A Few Questions

[Mark15631]

Been playing for about a month.

1. If a settlement can last 7 turns in a siege, why is it that often the next turn after the initial attack I'm forced to fight? And with no option of withdrawal? Sometimes the garrison under attack is small, and I'm trying to get an army there to fight... But I end up losing the settlement because apparently I have to fight suddenly.

2. How can I attack other factions without that darn Pope caring or making a fuss? I've been excommunicated once, it's annoying.

3. How can I train up assassins? Whenever I hire them it seems every target has an 8% success rate... They end up just dying.

Thanks

[lafeeverted]

While your settlement can last a certain number of turns under siege, the enemy doesn't care. The sieging army is initiating the attack, that is why you are forced to fight. The more time he waits, the more of an army you can build to attack him. It wouldnt make sense for the army to let you fight him fairly now would it

The Pope is pissed off by anyone who attacks another Catholic faction. There are ways to bribe the Pope and enhance your standing with him, that might get you more time before being excommunicated.

You can train assassins by takingout easy targets like merchants, diplomats etc... before taking on harder targets.

If you haven't read some of the Strategy guides on this forum check therm out. there is a wealth of knowledge to be found.

[Mark15631]

Oh! Haha I didn't think of that. Of course they can assault when they want, just like I do! I seem to of under-estimated the enemy. I will read these guides, thanks.

[eXistenZ]

The best targets for your new assassins are rebel captains. Also getting the assassin's guild will give you better assassins

[painter]

To mitigate the damage caused by the pope meddling in local affairs, you may want to consider attacking more than one region at once. Say you are England and you want to initiate a war against France, attack Paris and Rheims simultaneously. If successful, usually by the time the pope issues a stern warning, you'll have the regions you want in your pocket.

[Silverheart]

Assassins also become better later on. After gunpowder, they often have "Prototype Handgun", making them more likely to succeed, or "spyglass", increasing their LOS.
But the best improvement is of course a Master Assassins Guild house or the Headquarters, both of which affects all assassins you train in any city!
Practice makes perfect...

Staying on the Popes´ good side makes him more likely to overlook your anti-catholic aggressions.
Build and upgrade churches (preferably several at the same time), convert non-catholic lands, ally with him, and give him the occasional bribe. If your papal standing is high, you don´t have to worry about excommunication even if you violate his warning - you´ll just lose a few crosses.
Make sure to improve your papal standing before going at it again, though.
Or you could follow Painters´ directives, that works too ^::^

[painter]

It works better to employ every known trick to control the papacy. Alliance, gifts (bribe), recruiting priests, building churches, completing papal missions, striking at and taking multiple targets simultaneously and so on, while slowly increasing the number of your cardinals and neutralising the cardinals of non-friendly factions. Or the more extreme case of having been excommunicated, successfully assassinate or kill the pope in the battlefield and vote in a new friendlier pope. The more tactics you employ, the more likely you are to gain the theologian guild upgrades. Once you have the theologian HQ, getting new cardinals and further cementing your control of the papacy, if you don't have absolute control yet, will happen automatically without much input from you.

The most simplest path to achieve control of the papacy is to take and hold the Levants. There, you will naturally build at least small churches, recruit tons of priests and your recruited priests will gain a lot of experience of converting the people and purging the lands of heresy. If you can make decent progress in the Levants, do not be surprised with suddenly realising you have total control of the papacy within 30 turns, assuming all the other catholic factions fail to grab open seats and hold onto their seats.

I might be mistaken, but I think the pope can only threaten you with excommunication once per turn. For example, brutally attacking France, HRE, Spain and Denmark at once and it might take four turns for the pope to give out his last excommunication threat. It is not a good strategy though as it will leave you at war with too many factions.

I just realised that there is one other strategy to control the papacy that haven't been mentioned yet. Taking advantage of the excommunication threats. If your opposing faction is about the same or lower approval on the pope-o-meter, you should try to bait your opponent into attacking you. It is something to do while chaffing under such limits and chances are, the pope will excommunicate your enemy and then it is open season. It can be hard to successfully bait your enemy and you will have to fight defensively, you shouldn't even sally out to defend your settlement but wait for them to attack first.

Utilising most possible strategies, in my current VH/H game, Sicily (repeat offender), Milan, HRE and the Venetians have been excommunicated by the pope for attacking me and I haven't been excommunicated once. For once, I want Pope Gregory, age 60, to live a long and happy life. I know England will mourn his passing.