Pope and his power

[Mythoss]

Has anyone ever seen the papacy rise up to be a power in SP? Seems he usually just hangs on by a thread in the games I have played.

[Makuri_Dog]

Yes most ive seen is all of italian peninsula but not sicily
and some times some of the italian, but they seem to be happy with interfering with all the catholic factions.

[Duke of Gloucester]

Just as well, really. He is a big enough pain as it is I think the AI just makes him maintain his territory unless he is attacked or presented with an easy chance to expand.

[Despot of the English]

It's not unusual for the Pope to conquer the whole of Italy, often because of the imperialistic intentions of the Italians and Sicilians, i.e. the Pope gets attacked by them and counter attacks, before long he either gets annihilated or expands his territory.

The best I've seen the Pope do in my games is take all of Italy followed by Austria and Burgundy. But I have read stories of him taking all of France. Must be rare though because I find the Papacy aren't usually interested in expanding outside the Italian peninsula.

[Sardo]

In an English campaign of mine, some time ago, he had conquered northern Italy (he took Napels, but failed to hold on to it), and expanded into the Balkan, taking (iirc) Hungary, Croatia, Greece, possibly also Bulgaria, but my memory is a bit dim here, and even Constantinople

I held the rest of Asia Minor, as well as the provinces to his north, as far east as Austria (Hungary had originally been conquered by myself, but I ravaged it and left again). Since he was my faithful ally, I was pretty much the only reason he didn't expand further.

Apart from my own experience there, I've also heard tales of the Papacy conquering Wessex, for example.
In the HRE campaign I'm playing now, however, he's reduced to the Papal State. He shouldn't have gotten in my way like that.

[massamuusi]

Yea, papacy's troops get homesick really quickly
Then again they're poor and stuff. And yes, the AI is very passive, building mostly agents. It's quite nice that he can excommunicate you if you piss him off...