Yep, the loot is terrible. The legendaries are strictly worse than the rares after you have a healthy inventory of aspects. I’m only hunting uniques now, as the rares have 800 million affixes and never remotely close to what is needed.

You can do away with the crusade management if you want. There is a setting that makes it automatic. It’s really easy once you know the tricks though. Focus on one big general, save before each fight and reload if you suffer anything other than very minimal losses, and eventually any losses at all. Stack the good archers, forget their names but they have a fancy pointy hat on. They will kill most any unit in a single attack.