XL guide: the Papacy

First some info you need to know when playing with this unusual faction:

1. Although you play as the papacy, you’re not the pope. So you can’t grant catholic factions money (it won’t go from your treasury either), you can’t excommunicate other factions and you can’t ask for crusades against factions.
You are however in control of the papacy which means that you yourself can’t be excommunicated and catholic factions that fight you will be automatically excommunicated. In other words, this is a loophole in the ‘you-can’t-excommunicate-other-factions’-rule. Use this information at your own discretion.

2. You’re faction leader has sworn an oath of celibacy. So how virile he might be, he won’t give you legitimate heirs and princesses. Once your faction leader dies, your best general will take his place.
This spells disaster for your faction as this will drain you of any decent general (kings die of old age generals live until something cold and shiny pierces them). So make the most of those average to good generals you’ll get (by chance or bribe) and let them command as much as you can because they won’t be there for more than a few decades.

The most interesting moves I did with the Papacy was to attack the Almos, and then backstab Castile and swallow the Iberian pen. And use those Inquistors/Cardinals...spies are also useful.

At that point, I finished off Scicily/Genoa and had almost all of Italy under my boot..:P

I was pretty hated, but hey, I am the Papacy after all..:P

Bribery can also be very effective.

Probably old news, but I just noticed; all factions can train Swiss halberdiers in The Papal States and Rome. This gives the Pope an advantage at the start, giving him heavy, multypurpose infantry.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peasant Phill

...(kings die of old age generals live until something cold and shiny pierces them).

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This is incorrect. In my last XL game as the English I regularly had generals dying of old age.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gapinglotus

This is incorrect. In my last XL game as the English I regularly had generals dying of old age.

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This is correct. (I suspect Phil may have been thinking of vanilla MTW, in which generals always live forever -- it wasn't until Viking Invasion came out that generals were finally made mortal.)

Still, generals dying in MTW/VI doesn't matter a whole lot, as their "successor" will have the same abilities (command, dread, etc.) and vices/virtues as the guy who just died. You can, however, change this if you play with the "green generals" code.

When I played the Papacy I took Naples and bribed the Maltese quickly, then I trained an Inquisitor and had him try the generals of one of my not-so-great and religious units of soldiers; he is now level 5 and it's only 1170 as well, I've only been attacked by the Sicilians thus far.