Stupid Pope

[Legion12]

Is there no way to please him?! I have a church and a priest in every city/castle, finished his missions and i end up getting excommunicated. since im playing as the Holy Roman Empire all the Catholic nations are attacking me from all sides; i've assasinated 3 Popes and they still h8 me.

[Vor]

When I attacked Scotland the Pope warned me not to attack them again or I would be excommunicated. Taking note of the warning I pulled all my troops involved in the Scottish campaign out of Scotland and took them over the land bridge to Ireland.

I tried to get a cease-fire as well, but they refused. The next turn the Scottish king followed me to Ireland and attacked, he was killed during the battle and I got excommunicated for defending myself!

Before the Scotland incident however the Pope loved me

HRE and France remained my allies however, and the Pope died 5 turns later. I never got to find out how the new Pope would treat me, since I decided to start a new campaign.

[Trajan]

I've been able to please the Pope very well in my current French campaign. I’ve constructed plenty of churches and priests, taken part in the crusades, made allies with the Papal faction and kept relations very good to perfect via tributes, and whenever the Pope ordered me to cease hostilities with another Catholic faction, I obliged. The Pope has been very good to me by excommunicating all the factions that have waged war with me and won't agree to a peace treaty. How did you get excommunicated Legion12?

[(insert clever name here)]

Yea I actually found the pope to be pretty agreeable, granted the farthest I have gotten before giving up is 80 turns but still, I usually get people to attack me and then get them excommunicated. Heck I attacked Spain blatantly and nothing happened. Probably because the pope at the time won because of my two votes during the Papal elections, and I had an alliance with his former faction, but still he/she has been good to me.

[2ltben]

There's only one surefire way to win the Pope's love: money. Always keep a diplomat in Rome and any time you drop two crosses from full, start sending your gifts. Usually your map information and two 500 florin packages as three seperate gifts will work.

I've actually gotten permission from the Pope to attack Catholic cities(he doesn't care if you fight their armies, just leave the cities be). I just gave him Attack Faction and 1000 florins or so as a gift, he accepted, and I had free reign to attack. I'm not sure if it was that or my good standing, but I took two French cities with no objection from the Pope.

[Endeav]

I haven't been excommunicated for whatever reason unless I broke a ceasefire, attempted to assassinate the pope, or kept attacking christian factions. Even with 0 papal standing I was never excommunicated. Don't know if you can get excommunicatd just for having a low standing.

One thing to watch for is when a ceasefire is called, break off any siege on the target faction, as units die while you siege them and this will cause excommunication. I was pretty darned annoyed when this happened to me.

[Aristocrat]

The Holy Roman Empire has a bad relationship with the pope regardless.
Meaning that relations will always deteriorate quickly and the people will look more favourably on most other catholic factions.

You can change this in the desc_strat file diplomacy section.