Polish have a built-in affinity with the Pope?

**Aenlic** · 12-02-2006, 08:26

I started a campaign as the Polish tonight and I am rather surprised at how easy it is to max out my Papal favor as that faction and keep the Pope happy. With other factions it's a struggle to avoid excommunication and deal with inquisitors and keep piety up and heresy down to please his Popeness. But with the Polish it was almost effortless. I only had 2 priests after 15-20 or so turns, all of my generals had low piety and astrologers in their retinues including my faction leader, and I had done nothing to actively encourage the Pope, except allying myself with him as soon as possible; and yet, I was at max favor by turn 15-20 with just one crusade in which I didn't even manage to get even as far as Byzantium with my crusaders before the crusade succeeded! I even continued to attack the HRE after being told to stop by the Pope; and instead of being excommunicated when I failed the stop attacking mission he gives, I just "displeased" him and dropped down one level below max favor. Had it right back up again the next few turns by attacking another HRE stack and releasing them all and building a new church in another city.

Is it intended that Papal favor be so easy as the Polish? Is it just the Polish or do some of the other factions which I haven't yet tried, like the Hungarians, the Milanese and the Venetians have the same boost to Papal favor? I must say it sure is a major change from the struggle I've had with the Pope when playing the French, the English, the Danes, the Spanish and the Scots.

**Spartiate** · 12-02-2006, 08:48

One would wonder if it is a salute to the late great Pope John Paul ii.He was Polish after all.Now that you mention it i don't think i recall the Polish getting excommed in any of my campaigns.

**Kekvit Irae** · 12-02-2006, 08:54

I've seen the Polish get excommunicated in both my Milan and my French campaigns. They both got excommunicated OFTEN. I guess it's all due to rivalries.

**Steinfeld** · 12-02-2006, 12:34

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae

I've seen the Polish get excommunicated in both my Milan and my French campaigns. They both got excommunicated OFTEN. I guess it's all due to rivalries.

In my English campaign, the Polish have been excommunicated by every Pope so far.
But when I played the Polish, I renamed a priest of mine to Karol Wojtyla and guess what happened? He got elected as Pope immediately PLUS he neverever died!

**=Omni=** · 12-02-2006, 15:18

Originally Posted by Steinfeld

In my English campaign, the Polish have been excommunicated by every Pope so far.
But when I played the Polish, I renamed a priest of mine to Karol Wojtyla and guess what happened? He got elected as Pope immediately PLUS he neverever died!

LOL, that'd be great easter egg :D

I'm playing spain on H/H and I have to say that I also have good relations with pope - I can attack other facitions even if told by pope not to do so, I'm not attacked by inquisittion much and I don't participate in any crusades (I rather use them- ask pope to call them- to have other nations mobilise their army and go away from their land :lol:) I've got excommunicated once or twice, bo so was Poland and other nations. And I didn't have any problems with reconcilation. Well, it must be that the popes budgets is mostly sponsored by me :D

**Riadach** · 12-02-2006, 15:56

Originally Posted by Steinfeld

In my English campaign, the Polish have been excommunicated by every Pope so far.
But when I played the Polish, I renamed a priest of mine to Karol Wojtyla and guess what happened? He got elected as Pope immediately PLUS he neverever died!

what if you're the hre and rename one to joseph ratzinger? or will that just piss of all the muslim factions and force them to jihad against u?

**Kraxis** · 12-02-2006, 17:24

As the HRE the Polish are truly the ones who are the Pope's pets. I have one of my men on the position, and still the Polish maintain a position just below me, despite the fact that they voted against him and are at war with me.

**Molinaargh** · 12-02-2006, 18:15

I wish!

In my current Poland campaign (20 turns) I have to give 500 florins to the Pope almost every turn to keep my standing high. It went as far down as 4 when I attacked the HRE (after they backstabbed me!), and I hadn't even executed the prisioners.

What difficulty are you playing?

**Aenlic** · 12-02-2006, 19:15

I'm playing this campaign at H/H. Maybe I just got lucky at the outset and the Pope chose my faction as an early favorite. Another possibility is that I did make an effort at the beginning to ally with the Pope as quick as possible, having had so many problems with other factions and the Pope. So I built a diplomat on the first turn (Poland starts with a princess not a diplomat), sent him immediately west to Nuremburg to make friendly with the HRE to keep them off my back for at least a few turns, then sent him straight south to the Pope. He accepted an alliance on the first request along with trade rights and map info. We made the alliance before either one of us had any enemies, and as I recall, before anyone except rebels were listed as enemies for any faction. Maybe that helped.

Perhaps an early and quick alliance is the main factgor here. I'm about to close down this campaign; so I'll maybe try it with some other further off faction and see if an early alliance with the Papal States makes things easier than trying for an alliance later and perhaps failing.

I'm ending the campaign because I got caught with my pants down. While I was off expanding east and dealing with the Russians who had been getting aggressive by taking Vilnius, Denmark decided it really wanted Thorn and the HRE chose that same moment to betray a hard won ceasefire by attacking both Breslau and Krakow, and the opportunist Hungarians figured I was looking pretty weak and went for Iasi. The HRE and Denmark double teamed my best army into oblivion and my other big stack is tied down with the Russians. I'm screwed, with only Halych left as a major castle and Riga and Smolensk too small still to be any help. Iasi, Thorn and Vilnius were my other big castles. Ah, well.