Lowering resolution also helps when just visiting towns both in loading time and also to avoid crashes as it can also happen after you have visited a couple towns because this will hit your v-ram.
This is only problematic in TOWNS sieges, in castles sieges and normal battlefield this is not an issue. The crashes happen due to the huge size of the towns combined with the high poly textures of environment, buildings and units equipment and it seems to happen when reinforcements keep coming adding to the corpses already in the field, so having less corpses in the battlefield shall be a huge help. If your game crashes in some town sieges, before trying the optional patch, I recommend lowering the resolution and/or lower the corpses as this shall fix it if you have a good computer.
The Crusader States start to struggle to keep their possessions in the Levant, Salah al-Din armies seem unstoppable and a new crusade is called. Total conversion mod for Mount & Blade Warband based in Middle-East during the crusades.