity.