From Border Wars to Gathering Storm  

When players left Crusades: Book I, the Crusader states of Outremer were still clinging to their hard-won frontiers. A century of raids, sieges, and uneasy truces had turned the Holy Land into a lived-in colonial society, precarious but real. That earlier story – from the First Crusade to the rise of Zengi and Nur al-Din – is the focus of our recent blog post Between Cross and Crescent: The Border Wars of the Crusader States.

Inab and the Rise of Nur al-Din  

Crusades: Book II picks up the thread at the moment when that world begins to unravel. The opening battle, Inab (29 June 1149), took place in the shadow of the Second Crusade’s failure. Zengi’s conquest of Edessa had already shattered the illusion that the Latin states were permanent; his son, Nur al-Din, now set out to finish the job. At Inab, on Antioch’s exposed northern frontier, he destroyed the field army of Prince Raymond of Poitiers and had the prince’s head carried in triumph. Antioch survived, but the message was clear: the age of fragmented Muslim principalities was ending, and a new, more unified jihad was taking shape.  

The Crusader Invasions of Egypt

In the wake of these setbacks in Syria, Latin leaders looked south for a decisive counterstroke. Fatimid Egypt, wealthy but politically fragile, became the new prize. Over the 1160s, King Amalric of Jerusalem led a series of invasions and interventions along the Nile, sometimes in uneasy alliance with Byzantium, aimed at turning Egypt into a tributary or even a direct conquest. These campaigns consumed enormous resources and exposed the limits of Frankish power: flood-released waters, logistical strain, and determined local resistance all blunted their efforts.

Strategically, however, the invasions had far-reaching consequences. By battering the already weakened Fatimid regime, the Franks helped create the very power vacuum that Nur al-Din’s generals, Shirkuh and his nephew Saladin, would move to fill. Egyptian elites, caught between Latin armies and internal chaos, increasingly turned to Syrian help as the lesser evil. In game terms, the Egyptian expeditions mark a turning point: an ambitious gamble that fails on the battlefield but opens the door for the Ayyubid takeover that will reshape the entire balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean.

Saladin and the Ayyubid Ascendancy  

Over the next generation, Nur al-Din and his lieutenants methodically tightened the noose. Their most important foothold was not in Syria at all, but in Egypt. There, a young Kurdish officer – Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, better known in the West as Saladin – rose from relative obscurity to become vizier, then ruler in his own right. By the 1170s and 1180s, he had united Egypt and most of Syria under his banner, combining pragmatic state-building with a sincere commitment to religious renewal. Saladin’s authority rested as much on his reputation for piety and justice as on military success, allowing him to rally diverse Muslim constituencies behind the ideal of jihad. For the Franks, who had long survived by playing Aleppo against Damascus, this new Ayyubid empire felt less like another neighbor and more like an approaching storm.  

The Catastrophe at Hattin

The Battle of Hattin, from a 13th-century manuscript of the Chronica Majora depicting the capture of the True Cross by Saladin.

The climax of that storm was the catastrophe at Hattin in 1187. Drawn away from their secure bases and water, the combined forces of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were encircled and destroyed on the parched hills above the Sea of Galilee. The relic of the True Cross was captured, a devastating spiritual blow, while much of the knightly elite fell prisoner or perished. For contemporaries, the defeat was not merely a battlefield disaster but a shattering of the Crusader world’s religious and political foundations. Within months, Jerusalem and most of the inland strongholds that had defined Outremer since 1099 had fallen to Saladin’s armies. In game terms, it is the moment when a familiar map is turned upside down: the Crusader states cease to be expansive frontier powers and become a string of vulnerable coastal enclaves.  

The Battle of Hattin, as displayed in the game.

The Third Crusade and the War for the Coast  

Europe’s response was the Third Crusade, the largest and most famous of the expeditions covered in Crusades: Book II. Three great rulers took the cross: Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, Philip II of France, and Richard I of England. Barbarossa’s vast army dissolved in Anatolia after his sudden death in a river crossing, but Philip and Richard pressed on by sea, converging on the long and grueling siege of Acre. Around that siege and the subsequent campaigns along the coast – Jaffa, Arsuf, and the methodical reduction of fortresses between Acre and Jaffa – the character of the war changes. Amphibious operations, siege trains, and naval logistics mattered as much as heavy cavalry charges; the Crusader presence now depended on control of ports and sea lanes rather than broad inland dominions.  

Manuscript depiction of Acre surrendering to Richard I of England and Philip II of France (late 14th century).

Richard’s victories, especially at Arsuf, restored Frankish morale and secured a defensible coastal strip from Jaffa to Tyre. Yet the deeper symbolism of the crusade lay in its limits: Jerusalem remained in Muslim hands, and the dream of reversing Hattin proved elusive. The Latin states that survived into the thirteenth century were narrower, more commercial, and more dependent than ever on Italian maritime powers. In the scenarios of this period, Crusader armies still strike hard, but always with one eye on their lines of retreat to the sea – a reminder that the age of expansive conquest had given way to a precarious balance sustained by ships and fortresses.  

Byzantium, Venice, and the Road to 1204  

In the background, another drama was unfolding in Byzantium. The empire that had once called for Western help now struggled with civil wars, fiscal strain, and uneasy relations with Italian merchants. By the late twelfth century, emperors in Constantinople were balancing the need for Western military aid against the danger of Western interference. The failure of the Third Crusade to retake Jerusalem did not end crusading fervor in Europe; instead, it redirected it. When the Fourth Crusade was proclaimed at the turn of the thirteenth century, its leaders found themselves deeply in debt to Venice, short of men, and short of a clear strategic purpose.  

Crusades: Book II follows this uneasy evolution of “holy war” as the Fourth Crusade lurches off course. The diversion to Zara, a Christian city under Hungarian protection, marked a first, shocking breach of the crusading vow: Latins fighting Latins under the banner of the cross. From there, dynastic intrigue drew them toward Constantinople, where rival claimants to the imperial throne promised money and unity in exchange for armed support. The result was the infamous sack of 1204 – a moment contemporaries saw not only as the destruction of the greatest Christian city in the eastern Mediterranean, but as a betrayal of the crusading ideal itself. The Byzantine Empire was shattered, a short-lived Latin regime established, and the crusading movement revealed in its most paradoxical form: a holy war turned inward, reshaping Christendom as much as its enemies.  

The Siege of Constantinople in 1204, by Palma il Giovane

From Holy War to Power Politics  

The scale for the majority of the included scenarios is 40-meter hexes and 10-minute turns. The game is playable from either side — Crusaders or Anti-Crusader forces (based on the specific scenario). Anti-Crusader because the topics covered entail more than just Muslim forces fighting the Crusaders.

You will be able to command units with an array of weaponry, from infantry armed with swords, axes, maces, and bows, through cavalry with lances, swords, and bows, to siege weapons such as the Mangonel, Trebuchet, Onager, Ballista, Battering Rams, and Siege Towers. Create the breach and storm the fortress, or man the walls and hurl the attackers back! There will be loads of intense combat to be had with the forces provided. Included Muslim forces are the Seljuk, the Fatimid Caliphate, the Ayyubids, and other Islamic Allies - such as the infamous Nizari Isma'ili order of Assassins. The Crusaders include various forces from Christian Europe, the Roman (Byzantine) Empire, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as other Crusaders states.

Combat is not limited to sieges and assaults on fortified towns, either. There are battles on the plains that will take place as a relief force dispatched to try to lift a siege. There are ambush situations where Crusader columns are engulfed by mounted Muslim forces swirling around them and raining arrows from all sides. Or large pitched battles in open terrain where the armies come to grips and try to eliminate their opponents. With better than 60 scenarios to choose from, Crusades: Book II will have a lot of gameplay to offer.

Some of the new game engine features include:

• Night shading, to give better "atmosphere" to Dawn/Dusk/Night scenarios.
• Scaling Ladders.
• Leaders can now dismount.
• The firing range function indicator not only shows the firing arc, but also differentiates between direct & indirect fire when applicable.
• And many adjustments to the combat model, AI performance, and other great enhancements.

Here's some suggested reading to get yourself acquainted with this time period:

Here's some video content on the subject:

We have tailored both 2D and 3D graphics and a range of period-specific forces and rules. Though again, all is currently work in progress, here are some example screenshots from this title. We have an array of new graphical elements for both 2D and 3D. Additionally, there will be three different 2D Symbol sets you can pull from.

(All images can be clicked for full-sized viewing.)

We hope you have enjoyed this preview today of Crusades: Book II. Again, this isn't too terribly far from release, so you'll be able to get your hands on it in the first half of 2026 if all goes well.