Pope Abuse

[John_Longarrow]

I've noticed a few odd items about Papal warnings.
1) If you are sieging a city/castle and the Pope warns you to stop fighting, you can keep up the seige and take the provice so long as you don't assault. Logically the warning should mean "Stop the seige", but thats not how its handled.

2) Blockades can be kept during a Papal warning without you getting in trouble with the Pope, but you can't start one without getting him upset.

3) When he gives the warning, the only types of combat you can be involved with are siege related without failing the mission and getting the Pope upset. That means you can sally forth to get rid of a sieging army or fight an army that sallies forth, but you can't fight and open battle even if you are the one defending. I've had a couple cases where I had small units moving on the campaign map that got attacked. If I wasn't able to withdraw and I was stuck fighting, I'd get the Pope pissed at me.

4) If you bribe your way into better standings with the Pope than what your enemy has, you can continue fighting with them (and accept the loss of the mission) without worrying much about really loosing standing. This may not always be the case but I've yet to get excommunicated for doing so.

This may not be intuitive, but its what I've observed in the game and, to me, definitly seems to be abusable. Now if we could just figure out when other factions recieve Papal warnings.

[FactionHeir]

You describing 1.2 or 1.1? 1.1 is vastly different from what you are saying

[_Tristan_]

Some observations :

1- In those cases, I even have been able to fight a siege battle after gaining a warning repeatedly...

2-Sure is so...

3-Not sure on this point, if you're attacked in field battle by the faction you got a warning against, I've never seen excomm or loss of status happen...

4-That's the whole of bribing the Pope (and is not far from what was done in reality at the times : Popes were generally either puppets or puppeteers)...

As to when other factions get warnings, I think, but it has still to be proven that both warring factions get the same warning at the same time...

On this point, the Danes got excommed for continuing fighting me after I got a warning so I think the may have gotten one as well or maybe they wrer just fihgting on another front against another Catholic faction and got warned for that...(No savegame to check w/o FOW)...

[John_Longarrow]

FactionHeir,

Patched to V1.1 and before. Last night I took Paris after the French sallied forth and got their heads handed to them. Pope didnt' blink an eye. I've still got one more turn on my warning to, which seems kinda funny.

I started the siege before the Pope issued his warning and I kept it (and reinforced the sieging army) for about 6 turns until the timer for the siege ran out. French came out to fight my English army and were put in their place. As far as I can tell, the Pope wasn't aware of this little fight.

[DukeKent]

I've noticed a few odd items about Papal warnings.
1) If you are sieging a city/castle and the Pope warns you to stop fighting, you can keep up the seige and take the provice so long as you don't assault. Logically the warning should mean "Stop the seige", but thats not how its handled.

2) Blockades can be kept during a Papal warning without you getting in trouble with the Pope, but you can't start one without getting him upset.

3) When he gives the warning, the only types of combat you can be involved with are siege related without failing the mission and getting the Pope upset. That means you can sally forth to get rid of a sieging army or fight an army that sallies forth, but you can't fight and open battle even if you are the one defending. I've had a couple cases where I had small units moving on the campaign map that got attacked. If I wasn't able to withdraw and I was stuck fighting, I'd get the Pope pissed at me.

4) If you bribe your way into better standings with the Pope than what your enemy has, you can continue fighting with them (and accept the loss of the mission) without worrying much about really loosing standing. This may not always be the case but I've yet to get excommunicated for doing so.

This may not be intuitive, but its what I've observed in the game and, to me, definitly seems to be abusable. Now if we could just figure out when other factions recieve Papal warnings.

This does not match up with my experiences. The key is your standing with the Pope, Vs the standing of the other party with the Pope.

[FactionHeir]

I've noticed a few odd items about Papal warnings.
1) If you are sieging a city/castle and the Pope warns you to stop fighting, you can keep up the seige and take the provice so long as you don't assault. Logically the warning should mean "Stop the seige", but thats not how its handled.

I get excommed for that if the papal warning is "you may be excommunicated". If its a warning that you may only lose standing, then you lose standing by keeping up the siege.

2) Blockades can be kept during a Papal warning without you getting in trouble with the Pope, but you can't start one without getting him upset.

Correct, he doesn't care about that

3) When he gives the warning, the only types of combat you can be involved with are siege related without failing the mission and getting the Pope upset. That means you can sally forth to get rid of a sieging army or fight an army that sallies forth, but you can't fight and open battle even if you are the one defending. I've had a couple cases where I had small units moving on the campaign map that got attacked. If I wasn't able to withdraw and I was stuck fighting, I'd get the Pope pissed at me.

Not quite. You can freely attack anyone inside your lands without the papal mission failing. He may give you a mission to stop attacking when you attack people in your lands though but it never fails if you follow the above. As such, you can also attack the besieging army from the outside without repercussions.

4) If you bribe your way into better standings with the Pope than what your enemy has, you can continue fighting with them (and accept the loss of the mission) without worrying much about really loosing standing. This may not always be the case but I've yet to get excommunicated for doing so.

Again, only works if the missions is not "you may be excommunicated" only if its a lesser penalty.
if you have the excomm warning, you can bribe yourself up to perfect and he'll still excomm you if you fail the mission.

[Henry the Fifth]

Check to make sure that in #1 of your post that the amount of turns left in the siege is not the same or greater than the amount turns in order to not attack the faction. The Papal command use asks you to cease hostilities for seven turns if you have at least seven turns in your siege, the Papal ban will cease before you resolve the siege, which may be why there is no penalty extracted.