What happened to the Pope?

[caralampio]

I've noticed that lately (I mean, in 6.4) the Pope is very soft. He loves every Catholic faction (except the player's) and never excommunicates anyone (except the player). If the player disobeys him, he gets excommed but the AI can attack you as much as it wants and never gets excommed.

OTOH, he seems to be more annoying than ever. Go to war with a Catholic nation, because THEY attacked you, next turn comes the warning to cease hostilities. You wait out the time to attack again without getting into trouble, then you get to attack exactly one turn, and the very next turn, another warning to wait 6 or 7 turns. All the time, of course, the other side is attacking you with impunity and never getting any Papal interference. It used to be that the Pope waited a few turns before sending his first warning, and also that he would give you a little breather between warnings. Also, if you behaved properly, sooner or later the enemy would be excommed if they kept attacking you.

"Playing the Pope" has become very difficult. Or totally fruitless I might say. I wonder, what file governs Papal behavior?

[oxxid]

In my 3 late games on 6.4 I've seen lots of excommunications of other catholic nations.

But it is indeed true that I find it hard to have an nation attacking you being excommunicated. Usually they attack up to 3 times, then wait (they must have a warning of excommunication I guess), then attack again, etc... I found that the ennemy doesn't have warning in this case for example : The ennemy sieges one of your cities, you attack him or sally forth, and win. As the ennemy loses, the Pope doesn't react (he wanted a fight, he lost, punishment not neccessary). If you let him siege you and wait for a defensive battle, THEN you'll find that there are a lot more chances of excommunications for him.

Problem is : If you attack an ennemy trespasing on your territory, usually it poses no problem with the Pope (Well, I found it like that most of the time). So if you attack an ennemy on his territory, you'll have quite quickly the warning for yourself too.
This pushes you to prepare massive attacks in one turn, and then stop for the next seven.

There should be ways for advanced provocation to force the ennemy to attack you on your territory. THAT would be great. Like an option in diplomacy for advanced diplomats that would insult so greatly your ennemy that it would attack you nonetheless the warnings of the Pope.

[Basileus Antiochus]

The pope always sent the cease hostilities warning on the second turn after I start a war... So I have to bring artillery all the time... In my late campaign, its the 20 something turn, and the pope has excomed 4 countries already...

[Zvornik]

maybe every pope has different views on who and when to excommunicate countries

[Dwarven Berserker]

Yeah SS pope is a lot more challenging to not get excommunicated.

In vanilla i'm often one of of the few (if not the only ) factions that ISN'T exommunicated