the pope asked me to cease

[Postino]

playing as italy, the pope excommunicates me cause i had to isolate the pirates(sicily). i crush him and hold his 2 provinces, and retreat leaving 1 spear, 1 fmaa, and 1 sailor on each.
pope comes back with a TON of feudal knights, feudal spears, royal knights and some archers. 3 stacks.

i flee both that territory and the papal states, and hike up the tax rate on it, hoping the pope will just take back his stuff and give me time get money and bribe his large armies. after 10 years, the papal states is still mine at 100% loyalty with very high taxes, and the pope hasnt touched it. the pope has lead small attacks repeatedly on naples and "the shin" of italy. he withers himself down to a motley crew and sits where he is for another 50 years. never even looking at the papal states. he should be out of debt from the huge army by now, but he still does nothing. fool pope.

[NateEngle]

As close as I can tell there's no limit to the number of times the Pope will respawn. Every other power can be spanked into submission, but not the papacy.

Further, it doesn't seem to me that high loyalty or garrisons make any difference to the respawn, although if you're determined and keep a good enough army in Rome then you can have a good chance to treat the respawning army like a Bozo punching clown. Just bear in mind that every time you swat it down it's going to come back up sooner or later.

Fortunately excommunication is survivable. I was surprised in a game a couple weeks ago that I was able to hold together under excom for upwards of 25 years. If you play a mainly defensive game and aren't trying to hold down a bunch of recently-conquered Catholic provinces you'll never notice the difference. And even if you're playing the rapid conquest route, I found it quite refreshing to have time to go on hammering the French and whoever else got in my way. Besides, if you've got heirs and a king you can afford to lose, you can always get out by arranging for your own king to have an accident.

[A.Saturnus]

Got the impression that the Pope gets stronger every time he comes again. Have Rome in my HRE-campaign and he respawns every 5-10 years. Well, it provides me with cool high-level battles http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[Qilue]

One thing you can do with the Pope. (this can be defined as cheese.)

Invade Rome and Papal States, trash all the buildings in Rome, set the tax rate to max and then leave (keep Papal States). Usually a rather impressive rebel army appears and takes the province from you. Then, when 'His Holiness The Pest' decides to make a comback, the rebels can usually wipe him out a few times before he succeeds with your army eradicating any forces that appear in the Papal States.

This works no matter what religion your playing.


Funny story time.

One game as Egypt, I had taken control of the eastern Med along with northern Italy with the Elmos having taken the western Med and southern Italy with the Pope all alone in Rome (ooh, a rhyme). Then on successive turns, the pope calls for a crusade against me and then against the Elmos. I invaded coincidently on the same turn the Elmos did and there was the pope with 1/2 a unit of spearmen, 2 units of archers and some peasants looking across a battlefield at two moslenm armies.

My mamluks got to him first. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[insolent1]

In my latest Turkish campaign I use Rome as my Heir training ground. I just keep 2 armies there & 2 heirs they started off rank 3 & 4 now they r rank 6 & 7 with some good vices for once http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif . I don't think the pope likes Janissaries http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif