England attacks me, yet I'm threatened with Ex-com?

[grapedog]

My cash flow has started to pick up, but most of the towns...York, Caernavorn(sp?), Dublin, Iverness were tiny and were producing no cash pretty much until I built them up enough to get ports and thats about when the war started a few turns ago. At this point I could probably gift a few turns to the Pope and see what happens. I was actually hoping the English would attack so I could grab Nottingham and use that as my main Castle and troop producing center for the British Isles area...but it looks like it might have to wait a few more turns.

[dumas]

Here are a few things I picked up... though I could be wrong since I'm a noob. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If the pope gives you a "no aggression" warning,

-If the warning says that your reputation with pope will suffer if you attack, it will--but you wouldn't get excommunicated (you can make it up later with bribes).

-If the warning says that you will get excommunicated, you will get excommunicated after attacking faction (obviously). So don't do it unless you can handle it.

-If that faction's navy is blockading your port, you can attack that blockading navy without any repercussion.

-If that faction's army is in your land, you can attack that army without any repercussion.

Following the above, you shouldn't have any trouble with the pope.

[gardibolt]

-If that faction's army is in your land, you can attack that army without any repercussion.

I think the original post said that he did get in dutch with the Pope when he did this. My experience is that it's only safe to attack after you get the excomm warning if you're actually besieged.

Most of the time, if you can take it, let any Catholic enemy attack you, over and over, without attacking them. It wears them down, and drops their papal standing (since the AI isn't too good about bribing His Holiness) to the point you can safely assault. At that point, the enemy is weakened substantially and cannot resist after the Pope gives the All Clear to Kill sign.

[South90]

You know, the same thing happen to me when i was Scotland. Its probably inevitable. Besides paying off the pope (which costs alot of money most likely), sometimes its better to just get excommunicated. If your good enough then you can probably take on whoever comes to kill you because Scotland really only has one front, and thats through England.

[Musashi]

Yeah, if you get the excommunication warning, you have to just sit back and let them do the attacking. Then their relations with the Pope will drop instead of yours. If they lay siege to a settlement, you can attack the besieging army with no penalty, so use that to your advantage. Keep a huge army in the field and just light garissons in the towns and castles so that they're tempting tagets, and when the AI foolishly lays siege, break them against the walls with your huge field army.

If you do this a few times, THEY will get excommunicated. And then you can ask for a crusade against them, and go on a rampage :D