Anyway, I've was playing as a crusader state last night (went de Bourgogne -> Jerusalem, now going for the Outremer Empire), and if that game was anything to go by, crusader stating just got hella lot harder to survive. I got Jerusalem and the Oultrejourdain duchy, but the Jaffa/Acre duchy went independent, and the Galilee was held by the Byzantines since before (immediately reconquered by a Seljuk vassal). So not only did I lack the strength of my homeland to defend myself with, but I also didn't get the entirety of my new kingdom. They really should make all new crusader states allied by default.
I also think there's a bug (or miscalculation, or whatever) currently where nobody seems interested in coming to my defence against Jihads (not even the Pope!
Or my fellow crusader states!). I only survived by savescumming until both the Shia and Sunni Jihad targeted Anatolia and the Byzantines instead of me.
On the plus side, and I don't remember if this was mentioned in the dev diaries or not, but crusaders can now capture states outside of the target kingdom. For example, the Croatians took Antioch from the Seljuks, and promptly created the Duchy of Croatian Antioch, which is cool (I promptly force-vassalised them to consolidate the front, of course). I wonder how many other of those could be created.
Lastly, my starting character in this game was saintified by the Pope (Saint Eustache the Myrrh-Streaming, because apparently his corpse didn't rot but instead smelled very nice indeed, and that's totally true and don't you dare call me a liar!), so my play line goes Saint Eustache the Myrrh-Streaming, Duke Eustache the Sword of God of Flanders, and lastly Queen Adelinde the Guardian, Crusader Queen of Jerusalem. Which is a pretty bad-ass sequence of names and happenings.
edit: Meant the Duchy of Oultrejourdain, not Outremer