excommunication

[banick]

i am the danes & am at war with the polish. i have control of 4 of "what used to be polish" provinces. 1 of which i have retreated from because the seige equip will not arrive in time. another i have complete control of. the 3rd has only 2 years left till it falls. the last has plenty of supplies but my seige equip shall be ready next year & arrive & attack the same year i belive (could take an extra year). i have just received the message from the pope warning me of excommunication & have ended no ...

[Noir]

Hi banick,
you have "ended no..." ? You mean?

[banick]

further years. will i be excommed? also are there any dangerr i may not have realised eg. the polish can attack me w/o fear of excomm.?

thanks

[banick]

sorry about the 2 posts but it only let me post that much words. im on my psp if thats the problem

[Noir]

With the warning the pope gives you comes a time limit (usually two years) within which you have to cease all offensive action (attacking and sieging) on that particular faction - they may attack you and you can defend provinces you fully own (including the fortifications there) but if you retaliate you will be excommunicated - in which case Catholic factions may attack you without fearing warnings or excommunication themselves or crusade against you even until your current King or the pope that issued the excommunication die (one of the two is enough) in which case your faction will be re-communicated (it means that you can assassinate the pope or even your own king in order to do so).

Usually papal prohibitions of warring come with 10 years/turns duration after that you can reconsider to attack that faction without risking excommunication (you will have to be warned again etc).

There is a trick here: if you wish to wage serious war with a certain faction harrass another (if you can afford it) - the pope canwarn you only relatively one faction at the time. So after he has warned you you can go and attack your "real" target to your hearts content - heh.

Of course you can always ignore the pope and go about it your own way - sometimes that's the best actually.

Noir

[Tratorix]

Hello banick

From what you say, you will most likely be excommed if you wait for your siege equipment. If the province only has a fort, I say attack without it. Your troops can knock down wooden walls by themselves. If it's a keep or higher, you should probably pull out of the province. If you have more than twice the provinces the Polish do, they will be able to attack you without fear of excomm.

[banick]

yes the pope has given me 2 years but is it after the 2 years are up i have to have left or on the 2nd year

[banick]

they have a fort but i dont want to lose great deals of men breaking into it. can some one tell me the average men lost to a fort not counting the men inside (they have less than 100 anyways)

[Noir]

Save your game and try a few diffrent avenues of action banick - there's nothing better in MTW than finding out stuff yourself.

Noir

[Sensei Warrior]

Save your game and try a few diffrent avenues of action banick - there's nothing better in MTW than finding out stuff yourself.

Noir

Although a very good question and equally informed responses, I agree with the above. I save my game every year, if something comes up, I'm not to sure about then I try a couple of different avenues. It's fun going a couple of years into a decision you wouldn't normally make for fear of ruining the game.

I had one heck of an excomm once. I decided what the heck, I'd give it a whirl, as I had never been excommed before. Excomm lead to Civil wars, to rebellion, etc. In the end, I had way more fun digging myself out of the excomm, then I would've playing it 'safe'. That campaign took forever. I think it even shifted into Late, before i swept the last of the opposition away.

[banick]

yea i got excommed but i jut found out that all that happens is catholics can attack you so im not that bothered. also im richest so i have no problems. where can you find the pope to assasinate him? is he part of an army?

[Haccapelite]

Pope is the faction leader of the Papal States, which lies in Italy. He usually controls two provinces, the Papal States and Rome. But you might want to know that assasinating the pope isn't easy, and you should have a real high valoured assasin if you want to give it a try. (I haven't tried to assasinate the pope, but i guess he's just like any other faction leader.)
BTW, I'm just curious, how many of you folks has ever tried (and succeeded) to assasinate the pope? What was the valour of your assasin? Is assasinating the best way to get rid of the pope, I think I read somehere that a grand inquisitor actually suits that job better..

[Noir]

A three-four star assassin will most likely do the job (at least they did so many times in my games). In my experience its much easier to valour up assassins quickly if you use them instead of border forts (ie statically as spy/assassin catchers). They get up to 4 stars pretty quickly that way. After that they can be used offensively as well.

Usually i home mod border forts out so the assassins and spies are required to do this job. When there are no border forts the pope gets assassinated very many times and i am not responsible for not even a quarter of them.

Noir

[drone]

Since you are playing the Danes and are in a strong enough position, just ignore the Pope. You can't crusade anyway, so you don't need him. Just make sure you don't have any unrest issues, extend your middle finger to the south, and go about your business.

[gunslinger]

You can easily take a wooden fort without seige equipment. Just order a group of soldiers to attack a wall. The fort only has one small arrow tower. You probably won't loose 10 men knocking down the wall. After that, it's just a matter of attacking the soldiers inside with their counter unit.

Also, If you have the VI expansion, you can tell an archer unit to fire at the walls. They will automatically use fire arrows, which will destroy wooden walls very quickly. They won't fire at stone walls, of course.

As far as a keep is concerned, just use some cheap units like urban militia to attack the front gate. If you are playing VI, the enemy will take this opportunity to pour boiling oil on them. This causes a lot of casualties. So, order them to attack the gate, and as soon as they make contact, order them to back off a few paces. The oil will miss you every time. The castle only has 5 or 6 shots of oil. Once they are gone, you are free to wreck the gate. Just keep the good units of your army back and well out of range of the castle's defenses. You will take a lot of casualties, but they will be cheap militia-type casualties.