Quote Originally Posted by Carl
The basic rules as a catholic regarding the pope are pretty simple, NEVER attack a fellow cathloic that is not excommunicated, and allways give the pope money if your relationship is less than perfect.
Meh, if you're good at gifting the pope cash to keep relations up, you can easily support attacks into enemy territory. I usually try not to start them, but as the English both France and Milan attacked me (neither one was or became excommed), and I snatched most of France as a result, with almost no papal impact. You eventually get those papal decrees to stop fighting - those are the biggies you have to heed. Your pope rating takes such a huge hit if you ignore them that you end up not being able to do anything at all until you've built your pope rating back up again. If you start with it very high though, you have a lot of breathing room usually before the pope really becomes a concern. My campaigns usually turn into a rollercoaster of pope management - feed the pope, rating goes up. Beat on neighbors, rating goes down. Pope says stop - so I stop. Build rating again, and/or beat on a different neighbor. Pope mission over, commence beating on original target. It's really quite hilarious