The Pope as an Ally

I've been gifting the Pope alot of land lately and everything is peachy between us. One thing I did notice was that the Pope's empire is becoming quite large. He is currently an ally of mine and I am giving him tons of money to keep him out of bankruptcy.

The question that I have is has anyone been attacked by the Pope as a Catholic faction without getting excommed? I have been giving him pretty teched up cities and now wonder if that will come back and bite me in the butt real soon. I don't gift land to anyone else but him and he now has a bigger population than I do. I am in turtle mode for the time being and would like to finish my current campaign without getting rid of the Pope if at all possible. But not if he gets too big of a head you know. He lets me do whatever I want so I hope it doesn't become an issue. If he does attack me, it will take some time to wipe him out though.

Pope as an ally? Ha! I even made him pay a 15 turn tribute for begging for my friendship! :laugh4:

Haven't seen him attack any Catholic faction - only when prompted into war by a ruse ally that charges another fleet parked near his... :eyebrows:

I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think the Pope's AI disables him from attacking non-excommuniacted catholics. I've never had it happen before, anyways. If it were possible for him at all, he would attack sooner in the campaign, like the other factions, as I doubt that there's a trigger telling factions that they are strong enough to declare war. The only two possibilities for the papacy to wage war on fellow catholics is being attacked by another faction (Sicily most of my games) or joining a crusade against an excommunicated faction.

So, as long as you don't attack him first or have a crusade called against you, I'm pretty sure the pope will leave you alone.

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Haven't seen him attack any Catholic faction - only when prompted into war by a ruse ally that charges another fleet parked near his...

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Ah, that's another possibility I hadn't thought of before. Nice!

The Pope is reliable as an ally if you stay on his good side. I've never seen him out and out attack another non-excommunicated Christian faction before. If you're clever then you can use land gifts to your advantage. Example: if you're France and you give the Papal States Genoa and Milan, you're pretty much safe from attack by way of Italy, because the Pope won't attack you and no other faction will attack through his lands to get to yours.

I also have never seen an un-excommunicated catholic faction attacked by the pope.

But it does raise and interesting problem.

If the pope did attack he would have to send himself a warning. If he ignored the warning he would have to excommunicate himself.

He would then be bombarded with requests from all the other catholic factions (lets face it, who wouldn’t want to have a go at the pope) for a crusade against Rome.
The mind boggles

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Originally Posted by Sentinel

If the pope did attack he would have to send himself a warning. If he ignored the warning he would have to excommunicate himself.

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then he has to approve or disapprove the crusade requested against him. :laugh4:

Well, in my first campaign as English, the Pope excommed the French then call crusade against the French in Toulouse and took the castle before I could join the crusade.

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Originally Posted by Sentinel

I also have never seen an un-excommunicated catholic faction attacked by the pope.

But it does raise and interesting problem.

If the pope did attack he would have to send himself a warning. If he ignored the warning he would have to excommunicate himself.

He would then be bombarded with requests from all the other catholic factions (lets face it, who wouldn’t want to have a go at the pope) for a crusade against Rome.
The mind boggles

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at this point the machine would slow to a halt, your room would come crashing apart, god would bring out his big finger for disapproval, and poke you in the eye.

Yeah, I've also only seen him attack excommunicated factions too. That and muslim factions. Be careful about gifting him land. He can grow his own empire if given the ability and chance. That may or may not be a problem to you.

He does attack catholics.

In my venetian migration game (entire forces landed in teh holy land around turn 5) he wiped out the milanese strongholds in italy. Not sure who attacked who though

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Originally Posted by sapi

He does attack catholics.

In my venetian migration game (entire forces landed in teh holy land around turn 5) he wiped out the milanese strongholds in italy. Not sure who attacked who though

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Interesting. In my game, Milan took Rome and I had to get it back for his Popeness. Needless to say, Milan was excommed and the crusade called on Rome netted me about 100 units with better EXP:laugh4:

It is quite funny watching the Pope travelling all over the place. I gave him Nottingham once and he set up camp there for a long long time.