Cardinal Promotion / Pope Mechanics

For some reason, I was under the impression that the college of cardinals always stayed packed, or near packed.

On an English Campaign right now (H/H) About sixty turns in, my choice for pope has come up.. and the reason being is that I had four cardinals and there was only ONE other one, from Scicilly (And I murdered him shortly thereafter)

So now there were three English cardinals and one English pope.

Noone got promoted, and for most of the game, the entire thing remained empty when people died.

Are people inelligble for promotion if their piety is too low? Meaning, if there was only twenty or so priests in the world and each had a piety below three, would none get promoted?


On a related note, that pope then refused any alliance with me and seemed completely against any kind of negotiation. I wish I could have exposed them; the cardinal that got elected was actually 'Secretly Female'.

Female pope, FTW.

From the manual:

"-The College of Cardinals does not have to have all thirteen seats filled. if there are not enough Catholic priests in the game of sufficient piety, there will be fewer Cardinals."

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Originally Posted by Scipio Africano

From the manual:

"-The College of Cardinals does not have to have all thirteen seats filled. if there are not enough Catholic priests in the game of sufficient piety, there will be fewer Cardinals."

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Must have missed it.

Seems to make sense; although I must admit, putting a pope from your faction into power seems.. useless. :\

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Originally Posted by Scipio Africano

From the manual:

"-The College of Cardinals does not have to have all thirteen seats filled. if there are not enough Catholic priests in the game of sufficient piety, there will be fewer Cardinals."

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And what is a sufficient level of piety to be eligible for cardinalship?

I think it's around 5.

The college of cardinals does stay packed but there has to be eligible priests to be promoted. From what I've noticed a priest is promoted to a cardinal if there's a lot of seats open at 4-6 peity rating depending on your current relations to the pope. If there's only one spot open though and there's more then one possible cannidate its whomever has the highest piety combined with whoever has the highest relation to the pope from what I've seen.

For a preferat it's the 3 with the highest piety, also I've noticed its only 1 per faction. Currently in my game as the english there's only 6 cardinals and a full 7 seats open. While only I and hungary have cardinals (3 each). Granted that may have alot to do with the ultra violent english pope who upon being elected excommunicated 2 factions the next turn, and then went and excommunicated 3 more the turn after that. Puppet popes are awsome.~:pimp:

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Originally Posted by BigTex

Puppet popes are awsome.~:pimp:

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When I got a pope in, my pope-o-meter shot to max, but I couldn't even secure an aliance or trade with the actual faction.

What the heck?

Anyways, whats the real point? Does it make you nigh-invulnerable to excommunication? Aside from that, I don't see anything else (although, that is a great benefit .. :) )

I ended up patting myself on the back for getting 3 cardinals in then Germany had to top me by getting 5 cardinals in the seat, its always been full in my campains especialy when I got pissed and besiged Rome. Those 3 votes in the Papal Elections helped get the Pope back on my side and launched a Crusade to Jeruselum and captured it.

It seems that alliances with the papal states are not possible. The pope was my former protege, a full stack of Rebels was lingering near Rome and Sicily had their eyes on Rome but the pope didn't want to have anything to with me.

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Originally Posted by Barny Bangs

It seems that alliances with the papal states are not possible. The pope was my former protege, a full stack of Rebels was lingering near Rome and Sicily had their eyes on Rome but the pope didn't want to have anything to with me.

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Au contraire, mon pote, I've got a very nice going on alliance with the Pope. His Holliness even payed me for it some 2000 FLO. And he wasn't my ex-cardinal, this one came after.

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Originally Posted by OMGLAZERS

Must have missed it.

Seems to make sense; although I must admit, putting a pope from your faction into power seems.. useless. :\\

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I disagree, while having a Pope from your faction does not give you the ability to conquer all of Christendom anytime you want, it does have noticable benefits. The benefits may not all occur for each particular player in each particular game, but you will see some of them if you pay attention. Benefits that I have noticed:

1) Increased Papal standing for your faction.
2) Decreased Papal standing for factions you are at war with.
3) Decreased number of heresy trials for your faction.
4) Greater leniancy towards your faction\'s bad behavior (e.g. longer delay before the Pope demands you stop attacking someone else and decreased penalty for continuing to attack anyway).
5) Decreased hostile takeovers by Papal merchants.
6) Increased likelihood that the Pope will agree to your request for a Crusade.

This does not mean that you cannot piss the Pope off. If you continue doing things he does not like or otherwise act in a non-Catholic fashion, your standing will still drop and eventually you will be treated just as bad as you would be with any other Papal nationality.

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Originally Posted by Vlad Tzepes

Au contraire, mon pote, I've got a very nice going on alliance with the Pope. His Holliness even payed me for it some 2000 FLO. And he wasn't my ex-cardinal, this one came after.

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I'm allied to the Papal States as well. It took a while though, even to get trade rights, so much so that I began to wonder if there are two separate diplomatic systems in play: the Pope's approval of your faction on the basis of your actions in your own land (e.g. building cathedrals or trying heretics), and a separate (perhaps related) system which governs direct diplomacy with the Papal States. If this is right, in order to get an alliance (or favourable treaties) with the Papal States, you need to manage them as any other nation, independent of how their faction leader views you at that time. Of course, the Pope may just be picky...