Never but never turn auto crusade on. It's a trap option that will mess up your ending at best, and could halt your progress in certain mythic paths at worse. At least for now
This I agree with. Completely turning it off is not ideal at all. And the same was true with kingdom management in Kingmaker. Best is to set it to the easiest setting short of auto and also play around with some of the difficulty options to get an optimal setup. And in time there will surely be a mod that will give what some people want: turn off managing the crusade altogether, but while still retaining access to everything else.
There is a setting (found on the crusade in-game screen, *not* in game settings) that performs battles automatically. And importantly, the game tells you the result of the auto-battle and then you can choose whether to accept that result or fight the battle manually.
This has been a huge help in limiting the number of easy-but-tedious battles I have to sit through.
