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The current Catholic system is not only inaccurate and unamusing for players, it is vaguely offensive. The Church was integral to all aspects of medieval life, including the life of medieval rulers, but the in-game system is a watered-down snore-fest.

The College of Cardinals should have shipped with the original game. The Pope should be able to be more actively influenced, and not just with vaguely offensive "indulgences" but options to hold Church councils, build cathedrals, make pilgrimages, get rid of corrupt clergy or keep them, etc. There are myriad options for making the Catholic system more interesting but the Paradox pagans have chosen to make it appear that the only way to increase your rep with the Pope is to bribe him exorbitantly.

Furthermore, the Pope should have the option to make interesting ahistorical changes to the Church. He should be able to decide against clerical celibacy, or to declare Crusades against the Orthodox. And why can't Catholics repair the Schism? Schisms are two-sided events but the implication of the game seems to be that only one party wanted to fix it.
 
The problem is, historically, the college of cardinals didn't function in the early medieval period as it did in the high medieval period. Until the mid 13th century, Cardinals were quite literally, just Italian Bishops. It wasn't until the later 13th century that Cardinals could be non-Italian or even hold office outside of Italy.

I could see this working, only so long as in the beginning of the game all Italian bishops were cardinals, and the pope had a decision to appoint the titles outside of Italy, OR trigger an event that allows him to do so. Once this event is triggered, nobles might be able to petition for Cardinal positions.

I think in the long run this will be good because Popes will no longer all be exclusively young Italian men.
 
I see a lot of talk about the Pope system but not a lot about the cardinal system. If something like this were to be implemented, I would actually be a lot more interested in how the cardinal system will help influence your dynasty. Getting someone of your dynasty to be the Pope may be a once in a lifetime event for your dynasty, and could come with many benefits and a huge prestige boost to your dynasty, but the cardinalship would be where the core of the system is at. Simply getting a son or brother as a cardinal would give you a decent boost, but more importantly your relative would have the pope's ear. You can work through your relative to manage excommunications with a smaller loss in piety, and hopefully even influence crusades, tithes, and the opinions of your own bishops toward you or the pope. Ideally, you could also try to influence more diversity in papal elections.

Unfortunately, as other people pointed out, most popes were Italian and in the start they were almost exclusively Italian. The game should simply start out with a set limit on how many cardinals are allowed to be non-Italian. At the start, all the cardinal slots would have to be Italian, then slot by slot they open up to other cultures. If you get someone of your dynasty in there, and if that relative is a good and pious man, you can influence the pope to open up (or shut down) even more slots.

And it doesn't have to end there. Going back to actually getting a family member to be the pope, you should be able to create your own Borgia-style papacy where, after becoming influential enough, you can make family members into popes on a semi-regular basis. That is of course assuming none of the other cardinals catch onto your scheming ways. Manipulating the clergy to put your family on pope's throne too often (plus having deceitful family members with a lot of negative traits) can increase the chance of your plans blowing up in your face and causing you to lose huge amounts of prestige later on.
 
Until the mid 13th century, Cardinals were quite literally, just Italian Bishops.
Actually, they still are (well, six of them are, the rest are Italian priests).

The Cardinal Bishops are simply the bishops of the seven bishoprics closest to Rome, while Cardinal Priest are the priests of about a limited number of specific churches in Rome or one of those seven bishoprics (the number of cardinal churches have varied over time).

Since 1962 they don't actually perform any functions in those bishoprics/churches, but until then they had to run their bishopric/church in addition to their duties as members of the College of Cardinals (though in practice they delegated most of it). However, while they all are Bishops/Priests in Italy, not all of them where originally ordained in Italy, and in modern times they usually keep their existing bishoprics in their home country in addition to their new one in Italy (and thus usually accumulate quite a few flight miles over their service in the College of Cardinals).

Also note that until 1059 the Bishop of Rome (a.k.a. the Pope) was elected just like any other bishop, that is by consensus among the local clergy, and until 1139 the local clergy and laity (eg. Christian inhabitants in Rome) had to give their approval, or the cardinal college would have to start over. In game terms, that would be "open elective". Of course, might makes right, and several kings and emperors tries to appoint their own Pope, with various levels of success, but in game terms that is best represented with pressing the claim of an anti-pope.
However, the papacy should probably be able to change succession law to "agnatic elective", but with the bishops in the papal state as electorate, and later start dates should use it...
 
The DLCs after Old Gods will focus on spicing up clerical life, including playable religious orders and theocraties, and it seems like a given itll also overhaul religious mechanics, though a playable Pope is not in the cards.
Is that official or your best guess? I hope its the former :)
 
It will never happen. The reason is simple: The Pope in game is used to handle background events and divorces and excommunications and would crash the game if there was such a period where there was no Pope during the papal election.
 
It will never happen. The reason is simple: The Pope in game is used to handle background events and divorces and excommunications and would crash the game if there was such a period where there was no Pope during the papal election.

Actually during the period between the Death of a Pope and the election of a new one the Camerlengo or 'Chamberlain' serves as 'acting head of state' and could take care of the Popes responsibilities during the 'regency'.
 
Ok, come up with a solution then, since you seem to be so knowledgeable about the game's code. Find a way to direct the excommunication, background, and divorce events to some other character.

How about when the Pope dies have the game randomly generate a new Pope, but also assign that new Pope a flag (or trait) that kicks off the election events? The randomly generated Pope is the acting head of state until the elections are over at which point the acting Pope is removed from power and the flag (or trait) is removed.

Not sure how exactly to get the flag or trait to always show up, is there a way in the game's code to make sure a randomly generated character always gets a certain trait/flag? Like, if the game is generating a character for a Pope (i.e., real Pope died) is there a way to make sure the randomly generated Pope always gets a trait like "Acting Pope" which will then trigger the election events?

Assuming that can be done, that will make sure there is always a Pope so that all those events will fire correctly, but it will still allow for elections with only a minor downtime with a randomly generated Pope which can just be seen as a regent until the end of the elections or something of the sort.
 
Interesting discussion... but before 1059, there was no hard and fast rule regarding the creation of a new pope. Reserving the process entirely to the CoC, free of outside interference, starts at that time, I believe.

So, presumably, for games starting in the 9th century, it could be the HRE, the Roman nobility, interfering Italian neighbours, the dying pope, or even the Byzzies if they manage to work their way up the peninsula.

As an aside: if EU4 can make do with "regencies", I'm sure a way can be found in CK2, eg the cardinal chamberlain (though for the period prior to Gregory VII's rule, I believe it must have been someone else).
 
Oh and please institute an interregnum between Popes... Its weird when a Pope dies another one pops out the same day the old one died like he was appointed beforehand.

You can say that about any title in CKII. VERY few rulers were crowned the day of their predecessor's death/deposition/retirement/whatever caused them to relinquish the throne. It just doesn't seem to be something the game can handle without automatically destroying the title.
 
Well, with monarchies, technically the next king/queen inherits immediately rather than at their coronation. It's even been a point with some regnal numbers