Papal States going crazy

[Alerion]

Hey... In my two recent games (one as Venice and one as England) the papal states are going crazy... they are conquering a lot of stuff... in my venice game they conquered almost all of africa... which I only realized when I had to take rome after a failed assassination attempt on the pope

In my England game it's even worse... The pope owns all of Italy a good part of HRE land and is advancing deep into france...

Did you guys also encounter this? Is that a normal behaviour for them? Because in my other games I`ve never seen them conquering anything, they staid in there little province... which is as it hsould be IMO...

[Ramses II CP]

Every so often something gets under the Pope's skin and he goes off a'conquering. In fact the Papacy is one of the few factions that, once they get rolling, will tend to build a pretty good empire. I kind of like it when he goes on a tear, makes things more interesting, though obviously a lot less realistic.

[Arcana]

I've actually never seen it happen. They tend to have like a full stack and a half-stack and then just sit there twiddling their thumbs while the other catholic factions do all the donkey work. Once or twice I've known them take exception to the HRE and capture Florence from them, but then the Pope's ambitions sort of dissipated into the ether. Worse, I was rooting for him...

[Monsieur Alphonse]

In my campaigns it happens all the time. In my last campaign as Egypt the pope started to recreate the Roman Empire controlling both Rome and Constantinople. In my current campaign as Russia I had to conquer the entire north of Italy which he controlled. His current capital is Thessalonica. He is very happy to go on crusade and since Milan in this campaign is some kind of hound from hell, almost all the crusades are directed against a city controlled by Milan.

[Alerion]

Wow... I've never seen the papacy take part of a crusade though... the french are pretty keen on that... I think they joined EVERY SINGLE crusade ever called in all my M2TW games... EVER...

[Ibn-Khaldun]

The Papacy go 'crazy' usually if they manage to get another settlement. If they manage to conquer Flonrence at the beginning of the game they soon go after Milan and Venice.
In case you give them land in Levant they tend to build a pretty mighty Empire over there.
But it's only if they manage to get a province. If they don't they will move their army near Rome and that's it.

[Alerion]

WEll in my Venice game I took Florence right away after buying Bologna from the HRE and so they didnt get that but somehow they started a war on the Moors and took northern africa...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I often give land to the papals, sometimes to create a string of provinces as a buffer and other times just to pump up my "your truly have our interests..." metric.

The Pope's armies often acquire other territories from rebels, excommunicati, and even muslims. In fact, from higher tier cities, they produce what I think is a BETTER city army than those of Venice or Milan -- certainly their equal.

On the other hand, I've yet to see a really aggressive version such as those described above, though I often see papal troops on crusade and, once or twice, they even got the target first.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Last night I reloaded an old save of a Portuguese campaign I played over a year ago and never finished. The Papal states were number two with 18 provinces!. The Pope controlled Italy, parts of the Balkan and central Europe. If I remember it well the pope went after Venice and Hungary who were the bad guys of this campaign.

In my last English campaign I decided to play the nice guy. I never attacked (except the Scots), occupied and released prisoners. My reputation was mixed and my power was supreme. I forgot to ally with the pope but to my astonishment the pope offered an alliance. The pope was in a bitter war with the Milanese and lost Rome to them. I have captured Rome three time and gave it to the pope but he lost it all the times. The pope had Antioch, Constantinople large parts of northern Africa (captured from Sicily) and Sardinia. And sometime Rome.

As Ibn-Khaldun stated, once the papacy has captured one region it goes crazy. In all my campaigns once the papacy has one region it will join all the crusades and start attacking excommunicated neighbors. When I play a Muslim faction and come close to him him he always attacks me. Since the Italians and the HRE are the natural bad guys in the game there is a huge chance that they will be attacked by the Men in White

[Alerion]

In fact they're aren't necessarily the bad guys first... In my campaign as far as I've seen the Pope was the aggressor... He took Florence from rebels in the beginning and then laid siege on Palermo... He declared war on the Sicilians but since everyone at war with him is excommunicated it made them the bad guys....

[Skott]

I have seen it a few times myself. Its usually when you give the pope a couple of regions free and load him up with lots of cash. Give him like 100,000 florins and a couple free regions and see what happens. In my experience there is about a 5%-10% chance he'll start his own papal empire. Sometimes you have to give him more than 100,000 florin. Like give it to him a couple of times. It also helps if he's allied to you when you are at war.

[Ashen]

Recently I conquered Rome in a game of mine with Sicily. The pope had just moved 2 full stacks eastwards and now, having regained Rome, Also holds Constantinople and a few surrounding territorys despite pressure from the Turks and the remaining Byzantines.

Also, the pope dies, im re-patriated with the church with 1 cross standing. 2 more popes go through and suddenly I have 6 cardinals including one of the Priest Preferati and full standing with the church (I lost Rome to a spanish crusade). The pope tends to forget quite easily :)