When do you decide to take out the pope or hold him for ransom

In my recent English expert early GA campaign, I have decided to change the path I was on. I was attacking some neighbors and decided to disband my mercs and end my raids to avoid excommunication by the pope.

But I got annoyed when a crusade came through sucking away some of my guys. I am thinking now instead to go back to the year 1129 and stop the crusade coming through Tolouse, 'allowing' the Spanish to attack me and probably bring on an excom. I will reinforce with new mercs who are available, and whip them when they arrive, and then attack the adjacent provinces to clear some adjacent areas of their buildings and raise more cash for my empire.

Now since I have a merc group with a 8 star general currently razing Venice, I will probably swing down to attack the pope and raze his lands! I'm also thinking this will be more profitable and allow me to keep building up my regular army as well as building up my infrastrucutre and my farming and mines.

Currently I have very little trade going on, so I am not worried about losing that income. I know I have seen other threads for dealing with the Pope, but how often is that your main strategy, using excom status as a way to justify razing your nieghbors. In addition, since my neighbors will probably heed the call to oust the heathens (me), I will get a chance to defend and whittle down my neighbors' armies, thus reducing some of my own upkeep through my losses, though I feel this will be more than offset by the victories I achieve.

I know, odd strategy for a GA campaign, but so far it has been working, and I plan to retain Venice as well a foothold near the pope. It unfortunately is cut off from me by rebel held Provance, but I can probably retake this later easily enough.

What do you think? As I mentioned earlier, I have won expert campaigns using little trade, though I know trade income can soar, but it is fickle when you are at war with your neighbors, which seems to be my 'hobby' in this campaign.

You can read about my recent Pope problems in the See Naples and die thread. The problem with taking out the Pope is that when he comes back, he comes back big time. There are usually 3 to 4 stacks in Rome and the Papal States and they are all good tech troops, all be it low valour. Even with a well developed empire they need a lot of resource to get rid of them. What is worse, they keep coming back. My advice, from bitter experience, is don't take them out until near world dominance - a sort of leave them to last approach. If you want to wage war on your catholic numbers either do it quickly or take the excomm. It doesn't last for ever and if well timed with an old King should only be a few years with no time for a crusade to be declared.:2thumbsup:

Thanks to some good advice in the Naples thread, I've come to live quite well with the excomms: As soon as I control Italy (with the exception of the Papal States or some other lone reservoir province for the Pope to starve in) the problem is basically history. I simply keep a high-level assassin in a border province, wage war against whoever I want or defend myself offensively and if I get excommed....well, since the Pope usually has a very low command rating, it's no big fuss: Pope dead, excomm void. Rinse and repeat. As long as he still owns a province his successor will come back next turn. Just take care that the his income is more or less eaten up by his remaining troops to prevent the construction of border forts, clearly the achilles heel of this plan.

To answer your other question: I don't know whether the Pope can be ransomed.... would be interesting to find out, though.

I believe I ransomed a Pope or two while I was playing the Italians a very long time ago. Although I might be mistaken, but I clearly remember capturing him a number of times. I played the game with the intention of seeing how long I could put down his re-emergences.

As an aside, I lost one of the re-emergences, and the Pope decided to roll right over Europe. My Italian lands were conquered and I was sent to the Holy lands which I controlled. Eventually, the Pope got the better of me, and I believed united the world under the Papal Banner.

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Originally Posted by Deus ret.

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To answer your other question: I don't know whether the Pope can be ransomed.... would be interesting to find out, though.

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I'm sure he can be ransomed but you have to catch him first.


:charge: Run little Pope run.:laugh4:

Thanx King Kurt, I read the Naples thread. I feel justified that I last night razed Rome and have invaded the Papal states. The Pope is in the castle now, waiting for my next assault. I have seen a bit of a drain in the coffers as I have 2 mercernary armies (rather than 1 in the previous version of this campaign) to support, but the Aragonese and the Spanish are 'loving':laugh4: are encounters. Th Spanish seem to be moving some stacks towards me, though they did tentaively offer a cease fire, which I turned down:laugh4: as I plan to raze a few more of their provinces (the last razing filled my coffers:2thumbsup: , not as high as when I alternatively had attacked the Hungarians and the Polish, but still not bad).

I was a bit surprised to see the Sicilians seem to have expired as the Byz have moved into the areas south of the pope. They could be 'helpful' after I weaken the Pope more with ransom or death in the future. I might hire more mercs to bring to bear to take Milan or Provance (to connect Venice to my empire). Also might still strike out at the Hungarians and the Polish if I haven't decided to build up my fleets by then. Of course my troops ravaging the Spanish may also reunite with my Pope ridding army, which is a bit depleted now after taking casualties and leaving some troops behind to defend Venice until I build up reinforcements.

As to assasinating the Pope, I don't even have assasins yet, so that would have to wait. I think after he comes back, I will settle down and be peaceful again.

If you feel the urge to fight the pope, catch him if you can. He'll always pay his ransom if he has a province to be returned to (unlike other factions who may not if they have an heir), and is worth big money, plus he's such a poor general it's easy to defeat him again. He will return if his faction is eliminated, but your excom will be ended, nobody will be able to start those annoying crusades to traverse your lands, and if you abandon Italy afterwards then when he comes back it's somebody else's problem. Also, fighting his ever more powerful reemergence armies can be a good challenge if you're getting bored.

If you'd rather not deal with the complications of papal reemergence, then as stated there are plenty of other ways to deal with the pope, such as assassination (or even inquisition if you've got a great inquisitor and the Pope's a heathen himself), using warnings to your advantage, or waiting for Pope or king to die.

Ajax

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Originally Posted by ajaxfetish

If you feel the urge to fight the pope, catch him if you can. He'll always pay his ransom if he has a province to be returned to (unlike other factions who may not if they have an heir), and is worth big money, plus he's such a poor general it's easy to defeat him again. He will return if his faction is eliminated, but your excom will be ended, nobody will be able to start those annoying crusades to traverse your lands, and if you abandon Italy afterwards then when he comes back it's somebody else's problem. Also, fighting his ever more powerful reemergence armies can be a good challenge if you're getting bored.

If you'd rather not deal with the complications of papal reemergence, then as stated there are plenty of other ways to deal with the pope, such as assassination (or even inquisition if you've got a great inquisitor and the Pope's a heathen himself), using warnings to your advantage, or waiting for Pope or king to die.

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Agreed.

Ah, the pope. I´m currently having a blast fighting him, he´s one of the three superpowers in my current game as the Castille-Leonese. The others are me (obviously) and the Crusader Kingdom. The HRE, Sweden, England, Poland and Scottland still exist, but barely so.
I can´t remember ever having seen the pope expand like this, he´s got all of Italy, a good part of Germany and the whole of Poland (the Polish have moved to France). Of course, that makes dealing with him more difficult than usual, you can´t kill off Papacy by killing the pope often enough, in that respect he´s the same as the HRE, you have to conquer all of his provinces. And so I shall :skull:

Ah, I ran into troubles (see my English strategy thread) with my 3 merc armies running wild (on my bank account) and the problem with loyalty dropping in Wales and Mercia after being excommed. I'm wondering, does stopping a crusade automatically get you excommed (repeat q in another thread)?


Anyway, if you can catch him the money is good, though he is a slippery customer.

I´m not sure about that excom question of yours, I think it depends on the mode you´re playing (GA or Conquest). If the former, stopping a crusade en route to a GA province is excommunication. The other instances I´m not sure about, but the Frog Goddess :bow: wrote something about it in the Beginners Guide. So I suggest to take a look there.

Refusing to allow a Crusade to pass through your lands will always get you ex-communicated automatically, whether you're playing GA mode or Domination. (Do not pass Go; do not collect $200.00. ~;) )

In Frogbeast's manuel, attacking or refusing GA crusades that are not GA goals don't automatically get you excommed.

I've never refused a crusade without getting instantly excommed, regardless of where it's going (and I usually play GA mode), even if the Pope's my ally (I've had him excommunicate me but break his alliance with the crusading faction since the two of us went to war).

I try to move my important troops out of a crusade's path and then let it through, but sometimes I don't have that option and the excommunication is less damaging than the crusaders would be. Very annoying if I'm trying to be a good Catholic and my neighbors insist on sending crusades through my lands over and over.

Ajax

Maybe the manual needs to be updated, though we'll need a new volunteer. In my current campaign, I lucked out as the Spanish decided to crusdae by sea, thus sparing me a battle.

On Crusades: It is odd how a Crusade is let through on a given territory or not.

Catholics can always let through (except if excommed), sometimes Orthodox, too, and if your territory is the target you will be attacked on the first encounter.

But sometimes pagans and orthodox are attacked and sometimes they can let through the Crusade. E.g. the Mongols (GH) in my game has an English Crusade sitting in Kazar, but the Crusade is not occupying the province because the Mongols are not in the Castle being besieged and the color the territory is not red.

So my q: what decides?

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Originally Posted by bretwalda

On Crusades: It is odd how a Crusade is let through on a given territory or not.

Catholics can always let through (except if excommed), sometimes Orthodox, too, and if your territory is the target you will be attacked on the first encounter.

But sometimes pagans and orthodox are attacked and sometimes they can let through the Crusade. E.g. the Mongols (GH) in my game has an English Crusade sitting in Kazar, but the Crusade is not occupying the province because the Mongols are not in the Castle being besieged and the color the territory is not red.

So my q: what decides?

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I think it works like this:

1) A crusade passing through any Muslim lands counts as an instant attack. Whenever I've played as the Turks, I've often been faced with a crusade aimed not at one of my provinces, but at the Almohads (often Morocco). When they enter my province, e.g, Anatolia, it is a declaration of war. I don't have the option let them pass nor do they ask for it.

2) With regard to Christians you always have the option to let them pass or deny them passage (unless subject to excommunication). If you deny it you are at war, and ex communicated instantly. If you allow, it that crusade can pass through your provinces and use your shipping network, sucking up your troops in the process (depending on the provincial zeal).

3) For Orthodox it's the same as with christians, unless the Orthodox faction itself is the crusade target, though the crusade may also loot the orthodox provinces it passes through. I think they are likely to deny you entry if you are at war with them.

4) Pagan is the same as Christian though the Pagans seem to be more likely to deny you permission to pass through their provinces. Especially if you're at war with them.

Rebels are often known to give up the province peacefully to Jihads and Cruisades.

Any corrections, anything more to add appreciated.