The Pope is p****** me off !

I just started MTW2 and I'm loving it as musch as I loved RTW ( which is saying a lot. I almost got divorced because of RTW ....something about neglect, etc ) ...but WHY, OH WHY does the Pope keep threatening to excommunicate me because I fight back when the other Catholic nations ( France, Scotlane, etc ) attack ME ???!!! I'm playing as England and I didn't start any of the beefs but I keep getting attacked just standing there trying to make a living. I'm not going to stand there and take it but how do I keep His Holiness off my back and not go straight hell ? ...little help from the TW gurus please.
BFD211

Cause it's bad AI. Just send a diplomat to Rome and have them feed the Papacy some coin every time you do something naughty. 1000 every three turns or so usually gets them all lovey with you.

1. Make alliance with the pope before you go to war with anyone
2. Give him bribes of 10K to improve your relationship
3. Build churchs everywhere
4. Try to get high piety priests, might be a problem for England
5. If you're playing on VH, expect it to happen and deal with it.

When dealing with papa, you need to understand a few things.
First, how much he likes or dislikes you to start is related to the campaign difficulty. The harder the game, the more florins you will have to give him on a regular basis.
Second, if you have troops one someone elses territory, they can attack your troops without iritating Papa. Likewise enemy troops on your lands are free game.
Third, If you get a message warning you that Papa is going to kick you out of the faith, only take it seriously if you are NOT in good standings with the pope (read a lot of crosses on your pope-o-meter)

In general, I try to make sure that I can move to, and then siege, several cities all on the same turn. If this gets the pope mad, I go ahead and storm them all the next turn then pay off the pope to be my friend again. This works best if you've been able to ally with the pope.

I usually play Hard/Hard. I find that long term tribute of 100 - 200 /turn to the Pope tends to keep him happy even if I haven't been able to get him to ally with me or give me military access. I just keep one diplomat near Rome to update the tribute every 10 years or so.

SG

Ignore him.
I usually play as the English, and build no monasteries churches or priests whatsoever. This diminishes the Popes influence in my armies. He can excommunicate me if he wants, no big deal. My armies stay loyal.
Eventually you can have two strategies: capture and fortify Rome and have some huge sieges every few years as the Pope in Exile tries to take back his castle, or leave the Rome and Papal States to last, conquer everywhere else, then go back to the Pope and announce: "Oh Yeah? You and whose army?"

Yes, his highness the Pope does enjoy a few florins from time to time :yes:

Here's a screenshot from my latest campaign.

I'm playing Russia as a big friendly bear in a VH/VH world (vanilla 1.3), emphasis is on max reputation through political finessed alliances, I'll do a post on it soon, but here's a taster :clown:


https://i207.photobucket.com/albums/...ussia_Pope.jpg

If the Pope continues to unfairly judge you I have a sure fire way to deal with him.

1) Kill Pope.
2) Success!

If you haven't the money to waste on bribes and don't want to mess around with diplomacy and other things then it's best to just take him out. :2thumbsup:

Maybe you should stop blitzing the map... :rolleyes:

The Pope should/could be you best friend/asset. Nothing is better than pimping your target faction getting it to attack you repeatedly, having the Pope excommunicate it, getting the Pope to call a crusade against one of it's central cities, you capturing a couple of cities on the way to the crusade target city and then getting paid by the Pope for capturing it and getting all the free promotions plus plunder. This is even easier on the higher levels because the AI is so much more aggressive. It really seems to be close to an exploit. I love it! Every once in a while I assassinate my own Pope just to reelect another of my men and get higher up on the Pope-o-meter.

The pope seems to only give a couple of excommunication warnings at a time. So once you get a decent empire going, they merely slow you down. They don't stop you.

On the french game I've just finished I was constantly under a couple of excommunication warnings. So I just played defensive on those fronts for a few turns and advanced elsewhere. As soon as the warning finished I'd immediately grab a couple of cities, get another warning and go back to being defensive.

I tried bribing the pope. But I was fighting so many battles that 1000 a turn didn't seem enough and he still hated me. So I just let him hate me and obeyed the letter (but not the spirit!) of every command he gave me.

Still - I was playing on M/M where the computer is ridiculously passive, so defending is easy. May be different on higher difficulties. I've just started a Milan game on H/H, so perhaps I'll find out!

Thanks !! ....I'm off to the vatican.

It is far easier to expand on VH because the AI is insanely aggressive. All you have to do is send some weak worthless ship near one of its and the AI will take the bait, usually within 3 turns if not immediately. You can get a faction excommunicated even if it has perfect relations often within 10 turns by repeatedly getting the Pope to warn your victim. But it also helps to be giving 100 or 200 a turn just to let him know that you still care about him.