England attacks me, yet I'm threatened with Ex-com?

How does that work? I'm playing as Scotland, making nice with everyone...haven't attacked any Catholic factions, I've just been taking over rebel towns. England blockades one of my ports, throws us into war, the next turn the Pope is all over me to stop the hostilities?! If I attack a single English town I get Ex-com'd immediately...wtf?

Both England and I had the exact same rep with the pope, though I went down to "Reasonable" when I fought off an army advancing on Caervanorn(sp?(the one across the channel from Dublin)) while it was inside my territory.

this was hard for me to understand at first too - but there really isn't anything odd going on, you just have to know how the system works and take advantage of it

whenever hostilities start, the pope tries to get both sides to stop - rest assured that England got warned also.... however, the easiest way to keep the Pope happy is to give him a little extra tithe every so often... so, if England gave him a gift, they can probably get away with several warnings in a row

which means you need to have a diplomat making your voice, and more importantly your coins, heard in Rome - there is no 'fair' treatment, only preferential

The first thing I do at the start of any catholic campaign is to send a diplomat to kiss the Popes arse. Just leave the diplomat there to boost your popometer ratings with a gift of about 700 florins whenever the Pope forgets how wonderful you are.
Whenever I'm about to go to war with another catholic faction, defensive or offensive, I pop him a couple of florins to get my rating above the rating of my soon to be enemies. Otherwise he just seems to toss a coin, doesn't seem to matter who's being aggressive. When you get the Popes warning about excommunication, just ignore it, if you are on more favourable terms than your soon to be enemy it seems to have no discernable effect on his attitude to you.

In short... just keep throwing coins at him and he will let you get away with murder or even genocide, even when he warns you not to. :2thumbsup:
And lets be realistic, a couple of 700 florin gifts at the right time will make you a rich man (and with a little luck get your enemy excommunicated).

Good luck.

It's also worth noting that being the aggressor does carry a bit of a penalty to it - I know you didn't start the war, but making the attack move against enemy troops even on your own territory is probably considered bad by the pope. I'm not sure this is the case, but it may be, especially when you're at the same or lower papal approval level as your opponent. You're probably far safer parking the army in the town of that province and waiting for the enemy army to come try to take the town. Of course as others have pointed out, if you have a higher papal rating than your opponent, you typically have a lot of leeway from the papacy, enough often to even support land-grabbing forays into enemy territory. Another big thing is that having a good papal advantage typically makes your opponent get the warnings from the pope while you're at war. They often fail to heed them, and as a result will often plummet in rating even further, usually all the way to excommunication, at which point you can do anything you bloody well want to them, free of (papal) charge. So it's not only good for more leeway as an attacker, it also punishes your enemies more too, which makes them even easier for you to lean on. Papal standing is awesome, and the price is always worth paying :smile:

The problem is that you were the agressor after you got the excomm warning. Most of the time, both parties get the warning, so your non financial/bribing options are
1. to wait out the mission usually 6-7 turns - this gives you time to get your army/units ramped up and in place to take out their cities/castles
- the one stategy change from rome is if you're playing catholic faction, you almost always have to take out ALL faction cities/castles in one turn - and if successful , you will suffer little repercussions from pope
2. attack and get excommed and make nice w/ pope later - very hard to reconcile w/pope, easier to kill off your faction leader or pope - or wait till one of those dies
3. get that enemy faction to attack one of your units - I prefer this option - all I do is block all their paths (river crossings, bridges, roads, mountain passes, etc) with one cannon fodder/depleted/obsolete unit
4. assassinate pope and hopefully one of your cardinals gets installed as pope and if that happens your rep/w pope is perfect.

I don't worry about attacking other catholic factions if they're in the way - just try to get them excommed or wait out pope warning because sooner or later they will attack you.

My cash flow has started to pick up, but most of the towns...York, Caernavorn(sp?), Dublin, Iverness were tiny and were producing no cash pretty much until I built them up enough to get ports and thats about when the war started a few turns ago. At this point I could probably gift a few turns to the Pope and see what happens. I was actually hoping the English would attack so I could grab Nottingham and use that as my main Castle and troop producing center for the British Isles area...but it looks like it might have to wait a few more turns.

Here are a few things I picked up... though I could be wrong since I'm a noob. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If the pope gives you a "no aggression" warning,

-If the warning says that your reputation with pope will suffer if you attack, it will--but you wouldn't get excommunicated (you can make it up later with bribes).

-If the warning says that you will get excommunicated, you will get excommunicated after attacking faction (obviously). So don't do it unless you can handle it.

-If that faction's navy is blockading your port, you can attack that blockading navy without any repercussion.

-If that faction's army is in your land, you can attack that army without any repercussion.

Following the above, you shouldn't have any trouble with the pope.

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Originally Posted by Slug For A Butt

The first thing I do at the start of any catholic campaign is to send a diplomat to kiss the Popes arse. Just leave the diplomat there to boost your popometer ratings with a gift of about 700 florins whenever the Pope forgets how wonderful you are.
Whenever I'm about to go to war with another catholic faction, defensive or offensive, I pop him a couple of florins to get my rating above the rating of my soon to be enemies. Otherwise he just seems to toss a coin, doesn't seem to matter who's being aggressive. When you get the Popes warning about excommunication, just ignore it, if you are on more favourable terms than your soon to be enemy it seems to have no discernable effect on his attitude to you.

In short... just keep throwing coins at him and he will let you get away with murder or even genocide, even when he warns you not to. :2thumbsup:
And lets be realistic, a couple of 700 florin gifts at the right time will make you a rich man (and with a little luck get your enemy excommunicated).

Good luck.

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lmfao funny post.


If you get excommunicated - big deal! You are going to conquer everybody anyway! I don't think there is much to panic about when threatend with excommunication.

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Originally Posted by dumas

-If that faction's army is in your land, you can attack that army without any repercussion.

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I think the original post said that he did get in dutch with the Pope when he did this. My experience is that it's only safe to attack after you get the excomm warning if you're actually besieged.

Most of the time, if you can take it, let any Catholic enemy attack you, over and over, without attacking them. It wears them down, and drops their papal standing (since the AI isn't too good about bribing His Holiness) to the point you can safely assault. At that point, the enemy is weakened substantially and cannot resist after the Pope gives the All Clear to Kill sign.:smash: :smash: :smash: :smash: :smash: :skull:

You know, the same thing happen to me when i was Scotland. Its probably inevitable. Besides paying off the pope (which costs alot of money most likely), sometimes its better to just get excommunicated. If your good enough then you can probably take on whoever comes to kill you because Scotland really only has one front, and thats through England.

Yeah, if you get the excommunication warning, you have to just sit back and let them do the attacking. Then their relations with the Pope will drop instead of yours. If they lay siege to a settlement, you can attack the besieging army with no penalty, so use that to your advantage. Keep a huge army in the field and just light garissons in the towns and castles so that they're tempting tagets, and when the AI foolishly lays siege, break them against the walls with your huge field army.

If you do this a few times, THEY will get excommunicated. And then you can ask for a crusade against them, and go on a rampage :D

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Originally Posted by diablodelmar

lmfao funny post.


If you get excommunicated - big deal! You are going to conquer everybody anyway! I don't think there is much to panic about when threatend with excommunication.

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lmfao funny guy that didn't read the rest of the thread, he's too smart to do that. :wall:
Before you act so patronisingly, I think you should read the rest of the thread, we obviously aren't all as great as you... thank god! And being so smart (as you are), you obviously don't see any diplomatic point to papal rankings. Maybe we should all just rush like you. :juggle2:
Top and bottom of it. If the best you can do is be patronising, why post?

EDIT: Sorry, I just realised that you want to get your post count up...

As stated in the above posts. Send a diplomat to Rome get an alliance and bump your relations up to perfect.
This will cost you few thousand florins, and every time your standing drops you will have to slip the pope a few more florins (usually about 500 on VH/VH) to get it back up again. Plus the cost of the Diplomat 100 per turn.
What you get for all this cash is the best ally in the game. So long as you keep the relations near perfect the pope will not stab you in the back (unlike all the other factions).
You can call crusades with all the benefits that brings, cheap units, extra movement points, positive traits ect.
You can attack any catholic faction. You will get the warning but if your standing is high he will not excommunicate you.
Any other catholic faction that persistently attacks you risks persistently

Alternatively you can ignore the pope and get excommunicated.
You can then attack anyone and not have to worry about the pope because he can not do anything worse to you than he has already done. (except perhaps invade).
And what has he done.
You no longer get any benefits that a crusade brings
You no longer get the opportunity doing missions from the pope and the benefits they bring.
Every catholic faction and now call a crusade against you. Any crusading faction that does becomes your enemy breaking any alliance / trade agreement. Thus your trade revenue drops.
Fighting off these armies will cost you time and money replacing your losses.
Every settlement you own will suffer public orders penalties resulting in you either reducing your tax revenue of making you increase you garrison.
I think there is (not sure) a drop in your generals loyalty, increasing the risk of some of your armies rebelling.

Give the two choices I know which way I would go. Once you make the pope your friend the small cost involved is a good investment.
But if anyone wants to do it the hard way........Why not try using all town militia armies.

lol - ^^ said perfectly

I make it a matter of habit in my games to now either send my first diplomat directly to Rome, or build one as quickly as possible and send him to Rome - I then simply offer a tribute of 500 florins per turn for something like 20 turns - the Pope is overjoyed and instantly has Perfect relations with me, I can then get an Alliance - and I leave my diplomat sitting there in case I ever do something to annoy his holiness like repeatedly attack a catholic faction, ignore a called crusade, ignore a papal mission, etc, etc.... once the 20 turns is up, I renew it - my florins keep trickling into the holy fingers in the background and I don't have to be concerned

so it only costs 600 florins a turn (500 for the bribe, 100 for the diplo) and you get all those benefits Sentinel just listed, which in turn more than make good on the investment.... or you could hire two knights for the same money, lol

EDIT: dunno if the following includes me, but no flaming was intended - I'm el oh eling at the Pope's grubby fingers, not any poster on here =]

Guys, just a friendly warning to lay off the flaming.

Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that you should insult them.

to put a little closure on the question, i did what some recommended. I waited for my 7 turns of no hostile acts against the British. Apparently the British got the same warning maybe a turn or two after me. They kept one of my ports blockaded and got Ex-com'd about 2 turns after the Popes non aggression mission so I nabbed Nottingham. When I nabbed Nottingham I killed their faction leader so they were immediately reconciled...the bastards. Anyhow, about 6 turns later they decided to attack again, they got Ex-com'd again and I took London and Caen.

I moved a diplomate down to Rome as well, and started gifting the Pope 1000fl/turn just because i had so much cash and so far i've been perfect pretty much from then on. I'm at around turn 85 and own 20 provinces. I went down the coast of modern day france and killed off the english once and for all, now I'm working on Milan. Though I don't know whats up with them, they allied with me and about 4 turns later i caught one of their spies in my cities and it went to war...so I've taken about 5 of their cities, they WERE number 1 or 2 in every catergory that i was 2 or 1 in...but they are slipping big time now and the mongols are stepping it up.

Thanks for the advice, it worked like a charm. I'll just have to stay on the defensive for the first few turns in each new game until I can get a diplomat down to the Papal States to start greasing palms....though it's so easy it almost feels like cheating now.

200 fl/turn seems to work fine for me...

I´d not be too worried with the "immediate excommunication" threat. When I got it and attacked the faction in question (I wanted to get excommunicated, Rome was the only province I required for my HRE victory), the only thing that happened was that my relationship with the pope dropped one increment. In MTW I such a warning is way more substantial.

There are two different warnings from the pope. One is that your standing will not be as high as it was, and one that you'll be excommunicated. My experience has been that he's not kidding with the latter.

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

There are two different warnings from the pope. One is that your standing will not be as high as it was, and one that you'll be excommunicated. My experience has been that he's not kidding with the latter.

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Two points:

1. I think there's at least 3 - think I've seen one that says you MAY be excommunicated.
2. My experience has been hit or miss with the excom threats. Often you can do whatever he has ordered you not to and only suffer greatly on the pope-o-meter, rather than actually be excommed. It's not pretty in any case, but I've definitely had cases where it was threatened and then failed to actually be carried out.

I've only been playing for a couple of days and I'm wondering if anyone has the same problem with the pope that I do: the Papal States just refuse to accept gifts!
I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong. But I approach them as usual, with a diplomat, and try to offer various things (map info, one-off payments, regular tribute), and every time they just refuse!
This is getting ridiculous. The pope belongs to my faction, I'm offering their "bankrupt" state 3000 florins of pocket cash, and they "just aren't interested"! What gives?

Next to the "make offer" button you should see a preasent box. Click that when you want to gift him somthing. the make offer means he expects to give you somthing in return. you've got to actually use the "gift" button to gift him stuff.

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

There are two different warnings from the pope. One is that your standing will not be as high as it was, and one that you'll be excommunicated. My experience has been that he's not kidding with the latter.

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I´m referring to the pop-up box that appears when you´re about to carry out an aggressive act against a faction the pope wants you to hold peace with. You get that only if you got previously the warning message.
And I´ve so far always gotten away with ignoring this pop-up with only a minor loss on the pope-o-meter.

[Edit]I should add that this was the case playing on Medium campaign difficulty[/edit]

I don't believe I've ever seen that popup, but then again I usually obey the Pope. :shame: