[Discuss] Abusing game logic - Starving tens ofthousandstodeath?!?!

[Samuel Knowlton]

>> Correct me if my history is out, but didn't the First crusade actually
>> not
succeed because of that? As I recall, the crusaders were running out of time
before a turkish relief army would aerrive so they had to find a defector on
the inside who would open the gates and allow them to storm the city from
the inside. Not only that, but when they arrived they barely held it against
the attack of Kerbogha, and most of the besieging forces never went on to
their ultimate target, Jerusalem - even those that did waited for a year
before doing so.

You are partially right, though by most metrics, the First Crusade did
succeed (and was the only one that did).

Bohemond of Taranto had a guy on the inside in Antioch the whole time, and
he wanted to use his agent to take the city so it would be exclusively his
(and not shared with Raymound of Tolouse, with whom he didn't get along).
Others wanted to storm Antioch right away (which would've been a better
idea, in retrospect). The turkish relief army was indeed coming, and once
the Franks took Antioch, they nearly starved themselves as Stephen of Blois
told Emperor Alexius to send his relief army home and that the Franks were
surely destroyed (he'd left before Antioch was taken).

The sally out of Antioch and subsequent defeat of the Turkish relief army
was one of the most remarkable turnarounds in the history of Medieval
warfare, where the Franksih charge essentially routed and subsequently
destroyed a host nearly ten times its size. The likely made-up,
Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque "hey, we found this magic spear that pierced
Christ!" right before the glorious, final charge probably didn't hurt.

They didn't go on to Jerusalem because Bohemond didn't want to -- he liked
Antioch just fine and had everything to lose by leaving. His nephew,
Tancred, along with most of the other Crusader generals, ultimately did move
on to Jerusalem.

At any rate, siege warfare was basically designed to do one of two things:
reduce the walls with siege equipment, or starve the enemy. Starving the
enemy was a tough proposition because you had to feed yourself, but it was a
viable prospect. The Crusaders' decision to do so was probably not the best
one at Antioch, but it still worked, even if they lost a lot of their number
in the process.






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