New Papacy and Curia system?

[Scimittar]

What do you think about new Papacy system in 1.8? For me it is joke But here are my plus/minus list:

+ possible actions for papal influence
+ nice new bonuses for controlling Curia
+ better system for creating new cardinals

--- voting system !!! WTF !!! It is lottery. This system ruined all good work done with Papacy and Curia.

New system of control over Curia can't be predictable way to play. You can't make it as element of your tactic. It is random lottery. No matter that you have 50% or sometimes more. Always country with 5% can become controller. Or when I have 7 cardinals and other country only 1 - it always can control Pope !!! Not realistic !!!
Before you could make situation that most of cardinals were under your control (or sometimes all). In some situations you had 100% chance to become Papal controler.

My propositions:
* don't limit number of cardinals per country; when I control most of Europe I can have more cardinals
* change voting system:
-> maybe it should be something like Conclave? Each cardinal gives X percent of chance to become controller and rest is from spending influence
-> make game to choose new controler for exemple only from TOP 3 most influent countries - this prevent that countries with very low % can chance to become controller

What do You think? What are your opinions and propositions?

 

[Denkt]

Catholic religion is basicly the weakest religion but for a very few countries.

 

[yerm]

I'd like if it was separated. The papal reward system should be based on Pope's opinion, religious unity, conversion rates, etc. A colonial nation or holy order way off outside Europe spreading Catholicism and converting the unwashed masses should be getting massive bonuses there. Meanwhile, the whole curia control system could remain with its cardinal control mini game. I'd love if it wasn't all or nothing; there could be a level of control, and with it a percentage of the bonus, based on how much influence you exert over the curia and pope. This would mean a small European power might be leveraging curia bonuses but rarely getting any free mercantilism while New Spain is constantly popping out bonuses but never touches control of the papacy.

 

[Scimittar]

I agree that there are more better religions. So thats why there are bonuses for controller which can compensate weaknesses of that faith. Mostly usefull for big countries like Austria, Spain, Poland/Commonwealth or France. For smaller ones it is easier to change religion to other.

 

[unmerged(783218)]

Once you get big enough and have enough cardinals, the Papacy system is a chocolate box.
Trying to be the Pope is not the best way to profit from it. On the other hand, the bonus you can have are quite attractive.
I particularly enjoy picking the +1 stab when I'm at +2 stab. It always cost 100 papal influence whatsoever, so no need to use a tremounous amount of ADM to go to +3. Enjoy low unrest forever!

 

[Xinkc]

I find it frustrating that you can lose cardinals for no apparent reason. I ended up going Reformed once so I could at least get a Center of Reformation after losing a cardinal, gaining it back in the same province a year or two later, then losing another shortly afterwards. Forget you Pope man! I don't care if you have that papal plan, I've got bonuses I can control and one included buffing my already high morale.

 

[Thrake]

I wish it was a bit less biazed. I was a 100 BT Norway, but had no cardinals. 3 PM Lunebourg however, had 4 cardinals, all in Lunebourg. I wanted to give a try to the papacy system, but in the end, I just converted because I simply not had any weight in the curia. Otherwise, it looks as an improvement; it was way too easy to outbid the AI and become the "hereditary" controler earlier.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

A 100% random curia seems coherent with the overall game design and is AI friendly (this game AI is awesome but to make it perfect I wish all mechanics were as random as the curia); I actually like the new system because it lets me focus on what is really fun/important in this game which is to fight rebels to avoid several thousand LA clicks per game.

 

[Pornek]

Its better then before thats for sure. Pre - 1.8. it was just a stack of bonusses the player had at a certain point. Nothing that enhances gameplay at all.

 

[MaticT]

I'm a fan of a sandbox-historical type of solutions.
If anyone read Maurice Druon's "The accursed Kings" that portray wonderfully the politics with the papal selection, this one is obvious accordingly:
1. You've got Curia with 50 cardinals, divided among various nations. Pope dies, make an event for the conclave to begin and give it a year or two to finish
2. make a first round selection
-which countries haven't invested any influence into elections and eliminate them, while at the same time calculate which country those without any influence spent would be most likely to vote for, based on alliances, royal marriages, trust and relations.
-Apply rivalries on top of that. If I rival France, Burgundy and Hungary as Austria for example and they woud have a stack of 15 cardinals together that surely doesn't help with the votes, being rivaled by Bohemia, Venice with few more cardinals isn't helpfull either, as Austrian cardinal becoming a pope would be somewhat politicaly tough to accept.
-If you have a wide coalition against you it's perfectly normal to expect cardinals from those nations aren't about to vote for your candidate either.
3. After that first round eliminate all countries that wouldn't be able or are the least likely to receive at least 26 votes, just as it is obviously still the case with every papal selection.
4. Make a list of top5 countries with the most influence spent along with the upper mentioned factors, with the ability of the closest followers to make a run with some event decisions
5. make some event decisions, such as:
- "Palatinate would be glad to support your candidate for papal elections if you were to build them a temple in Heidelburg" for example, costing 10 ADM and 50 gold
-"bribe Burgundy's cardinal to vote for you costing X gold" or "buy off Burgundy from pursuing their own pope candidate for X gold"
- Brandenburg offers to vote for your candidate if you were to help them regaining their core Neumark/make an alliance/royal marriage/insult Sweden... and so on
-secure Milan to vote for you by increasing relations to 150
-offer a chance to back off from elections in exchange for increased relations with other countries or back off to eliminate chances of a particular country you dislike along that
-offer a 10 years non-attacking pact to XY in exchange for cardinal votes etc.
... and keep showing the odds changing for top few countries live
6. After a while the first round should end and once again by series of events and by the same procedure eliminate the candidates untill you got yourself a pope

It's somewhat historical reality, would give some chances to influence the elections and participate in those and would make a big deal out of it, as it historicaly was, therefore... would imo be fun

 

[ChildeR]

I like the voting system since it no longer makes in possible to control the curia nonstop for centuries. Most of the other benefits need tweaking, though. Stability is the only one remotely worth it. I usually end up sending some influence to the curia whenever there's a new pope, hoping for a quick reelection where I have the advantage. The other time I just collect it until at 100.

 

[hitchens]

I think its great. 100 times better that it used to be.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

I think its great. 100 times better that it used to be.

Yep now it has much more depth, sometimes I need 1 hour or more to decide what to do with the papal influence because I also consider the opportunity costs and all.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

I'm a fan of a sandbox-historical type of solutions.
If anyone read Maurice Druon's "The accursed Kings" that portray wonderfully the politics with the papal selection, this one is obvious accordingly:
1. You've got Curia with 50 cardinals, divided among various nations. Pope dies, make an event for the conclave to begin and give it a year or two to finish
2. make a first round selection
-which countries haven't invested any influence into elections and eliminate them, while at the same time calculate which country those without any influence spent would be most likely to vote for, based on alliances, royal marriages, trust and relations.
-Apply rivalries on top of that. If I rival France, Burgundy and Hungary as Austria for example and they woud have a stack of 15 cardinals together that surely doesn't help with the votes, being rivaled by Bohemia, Venice with few more cardinals isn't helpfull either, as Austrian cardinal becoming a pope would be somewhat politicaly tough to accept.
-If you have a wide coalition against you it's perfectly normal to expect cardinals from those nations aren't about to vote for your candidate either.
3. After that first round eliminate all countries that wouldn't be able or are the least likely to receive at least 26 votes, just as it is obviously still the case with every papal selection.
4. Make a list of top5 countries with the most influence spent along with the upper mentioned factors, with the ability of the closest followers to make a run with some event decisions
5. make some event decisions, such as:
- "Palatinate would be glad to support your candidate for papal elections if you were to build them a temple in Heidelburg" for example, costing 10 ADM and 50 gold
-"bribe Burgundy's cardinal to vote for you costing X gold" or "buy off Burgundy from pursuing their own pope candidate for X gold"
- Brandenburg offers to vote for your candidate if you were to help them regaining their core Neumark/make an alliance/royal marriage/insult Sweden... and so on
-secure Milan to vote for you by increasing relations to 150
-offer a chance to back off from elections in exchange for increased relations with other countries or back off to eliminate chances of a particular country you dislike along that
-offer a 10 years non-attacking pact to XY in exchange for cardinal votes etc.
... and keep showing the odds changing for top few countries live
6. After a while the first round should end and once again by series of events and by the same procedure eliminate the candidates untill you got yourself a pope

It's somewhat historical reality, would give some chances to influence the elections and participate in those and would make a big deal out of it, as it historicaly was, therefore... would imo be fun

Nah that is not sufficiently random so the player will have a big advantage over the AI besides it might require lots of coding!

 

[Drakken]

I think that when a pope dies, any country but the two with the highest chances lose their percentage. The two highest get a new percentage, according to the level of Influence they had spent, and they have a year to get/spend as many Influence as they can get to gain the upper hand.

The one with over 50% at the end of the year gets elected.

 

[yerm]

I think there should be some kind of incentive to being catholic and in central or south America.

SOMETHING

 

[Beagá]

Reformation system isn´t well done. The system is promising but flawed.

German minor becomes protestant? German minor is thrashed. Leaving one or two other centers of reformation... You converted as England? = Forever Alone England.

Catholics are... "fine". The -1% tech cost per cardinal was silly. On the other hand papal influence is almost only useful for extra legitimacy and stability. -1% interest... lol

 

[Denkt]

I think there should be some kind of incentive to being catholic and in central or south America.

SOMETHING

Move papal states to america