What is the penalty for Excommunication ?

[Periklis]

In my current campaign (my first as a Catholic England) I get attacked by France continuously. The pope on the other hand likes France more than me (France has 2 crosses more than me). Almost every time the France is the attacker (except the naval ones) but instead of getting crosses for being a good catholic not attacking the French I loose ones. It is a matter of turns before the Pope aks of me for the second time to stop killing fellow Catholics. This time I will not listen to him (I am ready to lunch a triple attack to take Paris, Rennes and a castles next to Paris (I do not remember the name). I will probably will be excommunicated thought and I am wondering what the penalty will be. I forgot to mention that I am on my way to take Antioch with a crusade army. If I get excommunicated will I be able to finish the crusade or the soldiers will desert?

If those questions are already covered in another topic I am truly sorry but I could not locate any info about the subject yet in the forums

[sapi]

You suffer a 20% public order drop on cities, 5% in castles, you can be the target of crusades, Catholics have no penalty for attacking you (not sure if your relations automatically drop) and all your current crusade armies will disband

[Ciaran]

I´ve so far been able to avoid excommunication (as the HRE, no less), but as far as I know, you might get problems with population unrest, disloyal generals and you can be targeted by Crusades.
What happens to your still underway Crusade I have no idea. Make a savegame, try it out and report the results. We´re always eager for knowledge ;)

[sapi]

@ciaran - i suggest you just bite the bullet and get excommunicated with the hre.

You can't afford to stuff around (imo) placating the pope when you're surrounded on all sides.

Wipe out france, venice, milan, poland and hungury (england if you're in a bad mood) then deal with your papal rep.

And, irony of ironies, i got reconciled at one stage, as my faction leader fell in battle....against the papacy

[Carl]

My advice, simply stop attackin the French at all, do that and then park an army right next to a french one. Make it a single peasent then fight the battle, the french will take a rep hit but you won't. If the french attack you then you imidietlly counter attack you will BOTH suffer a rep hit, and if the French have/are doing somthing for the pope then they will take a smaller hit, but so long as it's only the french attacking you will get no hit.

[JCoyote]

Carl has a good plan, BUT make sure the army for them to attack is on your land.

You take no pope hits for attacking armies on your own land. Even when the pope asks you to cease hostilities, their armies that are on your land are still fair game.

You only get excommunicated because you take the fight onto their territory.

[Kraggenmor]

Since excommunication can be reconciled by the death of either your faction leader, or his popeyness, the when either of those characters gets up around 59 or 60 years old; it's an ideal time to go on a rampage through your neighboring Catholics.

[Lamprey]

I'd be surprised if your crusading army disbands when you're excommunicated. Frederick Barbarossa, one of the more famous holy roman emperors went on a crusade while excommunicated, after all.

[JCoyote]

I'd be surprised if your crusading army disbands when you're excommunicated. Frederick Barbarossa, one of the more famous holy roman emperors went on a crusade while excommunicated, after all.

Well part of the technical advantage of the crusade is some tacit level of support from the church; unit support costs etc are covered. There's no reason you can't just take a big army and "go on a crusade" on your own, it just won't have the support advantages his meddlesomeness gives you.

[vitch]

Maybe it should be "What is the bonus for excommunication?"

Nothing worse than bringing your enemies to the brink of extinction only for old Popey to butt in and demand a cease fire allowing them to re-arm and rebuild.

And as Henry VIII exploited it lets you have your wicked way with any comely wench who takes your fancy

[Forward Observer]

In my first long English campaign, I played at least 3 or 4 turns before I realized that I had been excommunicated. I must have right or left clicked the message icons accidentally closing them before I read the proper warning message and subsequent announcement.

My first clue was the public order dropping across the board in my cities, and then seeing that the pope had called a crusade against Toulouse. Since Toulouse was my best troop producing facility at the time, it was easy to defend and since I was also in decent financial shape, I simply lowered my taxes a notch or two to get public order back to a normal level and played on.

It actually worked out pretty well, because from that point on, I had a relatively free hand to attack and rampage at leisure with no further admonishments.

Each of my neighbors sent a crusading army at Toulouse, but they only came one at a time and were rather weak---being composed of only 3 or 4 good units with the rest made up of pilgrims or peasants. I was able to easily defeat and wipe each army out, which had to have been a manpower drain on those factions to some extent.

I played on for maybe 25 to 30 turns this way until the pope croaked. During all of this time I still kept pumping out priests, and so to my surprise, my man got voted in as the replacement. Of course all was forgiven then and the game went on as normal.

The point is---if you are in decent financial and military shape at the time you might want to give excommunication a try. I wasn't all that bad and really did have some offsetting positives to it.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

the biggest thing you should be afraid of is if the Pope calls a crusade on your capital, you have more than 3 enemies, those 3 enemies and more will join, and if they actually do come (with full stack armies) its quite dangerous. economy will be very hard to get back up if they capture you capital- unless you have a lot of settlements and have another city worthy of being your capital.
didnt happen to me, but thats what i predict.

[JCoyote]

I just got excommed on my big long Portuguese game. But I have plenty of army to burn up and lots of cannon towers and such. (I got the bug fix for towers.) It actually seems to be working out nicely, it draws them into battles I can fight defensively bringing them massive losses.

It's very interesting how this long style of play is turning out. Not as many factions gone as I would have thought by now (after the normal game ended). All the Catholic factions but Spain and Milan are still in the game... so getting excommunicated is bringing a LOT of forces against my walls.

[TevashSzat]

Well, if you want lots of huge epic scale battles, try to get excomed then i guess. If you are pretty far through the campaign, there is a high chance that you will probably fight at least one battle where you face off against 2 crusading armies

[LordKhaine]

Since excommunication can be reconciled by the death of either your faction leader, or his popeyness, the when either of those characters gets up around 59 or 60 years old; it's an ideal time to go on a rampage through your neighboring Catholics.

Not a 100% safe plan by any accounts. Just because the Pope dies doesn't mean it will end. The new pope will sometimes take a disliking to you and keep you excommunicated. It can be a bit of a downward spiral really. If you've been excommunicated once it's also easier to get excommunicated again, since all the catholics by then will no doubt have really awful relations with you. And if you're at war with catholics and everyone hates you... it's obvious who the Pope will pick on.

Apparently the death of a faction leader should end excommunication.. though I swear once my king died and I was *still* excommunicated afterwards! I think I still had a crusade set against one of my castles though, perhaps that's why?

[JCoyote]

I should point out here, in my game with Portugal the Pope in question is 60. And I control 8 of the college of cardinals, meaning as soon as he croaks I'm going straight from abysmal to perfect with the papacy.

No Catholic empire should be without Pope on a Rope!

[sapi]

Not a 100% safe plan by any accounts. Just because the Pope dies doesn't mean it will end. The new pope will sometimes take a disliking to you and keep you excommunicated. It can be a bit of a downward spiral really. If you've been excommunicated once it's also easier to get excommunicated again, since all the catholics by then will no doubt have really awful relations with you. And if you're at war with catholics and everyone hates you... it's obvious who the Pope will pick on.

A simple solution - kill the pope.

Eventually your cardinal will get elected, even if you have to wipe out the entire college of cardinals to get to that point.

[JCoyote]

A simple solution - kill the pope.

Eventually your cardinal will get elected, even if you have to wipe out the entire college of cardinals to get to that point.

I find building more better priests is a more effective, reliable, and beneficial in the long term. But I guess to many wargamers the solution to every problem looks like killing more stuff.

[sapi]

I just tend to be so busy building my military that i can't afford the time that it takes to get a decent priest production facility online.

I usually use jerusalem for it when i bother capturing it.

[LordKhaine]

A simple solution - kill the pope.

Eventually your cardinal will get elected, even if you have to wipe out the entire college of cardinals to get to that point.

The ironic thing was the time I got excommunicated for longest... it was actually done by the first Pope I got elected! All that time getting him elected and he virtually instantly turned against me!

[yezhanquan85]

It's important to remember that although the new pope may once be your cardinal, once he's inside the Vatican, he's the head of the Papal States. Don't count too much on this "pope being my guy" alone. Instead, invest some money to grease his palms to make him look the other way.

[yezhanquan85]

Anyway, on the excom issue, the real threat is that your cities can become targets of crusades. If you're near a Muslim faction and they call a jihad on you at the same time, good luck.

[Kraggenmor]

Not a 100% safe plan by any accounts. Just because the Pope dies doesn't mean it will end. The new pope will sometimes take a disliking to you and keep you excommunicated. It can be a bit of a downward spiral really. If you've been excommunicated once it's also easier to get excommunicated again, since all the catholics by then will no doubt have really awful relations with you. And if you're at war with catholics and everyone hates you... it's obvious who the Pope will pick on.

Apparently the death of a faction leader should end excommunication.. though I swear once my king died and I was *still* excommunicated afterwards! I think I still had a crusade set against one of my castles though, perhaps that's why?

In my experience so far, when the former pope dies, you are automatically reconciled. That's when you stop attacking for a bit and build you papal rep back up.

L/R/R.

YMMV but, its worked that way for me quite consistantly.