Decreased faction standing over time + Passive Papal States?

[XSRE]

I've been looking for a way to change a few things in M2TW, but I'm no good at scripting; I have two questions, could someone please help me out:

1. How do you stop your faction standing with other nations decreasing with the passage of time?
2. How can you stop the Papal States from excommunicating you at the drop of a hat? Is there any way to make them less aggressive when you attach other Catholic nations, or making player excommunication not possible at all? ... while leaving all other factions excommunicable?

[zowrath]

1) If you ally with them, they standing will slowly rise. If you go to war with the same enemy, if any, that they are fighting they will like you more. Some times, depending on mod, you can use diplomacy and a stockpile of cash to improve the standings. All in all there are no default way to make them like you more. If you choose to not ally with anyone chances are you will drop to poor/very poor with most of them pretty fast.

2) Provoke the other nation to attack you. This ain't so easy though. But you can use diplomacy to offer bad deals and such so their opinion of you drops to abysmal. Then they some times attack you. Depending on how strong you are in comparison to them of course. If an AI starts to use Spies on you a lot, it is usually a prelude to invasion. But not always.

When or if they attack you, you can fight them on your lands without penalty. But you can not attack them on their lands, or besiege their cities/castles, without the Pope taking notice of it. Wait until they besiege you, and then they will eventually get excommunicated themselves and then you go.

Or you could use assassins to kill all their family and their lands will rebel, I have been successful at that two times. But it may take a while, especially if they have huge lands. Not worth it if you are short of time or impatient.

Or thirdly, stock up stacks along your border with Catapults and shock all the cities you can in one turn. As the pope usually doesn't get it until the turn after, when you of course complies with his demands for a ceasefire.

Some times, if the other faction has low standing with the Papacy, you can wage war without fear of reprisal though.

[SigniferOne]

1. Simply go into faction_standing.txt, and find the "normalize" function, which slowly makes all of faction relations worse by default. Feel free to take it out, to make for a much more interesting game.

2. Don't attack Catholic factions. When they attack you, and get excommunicated (as I've seen them be time after time), go and route them with full force.