Forget the HORDE, worry about the POPE !

[Shahed]

[alpaca]

You either gifted him a lot of got one bitch of a pope somewhere in the line
Anyways, the pope has very good units once he comes out of his corner.

[Shahed]

LOL !!! Yeah well I gifted him normal 5-10K until I got fed up with gifting. Then I just quit, could'nt care less.

I just got some beers and coasted through my chilled out Scottish Kingdom, creaming some enemies on the mainland once in a while. I just had a look at this since the armies I met raiding on the mainland were getting pathetic. So I did a toggle_fow and this is what I saw.

Mind you those are only the Middle Eastern armies, there were stacks like that in Europe -> Eastern Europe as well.

[alpaca]

Well if your lazy subordinates won't do it you have to take matters into your onw hands

[Shahed]

Hahahah !

[andrewt]

Well if your lazy subordinates won't do it you have to take matters into your onw hands

Fellow Catholics, crusade! Oh, you won't do it. Let me just do it myself, then.

[Shahed]

Hmm, actually that's true. I did'nt go on a single Crusade. I mean I'm sitting here nice and cosy on my Island and he expect me to go down ... where ? No way padre !

[Whacker]

[Shahed]

Could it be that CA meant this as a practical joke.

Imagine all those hyper aggressive factions and the Pope gets to pwn them all ! Wonder if there's any "Toke" meaning behind this one.

[Skott]

Its weird about the Papacy. One or two times out of ten campaigns they'll go crazy taking on enemies but most of the time they never go beyond their own Rome territory. Personally, I like it when the Papacy goes on a empire building spree. It adds a whole new dynamics to the game.

[darth_napo]

wait, how did the mongols and timurids invade before 1200? how did you discover america before 1200?

[Shahed]

Well spotted ! I was playing on 0.5turns/year.

You can see instructions on how to here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74279

BTW I was looking through my screenshots and I have to correct myself, I actually knew all along the Pope was doing this !

[Mailman653]

I wish my campaigns looked like that ha ha ha.

[Shahed]

HAHAHA ! LOL I thought people would find MY empire funny. Well anyway that was a chilled out game. I'm going to post some more from that campaign once I can.

[Magraev]

Heh a real challenge would be subduing the pope now!

I'd say that was a mission impossible, but some could probably do it?

[Bulawayo]

I really do hate when the Pope expands like this, although I still haven't seen something so extreme. I believe those Papal and Swiss Guards do help him by being very good in autocalc, so I was planning to make a hidden resource Rome in order to recruit them, but I don't know how to do it. Somebody out there maybe does?

[dopp]

Awesome. I have to try this myself. The Roman Empire is reborn!

[alpaca]

I think his popiness goes crazy when he's very impure, and then he'll have borders to excommunicated or outlandish factions and his successors will join the fray because they have so much military power

[TinCow]

I think part of the problem is that CA just codes the Papal States like any other faction. In 1.1 they attacked any rebel province they could get to by sea. In 1.2 it's more hit and miss. Sometimes the Pope is a good boy and sits in Rome like he's supposed to. Other times he goes nuts. In my current Portugal game, the Pope expanded to Florence, Ajjacio, and Cagliari within 10-20 turns. He's also actively attacking the Moors and will probably grab Tunis very soon. That's not a huge empire, but it's crippled Milan and Sicily, which is a shame.

They need to look back at the Senate coding in RTW and try to get back there. I dozens of campaign games, I never saw the Senate expand, not once. I understand that historically, the Pope would have loved to expand Papal States territory and become a powerful ruler in his own right, but in M2TW it just hurts gameplay way too much to have an expansionist Pope.

[Lusted]

I think part of the problem is that CA just codes the Papal States like any other faction

Well they haven't, the Papal states have their own ai coding. With the Senate in RTW there were no rebel provinces for it to expand into so there wasn't a problem. If you gifted them a province near enemies they would expand like any other faction. In M2TW the Papacy only really expands if a faction reaby gets ex-communicated or if it takes Florence. And even if it takes Florence it won't always expand further.

[TinCow]

Yes, but why is that? Surely it shouldn't be that difficult to simply code something that says the Papal States never attacks anyone, with the exception being that it vigorously tries to re-take Rome if it loses it.

[Lusted]

Yes, but why is that? Surely it shouldn't be that difficult to simply code something that says the Papal States never attacks anyone, with the exception being that it vigorously tries to re-take Rome if it loses it.

Probably, but i prefer it this way. Might not be that accurate, but the possibilty of the Papal armies taking over excommunicated lands and then forging a holy empire is pretty fun.

[TinCow]

I would agree if Catholic factions were given an AI that would actively attack the Papal States if they were at war with them. As it is, factions almost always just sit back and let themselves get pummeled because of their preference to avoid conflict with the Pope. Given a choice between re-writing the AI for all the Catholic factions and re-writing the AI for the Pope, I think it's best to stick with the minimalist approach.

[Magraev]

Agreed. Try playing as the pope. It's very easy. Factions will attack and be excommunicated. Then they will sue for peace or be a crusade target. Once the pope has 4-5 italian provinces noone can stop him. Add to that the excellent militia units and papal guard and you have a problem.

I must admit that most of my experiences are with 1.1, so maybe he is laid back enough in 1.2?

If the pope got big once every 50 games that might be ok, but not once every 2-3.

[darth_napo]

nevermind, forget what I said....

[Shahed]

That is a 1.10 game, long over.

What I find silly about this is that the Mongols, the Timurids, the Turks and others should be doing the same. Or any other faction for that matter. The fact that it's almost always the Pope obviously means something needs to be fixed, preferably with regards to other factions. It might be interesting for others to see the Pope in this glory but I'd like to see other factions as capable. It's simple, it's only because of the high end autocalc units the Pope gets which make this a strong faction. Same is for Milan. Xbows beating Chivalric Knights in auto calc.

BTW, IMHO to WTFPWNBBQ the Papacy in the game above is a PIECE OF CAKE.
NO challenge, just a long and boring tedium. Although there will be some fun battles, you are assured victory. It will be a lot of fun to fight those battles but it won't be a challenge.

I can't speak for everyone, but that's how it is for me. No brag either, just stating how it is for me.

[Magraev]

Brave words...

[Shahed]

Well I could go through all that trouble of proving it but I'm sure it's not necessary. It's much easier to beat the Papacy than to beat the Timurids or Mongols (as long as they have their initial stacks reasonably intact).

Are savegames 1.10 -> 1.20 compatible ?
I'm not gonna do it but I am tempted. If people are interested I could "fix" the savegame, make Scotland at war with all, only one territory and off you go. Might be fun as a community thing. Actually it would be fun to land one stack, and one replenishment stack in the middle of all those. That should make for some great cinematic editor worthy battles.

[Shahed]

I did'nt find many other interesting screens from that campaign, mainly battle results and such, but here's a couple.
York is profitable with a good governor. EDIT: hit CTRL+F5 to recache the screens just changed one.

[alpaca]

Well it'd only prove the point that the strategic AI still isn't worth a shilling