Excommunication for being attacked?

[Sokar Rostau]

I'm playing a domination campaign with the Italians on Normal difficulty. This all happened in 1188 but my save was in 1182. I don't understand what has happened.

In about 1120 I sent my Serbian army (Serbia was Rebel when I took it) into Hungarian Croatia to join my provinces together and got a warning from the Pope so I immediately withdrew. A couple of years later, with the Egyptian armies advancing on Constantinople they sent an emissary and I accepted, nullifying my alliance with the severely weakened Byzantines. By then I was allied to most of Europe, but most importantly the Germans, French, Sicilians and Papacy. A few years after this the Byzantines sent their entire Greek army into the defence of Constantinople, leaving Greece without a garrison, rather than let the Egyptians take it, I sent an army in and took it for myself.

In 1130, with Constantinople still under siege, the Byzantines attempted to retake Greece and this caused all of my allies, with the exception of the Pope and Sicilians, to abandon me. The next year the Egyptians invaded Greece, breaking our treaty, while keeping Constantinople under siege. Serbia was then surrounded by a huge and aggressive Egyptian army and the still pissed off Hungarians and Byzantines, who over the next few years would continue to invade and be repelled from Serbia. The French declared a Crusade to take Constantinople and thanks to my sea lanes it was able to get there pretty quickly and I was able to retake Greece (and the Byzantines kept trying, and failing, to take it back from me). With the Egyptians clearly very aggressive, my own armies being depleted faster than I could restore them in Greece thanks to the Egyptians, I decided to try a tactic that I had used to good effect when using the English and embark on a slash and burn campaign to attack the Egyptians at their economic powerbases, moving through each province not with the intention of conquest, but destruction of facilities.

I sent a Crusade, by boat, to Tripoli and took it without a problem giving me a rich province and an army of 3000 men in the Egyptian heartland. My plan worked fairly well, despite having to send a second Crusade to capture Antioch. The next 20 years saw all of the provinces between Antioch and Egypt change hands many times, and the French send another two Crusades to Constantinople. While my original purpose was to hit and run I spent so long there (with armies cut off from the port at Tripoli, waiting for new ports to be built), I decided to stay and reap the profits from those rich provinces. Sometime in the 1150s the Sicilian king died. In all this time I was only attacking Egyptians because the Hungarians and Byzantines had pretty much given up on Greece and Serbia.

Sometime in the late 1160s things started going weird. The first thing that happened was that, in the same turn, the Pope attacked one of my fleets and lost, and the Sicilian king conquered Rome and got himself excommunicated. With my Egyptian provinces still hard pressed and my economy only holding on because of my sea lanes, I decided not to attack Sicily despite the fact it looked like they would attack me after they were done with the Pope. I was left with one ally in the world... the excommunicated king that was about to topple the Papacy. It didn't take many years before the Sicilians had destroyed the Papal States. I saved at some point near here and then attacked Croatia which somehow provoked Sicily into simultaneously sinking 5 or 6 fleets and attacking me in Tuscany, Sardinia, Venice and Serbia,so I reloaded and concentrated on consolidating the Holy Lands because the Egyptians were gathering an army in Edessa, Armenia and Lesser Armenia, threatening Antioch and Syria.

By about 1178 I was finally in a position where I was more or less secure in the Holy Land (just, thanks to more slash and burn) and could concentrate on some much needed economic development back home. The Byzantines and Hungarians were mostly leaving me alone and the Egyptian garrison in Constantinople was tied up with the French. I had managed to secure an alliance with the French, but the Byzantines went and ruined it the next year by attacking Greece so the French dropped me. The Sicilians had managed to build a sizeable navy and I was getting worried about my sea lanes so I started to reinforce them and the Pope reappeared in 1182. Seeing an opportunity I saved again. In 1183 I made an alliance with the Pope and in 1184 I sunk the Sicilian fleets, thinking to do something good for my new ally... but no, the Pope threatened me and told me to withdraw from their territory within two years. Because I hadn't actually attacked any of their territory I left my fleet off Sicily to keep my sea lanes intact, this made the Sicilians attack Venice again (which they lost) and they got excommunicated for it. Because they had severely mauled my army and the Egyptians had done the same that year I reloaded.

This time I didn't attack the Sicilians, but made my alliance with the Pope. Then the Sicilians got excommunicated when they tried to retake Rome. In 1185 I finally caused a civil war in Egypt and in 1186 the Turks reappeared. 1187 I moved half of my Greek army into Constantinople which the Egyptians abandoned (the French were long gone) and made an alliance with the Turkish. The Germans sent a Crusade to Anatolia which was by then a Rebel province. 1188 is what makes absolutely no sense at all. Somewhere along the line I had managed to ally myself with Germany again but in 1188 they attacked Milan... and I got excommunicated for it and the Pope dropped me as an ally! I was allied to the Pope, Turks and Germany in 1187 and in 1188 I'm excommunicated with Germans in Milan. In 1189 I had Germans in Milan, Genoa and Venice and a Papal army in Tuscany!

What the hell went wrong?? Why did I get excommunicated for what the Germans did? Why did the Papacy sink my fleet when it was the Sicilians that were attacking them? Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to throw in as much detail as I could remember.

[Dom9127]

I think you got excommunicated because the papacy attacked your fleet sometimes the Ai just does sometimes for no real reason, it if the papacy goes to war against you, you get excommunicated.

[Erwin Rommel]

ITS BECAUSE YOR ITALIAN.........I GOT THE SAME PREDICAMENT I GOT ATTACKED, I GOT THEM ON THEIR KNEES POPE WARNS ME!