The "MyPope" Method, always have a pope of your faction.

[xDaishix]

Requires christian faction, DER DEE DEE!

Can be done in as little as three turns.

You need:
Requires either you having a cardinal on college of cardinals or an open slot in the college availible.

One army, decent enough to take the target province, but you need an army with a general (no captains) so you can join a crusade

4 Priests (if your faction starts with a cardinal only make 3)

5 Assassins (if you already have a decent skilled assassin, use him)

Target country to crusade


Method:
1. Send all assassins to Rome.

2. Declare crusade on a far away, 0% catholic, weak in revel force province.

3. Add army to crusade and send it off.

4. Send all priests to target province.

5. By the time your crusader army gets to its destination (usually well before then, if open spot in college of cardinals then you'll get it) your priests will start ranking up as they spread the good word. Once you have atleast 1 priest in the college then procede with step 6.

6. Start killing the pope! Usually doesn't work first time, have all assassins constantly attack him till he dies, you might get declared war on or excomunicated but once he's dead you're fine. After pope dead go with step 7.

7. Take the city you crusaded against, send all avalible priests to the province, make as many priests as you can afford.

By elections you should have atleast 1 Cardinal as preferati and 4 cardinals in the college total. Just keep making priests and sending them to 0% catholic places and you'll keep getting your priests into the college (for some reason once you got 2 in there the rest come real easy, I've managed to make entire college Venetian except for Holy Roman Empire, for whatever reason they have a gauranteed spot).

With the pope always on your side you should be able to manipulate anything to your favor or at worst use diplomat to ask papacy faction to attack w/e faction is attacking you, if the pope came from your faction they should be very helpfull to you, just throw in militray access and map information to 10,000 florins and you can get the pope to attack almost anybody.

Hope this helps~

[Bullethead]

Making the papacy a pawn and tool was a favorite occupation of the powers of the Middle Ages. And most of the time, the venal popes and their flunkies were only too happy to oblige .

I've read that you can turn the papacy into a BI-type horde--can you maneuver them to settle in your lands like the French did in the 1300s? If so, does that give you even more control over the papacy?

[Emperor Aurelius]

Remember that not all the time were the popes complete puppets of the kings of Europe. Actually much of the time the popes were in dispute with the governments of Europe. Although their were popes such as Urban IV, Paschal, and Clement V who were most certainly pawns of someone or another. However not all were.
Many strong popes such as Urban II and others say on the pontifical throne.

[vertical]

Making the papacy a pawn and tool was a favorite occupation of the powers of the Middle Ages. And most of the time, the venal popes and their flunkies were only too happy to oblige .

I've read that you can turn the papacy into a BI-type horde--can you maneuver them to settle in your lands like the French did in the 1300s? If so, does that give you even more control over the papacy?

If another faction takes over the Papal States the Pope takes up residence in another province "donated" by an AI faction. That faction also gets a huge boost in their standing with the Papacy. I think that's a pretty cool feature...

And I see you've torn yourself away from Distant Guns.

vertical

[Grifman]

So priests get promoted to cardinal according to their preaching and conversion of heathens? I was wondering how that worked.

[Quillan]

They get promoted based on their piety. Preaching to the heathens raises piety. The College of Cardinals has 13 slots. I'm not sure what the minimum piety is to be inducted, but if no catholic priests are out there with high enough piety to fill an open slot, it'll remain empty until one gets high enough to qualify. If it's full, then others will be inducted as positions open. Hmm, perhaps a job for other assassins?