Pope elections, advice?

[Flavius Gonzo]

The current pope is like 57 or something so I'm thinking I'll get an election in the next few turns, this will be my first one.

Any advice? This seems like I a pretty important thing. I want my pope-o-meter to remain as high as possible.

Also, I have one Cardinal, who is pretty worthless, I haven't put him to work much.

[Faenaris]

Try to vote for the likely winner. If one has 3 votes, the other has 2 and the last one got one vote, make sure you cast your own vote at the Preferati who has 3 votes already. I use this technique and it hasn't let me down so far.

[ZombieFriedNuts]

ask for money for your vote

[Doug-Thompson]

Play Muslim factions from now on.

[YankeeDoodle14]

All I know is that if you end up voting for the wrong Pope, you can always patch up relationships with them by giving him a gift of 100 florins. That has always gotten us back to "Perfect" in our relations no matter what.

[Dooz]

Best thing to do is have as many cardinals in the college as possible. Each one counts as one vote, so if you hold the majority of the vote, even if you don't have a cardinal with high enough piety to be the Pope, you still swing the vote any way you want. You end up getting a Pope-friendly bonus because you voted for the "right" guy, even though it was your votes that got him elected in the first place, and if you vote for an allied faction's cardinal to become Pope, even better.

[Flavius Gonzo]

All very helpful tips, thanks.

How do I ask for money for a vote? Is this something I need to do with a Diplomat ahead of time before a vote? And how can I know ahead of times which factions to move diplomats to?