Papal Dominion

**SultanSaladin** · 02-17-2007, 02:51

I have never seen a papal empire .. in my sicilian campaign i had 3 assassins and 3 spys in rome region making sure that their only income comes from my small tributes for them ... managed to keep the pope in rome and their army in rome region :)
perhaps if you give to the pope some land he will become greedy and the papal empire is born :P

**Carl** · 02-17-2007, 03:09

Yeah, he needs land to expand as his initial income just about covers his upkeep costs, so unless you give him region/s he never has enough income and that seems to trigger the AI into going passive. It only attacks when it has the forces to do so and enough spare cash to develop the target. Give him a few provinces though and he's got enough income to easilly form large armies and have money to spare.

**grapedog** · 02-17-2007, 17:49

Originally Posted by Carl

Yeah, he needs land to expand as his initial income just about covers his upkeep costs, so unless you give him region/s he never has enough income and that seems to trigger the AI into going passive. It only attacks when it has the forces to do so and enough spare cash to develop the target. Give him a few provinces though and he's got enough income to easilly form large armies and have money to spare.

same thing happens to scotland in most campaigns...they just sit on their rump like the Pope most times...soon as they take a city though, the Pope/Scot's can get dangerous. I've yet to see a Papal Empire though...

**khaos83_2000** · 02-17-2007, 19:45

I gave Papal Anitoch after my crusade.
Mongols arrive soon after that.
Papal didnt expand much in the muslim area and got kicked out by the mongols...
Im considering to get a few castle for them there. They might just kick the mongols out of the map if wat said in the posts are true.

**Marquis of Roland** · 02-17-2007, 21:21

In my current Turkish campaign, the pope has gone ape and took all of Italy, Sicily, Southern France, and encroaching into the Iberian Peninsula. I believe what triggered the expansionism was on 1 turn, 1 sicilian unit (not army) was trying to move across Naples or something and accidentally stepped into Papal territory. Well the pope got mad and declared war on Sicily, Sicily was immediately excommunicated and the pope calls a crusade on them. Next turn you see every Papal stack join the crusade, and each surviving catholic country also sends a crusade (France, Portugal, and Venice bit the dust).

Well the Pope wipes out the hapless Sicilians in short order, and for no apparent reason declares war on Milanese now. The same process is repeated, pope starts a crusade and all of his amries join crusade and attack. So now Milan is wiped out. So Pope now shares a common border with Spain, so guess what he does, yup he declares war on Spain and calls in the crusade. And ironically, the only ally of pope is not even catholic its the Moors lol.

My Turks have taken everything up to Vienna and are all ready to teach the pope a lesson in humility but then Timurids thought it was convenient to pop out just now, so the Pope is saved for another decade or so.

**Marius Dynamite** · 02-17-2007, 21:43

I was Spain and gave the pope Jerusalem when I had all the cities in that Area (Jerusalem, Gaza, Cairo) to make the area more catholic and give me stability in the region. It never really worked so I gave him Gaza aswell. He expanded north to Antioch and within 15 turns he had huge armies and most of the area. He was of course extremely friendly with me when I gave him the area and he never once attacked me. I decided to abandon Alexandria and Cairo anyways because I needed the huge armies keeping unrest down in those cities to crush the French. I destroyed everything in the cities to get as much cash and left them. Later on the Pope took them and built them up again. The muslims were more or less wiped out. I never got as far to see what happened when the Mongols and Timurids arrived.

**Frankenbeasley** · 02-17-2007, 23:12

I'm currently playing HRE. One of the first things I did was take florence and then gift it to the Papal states in return for an alliance. This gave me a nice buffer from Sicily.

Then I simply wound up the Milanese until they attacked me and got excommunicated. Then I called for a crusade on Milan and took it the next turn. Then I did the same thing to the Venetians, culminating in the Sacking of Venice in the Crusade of, um, turn 30 or so.

Anyway, both these crusades left the Papal States with full stacks floating around and the gift of Florence must have woken their expansionist territories because the next thing I realise, when I send my Merchants out for rare resources, is that the Papal States have wiped out the Moors in North Africa and taken everything from Arguin to Tripoli.

However, they didn't expand much from there, even when Spain and Portugal were excommunicated and they could/should have taken their lands. Of course, later on, during my annexing of the Middle East, I dumped Damascus their way just as the Mongols hit Edessa. That seemed to work very well at distracting almost everyone for a while...