How to deal with Pope

[Sylesia]

Hmm, no post here, so I will start. I found an easy way to deal with the pope. Kill him. Yup, send in assassins whenever he hates you, kill him, and its all good again. And also, kill other player's priests and cardinals so that they have less influence and you more. Over all though, if you ignore him, you are doing whats best.

[Hundred]

Isn't it obvious? But the hard part is getting a good enough assassin that can do it well enough without "cheating the AI".

[Kaneage]

Ive noticed alot of people frustrated with the popes action. Ive came across some things that can help you deal with the popes crazy behavior

Whenever you attack a non-excommunicated catholic nation, the pope will get mad at you. It does NOT matter if you are at war with this person. Every battle, land or sea, that you initiate will piss the pope off, even if that person is in your territory and/or seiging your castle. I hope this gets fixed or at least lessened in the patch

Defending a battle will NOT lose you favor but executing catholics after the battle will. Matter of fact, executing any catholics anywhere will piss the pope off

In terms of diplomacy, The more a faction hates you the harder it is for you to get them to like you again. Do not wait until you are abysml with the pope before you try and get on his good side again. Instead when you see your relations are slipping, start giving him gifts. maps and 100 florins usually improve my standing one level as long as im still respectable in popes eyes.

Allying the pope is never a bad thing, however it is also not cheap. I spent 13000 florins one game to ally with him. it took my whole turns income, but 45 turns later im still allied and ive not been excommunicated.

When a new pope comes in power, his countries relations with you are usually carried over. ie if you are at war with denmark and a danish pope comes to power, he will usually come down on you harder and faster.

If multiple people are at war with you, let them invade. You just defend your cities are defend your armies on the campaign map. The pope follows the same formula for the AI. As long as you are not excommunicated, the invaders will also piss the pope off everytime they attack you. This can be a long process but you can gain favor back with the pope by sitting there and taking a beating. In my games Milan, Venice, and/or Sicily usually become excommunicated because they constantly attack one another.

I know just defending sucks and we shouldnt have to "hope" they initiate combat just to not piss the pope off. i certainly dont think it is fair on the player nor do i think its better for gameplay. It actually helps kill gameplay imo, but this is how things work right now. You can either fight it and say "I shouldn't have to do that" (which is true) or you can work with the system and not get screwed by it.

[dearmad]

In this game, I love the Pope. More often than not, he protects me. It enhances gameplay a lot for me as it ups the intrigue level and makes conquest that much trickier to arrange... finally, this is one of the few challenges in this game as it is without the patch.

[Kaneage]

I totally agree that the pope is much better than MTW and he does add alot of gameplay depth and challenge, but even his holiness has some bugs in his system. When the pope excommunicates you because you broke a seige off of one of YOUR cities, there is a problem.

The most frustrating thing for me when dealing with the pope is the combination of him wanting peace, and the AI never accepting peace. The diplomacy is screwy in the way that it promotes total warfare (the game is called total war after all). I am often at war with 3-4 enemies at a time, yet the pope wants to promote peace. The Pope calls for a ceasefire, but apparently my enemies didn't get the memo so they continue to attack me. I am in a position of wait and let them starve my city out or sally and get excommunicated. seperatly i can deal with each problem. I can go total war or total peace, but together they cause problems.

The obvious solution the they above scenario would be to extend the ceasefire to the other country aswell. this is one of the many fixes i hope the patch addresses.

Overall i can see the Pope is by no mean broken or useless. Hes quite the opposite. But with diplomacy the way it is right now he can be a major pain to countries who have no non-catholics bordering them. (England, France, Denmark, HRE, Milan, ect..)

[Snakesword]

Dealing with the pope is easy,you just need to know how.
1. Build loads of churches and especially cathedrals.
2. Always do his missions.
3. Always go on a crusade when he says so.
I've done campaigns where I didnt get excommunicated and destroyed factions he favoured more than me. Please him and he lets you off the hook.

[Antonov]

The most frustrating thing for me when dealing with the pope is the combination of him wanting peace, and the AI never accepting peace. The diplomacy is screwy in the way that it promotes total warfare (the game is called total war after all).

I want to express my Western and Eastern-style appreciation of these words because they are very correct:
:


Am I the only one who's had the following experience: I get attacked by another faction, and the pope threathens me with excommunication if I attack them. That's even if they take my provinces I'm not allowed to hit back. I don't know if that's an attempt to recreate backstabbing and cooperation between the pope and some faction or is it just a bug.

Something else I wonder is what is the use of the factions' ratings with the pope? I had perfect reputation with Rome and I still suffered what I described. It looks to me that the pope's rating is just a sort of debit which is gradually spent as one does religiously-inappropriate things. I wish this rating had more impact on diplomacy both with the pope and with other factions.

This happened to me with the Danes: they attacked me and the pope asked that I don't take any action to counterattack them. Finally when they took Magdeburg from me I said to myself "that's enough" and went, mind you, not to attack them, but to recover my own city (I wonder if the pope's AI makes any difference between the two anyway). And guess what -- I was excommunicated.

So much the better I thought and now calmly moved my armies into Danemark I'm just sorry I went to war with the Russians over their stupid Smolensk, I could have used these armies to lean harder on the Danes...

[Oracle]

The Pope is an early game problem. He c**kblocks (pardon my french) you from expanding your empire early on. But once you got it going, you can manipulate him easy. Just:
1) build cathedrals
2) do missions
3) attack ex-communicated factions only, well mostly anyway
4) shower him with gifts
5) back the right pope-elect
and you'll be fine. And heck, in the end you would have so many priests, all the candidates will be yours.

[Lavastein]

if the pope tells you not to attack tehm, place a large army near your besiged city, if they attack you can defend. If they run, well they ran.

[Fuhrer Euik]

Um. How do you give the pope gifts?

[Trajan]

Um. How do you give the pope gifts?

Make the Papal faction an offer like some money, tribute, map information, etc. and you'll see a button on the left bottom corner of the diplomacy screen that looks like a gift box/present.

[Fuhrer Euik]

Thanks for answer, Trajan.

[Lavastein]

why does everyone give him gifts? I give him the sword and the next pope does what i say.

just do his jobs and he leaves you alone.

[Daveman]

I haven't really had any problems with the Pope whatsoever. Any time I'm attacked by another faction I defend myself and I get a message telling me to cease hostilities. I assume the other faction also "gets" that message, because when they continue to attack me, they get excommunicated. Also, if the Pope tells you to stop fighting for 9 turns or whatever, as soon as that mission is done you can attack again. If you take a settlement before the Pope tells you to cease hostilities that settlement is yours, unlike in the original when the Pope would ask you to return their lands.

[pero]

i didnt have any problems with pope either. Especially when i allied with papacy.
after when the rating dropped pope died and my cardinal got elected for pope. So once again maximum rating with pope again.

[Kaneage]

my second game as spain isnt too bad with the pope, but my 1st game was a nightmare.

As England i attacked scotland and seiged their castle but the very next turn pope told me to stop. Scotland them proceeds to invade my lands so i attack him (remember this is my 1st game) so i get excommunicated. i kill scotland but now denmark attacks Caen un expectedly.

I proceed to whip denmarks ass when France attacks me. Pope now tells me to stop attacking denmark so i oblige and start attacking France. this pisses off Portugal and Spain who are allied with France so they also declare war on me.

all the while the pope tells me to cease hostilities with one of these random nations. i stop attacking that nation and start attacking another. i literally was being attacking from all sides including sea, and the pope was telling me not to fight back...

Then the worst possible thing happened. France, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain were all allied at this point, but now France and Denmark allied the Papacy.

Long story short, lots of war, lots of excommunication, lots of dead popes.