The Pope says stop - what exactly can I do without being excommunicated?

[econ21]

I know we've had some discussion of this before, but I am still a little vague. What actions can and can't you take if a the Pope warns you to cease hostilities against a faction or risk excommunication?

I guess the answer may depend on your standing with the Pope (and that of your enemies), but I am interested in the "worst case" scenario. What actions did people do that led to them being excommunicated?

As I understand it:

You cannot
- Attack the AI in their land
- Attack AI ships
- Storm an AI settlement you are already besieging

You can:
- Fight back if attack (duh). (except maybe if they sally, see (6) below)
- Maintain a siege of an already besieged AI settlement (but see (5) & (6) below)

But I am unsure can you:
(1) Sally from a besieged town?
(2) Attack an AI army besieging your town (ie not with a sally, but with a relief force)?
(3) Attack an AI army on your land?
(4) Attack a fleet blockading your port?
(5) Capture an AI settlement already besieged if you starve it out and the defenders do not sally?
(6) Repulse an AI sally from a settlement already besieged?
(7) Initiate a siege of an AI settlement?

Has anyone done any of acts (1) to (7) and been excommunicated? Anyone done them and not been excommunicated?

I have a vague memory of doing (5) without being excommunicated, but being excommunicated for (6). ie I was able to take a besieged settlement when the defenders just gave up (no sally), but was excommunicated when they sallied.

[sapi]

Just vague thoughts - it's been a while - so don't treat this as absolutely correct.

Anyway, i believe that: (yes = excommed btw)

1) No
2) No
3) No
4) Yes
5) Yes
6) Yes
7) Yes

[Carl]

Same format as Sapi.

1. No.

2. I believe Yes, but not if you place it next to an enemy army and then sally so that it arrives as reinforcements.

3. Nobody can agree on this, I've had excom warning myself though so I'll put yes.

4. I believe this works the same as sallying, a ship in the port can drive them of and another fleet can come on as reinforcements, but can't be the attacker.

5 and 6. Yes, even maintaining the siege will get you Excomed I think.

7. Yes.

[anders]

Im sure youre right, but isnt this a bit illogical, I mean chasing off enemies sieging your settlements should be within every christian nations right, its a defensive act, if its not allowed then youre pretty much required to roll over and die.

on the other hand maintaining a siege is an aggressive act, and should get you thrown out..

[Kraggenmor]

Regarding Seiges maintenance:

I think it depends very heavily on you papal favor rating. I have both been excommunicated for maintaining a seige after receiving a papal warning, and NOT been excommunicated for maintaining a siege.

Each case occurred while I was playing a different faction and I don't remember my papal rating.

One occured with me playing Scotland, having laid seige to England (at Nottingham I believe) I receved a papal warning for laying the seige and decided to say 'bugger the pope' and maintained it.

When I clicked 'next turn' the English Sallied and I took the settlement. No excomm.

In every other case I can think of where I've been warned by the pope for laying a seige, I have been excommed if I maintained it.

[Foz]

Add (8): Can you maintain a blockade if it is in place already when you get the warning?

As for maintaining sieges, I too believe I have been both excommed for this, and not excommed for it. I think I've even gotten away with assaulting a besieged settlement and taking it, w/o excomm. Rare, but I swear it happened at least once. The deciding factor may be your papal favor, that of the target, or the actual difference advantage you have over the target.

I've also noticed that the pope seemingly allows you to do anything provided that it destroys the enemy faction. It may be that destruction of the enemy faction alleviates any papal consequences of the actions you took to accomplish it.

In general though the system seems a bit whimsical about what it allows or does not allow, and the best rule I've found to follow is this: save the game, then try to do something questionable. If you get excommunicated, reload and don't do it, lol.

[SultanSaladin]

Regarding Seiges maintenance:

I think it depends very heavily on you papal favor rating. I have both been excommunicated for maintaining a seige after receiving a papal warning, and NOT been excommunicated for maintaining a siege.

Each case occurred while I was playing a different faction and I don't remember my papal rating.

One occured with me playing Scotland, having laid seige to England (at Nottingham I believe) I receved a papal warning for laying the seige and decided to say 'bugger the pope' and maintained it.

When I clicked 'next turn' the English Sallied and I took the settlement. No excomm.

In every other case I can think of where I've been warned by the pope for laying a seige, I have been excommed if I maintained it.

I have never been excommed when I took a settlement after the messages from pope to end hostilities. And I have always had relations with the pope as perfect. But even perfect relations with the pope don't protect you from beeing excommed if you attack enemy ships/armies/settlements during popes mission.

[Bob the Insane]

One point worth noting is that this is a mission... Your mission is to not attack the identified faction... If you fail your standing with the Pope drops and if it drops low enough you will be excommunicated, even if the consequence is risking excommuniation your standing still just drops (a lot) and if you had an very good relationship you might get away with it...

I find that as long as you maintain a very good relationship with the Pope you can pretty much ignore his request and you will only get knocked down to an average relationship...

Now what this thread is about is really what constitues an attack as far as failing the mission is concerned...

IIRC you can sally but you can't attack a besieging force from outside...

Not sure about the others...

It is also worth considering what ships are allowed to do, can you maintain a blockade that started before the Pope's instructions?

[dph948]

to add to the list, I was once ex-commed for merging armies in enemy territory. I brought a spare general to join one of my larger stacks, not besieging, just sitting around in France, and bang, excom

[FactionHeir]

You cannot
- Attack the AI in their land
- Attack AI ships
- Storm an AI settlement you are already besieging

True x3

You can:
- Fight back if attack (duh).
- Maintain a siege of an already besieged AI settlement (but see (5) & (6) below)

True and False

(1) Sally from a besieged town?
(2) Attack an AI army besieging your town (ie not with a sally, but with a relief force)?
(3) Attack an AI army on your land?
(4) Attack a fleet blockading your port?
(5) Capture an AI settlement already besieged if you starve it out and the defenders do not sally?
(6) Repulse an AI sally from a settlement already besieged?
(7) Initiate a siege of an AI settlement?

1. Yes 2. No 3. No 4. No 5. No 6. No, as you ended turn and thus failed the mission by slaying christians 7. No

You should look for a certain post of mine in the buglist to see a few more examples of what's allowed or not btw. Might be tough though as I seem to be the most frequent poster there ;)

[dunno]

3. Nobody can agree on this, I've had excom warning myself though so I'll put yes.

People get confused about this because they assume actions that trigger a warning will also trigger an excommunication. The fact is that only a proper subset of actions, from the set of actions that trigger warnings, will actually trigger excommunication. The game will let you know if the action you are going to commit will fail the cease-hostilities mission by popping up a confirmation dialog. Attacking enemy armies on your lands will not trigger an excommunication, only a warning. Also, you are allowed to attack blockading fleets, even with a fleet from outside the port because it does not trigger the confirmation dialog.

[Foz]

People get confused about this because they assume actions that trigger a warning will also trigger an excommunication. The fact is that only a proper subset of actions, from the set of actions that trigger warnings, will actually trigger excommunication. The game will let you know if the action you are going to commit will fail the cease-hostilities mission by popping up a confirmation dialog. Attacking enemy armies on your lands will not trigger an excommunication, only a warning. Also, you are allowed to attack blockading fleets, even with a fleet from outside the port because it does not trigger the confirmation dialog.

There is a distinction to be made here: failing the mission is not the ONLY way to become excommunicated from the action you took. It should be entirely possible to do something that the mission allows, yet suffer a papal rating hit large enough (b/c of warring with other catholics) to in fact make you excommunicated (depending on your initial papal standing of course). Since you can presumably get excommunicated those ways without involving a "cease hostilities" mission at all, it would make sense for us to try to limit the scope of this discussion strictly to things that break the mission and therefore guarantee excommunication when you are under the mission.

[Ciaran]

As for maintaining sieges, I too believe I have been both excommed for this, and not excommed for it.

Maintaining a siege causes to faile the ceasefire mission, in any case, as does keeping up the blockade of a port after the mssion has been issued.
When I did those, however, my standing with the pope was near perfect, so all that happened was a slight drop in the relationships.

[FactionHeir]

Actually you are allowed to keep up port blockades after an excomm warning. Just not city sieges.

[Kraggenmor]

There is a distinction to be made here: failing the mission is not the ONLY way to become excommunicated from the action you took. It should be entirely possible to do something that the mission allows, yet suffer a papal rating hit large enough (b/c of warring with other catholics) to in fact make you excommunicated (depending on your initial papal standing of course). Since you can presumably get excommunicated those ways without involving a "cease hostilities" mission at all, it would make sense for us to try to limit the scope of this discussion strictly to things that break the mission and therefore guarantee excommunication when you are under the mission.

Excellent point Foz.

[Zatoichi]

Just to muddy the waters with my 2 penneth...

I received the 'cease hostilities' message saying not to partake in any aggressive action for 6 turns while I was sieging the Danes. As the siege had 7 turns to go before winning through starvation, I thought I'd take the risk and see what happened - well, in this case I wasn't excommed, and I took the city on the seventh turn.

A few decades later I received the same message, this time directed at my attack on the French. The mission was to cease hostilities in the next 3 turns, and I was sieging one of their towns that had 6 turns before surrender. So I figured I'd again wait it out, but I was excommed the next turn.

So I haven't added anything to the debate, but I thought I'd share my experiences of the randomness all the same.

[Foz]

I thought I'd also open up discussion of the various forms of the cease hostilities mission. IIRC, you are not always commanded to stop and told you will be excommunicated if you fail to comply. I may be mistaking it with other papal missions, but it sticks in my head that it comes in 3 flavors:

1. Your standing in the eyes of the pope will not be as high as it once was.
2. You risk excommunication.
3. You WILL be excommunicated.

If I haven't remembered that correct, someone just slap me and say so. But if I have, then it's important to take very careful note of which variety of warning you have received! The intent of the OP here seems to have been only to discuss the warning that says you WILL be excommunicated if you don't comply, and I think people are posting and remembering things that happened from the other 2 warning types at the same time, which would muddy the water here horribly. I strongly caution that you make sure you know which you're talking about before posting any experiences in this thread.

Also I know the papal missions in general use at least the 3 levels of punishment above, and I have a speculation as to what determines the wording. I am speculating that the game has designated (i.e. hard, invariable) papal rating hits for failure of each mission type, including ceasefire. It then examines where your rating will be if you fail, and pops up the correct wording for whatever result you'd get. So if you have 4 or less papal rating, and a given mission will subtract 4, it pops the one that guarantees excommunication. This would account for the perception that a higher pope rating makes him more lenient when you have infractions: it sorta does, but only because you have more points to burn through. It would be hurting your rating the same amount, it's just that the low-rating guy gets excommed, where you only go to half on your pope meter. To me, this would make far more sense than to suggest there are varying penalties for the same infractions, decided through some arbitrary method by the AI whenever a mission is issued.

[Zatoichi]

I strongly caution that you make sure you know which you're talking about before posting any experiences in this thread.

Egads! If we all followed that rule at the org, no one would post anything!

But on topic, yeah, you are almost certainly right with the levels of Papal warning angle - my memory of the specifics of the message and my standing in the pope-o-meter are vague.

[Whacker]

You know what'd be even better than all this right... CA telling us exactly what's acceptable and what's not to his popeliness.

[FactionHeir]

Not quite Foz. The three are:

- Not as high as it was

- Significantly suffer

- Excommunicated

first one means a hit of 1 cross, second of 3 crosses and third is loss of all crosses

[lorduzi]

Hi Everybody,

Some time ago I was excommunicated after being involved in a fight as an ally. Danish ships attacked HRE and mine (Dane's ally) ships standing near was involved. The next turn I became excommunicated. I don't remember exact pope-o-meter but it was pretty low for me (England) and HRE. Difficulty was H/VH.

Yesterday I was excommunicated after being attacked by HRE twice! One battle took place on my (Polish this time) territory and the second on theirs. HRE was 3 on pope-o-meter and I was 7. I play on VH/VH. I suppose this was the second battle when Germans attacked my forces hidden in the forest. Today I will reload and attack them when wandering on my territory. If the game is right they should get excommunicated for this...

[born2dive67]

I dont even let the pope get that far, send a diplomat to rome and be a good polotician. BUY HIM OFF shell out about 2000 - 3000 or more to make him love you then have your way with who ever it is you want to take out. Lets me wipe the scots out when i am english everytime. just keep an eye on your rating with him so you can keep bribing him.

i didnt say that, is it on camera? then no i didnt say it