How To Stop Being Excommunicated!!

[Total War Merc]

I am playing as the english and since i am surronded by christians if i attack anyone i get a warning, if i dont back off i get excommunicated which upsets my people and starts rebelions

is there a way around getting excommunicated while being the english (i dont mean mods or cheats)?

[professorspatula]

Kill the pope! When the dear old pope leaves the mortal realm for a trip to see St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, all those excommunicated factions are forgiven.

Or don't attack your fellow Catholics unless they attack you first - or better still, wait until they're excommunicated and then launch crusades against the troublemakers. The pope will love you for it. Unless of course he decides the other faction is no longer excommunicated the same turn you attack, causing you more trouble. Sometimes its worth getting the backs of the Papacy up if it means taking some land away from your Catholic neighbours anyway.

[Total War Merc]

If you kill the pope he just comes back (I hate him)

if the french attack me, then i attack them to get my province back i still get the blame for it. (The pope loves the french for some reason, the only excommunication i have seen apart from me is the germans)

[Procrustes]

The Pope can only keep track of one warning at a time. Once you get warned away from one Catholic faction you have 10 years to open up on all the others without interference.

HTH,

[p_nutter]

Don't eliminate the papacy entirely. It comes back with huge stacks of advanced units. Killing the pope himself works, but you really don't want to be at war with the papacy. You can assassinate or even inquisit him, but this may not be useful advice at the beginning.

Other ways of avoiding/voiding excommunication-

Kill your enemy: If you kill off all the enemy heirs within the 2 year time limit, their forces will turn into rebels. You can attack the rebels as much as you like after that, the pope doesn't care.

Kill yourself: A bit drastic, but if your king dies and is succeeded, the excommunication is null and void. Looks like an excom is a personal feud between a pope and a king. I'd seriously consider this method when playing the English in Early, since the king has decent heirs and is old, and nobody has the technology to crusade for a while.

Wait for someone else to be excommunicated. Then attack them. Pope doesn't care. He might even let you crusade at them.

Grab what you want in 2 years: First year, invade enemy forces in as many provinces as you can. Also move in catapults etc if necessary this turn. Second year, storm all castles. If you leave anyone alive in those castles, the pope would excom you of course. But if you slaughter every last man, you're not "attacking" them any more after 2 years (just dancing on their graves), so once again the pope doesn't care. Do not attack that faction again for 10 years. Take Procrustes' advice and kill off someone else. (I did this to the French as the English in early. Took out Ile de France, Flanders and Brittany all at once. French king ended up sitting in Champagne, attacking me and getting ransomed back every other turn. This funded my war against the Germans quite nicely. Eventually he and his heirs got themselves killed instead of captured, Tolouse went rebel, I grabbed that as well.)

[antisocialmunky]

Killing your king is kinda stupid because in the early game, your loyalty sucks for the most part and as the English you have a divided empire which means more loyalty penalties. You can do it but you risk civil war(it'll ruin your little tea party) or lots of rebels(not so unnice).

It's better to just take out the French in two turns within the first 4 years and then take the Pyrinnes away from the Aragonese(who cares about one provence fiefdoms?)

Then either beat the Spanish in 2 turns(not too hard) or kill the king turn 3,
take out the muslims and fight to the Sinai. Congrats, now you can turtle and wait for late units like Gothics and JHI to fight.

Usually the GH, Byzantines, Turks, or Russians or will conquer most of the East. And if one dies, usually another will conquer all its territories.

[ichi]

I try to a variation of p_nutter approach,

Grab what you want in 2 years: First year, invade enemy forces in as many provinces as you can. Also move in catapults etc if necessary this turn. Second year, storm all castles. If you leave anyone alive in those castles, the pope would excom you of course. But if you slaughter every last man, you're not "attacking" them any more after 2 years (just dancing on their graves), so once again the pope doesn't care. Do not attack that faction again for 10 years. Take Procrustes' advice and kill off someone else.

but I try to do it in a pulse or wave across a broad front. A lot of campaigns for me are cyclic; stabilize the front, upgrade provinces to produce better units and more florins, build units, attack 3-4 provinces along a border (do this in the two years as described above), stabilize the front . . .

If something goes wrong or I must do something that gets me excommed, assassinate El Popo, or in the worst case ride it out until he dies.

ichi

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Don't eliminate the papacy entirely. It comes back with huge stacks of advanced units.

Actually, it helps to do that if you're fighting the Italians of Sicilians.

[antisocialmunky]

There's always the "take over Rome and the Papal States and sell everything off so the upkeep on their massive resurgence army makes them laughably in debt" strategy.