Has anybody every tried this?

[Goofball]

Gifting one of your provinces to the Pope while it is under siege by another Catholic faction?

I'm thinking of giving it a try when I get home. Will it work?

[Carl]

I doubt it even if he's your ally.

[sapi]

You can't give away provinces that are under siege.

[TevashSzat]

sapi is right, you cant give away provinces under siege

[zstajerski]

yeah , no sieged provinces can be given to other factions

and eaven when you give the pope a province your relations with him plummet to abysmal

[IsItStillThere]

yeah , no sieged provinces can be given to other factions
and eaven when you give the pope a province your relations with him plummet to abysmal

Just a tip: when you gift a province to the pope or anybody else, make sure you remove all military units from it FIRST. Otherwise, you will get the "your army is on my land" diplomatic penalty.

[sapi]

^^ What he said - if you forget that you can also forget about the positive relations you were trying to achieve

[Empirate]

I tried to give the Pope provinces time and again, but regardless of my standing with him, he always replied "we can't take this gift, it's too much!". Granted, most of the time I wanted to get rid of Oslo (playing the English, Oslo being a ceasefire gift from the late Scots), which was constantly being attacked by the Danes. But I even tried to get a buffer between me and Denmark by gifting Antwerp to the Pope, and he declined. Does the AI take into account the probability it can hold a piece of land you gift it with long-term?

[gardibolt]

There does seem to be an exception if he asks you to give him the province, though. I had a mission from the Pope to turn over Rome to him (I had seized it from Milan as the target of a crusade). I figured what the hell, and gave it to him. My troops stood outside the city and took 2 turns to walk to a nearby province, but my standing with the Pope took no hit. So the mechanics of the game seem to recognize a difference between you gifting him a province and you giving it to him on his request. Or maybe the positive impact of giving him the province cancels out any negative impact.

[Quillan]

Did you have military access? When I play a catholic faction, some of my highest early game priorities are to max out my Pope-o-meter, ally with the Papal States and then sign mutual military access agreements with them. The alliance is usually easy while the military access usually requires either a monetary gift or waiting a few turns after allying. I originally did this because of bandits; I had a rebel army hanging out near a border of a papal territory and every time I'd attack it the army would just retreat. At the time, the Pope had no army to speak of and I couldn't pursue it into his territory without damaging our relations. Eventually I got the access and destroyed the army, but since then I just do it automatically at the beginning of the campaign. From turn 1 I have a diplomat on the way to Rome just for that purpose.

[caius britannicus]

yeah , no sieged provinces can be given to other factions

and eaven when you give the pope a province your relations with him plummet to abysmal

Thats never happened to me. In my sicily campaign I gifted the entire mid-east to the pope. My standing with him sky rocketed (I even gifted it to him with the garrisons still in the cities in some cases). The nice part was that they established Jerusalem as their new capital and I was able to take rome from rebels that went against the pope (large distance no garrison). He asked for it back, but I couldn't give up my position in italy so I kept it. The drop wasn't significant so it worked out great.