Too easy to get the Papacy?

[Germanicus75]

Playing the Spaniards on Hard and have had one of my cards elected last 3 times to Pope. Can then use him to manipulate my political, strategic and diplomatic ends by declaring Crusades on the Moors!

Anyone think it's too easy to get your man as Pope after a while? Basically start the campaign by building lots of priests and then build as many religious buildings - including theologians guilds - as you can. After a number of turns your guys will be up in the running for the Papacy again and again, and will win most times, since there is only 3 contenders each time.

Another question about the Pope - how does the game decide which cities the Pope will have as a choice of destination for Crusade? I wanted to declare a Crusade on a Moorish city - who were my enemies and a sworn infidel - while the Pope was under my control but there was no Moorish city as a Crusade object. Only a bunch of cities of other factions. Surely the Pope would see a Moslem faction and an enemy of his native faction as a potential target for a Crusade? Thanks.

[munrock]

I think there are a few things that affect the Pope's 'to do' list:

Historical / Biblical significance of the city
Owning Faction's relations with the Pontiff
If it's political rather than biblical: Value of the settlement
Proximity to Rome

Also I reckon the Pope's traits affect the weightings of the different criteria. We'll see when we can unpack.

When it comes to getting your Cardinal voted in, I agree with it being too easy. VH with Scotland and I have 7/13, which beats my previous record of 6 with Spain. Some tips:

Build up one city as a religious center... no brothels. Getting it up to a Cathedral level city will mean you can train from it Priests with piety bonuses. Whether you choose to build churches up in other cities is down to finance and strategy, but every priest available should be trained from the religious city.

As a side, If you have a general with lots of kids about to grow up should consider moving him to your religious city to raise them - even if it means an early retirement of sorts and especially with HRE. When the kids come of age their piety will be higher.

[Darkiemond]

I=....Build up one city as a religious center... no brothels....

It seems logical, but I just wanna confirm that having no brothel will infact raise the piety of your priests.
Also, just wanted to ask what triggers theologians guild? I am pretty sure someone somewhere posted triggers for guilds, but I couldn't find it. May be someone could direct me please...

[Lord Phoenix]

I figured out how to make a Cardinal Mill pretty easily without any Theologians Guilds. Take a place near Muslim lands, you can actually take Arguin on western Africa at the start of the game if you walk there as you can clear away the black space down there and walk along the narrow band of wilderness all the way to it. Helps to be at war or allied with the Moors with military access. Any place near the Muslims will do, but they never seem to realize they can attack Arguin. Then, start pumping priests out of the city you take and sending them to muslim lands. They're piety raises pretty quickly, by the time you convert a muslim land by 50% or so you'll have nearly full piety.

Then, if you've converted the surrounding lands up, you can either take them over and start again, or back off and let them reconvert to Muslim and start over again. Doing this, I had every cardinal position being priests in my faction except one or two Cardinals.

Also, make sure you have a priest with high piety before you destroy a faction with a cardinal or assassinate their cardinal as it will usually pick your priest.

[Germanicus75]

Thanks for the tips and info, explains a good deal :-)

[James]

I agree... I think it's a bit easy... almost exploit.

I found theologians guild is the key, seems easy to get early game with enough priests being recruited in one city. Other religious buildings help, but take longer and more expensive to build up. Not sure if there is an effect re brothels... maybe less likely to get "choir boys" unothodox trait... just joking.

In my Spain VH/VH campaign, I had a spanish pope for the entire campaign except the bit at the beginning. I had 9 cardinals near the end until I got bored of the campaign. In my current HRE VH/VH, it's taken me a bit longer, but by about turn 60 I now have an HRE pope... with 4 cardinals... and increasing now... should have an HRE pope for the remainder of the campaign.

I'm not sure how to have a nice balance so I don't "abuse" religion. Everytime I start dominating pope position, game's pretty much over. At least it lasts a bit, I refrain from using mercs and try not to blitzkrieg to keep the game interesting, but those are easier house rules to follow. Can't ignore religion or else you're at a major handicap, but easy to dominate game feature.

Think will have to try Turks next... probably less of a religious position to "exploit".

[CynicalMagician]

Yeah it's pretty easy to get high level priests no matter who you're playing as. Just mass produce 8 or 9 priests from the border closest to non-catholic land and then send them over en masse. Priests go up in rank fast when they're converting 0% catholic land. If you do this at the start of the game and rush your priests to the nearest infidel land you'll have 3 or 4 cardinals by the time the first papal election rolls around, and 8 or 9 cardinals by the time the 2nd election occurs.

I had one guy that was 9/10 by the time he was 29. He singlehandedly converted Thessalonica and is now on the road to popedom.

[munrock]

I dont' know for certain that not building brothels helps raise priestly piety because I can't see the game code. But I have empirical evidence from using the technique in the previous three campaigns. And I really doubt that building specialised cities could be considered an exploit. The fact that some building trees have negative effects is a good addition to the game.

[chaostheory]

Despite you can get your pope in at most of time, sometimes your pope does turn on you. I have to kill my own pope in my Spain campaign cus he kept asking me to ceasefire with England + Scotland + Milan who I was at war with.....

as a result, I whacked his ass with a Max lvl assassin and elect a French pope (French was my ally at the time also at war with England...LOL)

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I can't see why they didn't make the pope dislike you more and make your cardinals almost unelectable with increasing difficulty.

It seems the way it is at present you just don't need to do anything to have a fleet of eligible cardinals and as soon as the first one dies your cardinals will almost always get elected to pope, one after the other without any serious effort required by the player.

[Darkiemond]

Yea, it is pretty easy to get cardinals elected. Besides if you wanna speed things up you can assassinate other cardinals.

I found a way to get high level priests even faster:
Once I landed on one of the mideteranian rebel islands and noticed that there are 3 heretics there already. So I decided not to capture it, but to use as a heretic breeding/priest training facility. I'd send my priests to convert heretics which allows them to lev up really fast, and I never converted the highest level 7 heretic. So when I ran out of heretics to convert, I'd send a level 1 priest to the high level heretic and my priest would be converted to heresy.

Even though that approach is faster it takes much more management time then just sending priest to muslim lands.

[Machinator]

no brothels

SACRELIEGE!

[SPARTAN VI]

Found that by sending my priests around to provinces with 0% catholicism, it was pretty much guaranteed that they'd become a cardinal. I used my assassins to kill off enemy cardinals and kill off the popes. Eventually, they had no other choice but to elect my cardinal as pope. I had a 36 year old pope! Once you control the papacy, and you have a bunch of seats open, it's just a matter of time before all the cardinals belong to your faction.