I've only played the Ljosalfar in FFH2 (I might give the Bannor a spin later today when 0.13 is released) but from what I've seen this is some thoughts:

* Crusades gives -100% great person rate? What about Richard the Lionheart? Shouldn't Crusades give +100% great commander rate? Or even have Bannor Great Commanders which are super powerful? Crusade looks at first glance underpowered (especially when you consider that you are not getting the benefits from another better civic).

* There should be a one off world wonder hero? unit the Bannor can only build when in crusade mode and who dies when the crusade ends. To balance his automatic loss at the end of the crusade he should get special crusade bonus abilities, e.g. can be sacrificed to complete Glory Everlasting wonder, or if G.E. wonder has been built by Bannor then he gives all friendly units in his stack +50% strength for all units except disciple (e.g. crusader units) units who get +100% strength and an additional +50% city attack vs Doviello and Clan of Embers.

* During a crusade all Bannor units should get e.g. the courage promotion.

* To reflect their attempts to convert the world they should have all evil races as enemies - this makes life harder for Bannor (which balances other abilities they might be given).

Any other ideas to make Bannor more unique?

Since the Bannor can only build rather weak special units during a crusade they should get no military unit costs during a crusade.

If you're basing your opinion off of the Civilopedia instead of the wiki, note that you're missing two things:
1) All Disciple Units built gain Evangelist
2) You can build Demagog (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Demagog_%28Unit%29)s
In any case, for its category, it's the best military civic (the only competitor is Nationhood (http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/FfH_Nationhood_%28Civic%29))

lets not forget flagbearers and the free crusaders....lol

How do u get free crusaders from being in crusade mode?


The problem with an army of weak units is high upkeep cost with little chance of beating cities that are guarded by high level units (especially if they just XP off you!).

every time you take a city you get a free crusader , if you cant make crusaders yet i think you get a prophet or something (the order version).

your not useing the orders 2 heros for city busting?

are you using catapults? city raider promos?

Actually I only have really played evil civs for whatever reason....

Calabim, Balseraph, Doviello.

After playing either Evil civs or stunties myself from the start, I wanted to go with something different in the next game and was thinking about going on a holy-war in the next game to balance the books, but seeing as the holy-war is a bit weak, not sure if I should try.
so, someone who's done it, please tell me why Banor in crusade is the best way to go.

After playing either Evil civs or stunties myself from the start, I wanted to go with something different in the next game and was thinking about going on a holy-war in the next game to balance the books, but seeing as the holy-war is a bit weak, not sure if I should try.
so, someone who's done it, please tell me why Banor in crusade is the best way to go.

Any Civ playing as the Order does pretty well in a holy war. Basilica + free crusaders upon successful spread of the Order = best religion for capturing territory halfway across the world. Really, the Order is awesome if you like to go for religious victory like me. I like to use Varn Gosam, though, so I can't tell you much about using the Bannor's civic.