Building a Catholic Coalition - Diplomacy on Steroids

[Aaronontheweb]

Nice little guide. I think Crusades are a very effective strategy to defeat the Mongols.

If I may add a little suggestion: You should try to maintain a certain balance between your allies and/or choose allies that won't attack each other because otherwise you'll be forced to break an alliance which results in a bad rep hit.
Furthermore, on vh you often won't get very reliable because the negative normalisation is just too big.

Good suggestion! I haven't tried this on VH yet (Mongols are hard enough on hard!), and I don't know about the normalization.

As for balancing your allies, yes, forgot to mention that. Allying with the Pope is a must, but I prefer to ally with factions that are probably not going to come into contact with each other, or are allied together already (for instance, Poland and Hungary, had both been double teaming Denmark and the Byzantines). That's what made Egypt (a nation that I had originally crusaded against) so valueable as an ally against the Byzantines and Mongols during my most recent stretch. They never bothered any of my other allies, but they provided a ton of trade income and helped defend some of my settlements in the initial Mongol raids.

Eventually the Pope's diplomatic influence will be what constrains the Catholic nations from doing too much fighting with each other; if you have crusades going constantly to the Middle East or to Greece, that ties up at least one army's worth of military resources on fighting foreign enemies rather than each other, and in addition it gets your allies invested in the Middle East.

Getting your allies to tie up resources down there, especially the Pope, is a key part in unleashing the mega pope. I gave the Pope the fortress of Alleppo which was later sacked by the Mongols. Ultimately, this assualt on a papal terroritory is what incurred the Wrath of Mega Pope. When the Papal States' interest goes to "Military" or "War," it makes it very easy to launch a crusade against any terroritory owned by the faction who attacked the Pope. But in addition, the Pope will begin openly waging war against excommunicated factions or factions belonging to other religions. Out of nowhere, unprovoked, I watched the Pope capture a handful of Moorish expansions, which was a shame because I had eyed those for invasion, but it happens.

Anyways, Catholic nations are much more wary of a War mongering Pope, and his allies. Basically the Pope's leverage and the use of Crusades will help drive Catholic nations to attack foreigners, rather than each other, especially if Catholic nations begin allocating assets to those areas, or expanding in the Middle East.

[John_Longarrow]

Gifting his pointy hattedness territory can be very useful in a game like this. It does three things for you; 1) Increases your standings with the Pope, 2) Increases the Papal army due to increased resources and 3) if done correctly will prevent your allies from attacking each other. As an example, if you get Bologna from the HRE and give it to the Pope, Sicily can't expand north without getting into a war with the Pope, something they tend to avoid. By creating buffer zones between allies with papal lands you can keep your allies concentrated on killing Mongols and not each other.

[phonicsmonkey]

to the OP - I like your style

This is the way I play diplomacy and I find it very effective, and even realistic

I have to challenge the conventional wisdom that this won't work on VH - I always play on VH and my reputation is almost always reliable, and my alliances hold as long as I pay enough attention

[Durallan]

I'd also like to add that once you are a well off nation you can probably buy rome from the pope for 100-200k florins, if it is one of the targets you need to own to win the game.