My Pope, excommunication, and dead kings.

[dminoz]

Playing with 1.05...

I was Sweden, and had just had a cleric elected as Pope. Just to see what would happen, I decided to use my Pope to excommunicate Norway. As you do. (Figuring that if Norway was isloated from Catholic support, I might find it an easy acquisition to make.)

Instantly, I got a dialog popup telling me that Sweden had been excommunicated, on account of my bad behaviour towards Norway, them being an upstanding Catholic nation.

So, my first question -- does that make sense? Did the Catholic bureaucracy overrule my Pope, and reverse his decision? Or, did 'my' Pope have a fit of conscience, and excommunicate Sweden the trouble-maker instead of Norway? Or could he have been a spy all along? If so, I didn't receive any notice to that effect.

Either way, I checked my relationship with Norway, and found that it was unchanged -- and here is my real gripe. Surely such an attempt at trickery on my part, successful or not, should have put my relationship with Norway into the toilet? Not only was I now excommunicated, but I'd tried to do the dirty on them -- so surely our relationship should have gone pear-shaped. But it was 'calm', just like before.

Another issue -- as I understand the patch notes, relations with other countries go back to 'zero' on the death of a King. Did I read that right? The patch notes say:

"King Dead affects the relationship with all kingdoms:
In case the relationship was < 0 then the relationship is increased and set to zero.
In case the relationship was > 0 then the relationship is decreased and set to zero."

If so, that is very unrealistic, and means that we can make up for all sorts of misdeeds merely by waiting for our King to croak. Or, conversely, we may find that all our good diplomatic work can be undone by him dying. :angel:

Would it not be better to have the relationships with other kingdoms being affected at least in part by the diplomatic rating of the incoming king? So, if we have a bad relationship, a new king with a good diplo rating will be able to mend some bridges, but a king who is a diplomatic blunderer may actually make matters worse. And the same could apply for good relationships.

[Dobber]

I'm thinking the relationship thing when King dies, may be false. I believe I noticed bad relations carrying over, to my new King!

As far as the excoomunicatrion, I have never succeeded with excommunicating a country with the Pope in my court, before or after the patch.

[orpheus]

I successfully excommunicated France when my 1 star cleric got elected as Pope. I am seeing a trend when, if you use the excommunication option early in your Pope's reign, it is marginally more successful than if you try it after he has been in power for a while.

I also then tried to excommunicate England about 10 minutes later, but got snubbed and kicked out myself.

I figure your Pope's only worth a quick excommunication early on, then maybe a crusade - but after that I usually get rid of him.

[Elvain]

With pope on my court I never managed neither to excomunicate any kingdom, nor to start a crusade (even against Muslims or Pagans!)
I always got excomunicated, no matter if it was early in the game or later.

I hope pope actions could be tweaked somehow, because this is annoyng. There is not a single profit from having the pope:
he occupies a place in your royal court, you can't use him for nothing, so what's the point? More and more I tend to prefere not catholic kingdoms where I can't lose my cleric to papacy

[orpheus]

I agree, the Pope options as a whole are not really usueful, and I think everyone can agree that it is annoying to lose the 5 star cleric you have trained up for conversions and quick adoptions!

However, I think he is still worth at least one excommunication - but you've got to do it almost the instant he is elected to Pope - otherwise he gets 'too big for his boots' and will either not excommunicate who you wish, or completely turn on you and kick you out.

But overall, the whole Pope in your court is a waste of one space.

I suggest, that to make it worthwhile, you could directly control all crusader armies, and maybe even convert your standing armies to cursader units. But I think, since the 2nd patch, that crusader units have been nerfed a bit, as I rarely see a crusade win a battle, never mind taking a province!

[Elvain]

However, I think he is still worth at least one excommunication - but you've got to do it almost the instant he is elected to Pope - otherwise he gets 'too big for his boots' and will either not excommunicate who you wish, or completely turn on you and kick you out.I'd disagree.
I always do it almost instantly to have at least a little chance. But with no success :bash:

I suggest, that to make it worthwhile, you could directly control all crusader armiesgood idea indeed :go:
But I think, since the 2nd patch, that crusader units have been nerfed a bit, as I rarely see a crusade win a battle, never mind taking a province!it's not because weakening of crusader armies. They are as strong as they were before, but the AI provincial defense is now much better and AI uses much better units now which almost equal the crusaders.
the solution could be an increase of crusader's squads or of number of crusader units per squad

[dminoz]

Hopefully the Pope can be tweaked in any forthcoming mods. As it stands, he seems like a waste of space.

I've just found something else that could be different -- my spy became king of Poland, and dutifully handed the crown over to me. In one step, my kingdom doubled in size. The reaction from my neighbours? Nothing. Everyone is still sitting on "neutral". Surely such a huge development, geopolitically, should have at least made everyone nervous... Imagine the paranoia today if Venzuela and Columbia announced that they were going merge, or Pakistan and Afghanistan...

[Lord_Nick]

Maybe the Pope has something similar to the Relationship spectrum.

For example, if you have a normal or poor relationship with a country and demand gold from them, they will usually refuse. However, if you have a very strong relationship with a country, and demand gold, they will give it to you and your relationship will plummet to a poor status.

Perhaps Excommunications work the same way. If you have a lot of X (let's say X stands for "Papal Capital"), and request to excommunicate a kingdom with low "Papal Capital", you will be succesful, but then you will lose the ability to perform more Excommunications.

Now, if you have low "Papal Capital", and attempt to Excommunicate a kingdom with higher or equal "Papal Capital", you end up being Excommunicated.

Perhaps "Papal Capital" is analogous to Political Capital in the real world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_capital
"Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of "political capital, and now I intend to spend it." Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/30/AR2005053000891.html

I guess we just need to figure out how to guage how much "Papal Capital" we have before we try to spend it.

[Angryminer]

At least concerning crusades you have to look at who you want to make the pope call a crusade against.
Calling a crusade against a peaceful muslim country won't work, but calling a crusade against a muslim nation that is leading several wars against catholics will propably work. I got the pope to declare 4 crusades in a row once that way. 4 crusader armies aren't too bad if you ask me. :smile:
I don't remember for sure, but I guess it's similar with excommunications.

Angryminer

[mammix]

I had a situation:
Peshengs declared war at me.
I found their king and their marshall plundering me.
I took marshall as a prisoner but king escaped.
I killed marshall, then king attacked again.
I closed him on a special terrain, so he couldn't escape succesfully.
After about 20 battles, i finally killed him.
And my relations with his son was... 0!
I think that's not good solution :nono:

And excomunications: my pope only 2 times agreeded to excomunicate sb, and i play more than 2 years as i remember...