The catholic authority downward spiral.

[Freodin]

After a first drop of religious authority of the Pope, I had managed to stabilize the situation.
But then a lost crusade started it anew. The Pope lost Rome. He is reduced to a single barony.

So all attempts to use the "Papal War" casus belli are doomed... all settlements that I could target are held by Christian heretics, and a barony level Pope cannot vassalize any of them.

So the authority is a 0%. Heresies spread across the continent, and with them the rebellions. I cannot whack them all, and definitly not instantly. So they gain some victories. Every heretic victory reduces papal authority... at the moment, the value from "Heretic Rebels Victories" alone is at -105%.

That means even more provinces spawn heresies and rise up in rebellion. Which means holy sites get lost to heretic, reducing the catholic authority even more.

And so on...

I have not given up yet, and I have not fallen to the lure of heresy myself. But, by all Saints, this is an uphill battle, even for the largest Empire in Europe.

I love this game.

 

[WomboCombo]

If you're gonna try and be a religious champion, you need to be involved in almost every religious war.

 

[Freodin]

If you're gonna try and be a religious champion, you need to be involved in almost every religious war.

I just want the heretic rebels rip into my country every second week. I am at the 13th Cathar, the 8th Lollard and the 11th Waldensian revolt right now... the Fraticelli have wandered off to Spain luckily.

 

[BuddyLove]

What realm are you?

You need to recruit or breed a mega- Chaplain and start close with converting those heretics and go on a imprisonment and forced recoversion spree for your big vassals to get their chaplains on the right side of things as well.

 

[Freodin]

What realm are you?

You need to recruit or breed a mega- Chaplain and start close with converting those heretics and go on a imprisonment and forced recoversion spree for your big vassals to get their chaplains on the right side of things as well.

Bavaria. Empire of Bavaria, spreading from the Danube to the Rhine, from the Alps to the North Sea Coast.

Chaplains don't really work with such a low moral authoritry. Even with all other factors in my favour - high learning, same culture, the yearly chances to convert are at 0.08%. The heresies spawn faster than I can combat them.

I don't think I can combat the heretics with conversion alone. I need to raise moral authority. For that, I need to bring the Papacy back to power. Than means wars against all the Cathars and Lollards who hold Rome and the surrounding area. With Holy Wars, to get authority up. Which means I am fighting them all at once. While also battling the next and next and next heretical uprising in my northern homelands.

I blame this situation on the lost crusade. 15 years of constant struggle, through lands ravaged by the Great Plague. And then, after we had manged to start to get on the winning side, this stupid bastard of a King gets overthrown due to decadence... boom, Crusade lost.

As I said: I love this game.

 

[BuddyLove]

What religion are those Lollards/Catars in Rome?

Could you Holy War someone else? (i.e. if those guys are Sunni, go beat up the Norse or Romuva or Sueo-whatevers in small, winnable Holy Wars to push up your Moral Authority?)

When I'm using Holy War for conquering territory I always try to maximize return on investment by going for the MOST counties per hit, but if you pick the smallest guy and Holy War for the single province he holds of a duchy you can push the war score very fast by taking that one province and potentially win before their allies can organize, and you get the same +3% whether you take one province from an independent count or a 5 province duchy off an Emperor.

 

[Patriarch of Bub]

Your cause is a worthy one. Onwards!

 

[Zsrai]

You may even want to make an anti-Pope, then press his claim to the Papacy to make the Pope your vassal. Then you can do some Holy Wars, de jure wars, etc. in Italy while the Pope hopefully does the same. You'll take a quick hit to MA from making the anti-Pope and the resulting war, but it should make grinding MA higher easier in the long run.

 

[Woifee]

If you have stronger vassals you might not have to beat the rebels yourself.

Aso if you look for claimants in the heretic counties in Italy you might nod need the Holy war CB.

 

[heliostellar]

I've given up on complaining on these forums that rebellions need a massive, EU4-style overhaul. This is the kind of mess that was pretty typical in all Paradox games with the original RNG rebellion mechanic. CK2 goes one step further and punishes everyone when a religion nosedives, and the rebellions get progressively worse.

 

[Karlington]

You may even want to make an anti-Pope, then press his claim to the Papacy to make the Pope your vassal. Then you can do some Holy Wars, de jure wars, etc. in Italy while the Pope hopefully does the same. You'll take a quick hit to MA from making the anti-Pope and the resulting war, but it should make grinding MA higher easier in the long run.

This makes a lot of sense. Plus, it sounds like Moral Authority is currently at 0% anyway, so the hit doesn't really matter. It's a great idea from an efficiency standpoint, though if he is RPing as a faithful Catholic then setting up an antipope would be the biggest no-no.

 

[Rubidium]

This makes a lot of sense. Plus, it sounds like Moral Authority is currently at 0% anyway, so the hit doesn't really matter. It's a great idea from an efficiency standpoint, though if he is RPing as a faithful Catholic then setting up an antipope would be the biggest no-no.

The current pope is a tool of heretics, in whose land he continues to dwell. He has made the palace of St. Peter into a den of iniquity. Clearly he is a pretender, fraudulently elected. It is your duty, as the last true defender of the Faith, to find the rightful Pope, restore him to his rightful place, and restore Christendom. Fortunately, the rightful Pope happens to already be one of your bishops...

More broadly, not all of the antipopes represented merely cynical power-grabs; plenty had reasonable theological arguments on their side. Indeed, the whole schism that was breaking out shortly after the 1066 start date arguably saw the Emperor and his antipope defending traditional Catholic practice against the unprecedented innovations of a dubiously elected heretic (or at least they had a reasonably solid case for it, although obviously in the end they lost).

 

[treb]

This makes a lot of sense. Plus, it sounds like Moral Authority is currently at 0% anyway, so the hit doesn't really matter. It's a great idea from an efficiency standpoint, though if he is RPing as a faithful Catholic then setting up an antipope would be the biggest no-no.

Any pope that lets the situation get so bad that the church itself ceases to effectively exist as a standalone entity not being propped up by the few remaining Secular adherents with any power Shouldn't have been elected in the first place.

 

[afrodius]

If you make a antipope to set up as a vassal pope, be sure to pick a bishop who owns a holy sire for another boost to moral aurhority.

 

[FifthMonarchy]

Join a monastic society and live long enough to get to the top tier, then you get province conversion for 1000 society currency, obviously bit long term but its one of my regular ways of keeping miaphysitism alive when it obviously has moral authority problems too. With the right ruler you might get twenty years of regular province religion policing.

 

[Freodin]

The Anti-Pope idea is a good one. So good, in fact, that I already had executed it before writing this post.

At first, when I noticed that the Pope had lost Rome and all of Latium, I started a "Papal War" on the current Duke of Latium. I occupied all of his holdings, made peace... and to my huge surprise saw that nothing had changed.
At this point I had mistakenly thought that the reason for that was that the Pope, weak as he was, had taken the chance and started his own Papal War. So he was hostile to me when I won my own war.

At that point I decided: screw that traitor to the faith. I set up an anti-Pope, quickly installed him in the last papal seat, and repeated my Papal War on Latium.

Same result. I really don't know why this doesn't work: even if his last holding is only a barony, his titular rank should make it possible for him to vassalize the Duke of Latium.

That's when I hatched my current plan: conquering these lands for myself and handing them over to my vassal-pope.


The notion of joining one of the monastic societies and using their ability to convert counties is also a very good one. That's how I managed to turn the tide at the previous MA disaster. Sadly, my current emperor is not young enough any more to reach the fourth rank and gather enough power to pull that off. Maybe his son will, or his grandson.

There's just so many options, so many different ways to play. Yes, some mechanisms could be improved. But I just love this game.