My priests rule the Vatican, and I'm not even trying...

[hugorune]

Has anyone else seen this phenomenom? I'm playing Denmark, and I haven't done anything too extraordinary - just expanded into Sweden, the Baltic States, been pretty friendly with other factions except for Egypt, yet every single priest in the College of Cardinals is Danish.

There seemed to be a good mix early on in the piece, but I noticed sometime around the late 1100s (playing Early Era campaign) that there were only two countries with Cardinals - me and the HRE with two each - and then just mine. It's like the AI won't recruit priests.

Recently in the game I went on a Crusade and conquered Gaza - I decided to stay for a little while and recruited priests - they all become cardinals almost immediately The Vatican was desperate to recruit *any* priests since they seem in short supply...

[Brammius]

I guess you just got lucky, though this very normal in the late part of the game.

[s0meguy]

I know what you mean, the AI should be programmed to make more priests and train them. This has always bothered me.

[Gomer_Pyle]

In 5.1 AI made lots of priests has this changed in 6.0? Cus in my last campaign in 5.1 I came over an egyptian city on an island south of rhodos. When i captured it 10 imams came out. lmao.

[clonas]

I had the same situation with the Denmark, but they had only 2 cities left, still they had 7 out of 12 cardinals or so. At the nest election denmark had 0 cardinals, and Norway had around 5-6 out of 10. Later I created priests in all my 45 provinces, and at the next election I had 9 out of 12~ cardinals

[DireklianCliff]

It's not that the AI isn't making priests, it's probably because your priests are older and have more piety. The priests with the highest piety are the ones chosen for Cardinal-ship. I'm pretty sure the AI is fairly lax about taking out heretics (instead choosing to recruit more priests to combat the conversion), which means that any player that uses their priests at all will most likely see lots of Cardinals. One of my friends took Cairo and out popped 11 imams and a heretic. So I don't think it's that the computer isn't recruiting priests.

[Quark]

Maybe its that the Ai is just not using the magic reload button, and hence loses more priests to heretics.

[Marcus Fulvius]

big part of this is because the ai doesn't produce as many religious buildings.

current game, ive been in control of the college for the past 60 turns, the last 6 popes have all been from my cities... and for a good 20 or so turns every priest i trained would instantly get promoted to cardinal as soon as he was created.

then i went on a killing spree and started taking over other cities. well, when i sent my spies into enemy cities before sieging em, i found very few cities with more than a church or abbey... ive only seen one with an actual cathedral, and that was paris.

the muslim cities ive taken over though generally have some decently built up religious buildings.

also, just for curiousity, i toggled the fog of war and found that the ai had HUGE numbers of priests and immams... but they kept sending them to heretical and enemy lands to convert populations... so im sure they kept losing alot of said priests to heresy (which prolly means they have fewer high piety guys who qualify for the college).

[s0meguy]

big part of this is because the ai doesn't produce as many religious buildings.

current game, ive been in control of the college for the past 60 turns, the last 6 popes have all been from my cities... and for a good 20 or so turns every priest i trained would instantly get promoted to cardinal as soon as he was created.

then i went on a killing spree and started taking over other cities. well, when i sent my spies into enemy cities before sieging em, i found very few cities with more than a church or abbey... ive only seen one with an actual cathedral, and that was paris.

the muslim cities ive taken over though generally have some decently built up religious buildings.

also, just for curiousity, i toggled the fog of war and found that the ai had HUGE numbers of priests and immams... but they kept sending them to heretical and enemy lands to convert populations... so im sure they kept losing alot of said priests to heresy (which prolly means they have fewer high piety guys who qualify for the college).

Marcus, actually that's the way that I train my priests. I make a lot of priests, dump them in some muslim province, wait, then get good piety. I don't think that none of my priests ever became a heretic there at least.

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

big part of this is because the ai doesn't produce as many religious buildings.

I can totally agree with this.

I captured Constantinople, built a Huge Cathedral with Theologians' Guild Headquarters, producing high quality priest.

(When I built this cathedral a window popped up, that it was the sole biggest cathedral in the known world, so nobody else has built it yet.)

I literally spammed the map with my uberbishops, most of them became cardinals. But hell, they've got a pretty big evangelizing to do!


By powerwizard at 2008-04-26

(okay, not all the cardinals are from constantinople, some of them came from the lesser people by preachin'.)

[Radiant]

What are the advantages of the pope being from your faction?

[MKeogh]

I'm not seeing cardinals being appointed either. The last two papal elections in my game have been decided by a college of cardinals which had only two or three members. This wasn't the case in 5.1 in which I always saw a full college of cardinals. So appears something has changed with 6.0. I hope it's just a glitch or gets figured out because having two cardinals decide who should be pope undermines the entire point of the election.

[tup]

I have the same situation in my current campaign and I'm not even having many heretics around.
I'm just funding all those Great Councils (can the AI do that too?) and have a maxed out Theologians Guild. I don't even have Abbeys in my cities. And there are various factions being favored by the Pope too.
But that also was the case with 5.1... but it's possible that 6.0 changed something.
At one point I got a message that Scotland got 6 new cardinals or so... I wondered why so many died at once the round before, checked the college - and there were only 2 Scottish cardinals.

[Australia]

He likes you , less likely to get excommunicated, your priests get promoted to Cardinal just about every time another one dies etc.

In my temp campaign I just about own the Collage, but its because I have to convert allot and priests are a powerful weapon for me and the Pop is from my faction and my .

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

What are the advantages of the pope being from your faction?

He likes you , less likely to get excommunicated, your priests get promoted to Cardinal just about every time another one dies etc.

I might also add, that your Pope tends to hate and excommunicate your catholic enemies, and automatically reconciliates all of your catholic allies upon election.

The chance of successfully asking for a crusade increases dramatically.

Nonetheless, he won't be your home priest, as he will excom you if the conditioins are met (behaving very bad with non-excommed catholic factions).

[roy34543]

The AI tends to only recruit priests when it actually needs them to convert areas. Which leads to problems.

[AlfonsoVIII]

And late in the game when the number of empty seats for the college of cardinals is like 5, then you know no one is recruiting.

[Alexios Komnenos]

And late in the game when the number of empty seats for the college of cardinals is like 5, then you know no one is recruiting.

That's what is happening to me. And there's something even more annoying: my priests gain piety soooo slowly. I am in turn 40 and there are priests 45 and 50 years old who just have 3 or 4 piety circles. And they have spent their lifes in North Africa and the south of the Iberian Peninsula, and have converted this provinces to a 80-90% catholic. And as I'm playing with Aragon, I start with no cardinal, and my starting bishop got heretic (it happened in another campaign too). The results are that I've never had any Aragonese cardinal. And the Vatican is controlled by the Poles, the French and the Venetians.

I think I will begin a new campaign and let this one apart.

[Lupu]

What happens if there are no more catholics, and the pope dies?

[AlfonsoVIII]

What happens if there are no more catholics, and the pope dies?

If your a catholic faction, game over. If your not, then no more crusades.