Demanding Cardinal votes.

I'm curious about this. I've tried two ways of demanding votes.

A.) I've tried selecting 'Demand Votes' and then clicking 'Make offer' with nothing else offered to see if they would counter-offer.

This has never been accepted.

2.) I have tried 'demand votes' AND 'offer single payment' of varying amounts of Florins.

This also has never been accepted.

And by 'not accepted' I mean firmly not accepted.

The offer always reads as 'very demanding' no matter what else I offer with it. Even when I've offered Trade rights, alliance, map info and single payment.

The one time I had a Cardinal elected Pope, I canvassed for votes and was firmly rejected all 'round only to find myself with a Pope at the end.

Has anyone successfully racked up Cardinal votes using the 'Demand Votes' interface and if so, what have you had to offer?

I never have. What I've always done is wound up voting on my own, and everyone who likes me votes the same way, or else I stacked the College of Cardinals to the point where it didn't matter what everyone else voted.

I've been cheating around to see what happpens. I created a super assassin to kill the pope as Venice...on medium you can buy a vote for roughly 10,000 florins. Not sure on other difficulties

Sometimes (in all diplomatic negotiations with the AI) I find it effective to offer a single payment with an open-ended demand field (e.g. What will you give me for £xxxx?). This can trigger all sorts of interesting requests, & never rubs them up the wrong way.

In the beginning of my English campaign I offered Milenese (who had 2 cardinals) a regular tribute of about 5000 florins (don't remember for how long, probably 5 turns) and they accepted. I was not so succesful in bribing other factions, but Polish voted for my cardinal nonetheless, so he was elected Pope.

If you're allied with them, I think they'll also go along with you. Buying votes and such is just too expensive, and not to mention annoying.

All i do for a papal election is make sure that those with casting votes like me. Just give them enough money over enough turns to get your rating up to near maximum with them and they will vote for you. I've only lost one election so far this campaign and that was to the French who were popular with all of my enemies. :inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by HughTower

Sometimes (in all diplomatic negotiations with the AI) I find it effective to offer a single payment with an open-ended demand field (e.g. What will you give me for £xxxx?). This can trigger all sorts of interesting requests, & never rubs them up the wrong way.

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Now THAT is a cracker-jack idea! And one that I must try!

I had just assumed leaving the field blank would mean "We'll offer you 0." and would really honk them off.

That is an intriguing idea. "What would you give me for 5000 fl?"

I once tried buying papal votes from an ally (before I knew they'd vote for you unless they had their own candidate) and as a result they broke the alliance. :dizzy2: But they voted for me anyway.

I have found that simply donating small sums of money or perhaps a map move their hearts towards the most holy holy and worthy of the candidates, namely one of my Cardinals. Strictly speaking it might simply be because I have a good number of priests, provinces and churches, as well as avoiding war with Catholic neighbours and maintaining good relations with the Papal States, but I think some small gift helps. I usually play on the hard or very hard campaign level. Demanding votes with money of any amount in return always seems to be indicated as likely to make a bad deal, so I never tried it.