The Pope ignores my priest

**panurge** · August 11, 2008, 12:25 PM

I have priests with piety +9 and they are not promoted. I'm not at war with the papal states or excommunicated, but I do have an alliance with Sicily, which the pope is always asking me to break. Instead of breaking it, i send money to the pope so our relations keep good. Anyway, he's ignoring my priests. I should be owning the Vatican with all my holy land priests being great. I don't want to kill the Pope before I have all my cardinal votes for the next one... What to do?

**Zhangir** · August 11, 2008, 12:31 PM

Try breaking the alliance, otherwise, kill the Pope...
Moreover if there are too many Cardinals, the Pope can't appoint any more, untill 1 dies
Besides, where is the pope from and how are ur relations from his orgignal nation?

**Retribution** · August 11, 2008, 12:43 PM

Probably too many cardinals.

Try killing them

**panurge** · August 11, 2008, 01:04 PM

That must be it. I did not know there was a limit for the number of cardinals. I thought the cardinals would always be the best priests. I'll kill France very soon so maybe with theirs cardinals dead...

**Musthavename** · August 11, 2008, 01:09 PM

If you look on the Cardinal scroll theres a bit at the bottom which should say "There are X number of empty seats". If a seat is available and theres a priest with at least 5 piety, that slot is filled.

**Shaun** · August 11, 2008, 01:09 PM

There is a limited amount of Cardinals. You can try killing off other Cardinals - you can find their location by going to the College of Cardinals then clicking on the Cardinal you want to find - but this is risky. Best to just have as much priests as possible, send them out to areas which are predominantly non-Catholic, and watch their stats shoot up. The more Cardinals you have, the more votes you get in a Papal election - so if you dominate the College of Cardinals, you effectively select the Pope from your own Cardinals. This is a good strategy in dominating other Catholic factions.

**panurge** · August 11, 2008, 01:55 PM

That's what I'm trying to do. When you go past 20+ regions, owning the pope helps a lot to avoid some wars you want to delay.

**KoS** · August 11, 2008, 06:06 PM

Assassinate the Pope and as many cardinals as you can.

Well, that's one way of doing it...

**SPARTAN VI** · August 11, 2008, 06:18 PM

As others stated, probably not enough seats. Or maybe there are seats available, but your relation with the Pope isn't good enough? Few things I do.

Assassinate the other Cardinals. Not good for your reputation and your King/Faction Leader will likely build Dread as you assassinate the college of Cardinals.

If you want to be a good boy about it, you can just keep a perfect relationship with the Pope and saturate the non-catholic provinces with priests/bishops. Someone will eventually get elected. Makes it a little more difficult if your enemy's cardinal gets elected as Pope though.

You could also farm plagued spies in your sick settlements and send them out to infect Cardinals that are garrisoned inside settlements, which are more common than not. With a little luck, they'll die of plague, which opens seats, but doesn't build dread or hurt your reputation much if at all.

**Sorkenlol** · August 11, 2008, 06:30 PM

Excuse me for asking, but how do you send money to the pope? And how do you profit from priests? I started Campaigning yesterday, still learning.

**Sparkshot** · August 11, 2008, 07:00 PM

Originally Posted by Sorkenlol

Excuse me for asking, but how do you send money to the pope? And how do you profit from priests? I started Campaigning yesterday, still learning.

To donate money to the Pope you need to send a diplomat to Rome or one of the Papal States' provinces and "make a single payment" or offer "regular tribute". Then proceed to give it as a gift by pressing the button bellow and to the left of the scroll that looks like a present.

The way you profit from priests is not directly monetary, but being able to eliminate heretics to ensure religious homogeny and prevent unrest, getting them promoted to the College of Cardinals to influence the outcome of Papal elections and thus who the new Pope will be, and eventually for one or more of your priests to be placed in the Preferati (if they have enough piety) which mean they are a candidate for the next Papal election. Your once humble priest could quite possibly be the next Pope. Once you have it in with the Pope, crusades aren't hard to request

I hope this helps.

**Sorkenlol** · August 11, 2008, 07:10 PM

Originally Posted by Robert the Kingmaker

To donate money to the Pope you need to send a diplomat to Rome or one of the Papal States' provinces and "make a single payment" or offer "regular tribute". Then proceed to give it as a gift by pressing the button bellow and to the left of the scroll that looks like a present.

The way you profit from priests is not directly monetary, but being able to eliminate heretics to ensure religious homogeny and prevent unrest, getting them promoted to the College of Cardinals to influence the outcome of Papal elections and thus who the new Pope will be, and eventually for one or more of your priests to be placed in the Preferati (if they have enough piety) which mean they are a candidate for the next Papal election. Your once humble priest could quite possibly be the next Pope. Once you have it in with the Pope, crusades aren't hard to request

I hope this helps.

Cool, thank you. And thanks to the one above you too.

Can I get request gifts from the Papal States too? I now have the reputation "outstanding" with them, which sounds pretty good to me. Could I for example request a crusade amongst the Mongols or something like that? And if I can, how do I do it?

**panurge** · August 11, 2008, 07:22 PM

Poland and the HRE have an alliance and they're making a Vatican cartel against my priests. They have cardinals with +6 piety and I have +8 priests. I hope I'll have better relations with the Pope now that the french king is a poor rebel in my yard. I will wait some more before assassinating cardinals because I'm playing the honourable way.

**jsktrogdor** · August 11, 2008, 08:44 PM

Check the college and find out who else has cardinals that are younger than the pope. Try to get alliances with them, if your rep with them is better than the HRE's they might just vote for you in the election. Unless they themselves have a preferati in the running then they will always vote for him.

Also if you have good enough rep and enough money you can buy the papel elections. You can go into diplomacy with an undecided nation by clicking their faction icon at the bottom right of the papal elections scroll and theres a new option that says "Request Cardinal Vote" or something like that.

Oh and I dont know if killing france will eliminate their cardinals, im not sure but they might default to papal states if the french are destroyed. If france does have cardinals and you are kicking their trash as you claim to be, I would get them out of the way before the pope dies or else they're guarenteed to vote against you.

**panurge** · August 11, 2008, 09:32 PM

Oh, I really kicked them. France is no more and the cardinals do die. The Pope now likes me and I need only one more cardinal to secure the next pope. I think it'll work. Now I have to find a princess for the new prince... I only take the beautiful ones.

To Sorkenlol: you can ask for a crusade on the pope screen where you see how much he likes you, but you can't call it on the mongols. I guess it only works against muslims and excommunicated factions.

**Ursus** · August 11, 2008, 06:33 PM

What is the age of your priests, if they are 30-40. just wait acouple of years, some of the cardinals will croak.
Sorkenlol, send an emmisary to any papal army, city etc

**Sparkshot** · August 11, 2008, 11:02 PM

Originally Posted by Sorkenlol

Cool, thank you. And thanks to the one above you too.

Originally Posted by Sorkenlol

Can I get request gifts from the Papal States too? I now have the reputation "outstanding" with them, which sounds pretty good to me. Could I for example request a crusade amongst the Mongols or something like that? And if I can, how do I do it?

Originally Posted by panurge

To Sorkenlol: you can ask for a crusade on the pope screen where you see how much he likes you, but you can't call it on the mongols. I guess it only works against muslims and excommunicated factions.

To reiterate what Sorkenlol said; go to the Pope screen in the faction details pages. If the button displaying a cross is lit up to the left of the Pope's portrait, you can call a crusade by clicking on it and it will give you the available targets. Remember, once a crusade is called, you will have to wait a while before there can be another.

I think you can call a crusade on the Mongols if and when they attack Antioch. I'm not sure though because I've never done it before, but I could have sworn it was an option in one of my games.

You can demand things from the Pope but I doubt you will get anything from him, just like any other faction--unless it is a balanced deal or better. However, the Pope does sometimes reward you with florins every now and then, I've been known to get them a lot with Sicily.