Excommunication nonsense

[Don_giorgio]

There are two separate points to consider. One is whether Excommunication makes sense the way it's implemented, the other one is what this thread is about.

It's certainly absolutely ridiculous that a Byzantine Emperor who controls Antioch is incapable of interacting with the Patriarch of Antioch. It's an oversight on Paradox's part, whatever the merits of the system are otherwise.

Αgree... Paradox should fix that and on the same time make an overhaul of the way that Orthodox Bishops are appointed. I am tired to see 25 yo Bishops randomly popping out and of when i want to make a relative/friend/foe etc. a Bishop the only ways being either revoke a Bishopric and suffer the penalty or erect a new one and pay several hundreds gold.

 

[gdj]

Αgree... Paradox should fix that and on the same time make an overhaul of the way that Orthodox Bishops are appointed. I am tired to see 25 yo Bishops randomly popping out and of when i want to make a relative/friend/foe etc. a Bishop the only ways being either revoke a Bishopric and suffer the penalty or erect a new one and pay several hundreds gold.

That´s not the worst part of it. Orthodox prince bishoprics (metropolis) and prince-archbishoprics are open elective too. This is not a problem with normal bishoprics as their courts are empty, and a new character is generated, but for count- or duke level bishoprics it is a problem because they actually have a court, and the ai makes no distinction of culture of religion who succeeds. Whenever a heresiarch, peasant leader etc. is defeated, he flees to a random court - including your prince bishops court. I had monothelites, paulicians, catholics, bogomilists and even muslims become metropolitan in my last game, just becuase they happened to be in the old metropolitans court when the old man kicked the bucket.

 

[Talq]

There are two separate points to consider. One is whether Excommunication makes sense the way it's implemented, the other one is what this thread is about.

It's certainly absolutely ridiculous that a Byzantine Emperor who controls Antioch is incapable of interacting with the Patriarch of Antioch. It's an oversight on Paradox's part, whatever the merits of the system are otherwise.

Hardly. It was more than a little obvious that the Byzantine Emperor's excommunicate at will (and the consequences that flowed from it) was over-powered. Which is one reason why all requests for its geographic expansion, and limitations on autocephaly have fallen on deaf ears.

The religion should at least get a hefty hit to moral authority for this.

Unfortunately, because of the design decision not to have religious heads be independent actors (which admittedly would have been 'fun' to implement) there is no way for the church to do it for themselves. In any event, given that excommunications (where the Pope himself wasn't a beneficiary) were in response to some form of complaint (otherwise it wouldn't have been considered) its not that immersion breaking.

Orthodox excommunications on the other hand. Yep they are ridiculous, and pretty much showed how flawed the mechanic was.

 

[vandevere]

Even so, excommunication is religious tool, and using it for political means in feudal quarrels is strictly speaking corruption. Now, the way this works in CK2 causes at least two problems: 1) when a ruler asks the HoR to excommunicate someone, it has almost never religious reasons and 2) the game states openly what happened: "duke x has been excommunicated at the request of emperor y" i.e. it is known to everyone whos asked for it. This is a very open form of corruption and power abuse. The religion should at least get a hefty hit to moral authority for this.

This happened ages ago, when excommunications were far more common. I was playing 1066 Vanilla start, as Anjou. Firstly, every King of France, starting with Philip, the King at the 1066 Start, got excommunicated. If he was under 16, then the Pope would wait until he hit 16, and give him an excommunication as a birthday prezzie.

If the King did that Act of Contrition that made the Pope undo the excommunication, another duke would walk up to the Pope less than a year later, and get the poor King excommunicated yet again.

On this playthrough, every King of France got excommunicate. Every...single...King...from first to last; and many got it multiple times.

One particularly egregious example that comes to mind was when the current King of France-Zealous, Kind, Charitable, and Diligent-went off on Crusade.

He had all good traits, no bad, and no murders or adultery, on his ticket, *AND* he was on Crusade. Pope Excommunicated him anyway.

I know you guys want to see more excommunications. But, for me, they need to *MAKE SENSE*...

And...if the Pope really *IS* going to excommunicate a good son of the Catholic Church, when all the evidence-Traits/deeds/whatever-say he shouldn't, then there should be serious repercussions for the Pope that did the excommunicating, and the sonofabitch that asked him to do it.

As it is now, there are *NO* downsides to wrongfully asking the Pope to excommunicate someone. None at all...

There should at least be a fifty/fifty chance of negative outcomes, perhaps even higher, if the target doesn't have any obvious vices; like Known Kinslaying, or Known Adultery