The Paranoid Popes

Uncooperative sliders, diplomacy, and every possible bad event: 1419-1430.

After learning of the high cost of army maintenance, the Pope considers cheaper equipment for his soldiers...


My fingers are shaking as I change the difficulty to "very hard" while nervous thoughts about the new patch and beta swirl in my head like empty plastic bags being blown down an ally behind a liquor store. There is no going back now...the time has come to cross the Rubicon, to join the ranks of people who know what "synchronized looting" is, to become a man.

As the game loads I get a few error messages which I skip with the enter key. Not a good sign. What have I gotten myself into????

Anyway, the game starts. I spend some time fooling around with the religion sliders to calm my frayed nerves. Maybe this could be an AAR where the Pope has zero tolerance for Catholicism! I was tempted, but instead move the slider to the far right.

A click on the "horn of plenty" nearly causes a heart attack. It appears the stories about "expense troops" are true. The navy gets disbanded and the army has their maintenance cut in half. For a moment I wonder why cutting their pay/lodging/brothel privileges/etc doesn't cause a mutiny, but at this difficulty level I need all my brain for game play and can't get bogged down in such frivolities. In any case, the army of Holy Justice will just have to make do.

It's time to get serious about fixing the income nightmares caused by owning three rich provinces and having a tiny army. Tax collectors are ordered for Roma and Marche, and I'm already spending the extra gold in my head.

More taxes get this seal.


The next step is becoming a diplomatic powerhouse. Siena is invited to an alliance and accepts. After months of gifts and a royal marriage a vassalization is proposed, but Siena decides that a country that can't even afford to fully pay a small army has nothing to offer them. Using all my savvy, I send more gifts and repeat the offer. This time, they decide their opinions six months ago were a little hasty. Siena is now a vassal! This "very hard" difficulty is cake! Maybe I should play with my eyes closed or something for awhile!

In 1422, while doing a routine "click on other nations to see what's up" run, I note that Mantua is not in an alliance. They are invited and accept, creating a force of three unified powers the likes of which hasn't been seen since Tver allied with Pskov and Ryazan.

I then note that Mantua does not have an army. Who needs it when you have the protection of 10,000 underpaid and poorly equipped Papal infantry, though?

Using similar tactics from the Siena anschluss I vassalize Mantua in 1423, without so much as an initial rejection!

Bad events start happening. 1423: poor government policies, 1425: Unhappiness in the peasantry, 1428: noble ally with foreign power (Baden!!!???!!!), 1429: political crisis. I laugh at these misfortunes. I only have three provinces of the same religion, so stability means nothing, and the 50% pure Army of Good Deeds and Respect for the Elderly easily defeats a revolt in Roma in 1425.

What would have been the official Papal army seal, if the 50% budget cut hadn't eliminated all signage in the army.


1430 rolls around and everything is going well. I'm making some decent coin, have two vassals and no enemies yet. Is the game creating a false sense of security? Only time will tell.

The Papal States in 1430

Judge: It's good to be back, nice to see you survived another trip into the bottom of the bottle. I was so scared of being a "bad boy" on very hard that I actually decided to try my hand at diplomacy early...this trend did not continue. Hopefully this game will be a success, but a failure would be entertaining too. I'm just posting as I play, so I have no clue what the distant future holds.

The Pope responds to some of my decisions in this post.


The Albanian menace, tarnish on my image and a visit from the Golden Horde: 1430-1450

The use of diplomacy and peaceful cooperation with my neighbors has made the Papacy into what college basketball announcers call a "mid-major" but something seemed lacking. That something was the need for unjust and ill-advised wars with neighboring states. It was time to spread the good news by force.

The first good event of the game, an "exceptional year" in 1432 sealed the deal. 8000 new horsemen were raised to join the Army of Excellent Hygiene and Acceptable Table Manners. Somehow I didn't feel this was enough, so I did the unthinkable: I raised the support to 100%. With the fire of justice burning in their eyes, the Salvation Army marched against Naples, who was joined by Albania and Ragusa.

In all the excitement of attacking Naples and raising soldiers and moving sliders I missed a point of minor importance: I was now exceeding the support limit.

The Army of Compassionate Conservativism smashed the forces of Naples worse than I was Saturday night, setting up sieges in both their provinces. As I smiled a predatory smile, I noted that I now had 176 Ducats, despite it being mid-year and I had about 40 or so when last I checked. A trip into the ledger confirmed my darkest fears: I had taken a loan. My fully funded, too large Army of Justice and Goodness was a millstone around my economic neck. I was losing 7 Ducats a month at 20% inflation minting. Yikes.

A loan is required to support our armies...


Fortunately, the southernmost province of Naples has a low support limit, so attrition helped solve my financial woes. Unfortunately, while I was busy subduing Naples, Albania landed in Romanga and began a siege. First it was only 1000 men and I just laughed at the feckless Balkan nation. Next time I checked 12,000 men were in the province and it was about to fall. Whoops.

The official Albanian Army logo. Are their scouts stronger than the Army of Holiness and Pointy Sticks?


Luckily, Naples is in the process of collapsing even as the Albanian steamroller drives for Rome and thanks to the "alliance peace" loophole all their victories are for naught. Naples gets vassalized and is brought into the Papal States alliance shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, the rest of Italy is convulsing with war. Modena and Tuscany have managed to hold off the combined alliance of Savoy, Milan, Helvetia and Brittany, but their luck runs out when France decides to involve itself in the region and basically go on an insane annexation spree, gobbling up nations from both sides of this war like so much after-dinner mints.

Now is a good time to take advantage of the chaos, especially with Tuscany out of soldiers and revolting and its only ally Modena about to be annexed. After a quick victory over some rebels Tuscany is taken and annexed.

In hindsight it was probably a bad move, but Tuscany was still at war with a half-dozen nations and would not have survived as a vassal. Was that one province worth 8 naughty points and a -100 relation hit with all Catholic nations? Probably not, but I stand by my cowardly scavenger tactics. I now have 13.1 shame points, which is a "tarnished" reputation.

Speaking of Tuscany, remember this movie? I actually sat through this, and to add insult to injury the woman I saw it with refused my offer of "annexation" afterwards...


The 1440s are occupied with trying to rebuild my relations with the rest of Europe, especially a France that has decided to ignore its shield provinces and head east for some reason. The only break in this process comes in 1446 when the Golden Horde wants military access. I'm not sure what to make of this, but end up declining. You'd think they'd be more concerned about preventing their disintegration than dabbling in Italian politics, but you'd be wrong.

A picture of a typical Golden Horde soldier. Historical accuracy = fair.


The rest of the decade is a smooth, peaceful ride. It looks like a reasonably unified Italy is within my grasps, but what than? Take on Austria or France and get ruined? Conquer worthless Muslim provinces? Send merchants to Venice and then lovingly recount those efforts in this AAR? I'm still not sure. I'm not even sure I want to diploannex. Those gold lions are just so cool!

Papal States, 1450

Judge: Thanks for the encouragement! I decided to write this AAR in a drunken AAR style but with longer and more thought out (?) posts and with marginally less alcohol in my system. I am planning to make an announcement on "Coat Part III" soon though...

I can say without exaggeration that "Under the Tuscan Sun" was the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life. No explosions, no car chases, no killer robots, Lifetime movie of the week style characters and plot...and it just dragged on and on! I certainly deserved better than a lame headache excuse after sitting through that cinematic train wreck.

juszuf7: Something tells me that a force annexation might have given her family a permanent casus belli against me. Thanks for checking out the AAR, I'll try to keep bringing the humor.

ArmOrAttAk: I do feel bad about withholding important details in the name of brevity, but there's only so many times I can type "I sent a diplomat to Novgorod for royal marriage...denied" so I had to cut a few things. Believe it or not the merchants actually play a role greater than "I sent one to Venice" in the next post. I nearly fell out of my chair when the "merchant crisis" occurred...you'll understand once I post it.

Lucidor: Thanks for the kind words! I really wanted to play peaceful, but old habits (and rival nations) die hard. I'm trying to watch my naughty points, but instead I'm just watching them go up.

jwolf: I have on reasonably good authority (this guy who talks to himself and drinks fortified wine from a bag on the bus I sometimes take told me this) that the Golden Horde were several hundred years ahead of Europe in most areas and the massive consumption of oil for their cavalry is actually what caused their disintegration. The Astrakhans advocated a cavalry based on mopeds for a short while, but after being defeated by Russia the technology was lost for several centuries.

My homeless drunk associate deserves this award for his preservation of Golden Horde history.

The years covered in this post were so dull the Pope had time to dabble in space-ology, writing this book as a follow-up to "Unidentified Flying Outrage!"


Merchant sent = thousands of deaths, why won't they annex and enthusiastic sailors: 1450-1485

As the thirty year anniversary of the vassalization of Siena and Mantua passes, a smile spreads across my face like so much butter on bread. I recall hearing on this forum that after thirty years diploannexation is a mere formality, so it's just a matter of clicking, right?

Right?

Both nations refuse the generous offer of joining the world's Holiest nation. Tears fall to the keyboard as I try to understand this injustice. The problem seems to be my "tarnished reputation" combined with the fact that Siena and Mantua have super monarchs for some reason while I'm stuck with second rate Vicars of Christ leading my nation. At least the vassalage wasn't broken by my indecent proposal, so I haven't lost too much from the rejection. I decide that maybe I should play a waiting game and shed some wicked child points.

Hopefully this product works on reputations, because I just bought 1000 Ducats worth of it.


With that, the waiting game begins. Only unhappy peasants in 1455 breaks up the merchant sending monotony. In 1464 I try my luck with Naples, but they don't want to exchange their aqua for gray either. My luck seems to be cursed. I keep waiting.

The waiting game stinks...lets play this instead.


In 1471 Mantua finally gives in to my persistent requests and gives up its independence. I celebrate by disbanding an inexplicably large army they were somehow able to support.

Speaking of martial matters (I said MARTIAL, that was not an Eminem reference!!!) I've been increasing "naval" in hopes of colonizing one day in the distant future. The principle upshot of this has been two enthusiasm events, giving the Papacy an impressive ten galley "Navy of Holy Justice and Favorable Wind."

Papal States sailors caught up in their enthusiasm for the navy.


By the end of the 1470s I've forged an alliance with Genoa, built a wine manufactory and fought a meaningless alliance war with the Golden Horde (!) and some sundry Muslim nations. Luckily, the Horde's legendary "motorpsycho cavalry" do not make an appearance.

Then I sent a merchant to Liguria.

Genoa decides my merchant sending is out of hand and must be stopped. They embargo the Pope!!!!! Keep in mind they have +120 relations with us, are in the same alliance and are putting an embargo on the voice of Christ on Earth. Money is truly the root of all evil (except sex evil, of course).

The possibility of not being able to send merchants and lovingly recount this activity is too great an insult to bear. Genoa gets banned from the alliance and war is declared soon after. With their soldiers depleted by Golden Horde motorpsycho divisions and no allies to speak of, Genoa is quickly in the defensive position.

The embargo incident: cowardly Genoese dogs refuse to trade their walking sticks for Papal barrels.


Following the defeat of Genoa in 1483 our former allies cede Emilia and 50 Ducats, as well as allowing trade to resume with our merchants. All is again right in the world...but for how long???

The Papal States, 1485

Dr Jekyll: Thanks for the compliments! ArmOrAttAk is right about Genoa: I didn't want to drag out the war in Crimea and I didn't really have enough ships to oppose the Genoese navy or move my soldiers, despite the very enthusiastic sailers.

ArmOrAttAk: Attrition and their large navy were the issues. Why they would embargo an ally with good relations is pretty baffling. Wouldn't a trade agreement make more sense in this situation? I would have given it to them.

jwolf: Congratulations on hitting 500! Siena's new guy turns out to be weak in all areas, except diplomacy! There are certain benefits to letting them hang around as an ally, though. They field a huge army relative to their size that's much higher tech than mine. Glad you liked the images, I had to admit that sailor one gave me a case of the giggles.

merrick: The Popes truly are an unstoppable sledge hammer of holiness, crushing evil like some sort of walnut. Hopefully I'll still have a purpose once Italy is conquered, though...I'm hoping for explorers. Genoa's embargoing tendencies really worked against them...the embargo AI needs to be fixed, it's almost a CB exploit at this point. I didn't need those 6 annual Ducats from Liguria, but I'll take their land.

Judge: I'd rather look at the pictures in your AAR, if forced to choose. Progress is still slow and steady, but things heat up a lot in the next post. I really wanted to be a diplomatic force, but I just don't have the discipline to see that strategy through. Sending the army of Holy Justice and Sensible Footwear against my enemies just seems easier and faster. Naples has the bad luck of having a bad monarch in the next post (finally) so no prizes for guessing what happens to them.