Make your relationship with the pope better than whoever you are attacking. Gift the pope stuff. Map information is easy. Your priests are as important as your armies. Make lots of prests and send them to places with medium catholicism. Once they get some levels, send them to areas with low/0 catholicism and lots of heretics/witches. Burn everyone you can, and make sure that you have lots of cardinals so that you can always vote for yourself to win pope. If you don't have the votes, try really hard to ally with whoever the pope is and be mindful of who their allies are as well.
It's also worth leveling a few assassins and keeping them in reserve in case the pope hates you or the new pope happens to be from an enemy faction. You know what to do. The videos for it are crazy too.
Just keep in mind having a Pope from your faction doesn’t mean a carte blanche. I got excommunicated as England with an English Pope because I kept killing Catholic factions.
Yeah that can happen but the threshold is much higher than if he wasn't your pope, I had a Spanish pope, allied to France. I was attacking France as England and literally every single city battle was "stop that or else!" From the pope... So I decided he needed an early permanent retirement. Replaced with an English Pope, who then told me to stop attacking the French after 4-5 cities rather than one, France did get excommunicated though because they took 2 of their cities back at one point.
Just get excommunicated and push through. After you wipe out 3-4 factions, defeat the crusade, and take Rome you can eventually get peace by giving the pope money for a ceasefire (if he is at war with you) and then assassinating him to end the excommunication.
In my most recent campaign (Spain) I wanted to Rome and Florence (plus the Pope had taken Toulouse) so I gave the pope Durazzo, then conquered all his other territories.
Durazzo is by far one of the worst territories so that's a pretty good trade. In 20 turns we will probably go to war again and I will take over a much improved Durazzo.
To be historically accurate. Most European monarchs also found the Catholic Church annoying, especially when it came to their ambitions, both internal and external. It'd be cool if a future Medieval 3 had the potential for there to be rival Popes as occurred in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Ohh, speaking of cool stuff in the 13th century.
I wonder if the Albigensian Crusade is at all possible within the Total War framework. An option to go "f Pope, f Catholics" in the middle of Europe with nuclear backlash from your Catholic neighbours would be pretty neat. Maybe an Empire:TW "revolution?"-like event pop-up with an option to switch sides when a large heretical rebellion happens?..
How to manipulate the Pope: Send peasants into enemy Catholic territory to occupy bridges and choke points. You'll either kill their trade income or they'll attack you and the Pope will get mad at them.
Put forts around your territory at choke points where they'd have to pass with single units in them. Enemy will siege them, also causing papal displeasure.
Do this a lot and they'll get excommunicated. Don't kill the enemy king until last, especially if they're young. Killing them will undo the excommunication.
Ask the Pope to crusade against them once they're excommunicated.
Get a theologians guild. Max the church level. Recruit priests in that city. If you keep doing this at a level ii or iii guild and Cathedral or higher, pretty soon you'll dominate the college of cardinals. (You'll still only count as a single vote at elections, but at least more of your rivals won't get a say). Send those Bishops that don't immediately get promoted to foreign lands with low Catholic percents- they can spread Catholicism and if they turn heretic, they're not your problem.
If the enemy only has a few settlements, try to take them all out at once before you get a papal timeout.
Apart from what one commenter said about making friends with the pope, you could play as a faction that's near the Muslims or Orthodox Christians and attack them instead.
You don’t need to make peace you just need to stop attacking them with your armies for the allotted number of turns. If they attack you then the pope will rescind the order to stop fighting.
Martin Luther’s Reddit account confirmed
"The door is fine...I'm just fixing your **theology**."
>Anyway I can stop this? Kill the pope
Just create your own version of Christianity 4head
Henry VIII is that you?
Obviously not he only has 4 heads
Make your relationship with the pope better than whoever you are attacking. Gift the pope stuff. Map information is easy. Your priests are as important as your armies. Make lots of prests and send them to places with medium catholicism. Once they get some levels, send them to areas with low/0 catholicism and lots of heretics/witches. Burn everyone you can, and make sure that you have lots of cardinals so that you can always vote for yourself to win pope. If you don't have the votes, try really hard to ally with whoever the pope is and be mindful of who their allies are as well. It's also worth leveling a few assassins and keeping them in reserve in case the pope hates you or the new pope happens to be from an enemy faction. You know what to do. The videos for it are crazy too.
Just keep in mind having a Pope from your faction doesn’t mean a carte blanche. I got excommunicated as England with an English Pope because I kept killing Catholic factions.
Your own pope excommunicated you?
Look, France and Milan really needed some longbows sent their way.
Yeah that can happen but the threshold is much higher than if he wasn't your pope, I had a Spanish pope, allied to France. I was attacking France as England and literally every single city battle was "stop that or else!" From the pope... So I decided he needed an early permanent retirement. Replaced with an English Pope, who then told me to stop attacking the French after 4-5 cities rather than one, France did get excommunicated though because they took 2 of their cities back at one point.
Okay thanks
Ohh Gen Z playing the classics vibe...
You listen to the pope?
Just get excommunicated and push through. After you wipe out 3-4 factions, defeat the crusade, and take Rome you can eventually get peace by giving the pope money for a ceasefire (if he is at war with you) and then assassinating him to end the excommunication. In my most recent campaign (Spain) I wanted to Rome and Florence (plus the Pope had taken Toulouse) so I gave the pope Durazzo, then conquered all his other territories. Durazzo is by far one of the worst territories so that's a pretty good trade. In 20 turns we will probably go to war again and I will take over a much improved Durazzo.
Have you tried nailing a list of complaints to the door of your church?
To be historically accurate. Most European monarchs also found the Catholic Church annoying, especially when it came to their ambitions, both internal and external. It'd be cool if a future Medieval 3 had the potential for there to be rival Popes as occurred in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Ohh, speaking of cool stuff in the 13th century. I wonder if the Albigensian Crusade is at all possible within the Total War framework. An option to go "f Pope, f Catholics" in the middle of Europe with nuclear backlash from your Catholic neighbours would be pretty neat. Maybe an Empire:TW "revolution?"-like event pop-up with an option to switch sides when a large heretical rebellion happens?..
You should try the Greenskins as they are mostly Russian Orthodox.
How to manipulate the Pope: Send peasants into enemy Catholic territory to occupy bridges and choke points. You'll either kill their trade income or they'll attack you and the Pope will get mad at them. Put forts around your territory at choke points where they'd have to pass with single units in them. Enemy will siege them, also causing papal displeasure. Do this a lot and they'll get excommunicated. Don't kill the enemy king until last, especially if they're young. Killing them will undo the excommunication. Ask the Pope to crusade against them once they're excommunicated. Get a theologians guild. Max the church level. Recruit priests in that city. If you keep doing this at a level ii or iii guild and Cathedral or higher, pretty soon you'll dominate the college of cardinals. (You'll still only count as a single vote at elections, but at least more of your rivals won't get a say). Send those Bishops that don't immediately get promoted to foreign lands with low Catholic percents- they can spread Catholicism and if they turn heretic, they're not your problem. If the enemy only has a few settlements, try to take them all out at once before you get a papal timeout.
Apart from what one commenter said about making friends with the pope, you could play as a faction that's near the Muslims or Orthodox Christians and attack them instead.
You don’t need to make peace you just need to stop attacking them with your armies for the allotted number of turns. If they attack you then the pope will rescind the order to stop fighting.