The Pope and money

**Skott** · 12-04-2006, 04:21

Just a tip for any that may be having problems with the Pope I can offer this tip. Bribery! The Pope loves monetary gifts. I'm not sure yet whats the lowest amount to influence him but a thousand florin will always get you at least one extra level of esteem on the chart. I once gave 10,000 florin just to see what it'd do and it jumped from halfway on the chart to the very top. Money can also buy Cardinal votes if your guy is in the running. So if you attack someone and the Pope gets mad send him a gift. If you failed to go or complete on a crusade and he frowns at you, give him money and watch your esteem go back up. Want to buy votes to get your guy elected pope? Buy them. Usually this takes 5,000 florin though to do.

I started sending a diplomat to camp Rome in my games now just so I can influence the Pope and his religous ways. It works well.

**FactionHeir** · 12-04-2006, 04:55

Actually there are better methods of appeasing the pope:
Offer map information as a gift every turn. Even if he has your newest map, offer them to him again next turn because he will turn you down but at the same time like you more. So you can repeat that until you have perfect relations.
Similarly, use monetary rewards of 100 florins each time. Usually after 300-500 your relations will increase by 1.

Also, getting your own pope elected or just voting for the pope who will get elected is the same thing. Your own pope won't like you more than a pope you voted for.

**Valdincan** · 12-04-2006, 05:02

Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Actually there are better methods of appeasing the pope:
Offer map information as a gift every turn. Even if he has your newest map, offer them to him again next turn because he will turn you down but at the same time like you more. So you can repeat that until you have perfect relations.
Similarly, use monetary rewards of 100 florins each time. Usually after 300-500 your relations will increase by 1.

Also, getting your own pope elected or just voting for the pope who will get elected is the same thing. Your own pope won't like you more than a pope you voted for.

That is probably the best way, along with going on a crusade.

**FactionHeir** · 12-04-2006, 05:17

Thanks :)

Crusades are indeed quite good for raising relations. You get 1 cross for joining, 2-3 for reaching the destination and quite a few more for taking the settlement.

I've also tried reconciliation by offering the pope settlements in exchange. While that would seem silly at first sight, you can actually create a papal buffer zone through which your enemies would have to travel to attack you, and going through lands without military access lowers relations with the pope :D

You can actually ally with the pope (the AI does it at times so better be quick) and request military access, which is very cheap with the pope: some 1000 florins bought me it. This way you can march through new papal lands and attack and you cannot be attacked unless your AI foe wants to lose massive amounts of points with the pope :)

**IRONxMortlock** · 12-04-2006, 05:39

Giving an unwanted region to the pope also does great things for your rating and it can provide a nice papal state barrier between you and a hostile neighbour. Remember to first sell everything in the settlement except the church.

**Whacker** · 12-04-2006, 06:39

Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Also, getting your own pope elected or just voting for the pope who will get elected is the same thing. Your own pope won't like you more than a pope you voted for.

Are we sure about this? I was under the impression from reading some other threads on a few other sites that having your own pope elected ensured that there was a "natural affinity", so to speak, to your faction. This would be the rough equivalant of a +positive value in the hardcoded faction_standings tendencies in the descr_strat file.

**Kraxis** · 12-04-2006, 14:33

Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Also, getting your own pope elected or just voting for the pope who will get elected is the same thing. Your own pope won't like you more than a pope you voted for.

Decidedly not so...

I had 0-1-2 crosses with the Pope before I assassinated him, and I had been down there for ages. Then becasue I had 'pruned' the College of Cardinals I got my man voted in. Bam! Perfect score for me.
I had however voted for others previously and still gotten nowhere.

So it certainly matters who becoems Pope, and not just the votes.

**chunkynut** · 12-04-2006, 14:50

Originally Posted by Kraxis

Decidedly not so...

I had 0-1-2 crosses with the Pope before I assassinated him, and I had been down there for ages. Then becasue I had 'pruned' the College of Cardinals I got my man voted in. Bam! Perfect score for me.
I had however voted for others previously and still gotten nowhere.

So it certainly matters who becoems Pope, and not just the votes.

Interesting, I've not found this on medium difficulty, as long as you vote for the Cardinal that becomes Pope its the same. However every time this has happened its been my ally that I voted for too, and I don't have a Cardinal in the Prefiati but do have say 4 or 5 to ensure that the one I vote for is the Pope.

So it could be multiple votes or your relation to the elected Popes faction maybe, ideas?

Money works a treat on the pope tho, 100 florins for 10 turns tends to keep me at perfect and just let other factions excommunicate themselves by attacking you.

**FactionHeir** · 12-04-2006, 16:21

I play under VH and sometimes even if you vote in your own pope when you had a low relation with the papal states I only got up to 2 below the max. Most of the time I do get the max, but also if I vote in my ally's cardinal.

The entire point is, that the person whose pope gets elected gives near perfect relations to all voters and a bonus for those who either a) own the cardinal or b) are allies of the nation whose cardinal was elected.

Example: Hungary and Portugal are the only other cardinals out of the 12 cardinals in the college. The other 10 are mine. Portugal is my ally and Hungary my enemy. Pope dies and mine gets elected. Both others vote for their own pope. However, Portugal ends up with perfect relations (they only had 3 crosses before) and Hungary is down to like 4 crosses.

So yes, my conjecture does make sense. You also do get excommed by your own pope at times btw, at the same rate another pope you voted for would.

**FactionHeir** · 12-04-2006, 16:31

As a follow-up I'd like to add a point c) if you are allied with the nations whose pope gets elected, you get max relations as well.
Noticed that because poland didn't have any cardinals and thus didn't get to vote but as they were my allies they ended up going to max relations.