Excommunication

Opinion of you/Opinion of your vassal?

And what's the religious authority at? If you're in a game where Christianity is losing, you often won't have the required RA to excommunicate people (Requires 40% authority to excommunicate people).

If there's a lot of Crusades going on, you tend not to see excommunications because the RA is fluctuating with all the Holy Warring. If you've got a strong Catholic religion, it's a lot more common (My most recent Catholic game I was constantly seeing excommunicated rulers).

I have been excommunicated and have had characters in my realm excommunicated, but it was always relativly easy to lift, cept for one occasion.

I have never been able to excommunicate someone else, by request that is. Unless either you and the pope have alot of contrary traits, changes are small though.
What does seem to matter alot is free invesiture, I was excommed often while having it and only once while with papal investiture.

I swear maybe 6 months ago or so I would see excommunications pretty often, and I was excommunicated a few times, but I never see it anymore, probably since Sons of Abraham or so. Don't know what they did to chance it, but I miss it...as king of Ireland and Scotland I was able to excommunicate the king of England and then request an invasion. Fun times.

Garuda said:

When does a plea for excommunication work?

Click to expand...

AFAIK it never works if the Pope has a positive opinion of the person you want to excommunicate. Since there are few traits that negatively effect opinions outside of a realm (i.e. from your vassal to the Pope) other than ones which would render a person political kryptonite anyway, there are rarely any opportunities to request useful excommunications. If you're really lucky you'll make enemies with someone who just happens to have a bunch of traits that mesh badly with the Pope's, and with Christian ideals in general, but even then it's fairly easy to overthrow an excommunication - just involves throwing gold at the Vatican.

Would be nice if the Pope was more likely to excommunicate people for not accepting his authority over investiture - would definitely make the HRE more realistic - although for that to be worth it, Papal Investiture would have to be more of a blow. Perhaps if it came with more significant tax and levy penalties, and Bishoprics were a bit more powerful too?

I have never been excommunicated by the pope which is a suprise because I always ask the pope for money and claims, also MA is usually high in my games because I like spain and northern africa.

I loved when (maybe six months ago and before that) the pope used to excommunicate people, but nowadays I see none of that happening in the game. This is one of the things I'd like the devs to change back to how it was in the past, as currently the the game feels like there are no excommunications at all.

Ozamu said:

I loved when (maybe six months ago and before that) the pope used to excommunicate people, but nowadays I see none of that happening in the game. This is one of the things I'd like the devs to change back to how it was in the past, as currently the the game feels like there are no excommunications at all.

Click to expand...

Don't know what's causing that for you...

Me, I still see an excommunication-happy Pope in my play-throughs. At least two, or three excommunications in every generation...

vandevere said:

Don't know what's causing that for you...

Me, I still see an excommunication-happy Pope in my play-throughs. At least two, or three excommunications in every generation...

Click to expand...

Your playthroughs are the exception to the rule, I believe. I'll probably experiement a bit, but before I had SoA, ToG and Rajas, I saw a ton more excommunications.

Just make an antipope or make the real pope your vassal. Then you can excommunicate people whenever you want.

I always try to either have an antipope if I'm a smaller realm, or take the real pope as a vassal if I'm a larger empire. It really helps being able to excommunicate & imprison any pesky vassal you want at will.

Sunspawn said:

Your playthroughs are the exception to the rule, I believe. I'll probably experiement a bit, but before I had SoA, ToG and Rajas, I saw a ton more excommunications.

Click to expand...

Just today, I had to get the Pope to life two excommunications. Both victims were members of my dynasty, both rulers, and they got excommunicated within days of each other...

Don't know why my games are so different from yours...

vandevere said:

Me, I still see an excommunication-happy Pope in my play-throughs. At least two, or three excommunications in every generation...

Click to expand...

Same here. Just did a check and there's seven people presently in my current game that have the Excommunicated trait.

Byzantium got ate up by the Sunni caliphate, and Orthodoxy is gone. So no orthodox excommunications...

And Catholicism's smaller than usual due to there being an Empire of Hispania Shia Caliphate. So theoretically that's on the low side. I often run across excommunicated characters, so it might not be sample bias.

Just got a new wrinkle on the Papal Excommunication Blues...

A family member of mine got excommunicated. We're both Catholic, so I went into his diplo menu to try and get it lifted; and the "Lift Excommunication" Option wasn't even there. It wasn't even there as an unclickable, grayed-out option.

I've got plenty of piety and I also gave the Pope a cash gift to see if that would make the "Lift Excommunication" option magically appear. It didn't.
What's happening here?

WAD? Or bug?