Manipulate the Pope?

[Canopus]

Well, you can try to trick your enemy to be excommunicated himself by offering a bait. The pope doesn't even frown at anyone attacking a foreign army on own grounds, so this won't work. However, if you manage to corner an enemy army at home or a fleet somehwere else with considerably weaker forces, they sometimes do you the favour and attack. It's worth a few peasants. Or, if you can afford to risk a border province, leave it weakly defended with an army in the neighbouring province to bail your sieged settlement out, once the enemy came. Works for me from time to time, but not every time, of course.

[Vladimir]

100 Fl a turn for 100 turns is the slow and steady approach. Once as Spain I went from excommunicated (king died) to controlling the papacy in 3 turns. I'm not sure if that really helps but I was the highest ranking faction on the list after I went on a church building spree.

[WhiskeyGhost]

How to get around excommunication:

Strategy 1: Blitzkrieg!

step 1:Build armies including at least 1 siege engine of some sort in them.

step 2:Move your armies into enemy territory, with escort armies if necessary for dealing with large enemy stacks.

step 3:Launch a simultaneous attack on all of your enemies cities at once, which should be done either just after finishing the "cease hostilities" quest completes, or before you get one, either way.

step 4:Attack and don't siege, just assault all cities at once in the same turn.

step 5:???

step 6:Profit

This strategy works moderately effective, especially when fighting a weakened opponent. The pope can't tell you to stop if they are gone before he can tell you. Also, this works in favor of Strategy 2 as well.


Strategy 2: Making the enemy get discommed.

Step 1: Hide some armies and leave towns barely defended.

Step 2: Let them siege it, then rescue the town.

Step 3: Repeat step 1&2 as needed.

Step 4: If steps 1-3 are working too slowly, take an enemy town and use it to force them into attacking, preferrably not one on the border, but within their territory (like maybe their capitol) and defend it like crazy. With them surrounding your forces, they will attack it alot, even if the Pope gets on to the both of you, since its surrounded by them.

Strategy 2 works well as an initial move, so you can base your entire campaign against getting them excommed, then performing the 1st one afterwards without much papal intervention. They will reconcile with the Papacy automatically if they take huge losses (which i think it auto-matic)