Can't kill the Pope on the battlefield?

[lugh]

Well option 2 isnt really viable. Ive killed kings and princes' that were captured before when I wanted to weaken the faction (and was financially comfortable). I cant see the Pope being any different. I wont swear to it but I do think Ive killed a captive Pope near the end game before, to avoid making his jedi powers greater with the "captured" v&v.
Was there more than one RK unit on the field? Maybe you didnt notice the Pope slipping away and captured a vanilla RK unit?

On ending the excom by killing the Pope, if you invaded him, the remaining troops if any tend to turn rebel and you are no longer at war nor excommed with the new one. This has happened a few times with me. Youre usually left to besiege some rebels in Rome or wherever, the new pope in the papal states and all is rosy. So the tactic is sound, Id be inclined to put its failure down to one of the little glitches that happens

I had previously thought that, regardless of the result, if you have prisoners at the end of the battle, you get to make some ransom money and, with luck this will pay for any ransom demanded from you, so you can 'exchange prisoners', after a fashion. Hopefully theirs are worth more than yours and you could somehow still profit out of a defeat. Not so. Only the winning side gets to make ransom demands. Having lost, it's taken as read that you've released the prisoners, in order to run from the field - you can't exactly force-march them away with you.

On this, I make a point of killing any prisoners I have if Im being defeated. If theyre able to slap me a round they usually have a big enough army to plunge into my lesser garrisoned inner empire so the less they have left the better.