The pope is the most annoying part of M2TW. Sometimes is orders and missions can be downright stupid, but other times they can be beneficial. Having a pope from your faction will increase your Papal favor and you will be favored for a short time. However this will soon wear off and he will revert to a impartial prick. The Pope can be beneficial in his events that request you to recruit a pope of build a church and offeres you money for success ful completion. Not to mention Crusdades...

As Punic said, having a pope from your faction is highly beneficial. However, as I'm not very good at establishng good diplomatic relations with other factions, I just conquer Rome and kill the pope in the battle. Then kill every other pope elected until there are no more cardinals. It's extremely fun...

As Punic said, having a pope from your faction is highly beneficial. However, as I'm not very good at establishng good diplomatic relations with other factions, I just conquer Rome and kill the pope in the battle. Then kill every other pope elected until there are no more cardinals. It's extremely fun...

Punic? i cant say i have really ever fought the Papal states. I most just ally with them...

I don't ally with the pope, it seems sort of wrong to me to do that - so I don't know really what effect it has. War with him is one way out of excommunication

I'm surprised though you got a warning straight off when at full favour; are you sure the penalty was excommunication rather than 'your reputation with the pope will be lower than it was'? If he likes you enough you can get away with a spell in the naughty corner quite often.

Some popes are more tolerant of violence etc than others, depending on the traits they've picked up - I don't know how much of an effect that has but I expect it's noticeable if you pay attention. They won't however remember who used to own a settlement, only who does now. It's worth checking your opponent's favour rating too, if it's lower than yours then they might have the same message and so walking into an ambush on purpose or attacking them on your own ground could get them in deep doodah.

The pope is awkward but I quite like having that sort of tedious obstacle to have to work around.

are you sure the penalty was excommunication rather than 'your reputation with the pope will be lower than it was'?

YES! I attacked them the next turn, and got excommunicated right away. I had full score with the pope, while the Scots only had 8/10. I even sent the Pope 5000 florins as a gift before attacking, but it did me no good.

I should have saved the game before attacking, but I got a little pissed off for losing the city, so I forgot. After being excommunicated all my cities went into red, so I had to lower taxes, resulting in my income vanishing, and not being able to make money made it impossible to build or train troops. I even tried to have the Pope assassinated, but he was too well protected, so my assassins came up short. So after a few more turns I ended up restarting the game... I wont do this mistake again though

I try to pay attention to all the smaller details in the game, and I always have a look at the other factions papal favour ratings. I also add a priest to my army when attacking. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the priest get a liking for violence that way. Sometimes the priest get the trait, but not every time...

Ouch My apologies, Awesomated. I really need to see my doctor after all...

If you think your campaign is bad I should tell you about mine. I started playing Sicily for giggles when I was attacked by a Moor fleet off one of my islands. I was not paying attn and did failed to notice a papal fleet next to it when I auto attacked. Needless to say I got excommunicated because the pope and the moors was allied. The pope was from my faction when I did this.

I made the simple mistake of using this excuse to get rid of the pope from Italy for good. Stupid move on my part. I went from preparing to attack Egypt and finishing off Milan to having defend Cental/Southern Italy and Southern France from the HRE, Milan, Venice, French and Spanish.

I've killed the Pope 5 times in a row while I slug my way back up Italy. He keeps respawning in Florence and Rome.

I have also killed 4 of the 8 crusading armies that have attacked or are currently headed towards Toulouse. Only thing is I am now running out of money.. Hopefully my 600 troops can take on 2 full armies (Denmark and Poland) once the castle is besieged again in the next 3 turns. If I survive that I will have English and Portuguese to deal with after that. It was fun being a war monger early on but u think after killing the pope 2 or 3 times in a row he call off the crusade and some idiot country would give him land.

Ouch, that seems like a bit of a sucky situation. Maybe try making peace with the papal states and restoring relations to end the crusade. Seems like your only hope at this point..

When you get a priest of your nationality to become pope it resets you to quite high on the 'happy scale' regardless of where you were. However you can quickly slide back down again.

*Attacking a christian faction makes the pope sad
*Continuing combat after victory makes the pope sad
*Executing the prisoners after victory makes the pope sad

In my experience if you stop fighting when victory is gained and then ask for ransom but end up killing the captured people the pope doesn't care. However if you keep fighting after victory and then ransom but end up killing the captured troops the pope gets just as mad as if you execute them outright.

*The pope also gets sad when you march your armies through the lands of people allied with him.
*Having your army seiging a city seems to make him as mad as constantly marching through
*marching into then marching out of a christain nation seems to make the pope just as mad as marching in then marching around.
*Marching in then not moving the army next turn doesn't seem to upset the pope. You'd think that LEAVING would make him happier but it doesn't
*The kicker is, if the enemy attacks you and you defend yourself the pope dislikes that too, which is what normally happens to me.


What this means is that in 3 turns you can be back to extremely low on the pope-scale.

Popes with the trait warmonger care less about your warlike actions, and there is a peacelover trait (not sure on the name) making him even more sensitive. Your own nationality pope with the wrong trait may be worse than another nation with the right trait. Voting for the winning candidate is always good and will earn you some credit.

As far as you have 10/10 and scotland has 8/10...I don't think the game sees it as 'you have 2 more pope favor' but simply any faction with high standing has 'papal protection' and any christian attackers (even those with higher standings) will be told to back off.

And yes, the Pope seems to often give the same command of 'stop fighting to both sides' If given the option I would siege each city/castle until surrender but the pope so often interferes that instead I carry a gate-smasher and almost always attack first turn. Usually after I attack and take the city in question the pope tells me no more fighting X. Many times X tries to take the city back and THEY end up getting excommunicated.

Lol, I thought about making peace with the pope, but I decided to give up on it. Too much hassle for now. I will keep this file saved and try and figure a way out of the mess that I created.

Manipulating the pope and expanding against christian countries takes a lot of patience and opportunism. You basically have to wait for your neighbors to screw up, get excommunicated/lose to non christian factions etc) and then be in a position to take advantage. From that platform, all papal diplomacy does is facilitate those advantages by giving you more leniency and your opponent less. Doing this on multiple fronts against multiple enemies can make for extreme expansion. For example as Venice I blitzed Milan along with all rebel territories in the first 30 or so turns. I've also fought a quick HRE war for bologna and am about to embark on a Sicilian campaign ( all well carrying one on against the Byzantines), all with high papal favor. It helped i got the 3rd papal election, and my allies all have high favor also. The key is waiting for a time to strike and then doing so quickly and devastatingly; that's how I got Milan, i goaded them into a war with me and they pressed the attack, and got excommunication ( they got excommunicated).

I also played this game incredibly aggressively very quick, so my economy has slid but i would rather sit in a position of strength and fix my economy on the fly then work on it at the beginning and lose early territorial expansion

I returned to Medieval 2 total war a few weeks ago because it is the least played total war game I have. After a few weeks I learned why this game has possibly the best grand campaign of any total war game to date.

As Sicily, I recognized the need to be the Papacy's best friend. They could shield me from the bloodshed going on in Northern Italy. So after securing an alliance, the Pope ordered a crusade on Jerusalem. Although my budget was tight this early in the game, I entered the Crusade and hoped for the best...sailing there in 3 turns. I easily beat the Egyptians that were there and took the city. My relations with the pope skyrocketed as did my faction heir's (the one that I sent on the crusade) chivalry, loyalty, and command ability.

The pope (who loved my faction dearly) died suddenly and I was left with a complete idiot of a pope to please. This new French pope immediately excommunicated 3 factions and I was left feeling that the Papacy had no real power left. Thankfully he was killed and we moved on to a much more mellow Spaniard.

After that I expanded in the Holy land and eventually defeated the Egyptians. I stretched from Alexandria up to Acre and Jerusalem. In Europe I took Tunisia and other islands, eventually claiming all of North Africa from the Moors.

AND THEN....the Mongols came. At first they went up to Antioch and Damascus and I thought I may be safe (I wasn't at war with the Turks, but I didn't care for the heathen dogs either). Alas, they came down in swarms to Jerusalem. After defeating 2 consecutive stacks in 2 great sieges, Jerusalem fell. After this, I managed to stop their advance at Gaza, which was a large castle with strong defenses. Gaza's defenses were in ruins and my army hurting, but I managed to repel 3 full stacks and kill a few Mongolian family members.

Now I wait as I heard words of Timurids on the way...this should be interesting

^ This was my experience with the papacy. I think it is a great game mechanic!

The pope does add something quite interesting to the game, even when he's being a pain it can be quite an good sort of annoyance to have. The key to it being enjoyable is, I think, having the following:
(1) whatever the pope does should follow some sort of sensible/logical basis
(2) you should usually be able to manipulate things to get your way if you're careful enough / patient / lucky enough
(3) he's not too favourable / on your side (or I suppose unfairly biased against you - coming back to point 2)

(1) holds up most of the time, AFF92's comment on different papal personalities is a good one - perhaps there is too little visibility or at least a few flaws (esp. when the pope gets large enough to follow 'normal' AI patterns e.g. loving to blockade ports). I'm quite happy for the basis of the pope to be based on a potentially crazy personality, so long as it's consistent (for that pope), obvious and on assassination possible to get a better personality type.
(2) seems to work most of the time as far as I've seen, even having annoyed everyone as Denmark recently I recovered and crushed my then enemies - with papal approval to do so
(3) this falls down a bit as the AI sides generally seem to blunder and not realise that, if the pope is all that's protecting them from a neighbouring enemy many times their size, perhaps getting excommunicated is a bad idea

Point 3 is sort of why I don't like allying with the papal states, although bunging them a lot of cash is fair game.

Does anyone agree/disagree on those points being important? I'd not really thought about it before a few minutes ago so happy to accept being wrong

I mentioned point 3 in my post. When you are working with the pope and have good relations going, you get a bad feeling when he starts excommunicating multiple factions per turn. Its like the papacy is losing its prominence and power.

The game mechanic is just a really fun one to play with. I like being rewarded for taking upon myself to erect massive, expensive cathedrals or for putting a witch or heretic on trial! Also, going to war against the Muslims seems to make the Pope very happy too

Its something very fun to play with, and it can be a very powerful ally or enemy. Once, the darn papacy sent an inquisitor into my region because of a stupid witch that I never bothered to purge. Somehow he tried one of my faction family members with heresy and had him executed! LOL!

Yeah another reason to stay on the pope's good side, to keep inquisitors off my land.
I agree with a papal personality but I haven't really witnessed it. Every pope's behavior just seems erratic to me all the time.

AND THEN....the Mongols came.

I had the exact same thing happen to me in my English campaign. I had successfully set up my own Kingdom of Jerusalem, fully self sustaining with the cities of Jerus. Gaza Sidon and Damascus (maybe one other), while my main armies fought in spain and HRE.
Mongolian hordes suddenly pop out of the turkish mountains in front of Antioch. While they're pounding egyptian armies into dust I think "oh I'm sure they'll do what they did historically and continue into turkey and hungary". But unfortunately Genghis Khan took an interest in Sidon. I managed too hold off three hordes (consecutively, not all at once) with swordmen and longbowmen. They never made it passed Sidon and Damascus.

Mongols and Timurids are very deadly, but then the black death hits! Its just one thing after another.

I love these events in the campaign, because it really changes the map drastically. You also get that sense when fighting them that it is something you have never faced before. When America opens up it becomes even more exotic and cool!

The mongols and Timurids are the hardest thing in this game for me. Some times i have some enemies om their last legs then the Mongols come and i have to divert my forces. But their presence adds excitement to any campaign.

Are you guys kidding?
All you do is go to war with the pope early, capture rome, and then he'll be happy to make peace with you.
Un-excommunication will soon follow.

I rather to not go to war very early with the pope and build up my power. The crusades really help..