Does anyone just HATE a faction.

[NodachiSam]

I have only played a few campaigns so far so these might change in the future. Perhaps I dislike Egypt (they tend to get quite strong), the Turks (I like Rome I guess) (they are seljuk Turks right?), and... the mongols (I cannot play in the east in early without being obbsessed with their arrival for 70 to 50 years, which is an unfortunate detraction from the gameplay)

The papacy is annoying but is usually mostly harmless. The exception of course is after successive pope comeback tours where the pope'll keep gaining land after summoning strong high tech armies from the ether when he reappears. In my games they don't get attacked too often and I usually reduce them to their papal states and work to cast them off into inescapable dept. It is regrettable that the game is so inflexible. When playing byzantium most of eastern and southern Europe becomes 90 or over percent orthodox the pope would likely cease to be a huge significant factor politically to be able to gather so many soldiers with no land or sea connextion to catholic ruled areas in Britain, upper France and Scandanavia.

(Edit, the rest of the message wasn't showing up but it seems to have cleared up after I removed the < and % symbols that I had beside each other after the 90)