Lack of catholic CAI hostility

[NordicRevolution]

This is the best mod ever. Probably the best out of the whole TW series.

This is not a rant or suggestions thread. I am posting this to express my humble opinion of the 1 fault I have noted in the current 6.4 version, and to see if my fellow SS members experience similar faults.

I have heavily played a few campaigns of recent and notice similar results. Lets first talk about my Genoa campaign. Venice attacks me, repeatedly. I retaliate once and immediately get a warning from the Pope to stop shedding catholic blood, threatening excommunication. So I have to deal with this the next what, 7 or 8 turns. During these so called 'missions' from the Pope, retaliation is impossible without severe repercussions. I can pretty much forget defending my ports and cities from blockades/sieges without getting excommunicated. So you can imagine the difficulty I had taking their capital with the Pope breathing down my neck.

This same scenario happened with Aragon, Portugal and France. It's pretty ridiculous how I had several missions from the Pope at the same exact time, to stop fighting with all of these factions. I don't get a break for more then 1 turn.

It is pretty much impossible for me to war with fellow catholic factions, and from the looks of things, they are having the same exact problem(also note how its pretty much impossible to ally a faction of another religion).

So, throughout almost 100 turns in, all of the catholic factions have barely held any hostilities toward each other. This has led to an extremely boring campaign for me. I see no difference in catholic faction start-ups except for nearby rebel lands, and also no destroyed catholic factions(except for the Crusader States). Catholic factions are being forced to be civil with each other at no other costs(which makes it both easy and hard for a human catholic to dominate in Europe, that's if they are willing to be excommunicated and possibly take on all of catholic Europe). I also noticed a lack of CAI being excommunicated...weird.

From the looks of things, the Pope has way too much power, and is leading to the destruction of Europe altogether from the power rising in the East..

So, there's my observation from the past couple of campaigns I've had. I am expecting this to be tweaked in the upcoming 7.0(which I am eagerly awaiting, along with DM8 for Empire). I greatly acknowledge I shouldn't make an observation from just a couple of campaigns, but after coming back from a long break of gaming, this is what I have experienced. I would greatly appreciate everyone's opinion on the subject and to express what they have witnessed in such matters.

Thanks for reading!

[Navajo Joe]

Your absolutely right, this is the best mod for MTW2 Kingdoms

Which campaign AI did you choose, Lusted,Savage or Gracul?

[ksenagos]

You can defend your cities and your regions.As long as you are in your territory you can attack them it is not considered aggression.Something extra if you have enough papal favor prior to the wars and try to keep the pope happy ie releasing cristian prisoners,only occuping cristian cities and maybe pay him 3-5k you will only lose papal favor if you fail his mission...he won't excom you.Say you start with 8 crosses...you will fall to 6 big deal

[Vissewalde rex de Gerzika]

As Ksenagos already said, it is not aggression as long as they are on your territory, you can lure the enemes to attack you with 1 unit in their territory and use retreat to get back into yours and lure them to attack you and anger the pope, once they are excommunicated you can attack freely.

Also, we dont have any info on when exactly 7.0 is coming out, unfortuneatly, but before you post here about how bad it is there is already a thread called when is SS 7.0 being released in page 1 at the bottom or page 2.

[Gogolometro]

Mission is dont atack faction X. After 4 turns the congratiolations come from papacy, you dont shed the cristian blood. Next turn one of your armies atack the city with a catapult and take the city. Next pope message will come too late.

[Gogolometro]

At this Point pope siege 1 fortress and 1 city of my kaiser. Papacy have 4 provinces and stacks of papal guards. I have under control the north east and south of Italy. The show must go on!

[Chazz1225]

The fact of the matter is, the pope is as pious as his coffers are full, if you're planning an expansion, keep your diplomats near they're capital and stuff money down his Holiness' throat til you're the best of buddies. A good thing to do is pick your enemies accordingly to the amount of papal favour they have, always look for a faction that's dwindling in faith. Any attack you cause to them will almost always not provoke the Pope's wrath, the most you'll get is him saying don't attack these guys and your penalty is a reduction in papal favour, WHICH can be considered nothing as you can stuff more money down the Pope gobby. So all you gotta do is shower that ho in cash!!

[Duck of Death]

What they said...
This seems frustrating , but its actually fairly accurate. The Pope was constantly on Kings' backs about this sort of thing unless they "demonstrated" thier devotion to the church (pay off the pope).

If you have 5-6 crosses and threatened with x-com, gift the pope 10,000 gold and youll have perfect relations... you wont get x-comd then.

The catholic church doesnt own billions of acres of land all over the world by luck

[NordicRevolution]

I have managed to get past the Pope when fighting other factions..but what about the lack of wars between other catholic factions? I've been playing on hardCAI/savage. I think I still have a submod for the CAI that was from a long time ago..perhaps removing that will return hostilities between catholic's

[Strengelicher]

I have managed to get past the Pope when fighting other factions..but what about the lack of wars between other catholic factions? I've been playing on hardCAI/savage. I think I still have a submod for the CAI that was from a long time ago..perhaps removing that will return hostilities between catholic's

In my campaigns, I have not experienced too much peace between the Christian factions. I used to play vh/vh with Savage AI for a long time, now I am playing Gracul AI, which is supposed to be more difficult and bring even more warfare.

Granted, in a few campaigns some Catholic factions would form greater alliances with up to 10 "members", but they would always fall apart after a while. There was no general rule that Islamic factions would come out strongest.

You mentioned that you have a CAI submod installed. Maybe that is causing the "peace phenomenon" you are describing. Disturbing, to think of it... peace...

[Chazz1225]

It's possible that the other factions are merely turtling, or perhaps an a state where they make no movement, so could be a script error???