Diplomacy idea..

Well back in MTW, excommunication was a big thing. Here in MTW2, it isn't nearly as important. Most people can just shrug it off, and keep up their merry conquering.

So I'm thinking that maybe make the Pope more "proactive" in his excommunication threats when two catholic factions attack. Maybe even declerations of war should hurt papal rating. Excommunication should lead towards any catholic nations with a desire to start war declaring and joining a crusade against you.

Then, program the AI around desiring good papal relations. This way, the catholic factions only attack under extreme circumstances, and honor alliances as long as the player's papal rating is good.

What do you think? Maybe some factions, not all, could be programmed to be more responsive to the pope, such as in the above manner.

I suspect it might limit the conquest and expansion of Catholic factions too much, compared to the non-Catholic factions. In theory, they're already somewhat limited by the threat of angering the Pope. However, the game is still based on territorial expansion, so there can't be too many limits on aggression without unbalancing the game... for example, forcing the Catholics to only expand in the direction of non-Catholic neighbors.

Ideally (IMO), all factions should have a more-or-less equal chance to conquer the world; or at least their corner of it. I like the way the Pope adds a bit of historical flavor and atmosphere to the game, but I think that's really all it's intended to be... not something that alters the basic "conquer your neighbor", dog-eat-dog premise of the game.

Well, that's my $.02 anyway. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing an "Extreme Catholic" mod for the game, that would give the Pope more power, and make the Catholic factions even more challenging to play. But I don't think the vanilla game should work that way, since (I think) a majority of players enjoy warfare more than playing the diplomatic game.