How bad is excommunicaiton really?

**buncheesy** · August 19, 2011, 12:55 AM

Preamble: played STW, MTW, RTW and now M2TW. Stainless steel is my first mod (with really bad AI+settlement tweeks) after playing vanilla only once. I am completely

(blown away) and this is my first post on the forum!!!

Am playing H/H venetian turn approx 40. I have kicked some byzantine butt, sued for peace and am now trying to take on the sicilians after taking Naples. I am allies with the papal state and the pope loves me but everytime I even sneeze in the direction of the sicillians he slaps a 7 turn time out on me. The pope is sicillian by the way.

I am cautious by nature and did not get excommunicated in my only vanilla game. However I cant stand this constant pausing of my battle plans. Is it a real issue being excommunicated? how hard is it to get back into the popes good books afterwards?

thanks in advance.

PS the forum is fantastic.

**wyk4wgary** · August 19, 2011, 01:31 AM

normally when the pope excommunicates you, you always:
lose other catholic allies, nearly all;
have low reputation;
is highly possibly attacked by neighbor catholic factions;
lost trade right, reduce your income;
is highly possibly crusaded, required heavy troops to protect, defensive war has no profit!

**Navajo Joe** · August 19, 2011, 03:14 AM

buncheesy,

Firstly welcome to SS, glad to hear that you are enjoying this most wonderful mod.

I my opinion at this early stage you do not want to upset his holiness, so best leave them alone and find someone else, send an expeditionary force to N Africa, pick a fight with the Moors or Fatimids.

Frequently in my campaigns Genoa always gets itself excommunicated or HRE, let them make the mistake and capitalise from their mistake

regards
NJ

**cezarip** · August 19, 2011, 03:40 AM

You can add unrest in your lands (your people will be unhappy because of the excomm), inability to join a crusade, or a crusade could be called against one of your cities. Better keep the poppey happy with gifts and always have more crosses of rep with him as your enemies. Try to get them excommed and you can enjoy waging war against them without pope's intervention.

**Ziltoid** · August 19, 2011, 04:23 AM

Excommunication threat applies to both parties, you can use that to your benefit by luring enemy to attack you. Leave one city with minimal garrison and hide main army in forest nearby. Enemy likely cant resist and goes for it, if he doesn't get instantly excommunicated then atleast loses loads of papal reputation and 2nd time with the trick should get him excommunicated too. Then they are free for all your attacks.

You can even call crusade on them after excommunication if you are in good relations with Pope (little florin bribing and map giving every few turns and alliances with with fellow catholics helps). But i think calling crusade on fellow catholic kingdom is overdoing it and borderline cheating as then you can just march through their lands with superfast huge stacks of crusader knights and conquer several cities in just couple turns. Blitzkrieg like just doesn't seem legit or realistic for medieval game, so i try to leave it only for those long voyages to muslim/pagan lands. Exception being times when someone else does the crusade calling to catholic lands, then might aswell get share of the pie.

**buncheesy** · August 19, 2011, 06:12 AM

Thanks for the replies! Much appreciated.

So I shouldnt keep up my guard and pay ongoing tribute to either my Genoese or Sicilian neighbours then? I have been very wary of the Genoese and have been paying them cash on demand and as gifts so that i can pursue my Sicilian ambitions first. Perhaps let them attack and lose rep and then goad them diplomatically in stead

In the meantime I think I might take the city on the eastern end of sicily (name escapes me at the moment) as its wooden walled and i have catapults i should be able to take it in one go before Papa puts me in the naughty corner again. Then I will pull out and smack the byzantines again!

Does the fact that the pope comes from Sicily influence his response to my attacking their besieging armies for instance (which earned me a tap on the wrist!)?

**cezarip** · August 19, 2011, 06:22 AM

Originally Posted by buncheesy

Thanks for the replies! Much appreciated.

So I shouldnt keep up my guard and pay ongoing tribute to either my Genoese or Sicilian neighbours then? I have been very wary of the Genoese and have been paying them cash on demand and as gifts so that i can pursue my Sicilian ambitions first. Perhaps let them attack and lose rep and then goad them diplomatically in stead

In the meantime I think I might take the city on the eastern end of sicily (name escapes me at the moment) as its wooden walled and i have catapults i should be able to take it in one go before Papa puts me in the naughty corner again. Then I will pull out and smack the byzantines again!

Does the fact that the pope comes from Sicily influence his response to my attacking their besieging armies for instance (which earned me a tap on the wrist!)?

Don't fight on multiple fronts!
Pay tribute to the pope. Build churches, spam priests and send them to convert Muslim/Orthodox/Pagan lands. And give him money gifts. You can do almost anything if your rep with him is greater as of the faction you're at war with. But be careful when he tell you he'll excommunicate you. Then stay in defense and get the enemy to attack you. They'll get excommed.
The pope will like more the faction he's coming from. In the sense that, when he gets elected, the standing with his ex-faction will be at max.

**recentiy03** · August 19, 2011, 09:11 AM

It's obviously a situational question, although if you have enough money then it really isn't an issue.

When you're playing a more difficult game then it becomes more and more of a problem. If you have no money to bribe yourself back into His Holiness's good graces you can expect to be fighting a lot of wars against your Catholic neighbors, which may or may not be something your faction can overcome, depending on the game you're playing.

**Kabeloko** · August 19, 2011, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by buncheesy

Preamble: played STW, MTW, RTW and now M2TW. Stainless steel is my first mod (with really bad AI+settlement tweeks) after playing vanilla only once. I am completely

(blown away) and this is my first post on the forum!!!

Am playing H/H venetian turn approx 40. I have kicked some byzantine butt, sued for peace and am now trying to take on the sicilians after taking Naples. I am allies with the papal state and the pope loves me but everytime I even sneeze in the direction of the sicillians he slaps a 7 turn time out on me. The pope is sicillian by the way.

I am cautious by nature and did not get excommunicated in my only vanilla game. However I cant stand this constant pausing of my battle plans. Is it a real issue being excommunicated? how hard is it to get back into the popes good books afterwards?

thanks in advance.

PS the forum is fantastic.

when fighting other catholic factions, u can put catapults or trebuchets in ur armies, so u can directly attack, not having to break siege...
position 3 armies in 3 sicilian cities at the same time, and assault them all...
so u get 3 cities before getting the cease hostilities mission...

**buncheesy** · August 20, 2011, 12:06 AM

Thanks again all

Kabeloko - thats what I did in the vanilla game, towards the end of the campaign, 3-4 cities at a time with the 7 turn break to regroup. In this game am just getting some catapults together. So its early days yet.....

Have got some got strategic ideas now. Cheers

**Dahoota** · August 20, 2011, 03:51 AM

Others have pretty much covered everything about excommunication but I will add this;

In vanilla I didn't let excommunication bother me much at all - if anything I enjoyed the challenge. However now I am playing SS with BGR IV, RR and Savage and a few other submods on VH/VH. With this setup, especially with BGR, you do not want to get on the pope's bad side. Becoming a free target for other factions and being crusaded on will pretty much spell an end to your campaign.

The restrictions of BGR simply make it impossible to fight a war on more than say, 2 fronts.