Game of the Week, March 16–22

From March 16 through March 22, Sword & Siege: Crusades: Book I is featured as this week’s Game of the Week at 25% off. 

This is the first time the title has appeared as GOTW since its release in March 2025, and it also arrives just after being brought up to the latest patch level, which adds ladders to the game as well as all new 2D and 3D terrain graphics. For anyone looking to step into the Sword & Siege series—or to revisit its opening volume in its newly refreshed form—this is a good moment to do it.

Note for existing owners of Crusades: Book I: In conjunction with this post the 4.04 update for both Crusades: Book I and the Sword & Siege Demo have been released. This release is provided as a new full installer rather than as an incremental update, reflecting the move from BMP to PNG graphics and related visual refresh work. It is recommended that you complete any ongoing games before installing the new version.

The First Crusade and the Contested Frontier in the East

Crusades: Book I covers an era that began with a call to arms in the Latin West, but unfolded in a Near East already shaped by rival dynasties, regional power struggles, and long-established military frontiers. In 1095, Pope Urban II urged western Christians to march east, presenting the expedition as both aid for Byzantium and a sacred undertaking.

"Qui hactenus adversus fideles in privata pugna dimicare consueverant, nunc contra infideles procedant"

"Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare now go against the infidels"

— Pope Urban II, Clermont, 1095, in the version attributed to Robert the Monk, written approx. 25 years after the speech

What followed was not simply a military campaign, but a movement powered by faith, ambition, fear, and opportunity in unequal measure. As the message spread across Latin Christendom, it drew in nobles, knights, and commoners alike, each bringing their own motives into a venture of enormous scale and uncertainty.

When the crusading armies entered the eastern Mediterranean world, they did not arrive in a political vacuum. The region was already contested by Seljuk rulers, their successor states, Fatimid Egypt, Byzantium, and a range of local powers whose immediate concerns were often regional rather than civilizational. That mattered enormously. The crusaders saw themselves as undertaking a sacred armed pilgrimage and a recovery of lands and holy places, but those confronting them in Syria and Palestine often perceived them first as another armed force intruding into an already unstable balance of power. The result was a war in which ideology and religion were important, but in which strategy, local rivalries, and political fragmentation were just as decisive.

Once the great march east was underway, the realities of campaigning quickly overtook the language of proclamation. Distance, terrain, hunger, and logistics shaped events as much as conviction. The road through Anatolia was punishing, and by the time the crusaders reached Syria, success depended less on momentum than on the ability to seize and hold fortified places. Antioch became the great proving ground of this reality: a vast siege, a hard-won capture, and then a desperate fight to survive the counterstroke. The fall of Jerusalem in 1099 and the victory at Ascalon secured extraordinary gains, but they did not produce lasting stability. Instead, they created a new and precarious political order whose survival would depend on continual military effort.

Out of those victories emerged the Latin states in the Levant: not broad and secure kingdoms, but a fragile chain of ports, towns, castles, and roads. Their strength lay in fortifications, key nodes of communication, and access to the sea. Their weakness lay in manpower. They rarely possessed enough men to dominate the hinterland in a permanent way, and this made the frontier inherently unstable. A lost stronghold, a broken relief attempt, or a severed line of communication could shift the balance far beyond the immediate battlefield. What the crusaders had gained was real, but it was also thinly held.

That fragility shaped the conflict on all sides. The first Muslim responses to the crusader conquests were often uneven, not because the danger was invisible, but because political concentration was difficult. Antioch, Jerusalem, and other key places were not lost for want of military culture or strategic understanding, but because the political map of the region made sustained, united resistance difficult at first. Competing rulers frequently viewed nearby rivals as more immediate threats than a distant new frontier power. Yet the establishment of durable Latin principalities gradually changed that calculation. What may initially have appeared to some as another transient incursion increasingly revealed itself as a permanent military presence that would have to be contained and, if possible, reversed.

This is one of the defining themes of Crusades: Book I. The years between the First and Second Crusades were not a pause between two neat expeditions, but a continuing contest of sieges, raids, marches, fortress warfare, and local crises. Geography dictated operations: passes, ridges, bridges, road junctions, and strongholds mattered because they determined whether armies could reinforce a threatened position, isolate a castle, or strike before help arrived. The Latin states depended on this defensive network for survival, while their opponents increasingly learned that steady pressure on exposed points, the cutting of communications, and the recovery of vulnerable frontier zones could be more effective than seeking a single dramatic decision in battle.

أتهويمةٌ في ظلِّ أمنٍ وغبطةٍ
وعيشٍ كنَوّارِ الخَمِيلةِ ناعمِ
وكيفَ تنامُ العينُ ملءَ جفونِها
على هفواتٍ أيقظتْ كلَّ نائمِ
وإخوانُكم بالشامِ يضحى مقيلُهم
ظهورَ المذاكي أو بطونَ القشاعمِ
تسومُهمُ الرومُ الهوانَ وأنتم
تجرّون ذيلَ الخفضِ فعلَ المسالمِ
وكم من دماءٍ قد أُبيحتْ ومن دُمىً
توارى حياءً حُسنُها بالمعاصمِ  

“How dare you slumber in the shade of complacent safety, leading lives as frivolous as garden flowers, while your brothers in Syria have no dwelling place save the saddles of camels and the bellies of vultures? Blood has been spilled! Beautiful young girls have been shamed, and must now hide their sweet faces in their hands! Shall the valorous Arabs resign themselves to insult, and the valiant Persians accept dishonour?”

— Abu Saʿd al-Harawi speaking in Baghdad after the fall of Jerusalem

The Fall of Edessa and the Second Crusade

Over time, the strategic balance became less favorable to the crusader states. Their narrow territorial base and chronic shortage of manpower remained constant problems, while the political and military world around them became more dangerous as rulers in Syria and northern Mesopotamia proved increasingly able to concentrate force and act with greater coordination. The fall of Edessa in 1144 marked the clearest sign that the balance had shifted. Its loss was more than the capture of a city. It exposed the vulnerability of the northern frontier, demonstrated that one of the crusader states could be reduced, and sent a shock back across Latin Christendom.

The response was the Second Crusade, led not by lesser nobles but by reigning monarchs, and therefore burdened with immense prestige and expectation. Yet the same realities that had shaped the First Crusade and the frontier wars after it still applied. Long-distance campaigning wore armies down before they reached the decisive theater, local conditions shaped what could realistically be achieved, and grand intentions collided with the practical limits of supply, coordination, and timing. By the time the campaign focused on Damascus in 1148, the crusaders were attempting to force a result under difficult circumstances against an enemy world that was no longer reacting with the same degree of disunity seen decades earlier. The siege failed quickly, and with it failed the hope that western intervention alone could easily restore the earlier balance.

That broad arc—from the launching of the First Crusade, through the creation of Outremer, to the mounting pressure that culminated before Damascus—is what gives Crusades: Book I its distinctive character. This is warfare of fortresses, road networks, relief columns, exposed frontiers, and uneasy coalitions. Battles matter, but so do endurance, position, and political cohesion. The period is defined not only by conquest, but by the long struggle to hold, contest, and reshape a frontier that neither side could ever treat as secure.

What is in the Game

• Crusades: Book I includes over 70 Scenarios – covering a variety of sizes and situations, including a solo tutorial scenario, five Training scenarios, historical, variant, and What-if versions for both head-to-head play and vs. the computer AI.
• A range of maps is included, covering all the significant locations fought over during the 1st & 2nd Crusades, as well as some lesser-known locations.
• The order of battle files cover the various forces that participated in the campaigns, with additional formations added for hypothetical scenarios.
• There are extensive 3d unit graphics covering all of the major armies involved.
• Campaign and Scenario Editors, which allow players to customize the game.
• The sub-map feature allows the main maps to be subdivided into smaller segments for creating custom scenarios.
• Design notes covering the production of the game, campaign notes, and a bibliography of sources used by the design team to produce this historical simulation game.
• Crusades: Book I provides multiple play options, including play against the computer AI, Play by E-mail (PBEM), LAN & Internet "live" play, and two-player hot seat.
• As mentioned, the game was just updated to the latest patch.

Books, Videos, and Podcasts

Below are some book recommendations to give you a broader insight in the history of the First and Second Crusades (Clicking the cover brings you to Amazon)

Asbridge, Thomas. The First Crusade: A New History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005

France, John. Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Morton, Nicholas. The Crusader States and Their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099–1187. London: Routledge, 2020

Maalouf, Amin. The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. London: Saqi Books, 2020.

Phillips, Jonathan. The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Hillenbrand, Carole. The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

... as well as some documentary and gameplay videos...

... and finally the excellent "History of the Crusades" podcast by Sheryn Eastaugh. 

Screenshots

Now for some screenshots from the game. As with the entire Sword & Siege series, this title has three 2D views and two 3D views to choose from. The game also features  3 different 2D icon sets (image, NATO-style, and silhouette)

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: Sword & Siege: Crusades, Book I. Like all WDS titles, it provides countless hours of rich gameplay at a very attractive price.

Note for existing owners of Crusades: Book I: this release is provided as a new full installer rather than as an incremental update, reflecting the move from BMP to PNG graphics and related visual refresh work. It is recommended that you complete any ongoing games before installing the new version.