Cardinals

[Pugman]

I haven't played in a while and there have been quite a few changes. I'm hoping someone can catch me up on Holy See changes. I just started a game as Castille and both times the curia controller changed it happened like this:

1) I was competing with another country for control of a future cardinal. I was in the lead.
2) I get the popup saying I've lost control of a future cardinal.
3) IMMEDIATELY after this (i.e. with no opportunity at all for me to do anything) the cardinal dies event fires
4) The future cardinal I was trying to control replaces the dead cardinal and the country that just took him becomes controller.

Again, this happened twice in a row. Am I just extremely unlucky or is there a new mechanic I'm not understanding?

 

[Pandadan]

You can now auto-pause on loss of cardinal control. I haven't noticed a specific trend towards cardinals dying as soon as I lose control of them.

 

[Pugman]

Apparently I was just really really unlucky. I kept on playing and it hasn't happened again yet even after a couple cardinal deaths.

 

[TheBloke]

Yeah, you're really unlucky.

But this is why I get quite anal about voting and try not to even be outvoted in the first place - checking the Papacy every time I have points, even before I'm outvoted, and topping up those candidates where I'm drawing with the next highest candidate. But worst case, if I'm feeling lazier, I do have Popup and Pause for the outvote notification, so I can fix it before he can die.

Here's my highly click-and-time-intensive Papacy Voting Strategy, if you're interested.