Weirdness dealing with the pope after 1.2

Hi there. I patched to 1.2 for my new game and I've noticed things are different where dealing with the pope is concerned. I used to be able to bribe him and get my status up by one with three hundred gold, and I could bribe him multiple times a turn.

Now, I bribe him and it takes 700 to go up one and I can only seem to do it once per turn. I don't know if it's a bug but sometimes I get a "relations improved" message when my rating hadn't gone up.

Have there been changes, or could it be a bug?

Thank you most kindly.

It kind of sounds more like a fix than a bug...

I guess the pope became more greedy :laugh4: .

When going against a fellow Christian, I usually bribe him with 1000-5000 florins, or give him a tribute of 500 for 5 turns. After that, we have a perfect relations.

It's not necessarily a bug. Relations are measured on a scale of -1.0 to 1.0, with every thing you do giving fractions of that - IIRC for example building a church gives 0.01 boost to papal relations.

The trick is that the levels you and I see in game (So-So, Outstanding, Abysmal etc...) have thresholds.
Example of what I mean : let's say for the sake of argument (I don't recall the actual ones) that So-So is 0.1 and Good is 0.3. You're at So-So. You build like 4 churches. Your relations with the Pope are now 0.14. Your relations with the Pope have improved, but not enough to switch levels.

As a rule when playing a Catholic faction I give the Pope a 100 florin tribute every turn. This really works good at keeping him happy and my standing perfect most of the time. I set it for 20 turn sequences and renew once every 18-20 turns. It works well in 1.01 and 1.02. :yes:

So if I bribe him 300 florins and there's no apparent improvement I haven't wasted that money. Relations have improved a bit, just not enough to go up a notch? Would that explain if, lets say I'm on four crosses and I get a massage that relations have improved, but when I check I'm still on four crosses?

Ok, as long as it's working the way it supposed to and I know that any money I give him is making some improvement it's fine.

Thank you very much indeed.

Yeah, that's right - you money isn't wasted; you just can't see its effect as yet.

I tend to bribe the Pope in 500 florin increments and see an improvement the following turn. Can't say I've noticed any difference since 1.2 though.