The pope's obsession with Toulouse

[eugenioso]

as you all know, or most of you anyway, the pope does indeed excommunicate other factions that randomly attack other christian factions. thanks to my warmongering on france, and the pope's caresse, a crusade was called on the christian capital of the world, a node that unites both eastern and western cultures, the birth of holy jesus... toulouse.

i get that the pope's angry at me, but shouldnt he declare a war against something a bit easier to take, not to say also but a more important location? why Toulouse? what the hell made toulouse so goddamn important? (besides that little episode when a bunch of nihilistic priests took control of southern france in the 1200's)

[Ciciro]

Because Pope is stupid.

[The Kybrothilian]

Isn't that also the region in France where the Templars had a base of operations?

[HannibalExMachina]

its the bloody cathars, always poking trouble, these heretical bastards. deus vult, save your soul!

[Sir Adrian]

Isn't that also the region in France where the Templars had a base of operations?

Nope. It's the region in France where the cathars had thier base of operations.

[Maklodes]

Toulouse does have the crusade resource, which I think makes it more likely to appear when selecting crusade targets (although certainly cities without the crusade resource can be crusade targets), but it might not have been the pope's sole decision. from my understanding, the pope declares crusades in response to requests from Catholic rulers. The targets must be legitimate crusade targets, but which of the crusade targets is actually picked could be at the discretion of, say, the French, not the papacy, if the French have good relations with the pope. If the French requested a crusade on Toulouse, then the Pope might have said yes.

(I don't think it's really right to call the Cathars nihilists, but that's for another thread.)

[PapaRosario]

although certainly cities without the crusade resource can be crusade targets

Do you have any examples? I was under the impression that the crusade resource was 100% required to call a crusade on a region.

Edit: Wow, just looked through the Vanilla files, and there are only about 10 regions in the game that have the crusade resource. So I guess you can call crusades on targets without that resource. I wonder if there's any restrictions on Crusade targets then except for Orthodox or non-excommunicated Catholics.

[Aeratus]

Toulouse is a very common crusade target. For some reason, the game developers hard coded it that way, it seems, even though the historical crusade was relatively minor.

In vanilla, it seems that the most common targets are Toulouse, Jerusalem, Antioch, Vilnius (if captured by Mongols), and Frankfurt. If the player doesn't currently control an eligible target, 95% of crusades are called on these cities.

[BM309K58SMERCH]

He wants everybody Toulouse their best units.

[TWWolfe]

perhaps he's aiming to take Avignon?

[Maxattack76]

perhaps he's aiming to take Avignon?

That's what I always assumed. "He's sniffed out the conspirators for a second Pope!"

[Sir Adrian]

It's an in-game representation of the Albigensian Crusade

[Duncan III]

What Sir Adrian said.