I agree on everything you said, and ESPECIALLY on the crusade. What were they thinking. It has to be the most unfun thing I have seen in any video game. Instead of having to play a fun CRPG, I have to play a separate side game which is terribly unbalanced and removed from anything else. Act 3 is already dragging on for too long, crusade made me straight up drop the WotR entierly for months. I know it can be disabled, but I feel kinda bad to play on a custom difficulty.
I will say, it took me a bit to fully get into the crusade. However, once I understood how it worked, I enjoy it. Definitely not my favorite part, but I have to disagree with you. It's most definitely NOT a separate side game, terribly unbalanced, or removed from anything else. You HAVE to get good at it to progress. Enemies start to spawn in the map to invade your territory. If you try to take your main party along a path where an enemy army is, you have to fight a sometimes difficult encounter.
I have 1 major general and 2 leaders. I was booking up my main army and starting to feel pretty dang invincible when BAM! I fought an enemy army that took out some of my best troops because it's general did bolts of lightning that wiped whole units out each turn. I still won the battle, and some troops survived, but I had to retreat a bit to buy more troops. Hard? Yes. But it was a challenge, not unbalanced. And it didn't take long to recoup losses.
Again, not my favorite part of the game, but it is a main part of the full game, decently balanced once you get how it works, and definitely not removed from everything else.
