Question about weird cardinal situatrion

I am playing as the English on m/vh and I am on turn 75, having eliminated Scotland, France, Milan, Portugal, and I have Spain and Denmark on the ropes. I'm pretty much at war with everybody except maybe Poland and Hungary.

The pope waited until my last King was pushing his mid 60's to demand that he go on a crusade. Damn, if Sicily didn't beat me to Jerusalem, and my king
succumbed to his life long battle with severe flatulence just as his army disembarked at the city's port. Now I have a leaderless army in the middle of the "oh so friendly" middle East--nice! (The Mongols are also there by the way)

The real problem is that I have absolutely no cardinals, and it's been that way for at least the last 40 turns or so. I am sure I had one or two early on, but I guess they died, and since then all the priests I keep pumping out seem to be relegated to being low level child molesters in the backwater provinces.

I have churches in all my provinces plus a couple of abbey's, and I'm building a cathedral in Paris. In addition, I have been pumping out all the Catholic pedophiles I can.

I dominate the world presently with population, military might, and held lands, but my rating on the Pope-o-meter is always the lowest and is constantly on the decline because I can't seem to get any one promoted to cardinal.

I put 5 or 6 assassins around Rome and I keep offing the Popster, but that does me absolutely no good since I have no voting privileges, and the next guy to get the pointy hat is usually just another one of my enemies.

Heck, I might as well just get ex-communicated, so I can quit worrying about it.

Anyone else experience this?

why don't you just bribe the pope with map information or 1 florin a turn for 1000 turns, always works for me

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Originally Posted by Bob_the_great

why don't you just bribe the pope with map information or 1 florin a turn for 1000 turns, always works for me

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I got them to accept a trade agreement early on, but so far my other diplomatic proposals have been answered with "this is an offer, we cannot match at this time". I guess I just haven't tried enough combinations of offers, but that still won't solve my problem with no priests getting promoted to cardinal.

I am wondering if I might not have a corrupted game, and will never ever get anybody promoted.

Cheers

Some of the problems you are describing have to do with how you start out. This is not to say that you cannot remmedy the situation.

England as a country does not start out with much religious unrest. Pump out the max amount of priests in the beginning from one town.

- Decline any other guild except the Theology guild there.
-Build the highest possible religious buildings as you are pumping out priests from that town and that town only.
-Keep those priests on the move. I keep a couple around England ,but ship the rest off to Riga area originally. This will build your piety on those priests sent off as they are converting a largely pagan area.
-Only build priests out of the city with the Theology guild. Try and dispatch all heretics you come upon. That helps also. They start out as guild trained which helps their piety rating.


I keep a diplomat down by the Pope and gift him a couple hundred florin ever so often. I do this immediately so I can control where the Crusades go to.

Don't worry about the other factions attacking you. Keep your army on patrol around your provinces and use them to break seiges. Eventually the Pope will excom them and you will have free reign to kick their arse.:duel:

recruit priests from great cathedral, there are 70% of chance that new one will have 5 piety on start.

Joe,

All you say makes sense, and I'll admit that tend to tend to play the strategical/diplomatic side of the game with less intensity than I should just to get to the tactical battles and settlement conquests.

Actually the one time I got excommunicated in a campaign worked in my favor. I had a secure ecconomy and good balanced armies. Nation after nation sent :elephant: crusader armies against me which I easily defeated, but in doing so drained their resources of fighting men and leaders.

Cheers

get a priest at huge cathedral i once got one that started! at 9 piety!!!!

By the way, I went back and checked, I do not have a theologian's guild in any settlement, nor have I ever had an offer of one.

Get yourself a nice middle east territory, perhaps even an island if need be, and crank out some priests and go on a conversion war. Send 5 or 6 of em into a non Catholic territory and watch as they get traits for quickly converting the heathens =)

i've done this as far as 100+ turns in the game, and it took me about 30 turns from there to get some guys into the cardinal seats (without using assassins too)

Destroy a guild in one territory and build nothing but churches there and priest. When a priest is made move him to a low catholic area and just spam the map this way with Priest.

Soon, you will have more cardinals then you know what to do with once you get the Theologens guild.

conversion is the fastest way. I alway crank out 4-5 priests for each 0 catholics region i can easily send them to. once it reaches 50% or so, i move on. It is the way the conversion is calculated.

You convert x% of NON-catholics. if x=10 and there is 100 population, you can convert 10 on the first turn. On the second turn, you only convert 10% of 90 (since 10 are already converted), i.e 9 people only and so on...so you convert less and less people if you stay in the same region for too long. With less people converted, your priest rank up slower.

I do not understand what the leaderless crusader army has to do with the fact the Pope does not like you? Take the intended target for the crusade and the Pope will love you dearly for at least a few turns, until you start fighting your fellow catholics again.
As was suggested earlier, pump up priests and send them to the south side of the med. You will get cardinals promoted (providing they have the minimum pity requirement) whenever other nations ones croak!

Also, You sem to be having problems with gifts. that littile christmas present box is the gift button, use that, not make an offer button to bribe him.

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Originally Posted by tarbanrael

I do not understand what the leaderless crusader army has to do with the fact the Pope does not like you? Take the intended target for the crusade and the Pope will love you dearly for at least a few turns, until you start fighting your fellow catholics again.
As was suggested earlier, pump up priests and send them to the south side of the med. You will get cardinals promoted (providing they have the minimum pity requirement) whenever other nations ones croak!

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He said that Sicily beat him to Jerusalem. I've also used the tactic of assassinating other factions cardinals to get mine in. I always max out the number of priests I can build.

I recently played a game as Scotland in which I pretty much spent the whole game with one or two points of favor with the pope, with the remaining time spent excommunicated. I did, however, have churches in all of my towns and and kept pumping out the priests. Eventually, despite being at war with everyone, I managed to get more than half of the College of Cardinals. I assassinated the Pope and voted in my guy on the Preferati, and bam, perfect papal relations.

I don't think it matters if you are pumping out 5 piety priests, you will never have a cardinal if the pope hates you. Not trying to assassinate him would be a good start. Also if you are at war with the Pope's birth country it is much harder to get him to like you. If you want the pope to like you and promote your priests, you can't run around pillaging all of europe and ignoring everything he says. You can't have the benefits of being good and bad at the same time.
You can get away with a lot of stuff if he likes you in the first place, but trying to repair damage seems much harder. The key to both of these is to pay him off, not knock him off. Killing him probably won't do any good because you have no cardinals and the pope will probably be from someone you are at war with, and you will start with very low pope rating.

Carl's point is a key one. IME, you never get the "we cannot match this offer" if you're giving the bribe as a gift. Make sure you are clicking on the wrapped present, and the pope will almost always accept it and you move up a few notches in his estimation. I like to promise him 200 fl for 100 turns...that will really make you one of his favorites---I think he adds it up and thinks you're giving him 20,000 fl every turn. No one said math skillz were needed to wear the Hat of Rome. :dizzy2:

And to get cardinals, make sure you're sending the priests off to pagan lands. No one ever made cardinal sitting in their parish. Send them in groups of 4 or 5 so they don't fall heretic, and you'll have a fistful of cardinals in no time. But I would knock off the popination. They don't much care for that.

I agree with a lot of the posters above, but thought I would share my 2 florins on developing a strong catholic nation.

I have recently started an 'uber chivalry' game as france (M/VH) with the emphasis on being a peaceful and respectable global power. My house rules are:
-only occupy settlements
-never chase routers (always end battle when option appears)
-always release prisoners
-only act aggressively vs rebels, unless attcked and reasonable ceasefire is non-negotiable
-never start a war or betray an alliance
-minimal spies mainly used as passive observers, no assassins.
-equal strength battles when possible.

Firstly I sent my starting diplomat to rome to gift a bit of cash/map info then grab an alliance. 2-3 turns of this achieved alliance and perfect relations. I don't build many priests until I have a level 2/3 church at least.

Now that my popeometer is maxed I call an early crusade on antioch (rebel), and run my prince down there, recruiting as I go. Antioch falls and I take aleppo and hold a while. I am still being chivalrous in europe, and have all settlements on low tax to max out growth.

I then call a second crusade as soon as possible, this time to baghdad, as it is still in rebel hands. Again I send a young prince from antioch and recuit a crusade army. Cash is a bit tight globally as every penny is going into development and keeping pope/neighbours happy. I gift the Pope 100/10turns usually but always renew it before it expires, and top up with map info/100 gift to keep faction maxed.

I am now on turn 70, have 'trustworthy' global rep, my third crusade I used on jerusalem after egypt betrayed my alliance and attacked antioch. I have now one priest prefenti and 60-70% of the college of cardinals. I have also built the master theoligans guild in antioch along with a cathedral so its pumping 5*+ cardinals out and I am poised to take acre/damascus soon and convert the lot .. 4th crusade is due refresh in next turn or so and I will use it one either milan if they continue to attack me and get excommed, or HRE as they have already been excommed. The mongols have also appeared north of baghdad, so hopefully they will join the jihad against baghdad thats running, and break on the walls. Hopefully the mongols will setlle somewhere north, giving me time to 'cannon up' a little in the holy land then crusade them to death :dizzy2:

I have to say, I have really enjoyed playing the game this way. I thought the lack of aggressive expansionism/sacking/ransoms would really hurt the treasury, but have found the growth from high chiv generals plus the lack of funding multiple mass armies has meant I have a strong economic core empire, dominate the pope and catholic church (the next pope will be french in 5-10 turns) and have enough wars going on to keep the game fun :2thumbsup:

Thanks for the info on the Uber-Chivalrous nation. It sounds like an interesting way to play. I think I'll give that a shot next cycle.

I am embarrassassed to admit it, but I have been playing the game since it came out and never noticed the gift box button, so now I know why 99% of my offers to the pope were refused.:wall:

However, this is probably my 5th or 6th English campaign during that time and this is absolutely the first time I have had not a single cardinal at this stage of the game.

Even though I had a leaderless army in camel-land and Jerusalem was already taken, I immediately attacked the citadel of Gaza. A chapel got me access to priests, so using one to escort my leaderless force, I also to took Cairo.. Now I am pumping out priests in the Holy Land, which is pretty much non-Catholic at this point.

Along with that, now that that I also know how to properly gift the Pope, maybe I can get a few cardinals---I'll report back if it works.

Cheers, and thanks for all the tips

Just to add to the topic, here is a bishop I had spawn in antioch last night, not a bad investment for 180 florins:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[IMG]
https://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb242/Grog_M2TW/antiochbishop.jpg[/IMG]

I did have my 10* command/chiv King Louis in antioch at the time, which may have had some influence. (Antioch has cathedral and Theologians HQ).

thats quite a few european provinces for being "non aggressive" eg Frankfurt, Staufen, Milan, Genoa. I don't recall those being rebel. :grin: But perhaps you do it like my style.... I like to play non-aggressive campaigns, I only attack those who attack me. I make the following deal with the AI: If you blockade my port, I destroy your navy and blockade every last one of your ports; if you besiege one of my cities and fail, I besiege 3 of yours and don't fail. If you actually capture one of my cities.... may God have mercy on you because I will not. The only problem is that the AI doesn't seem to understand the terrible punishment it will suffer for its stupidity, and I get way too emotional over it.

Also the College of Cardinals is only available to Catholic factions, so the more Catholic factions you eliminate the less competition you have (this helped me gain dominace of the Vatican mid-way through the game).