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

[Sentinel]

As stated in the above posts. Send a diplomat to Rome get an alliance and bump your relations up to perfect.
This will cost you few thousand florins, and every time your standing drops you will have to slip the pope a few more florins (usually about 500 on VH/VH) to get it back up again. Plus the cost of the Diplomat 100 per turn.
What you get for all this cash is the best ally in the game. So long as you keep the relations near perfect the pope will not stab you in the back (unlike all the other factions).
You can call crusades with all the benefits that brings, cheap units, extra movement points, positive traits ect.
You can attack any catholic faction. You will get the warning but if your standing is high he will not excommunicate you.
Any other catholic faction that persistently attacks you risks persistently

Alternatively you can ignore the pope and get excommunicated.
You can then attack anyone and not have to worry about the pope because he can not do anything worse to you than he has already done. (except perhaps invade).
And what has he done.
You no longer get any benefits that a crusade brings
You no longer get the opportunity doing missions from the pope and the benefits they bring.
Every catholic faction and now call a crusade against you. Any crusading faction that does becomes your enemy breaking any alliance / trade agreement. Thus your trade revenue drops.
Fighting off these armies will cost you time and money replacing your losses.
Every settlement you own will suffer public orders penalties resulting in you either reducing your tax revenue of making you increase you garrison.
I think there is (not sure) a drop in your generals loyalty, increasing the risk of some of your armies rebelling.

Give the two choices I know which way I would go. Once you make the pope your friend the small cost involved is a good investment.
But if anyone wants to do it the hard way........Why not try using all town militia armies.

[SMZ]

lol - ^^ said perfectly

I make it a matter of habit in my games to now either send my first diplomat directly to Rome, or build one as quickly as possible and send him to Rome - I then simply offer a tribute of 500 florins per turn for something like 20 turns - the Pope is overjoyed and instantly has Perfect relations with me, I can then get an Alliance - and I leave my diplomat sitting there in case I ever do something to annoy his holiness like repeatedly attack a catholic faction, ignore a called crusade, ignore a papal mission, etc, etc.... once the 20 turns is up, I renew it - my florins keep trickling into the holy fingers in the background and I don't have to be concerned

so it only costs 600 florins a turn (500 for the bribe, 100 for the diplo) and you get all those benefits Sentinel just listed, which in turn more than make good on the investment.... or you could hire two knights for the same money, lol

EDIT: dunno if the following includes me, but no flaming was intended - I'm el oh eling at the Pope's grubby fingers, not any poster on here =]

[sapi]

Guys, just a friendly warning to lay off the flaming.

Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that you should insult them.

[grapedog]

to put a little closure on the question, i did what some recommended. I waited for my 7 turns of no hostile acts against the British. Apparently the British got the same warning maybe a turn or two after me. They kept one of my ports blockaded and got Ex-com'd about 2 turns after the Popes non aggression mission so I nabbed Nottingham. When I nabbed Nottingham I killed their faction leader so they were immediately reconciled...the bastards. Anyhow, about 6 turns later they decided to attack again, they got Ex-com'd again and I took London and Caen.

I moved a diplomate down to Rome as well, and started gifting the Pope 1000fl/turn just because i had so much cash and so far i've been perfect pretty much from then on. I'm at around turn 85 and own 20 provinces. I went down the coast of modern day france and killed off the english once and for all, now I'm working on Milan. Though I don't know whats up with them, they allied with me and about 4 turns later i caught one of their spies in my cities and it went to war...so I've taken about 5 of their cities, they WERE number 1 or 2 in every catergory that i was 2 or 1 in...but they are slipping big time now and the mongols are stepping it up.

Thanks for the advice, it worked like a charm. I'll just have to stay on the defensive for the first few turns in each new game until I can get a diplomat down to the Papal States to start greasing palms....though it's so easy it almost feels like cheating now.

[ObeliX]

200 fl/turn seems to work fine for me...

[Ciaran]

I´d not be too worried with the "immediate excommunication" threat. When I got it and attacked the faction in question (I wanted to get excommunicated, Rome was the only province I required for my HRE victory), the only thing that happened was that my relationship with the pope dropped one increment. In MTW I such a warning is way more substantial.

[gardibolt]

There are two different warnings from the pope. One is that your standing will not be as high as it was, and one that you'll be excommunicated. My experience has been that he's not kidding with the latter.

[ezoons]

I've only been playing for a couple of days and I'm wondering if anyone has the same problem with the pope that I do: the Papal States just refuse to accept gifts!
I don't know, maybe I'm doing something wrong. But I approach them as usual, with a diplomat, and try to offer various things (map info, one-off payments, regular tribute), and every time they just refuse!
This is getting ridiculous. The pope belongs to my faction, I'm offering their "bankrupt" state 3000 florins of pocket cash, and they "just aren't interested"! What gives?

[Carl]

Next to the "make offer" button you should see a preasent box. Click that when you want to gift him somthing. the make offer means he expects to give you somthing in return. you've got to actually use the "gift" button to gift him stuff.