Becoming Pope and maintaining peace

**Bwaho** · March 26, 2008, 12:50 PM

Having every game end up with me slaughtering and conquering the entire world is getting a little old.

I enjoy games where I set up my own goals and rules and try to follow them the best I can.

The type of game I want to play now is one where I try to do things mostly through diplomacy. I want to become the pope, how do you do that? do you guys kill other rivaling cardinals?

also, how do I maintain a long peace with a bordering faction?

I've heard marriage alliances are good, but how the hell do you fix those?

I tried sending out my princess to find a faction heir, but they were all taken so I couldn't do anything.

**Carrack** · March 26, 2008, 01:16 PM

To become pope, I tend to just try and obtain as many high piety priests as possible, and when the opportunity arrises, i'll assassinate some of the hostile factions cardinals. To ensure peace, (atleast in vanilla) I find the only real way is to give cash/tributes often and ensure that your reputation is pretty good. Otherwise, you'll find that you can get backstabbed even by factions you've been allied with for years.

Have to say though, there are mods that make it alot easier to maintain peace because of the improvements made to the AI.

**gpowsang** · March 26, 2008, 07:08 PM

Ive actually managed to control the ENTIRE college of cardinals for the last 50 or so turns in ny Britain campaign.

JUST MAKE AS MANY PRIESTS AS POSSIBLE AND ASSASSINATE THE OTHER CARDINALS.

Trust me it works, it came to the point that the youngest pope was around 23

A good way to have a high reputation is mainly to estblish trade rights and ofer them other stuff

hope this helped.