Respawning Papacy

I am currently in the midst of a campaign as the Polish. The Almos swept through the Italian peninsula early in the 1200s and installed their puppet pope on the throne. In the 75 or so years since then, the pope has respawned maybe half a dozen times. It seems that when the AI has another faction take over the Papacy, he does not re-spawn nearly as often. When I take over the Papacy early, he seems to come back every 3-4 years, not every 10. This happens when I play Catholic or Muslim faction. I can send an Imam into Rome & the Papal States and make it 95% Muslim and he still respawns all the time. Likewise, even though I have sent cardinals & bishops to Rome & the Papal States to keep it over 50% Catholic, the Pope rarely respawns.

It depends on how many troops are in the province too. If you have a lot in the provinces of former factions, like 600-700, the faction is much less likely to spawn on the lower difficulty ones. On higher difficulty I've found that the returning faction's force just tends to be larger, so it depends on what difficulty your on. I tend to just leave the papacy alone until the latter parts of the game, along w/ the rebellious provinces like Scotland and Portugal.

I usually try to finish up by invading Rome & the Papal States as my last move, or moves.

However, once as the Italians, I got so upset at how many crusades just seemed to end up passing through my very high zeal lands and sucking up my high quality gold armor troops (and sometimes gold metalsmith from Tuscany) that I just wiped out the Pope. And, the crusades always seemed to divert to my high quality troop lands - Wessex to Flanders to Milan to Serbia (my province) However, every few years, he would come back - even if I had 1,200 troops in the province - with waves of Royal, Feudal & Chivalric Knights. Luckily, Pavise Arbs make quick work of them. But, it gets boring to do repeatedly.

Same thing happened when I was the Turks one time. But, JHI make quick work of mounted troops. But, again, it got boring.

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]I usually try to finish up by invading Rome & the Papal States as my last move, or moves.

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Exactly, the Pope cannot be held out of the game.

If you manage to beat him back and wipe him out he will come back with a rebellion, and if you should win the battle and send him back in exile... he will be back next time with more and more men

During my first muslim faction game (the Almohads) I held onto the Papal States and Rome for ages when suddenly the Pope returns... I beat him back and laugh at his attempts to overthrow me, then he's back again a few years later (after about five years) with a much larger force of better troops. I beat him back again but take heavy losses, then before I know it he's back yet again with an even larger army than before and my previous losses still have yet to be replenished

Soon enough I learned my lesson, fighting the Pope and keeping him off the map is a war of attrition, and a very costly one that he will win in the end...

The Pope doesn't have to worry about production costs and training his men up, he gets them every time out of thin air We however do have to worry about such things, and its much easier to just weaken him down to the point where you can crush him like an ant... and leave him there as a solitary voice in the darkness.

The Pope is the eight ball of the game, the last one down