Role ot the Pope?

[Denisold]

I have had Pope as member of Royal Court for past few hours of game play - he doesn't seem to be very active/influential in the game.

Can someone outline the advantages having the Pope as a a Court member?

[maks]

The point is, he's not your knight anymore. You can "convince" him to excommunicate a kingdom or declare a crusade (with your marshal on an enemy territory), but being a leader of the catholic world, he has mind of his own. He can excommunicate you if he won't like your standpoint. So, making him do things is risky. If you don't feel like taking the risks, it's better just free the knight slot, no hard feelings involved.

[Denisold]

Can someone outline the advantages having the Pope as a a Court member?


Perhaps I can rephrase the question to "what is the role of the Pope in the game?"

So far I see 2 roles:

1. As a 'court member' the Pope can be asked by the player to excommunicate a kingdom which I think weakens that kingdom and makes the kingdom ripe for a takeover (but this carries a big risk a pointed out in Maks post). When not a 'court member' the Pope carries out excommunication as he sees fit.

2. When not a 'court member' the Pope orders crusades as he sees fit which weakens various far off kingdoms (also your own if your marshal happens to go on a crusade and fails/dies).

It seems to me that over the course of a game the Pope has really very little impact on game play. This seems odd when considering that historicaly the Pope was about the most powerful person that existed during the 400 years that the game covers.

Is there more to the Pope's role than the 2 listed above? Am I missing something here?

[Frankoman]

It may just be my luck, but when asking the rich as heck papacy for Money, I believe there is an increased chance of you getting the money. Or maybe I am just a lucky person :P

[elvain]

IMO the pope is much less influental than f.i. Patriarch of orthodox independent church . he can convert your provinces and in most cases he's successfull, keeps your church independent from Constantinople..

but generaly religions should make muh bigger diference in the game, let's hope for KoH2

as for the pope, he is the reason why I prefere other religions than Catholic, and when I am catholic I enjoy being excomunicated - I don't lose my clerics. Bad thing is that there are almost no positive outcomes of having pope.You may preach a crusae against some non-catholoic kingdom, excomunication is too big risk for me and I always get execomunicated

[Denisold]

excommunication is too big risk for me and I always get excommunicated

Yes - I came to the same conclusion. But also I have sometimes been able to have Pope excommunicate one of my 'target' kingdoms which weakened it considerably.

The risk of using religious leaders as part of game strategy needs balancing - and overall use of religious leaders needs strengthening

[elvain]

I think it's not only about the leaders. IMO religions should really make diference in game. I mean having one feature that other religions don't have + some small bonuses/penalties is terribly poor influence of religion (in medieval world)

I think there should be whole bunch of religious features (harem for the muslims, more developed crusades, religious or monasteric orders, coronation, usage of princesses should be tied to religions etc.

[Denisold]

Yes - religions and the various levels of leadership within the religions should be a substantial part of game play.

How about something like this:

For the Pope (or another religious leader) to be in your Court - you need say 3 highly trained Clerics (ie each has been through a 'apprentice' hierarchy before becoming highly trained, each level of the hierarchy allows the Cleric to add increasing benefit to the player) - then depending on how you have conducted yourself, the Pope might appear as a Court member.

Now if you are truly in the Pope's favor, you might request an excommunication of a Kingdom - if successful the excommunication would weaken the selected Kingdom (as in KoH), and also the Kingdom would give you a province (or maybe 2 if the Pope really favored you). If you were on the bad side of the Pope he might weaken you through excommunication, and you would have to give up a province(s). And if he was really annoyed with you, he might vanish from your Court and take his Clerics with him. All would depend on your efforts to build and maintain relationships with religious leaders.

Anyway there are many ways to do this - the important thing is to make religion and the leaders very important to game play - so much so that the player is willing to use up Court slots, and risk much in order to get a substantial gain.

[elvain]

interesting...

well, I have never really got to understand the positives of excomunicating other kingdom. You gain almost nothing, but there is high chance to get excomunicated yourself. It means you don't gain much, but risk bit too much (in comparison to all other actions - spy being captured or killed being by far the closest negative outcome of other actions, while this may cause you several years of excomunication)

Excomunication should damage kingdoms diplomatic relations with all other catholics, highly increase rebellion risk as the king cannot be part of religious rituals and thus causes bad luck for the entire kingdom, probability of crusades shuold be much higher, the clerics should leave the court or cost much more money.

At the same time, having pope shuold mean softer relation penalties for the "pope-owner", much higher chance to marry his offspring etc.

For other religions the Patriarch should be able to do coronation of king what adds diplomatic prestige and happiness, cheaper clerics, lower rebellion risk, but on the other hand being part of some religious family (any) should provide better diplomatic treatment (DoW against Muslim damages your relations with muslims, but does not with catholics - this partly works now - but it shuold work with all diplomatic actions)

Catholics should be able to make their princess an abyss who would be some kind of cleric,
shiite muslims should be able to proclaim mahdi what increases happiness within all shiite provinces and army morale,
harem gives muslims the possibility to marry up to 4 wives, but costs more money and increases chance of civil war for succession
Controll over patriarchate in Constantinople gives you high credit among all orthodox states
catholics and muslims should be able to create knight orders
jewish communities in your cities boost your trade income
pilgrimage to Mecca vastly increases kingdom's prestige among muslims

- to sum it up - religious features shouldn't be equalized - each religion should offer completely diferent gameplay and features should not have equivalents in other religions.

[poster]

to me starting crusades is a great tool, speciall for making -later in game- really strong, extremely faithful allies, and also the popes gives u a good bost in income gold as i see it.

other then that... i think it may change the way kingdoms react to u, but we need an official confirmation on that as im not entirely sure ;).