Look out for the next part of the Diplomacy trilogy where I explain how we can attack fellow Catholics now that we have a better handle of the Pope. Hope you enjoyed the video and happy maiming!
I've noted that if you have terrible relations with the faction that does become pope, your relations with the papal states, even if excellent, will drop significantly. As if the incoming pope has the same attitude as the faction they come from. You can fix it, and the pope stops thinking of themself as a member of that faction, but it biases their attitude coming in and requires more diplomacy to fix it. If you have excellent relations with the incoming pope's faction, they start off liking you.
That's a great point that I should bring up in the follow up video. On the papal states campaign the relations would swing around massively when the pope changed. It might well be a literal reflection of that faction's standings with other factions. Research time methinks!@@askthepizzaguy
“The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will always procure gold.” - Niccolò Machiavelli...alongside all his other quotes in Med2 You can find quotes for anything really, so quotes are mediocre anyway.
Hey! You should make a video about the Senatorial positions you can be assigned in the 1st Rome TW. Having trouble figuring out what will get u appointed to these positions
Last time I played Milan, I take Rome, buy Volga-Bulgar from Russia and give the region to The Pope. Now the Pope and his troop stuck at The Alps, blocking the choke point from HRE for good. I was in good terms. Having alliance, elected my cardinals but The Pope tried to take Florence, Cagliari and Tunis from me several time. Not a big deal as I can simply fend of or demand truce, but better kick that backstabbing warmonger out of my territory.
Just a quick note in regards to the part of the video why it would be questionable why anyone would destroy churches. Building churches leads to very good traits for your governors. I take the governor out of the city, light the church on fire for the insurance money, and rebuild. It gives points in StrategyChivalry, Upright, Religious Activity and GoodBuilder (Not 100% sure on GoodBuilder, only pretty sure) This is great to do particularly when your building queue is caught up and you're waiting for population to crest the threshold for the next stage of walls when construction would otherwise be idle. I always have a diplomat parked at Rome, so I just give the Pope some florins to shut him up when I go through a round of this.
A good point! We discussed that in the authority video... and I was looking to talk more about chivalry and dread in a new video so this is a great shout.
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH I will have to re-visit the authority video, and will look forward to one on chivalry/dread. Particularly battle chivalry as that one is a pain.
one thing you have left out about joining crusades, they are a great way of getting experience points for all your units. Obviously you start by sending either your faction heir or leader of on a crusade that you have selected, when they get to the destination (I usually send them by ship as its quicker than going overland) they first lay siege to the city, in the same turn you get all your other units that have a general to sign up for the crusade = even though they haven't actually gone on the crusade. Then in the same turn you launch your assault on the target city, Result is not only the troops that have gone on the crusade get an experience bonus, but so so all the other units that have signed up - but stayed at home
An excellent and sneaky ploy! I didn't mention the experience as I was focussed on papal diplomacy but obviously every unit is a relations boost and so that is a great trick, especially (as you say) with the experience bonus involved!
I am on a Venitian playthrough that started with the occupy bug. Got excommunicated and had a crusade called on me early. Entire Catholic world joined in. None of then are interested in peace at all. I am at war with everyone other than Scottland and Portugal. I am in the end game now, but it has not been esspecially enjoyable.
Get the Theologians Guild leveled up. When you have the HQ, every priest you create will have 5-6 piety from the get go. Pretty sure 5 is the minimum you need for promotion to Cardinal. You will be running the church at this point.
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH I would second that suggestion. Actively recruiting the guilds you want and where you want them add a really nice extra layer to the game.
very cool guide! the next part about attacking catholics without being excommunicated is very simple. There are 2 ways, the first one is the sneaky blitzkrieg way and the second one is the buttering up the pope way. They arent mutually exclusive either, for best results it is highly recommended to combine the sneaky blitzkrieg way with buttering up the pope way, and you'll see why. Sneaky blitzkrieg way: 1. Refrain from declaring war until you are in position to attack as many settlements as possible. This can mean positioning your armies nearby the settlements you want to take. 2. Then, blitzkrieg as many settlements as possible in one turn to catch the pope off guard before he notices your wily antics. This can be achieved through spies (faster moving but unreliable and dependent on luck) or siege weapons (slows down the army but reliable). Winning the settlements in one turn is crucial because of the next step: 3. Once the pope gives you the cease hostilities mission, this mission is also given to your enemy. The way it works is that you can freely attack enemy armies in your territory or besieging your settlements to defend yourself, but you cant attack them on enemy or neutral territory and you have to lift all sieges on enemy settlements. This is what trips up a lot of people and makes them think the pope is unreasonable when in reality he is: they try to retake one of their lost settlements after the cease hostilities mission is given and get excommunicated for technically attacking an enemy faction, because the pope doesn't care who used to own a settlement, only who owns it in the present. This applies to the enemy too, so they cant retake the settlements that you took without risking excommunication. Use the time of the cease hostilities mission to replenish your army and prepare for the next round of sneaky attacks. Buttering up the pope way: 1. Do everything in your power to befriend the pope up to the point that you have outstanding relations, perfect is better but harder to achieve. Alliances, trade deals, and the majority of the time you'll be gifting the pope tons of gold, in the tens or hundreds of thousands if necessary. Keep several diplomats around Papal settlements so you can easily bribe them whenever you need. 2. When attacking a catholic faction, whether through the sneaky blitzkrieg way or just a general offensive, keep bribing the pope every turn to make sure your relations stay at outstanding or perfect, because he will get pissed really quickly at transgressions against catholic factions like attacking them. This is absolutely neccesary because the penalty for failing the cease hostilities mission depends on how much the pope likes you. In most cases you'll just be straight up excommunicated even if you have moderately high relations, but if you have really good relations, you'll only suffer a little bit of relations loss with the pope which can easily be topped back up with more bribes. 3. You basically have carte blanche to attack catholic factions as long as the money keeps flowing to the pope. Which I daresay is a depressingly accurate depiction of medieval politics. You may want to combine this method with the sneaky blitzkrieg to minimize the amount of cease hostilities missions that you get, and therefore decrease the amount of money you have to spend to keep the pope happy.
An excellent first draft of my follow up video! Cheers ;) Can't argue with your points as they're all spot on. I'm sure I'll find something unusual in the files though... Let's see. Thanks for the enthusiastic comment :D
When I have a cease hostilities directive from the pope, I give him enough florins to get to 8 crosses of favour with him, and that is enough to avoid excommunication. Any lower than that and you're playing with fire.
For the Blitzkrieg method, it could be good to preposition armies in enemy territory, next to your target settlements. It will piss them off, but that's what you want. If they declare war on you, then you are just defending yourself as you take 4 or 5 settlements in one turn. :D And the Pope only cares if you attack fellow Catholics, not if you piss them off by trespassing. And I usually heed the Pope's call for Peace when he gives it. The AI will usually be so pissed that they will declare war again soon, or break the forced peace and be excommunicated. :D
A feature I especially miss i RTWM II is the ability to assassinate members of your own faction like in rome 2. Would be handy if you quickly needed to remove your leader.
There's a knowned bug from rome to medieval 2 that doesn't allow you to be ally of the factions that are allied with a Faction that you destroyed. It seems that the diplomacy remains unchanged. That sucks cause in the end you cant ally with anyone, included the papal states. Can you give a solution to this? 😢
Thank you! Medieval II is one of my favorite games of all time and I love your videos where I learn deep stuff about the game. Keep up this amazing work!!! Talking about the Pope, what I try to do always is send 100gold as a gift each turn... doing that in no time you're best friends hahaha
I've an off topic question. Is there anything else I can do to promote marriages and children besides simply declining the adoptions and praying to RNGesus?
More regions = more children/generals. But in terms of modding I am unsure. There is a section about family trees in the descr_campaign_db file but I've not experimented with it as of yet!
TNH's reply is the best above board way to do it. Conquering a few new territories does seem to push things along. Nothing to help with marriages, but if you have a general that is married but not producing kids and you're in a pinch, you can always open up the command console and give him Fertile x3 and let nature take its course...lol. If you do this for all your generals you will be swimming in kids.
In my current campaing I did ally myself with pope, but at one instance he chose the other faction to remain allied with instead of me and now I can't ally myself with him anymore (even though the faction has been destroyed). Is it normal?
Honestly, no. I've always been about making casual editing to the files so never organised it into mod folders. If this changes then I'll update the channel.
Hi! Love your videos! Could you please make a video tutorial on how to add special abilities from one mod to another (for example, from the Crusades campaign: the ability of Richard the Lionheart “Heart of the Lion”, Saladin’s ability “Righteousness of Faith“ and the others)? Thanks!
Nice video thx for that !! I have questions on medieval total war 2 it's really to improve your reputation to reliable on more 100 turn you now how you can improve your reputation faster in make trades and aliance easly??
Keeping your reputation reliable is key if you want any diplomacy in the game. The previous diplomacy video talks about reputation in more detail: ua-cam.com/video/PAOZ2zERcJE/v-deo.htmlsi=Xl2x-tEnAPUdcrId
Even without adjusting files, you can have a good reputation in the game, if you prefer that route. Don't form too many alliances as your reputation suffers when your allies attack each other and you're forced to break one. Be strategic with them. For instance, as England I will ally with France, Papal States, Hungary, and you could do Turkey, I suppose. These factions are very unlikely to get into it with each orher until much later on, if at all. France may seem strange, but by the time I finish off Scotland and Denmark, France has usually attacked me at Caen or Rennes, and them breaking our alliance does not affect our reputation. If Papal States are aggressive they may get into it with France too, but usually by then France has attacked me anyway. Also wait until your allies get into a war and then give them florins through diplomacy to attack their enemy. It builds your reputation big time and improves your relations by quite a bit. Doesn't even have to be alot. Like 2000 will usually do. However, you need a place to dump florins anyway as having too much in the state coffers starts to give your generals negative traits. Occupy or worst case sack cities (the big ones where public order will be an issue or other religion, etc), never exterminate, release captives and never attack an ally. I have no trouble keeping my reputation as "Immaculate".
I have been battling both Milan and the Danes for what seems like an eternity only for the Pope to recently encourage me to cease hostilities with both. However, all attempts at peace are roundly denied by both factions. What do I do? Any hints or ideas much appreciated. Thanks.
You just have to hold off aggressive acts for the duration of the mission. You can still defend your own territory though! Bets solution is to keep high relationship with pope and plan for a quick simultaneous attack to take multiple targets at once.
I played Roar of Conquest mod as Venice and Pope attacked me out of blue while I had 5 crosses favor with him. Is there a way to fix Pope not to be aggressive like in Stainless Steel?
![Improving Authority - A Guide to Traits and Retinue in Medieval II Total War [Vanilla]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZX720YZDqxU/mqdefault.jpg)
Look out for the next part of the Diplomacy trilogy where I explain how we can attack fellow Catholics now that we have a better handle of the Pope. Hope you enjoyed the video and happy maiming!
I've noted that if you have terrible relations with the faction that does become pope, your relations with the papal states, even if excellent, will drop significantly. As if the incoming pope has the same attitude as the faction they come from.
You can fix it, and the pope stops thinking of themself as a member of that faction, but it biases their attitude coming in and requires more diplomacy to fix it.
If you have excellent relations with the incoming pope's faction, they start off liking you.
That's a great point that I should bring up in the follow up video. On the papal states campaign the relations would swing around massively when the pope changed. It might well be a literal reflection of that faction's standings with other factions. Research time methinks!@@askthepizzaguy
Love the editing for the opening scene: "how to manage the pope." Cue crossbow.
I enjoyed that one myself :D
"The sinews of war are infinite money" - Cicero
In the case of the pope, you are not wrong.
“The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will always procure gold.”
- Niccolò Machiavelli...alongside all his other quotes in Med2
You can find quotes for anything really, so quotes are mediocre anyway.
Is their a way to mod missions in medieval 2 or rome one? I always wanted to do raiding missions for Denmark
An excellent question. I haven't tried that before but it should be possible; definitely one I'll do some research on.
Hey! You should make a video about the Senatorial positions you can be assigned in the 1st Rome TW. Having trouble figuring out what will get u appointed to these positions
I’ve looked around a other videos but they are just not like yours. I trust u for anything Total War
In regards of losing the papal elections, according to girl math you make a huge loss :P (or win depedent on your intentions)
Last time I played Milan, I take Rome, buy Volga-Bulgar from Russia and give the region to The Pope. Now the Pope and his troop stuck at The Alps, blocking the choke point from HRE for good. I was in good terms. Having alliance, elected my cardinals but The Pope tried to take Florence, Cagliari and Tunis from me several time. Not a big deal as I can simply fend of or demand truce, but better kick that backstabbing warmonger out of my territory.
🐗
Cheers!
Im Allies with Papal States
Just a quick note in regards to the part of the video why it would be questionable why anyone would destroy churches. Building churches leads to very good traits for your governors. I take the governor out of the city, light the church on fire for the insurance money, and rebuild.
It gives points in StrategyChivalry, Upright, Religious Activity and GoodBuilder (Not 100% sure on GoodBuilder, only pretty sure)
This is great to do particularly when your building queue is caught up and you're waiting for population to crest the threshold for the next stage of walls when construction would otherwise be idle.
I always have a diplomat parked at Rome, so I just give the Pope some florins to shut him up when I go through a round of this.
A good point! We discussed that in the authority video... and I was looking to talk more about chivalry and dread in a new video so this is a great shout.
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH I will have to re-visit the authority video, and will look forward to one on chivalry/dread. Particularly battle chivalry as that one is a pain.
one thing you have left out about joining crusades, they are a great way of getting experience points for all your units. Obviously you start by sending either your faction heir or leader of on a crusade that you have selected, when they get to the destination (I usually send them by ship as its quicker than going overland) they first lay siege to the city, in the same turn you get all your other units that have a general to sign up for the crusade = even though they haven't actually gone on the crusade. Then in the same turn you launch your assault on the target city, Result is not only the troops that have gone on the crusade get an experience bonus, but so so all the other units that have signed up - but stayed at home
Thanks for that information. Always something to learn even with thousands of hours logged. I am going to start doing that.
An excellent and sneaky ploy! I didn't mention the experience as I was focussed on papal diplomacy but obviously every unit is a relations boost and so that is a great trick, especially (as you say) with the experience bonus involved!
I am on a Venitian playthrough that started with the occupy bug. Got excommunicated and had a crusade called on me early. Entire Catholic world joined in. None of then are interested in peace at all. I am at war with everyone other than Scottland and Portugal. I am in the end game now, but it has not been esspecially enjoyable.
small unit size heresy detected. Engage the inquisitors.
😅 I play on large and I stand by it. The pope is on my side after all.😉
android style xD but it feels arcade in a fun way
Recruit a bunch of bishops and level em up as much as you can untill you have a majority in the papal election
Get the Theologians Guild leveled up. When you have the HQ, every priest you create will have 5-6 piety from the get go. Pretty sure 5 is the minimum you need for promotion to Cardinal. You will be running the church at this point.
This is definitely worth a mention! I should really make a guild guide, there's lots of useful tidbits to learn!
Absolutely. And using the guilds as suggested in the other comment will help that massively.
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH I would second that suggestion. Actively recruiting the guilds you want and where you want them add a really nice extra layer to the game.
How do you level a priest, though?
very cool guide! the next part about attacking catholics without being excommunicated is very simple. There are 2 ways, the first one is the sneaky blitzkrieg way and the second one is the buttering up the pope way. They arent mutually exclusive either, for best results it is highly recommended to combine the sneaky blitzkrieg way with buttering up the pope way, and you'll see why.
Sneaky blitzkrieg way:
1. Refrain from declaring war until you are in position to attack as many settlements as possible. This can mean positioning your armies nearby the settlements you want to take.
2. Then, blitzkrieg as many settlements as possible in one turn to catch the pope off guard before he notices your wily antics. This can be achieved through spies (faster moving but unreliable and dependent on luck) or siege weapons (slows down the army but reliable). Winning the settlements in one turn is crucial because of the next step:
3. Once the pope gives you the cease hostilities mission, this mission is also given to your enemy. The way it works is that you can freely attack enemy armies in your territory or besieging your settlements to defend yourself, but you cant attack them on enemy or neutral territory and you have to lift all sieges on enemy settlements. This is what trips up a lot of people and makes them think the pope is unreasonable when in reality he is: they try to retake one of their lost settlements after the cease hostilities mission is given and get excommunicated for technically attacking an enemy faction, because the pope doesn't care who used to own a settlement, only who owns it in the present. This applies to the enemy too, so they cant retake the settlements that you took without risking excommunication. Use the time of the cease hostilities mission to replenish your army and prepare for the next round of sneaky attacks.
Buttering up the pope way:
1. Do everything in your power to befriend the pope up to the point that you have outstanding relations, perfect is better but harder to achieve. Alliances, trade deals, and the majority of the time you'll be gifting the pope tons of gold, in the tens or hundreds of thousands if necessary. Keep several diplomats around Papal settlements so you can easily bribe them whenever you need.
2. When attacking a catholic faction, whether through the sneaky blitzkrieg way or just a general offensive, keep bribing the pope every turn to make sure your relations stay at outstanding or perfect, because he will get pissed really quickly at transgressions against catholic factions like attacking them. This is absolutely neccesary because the penalty for failing the cease hostilities mission depends on how much the pope likes you. In most cases you'll just be straight up excommunicated even if you have moderately high relations, but if you have really good relations, you'll only suffer a little bit of relations loss with the pope which can easily be topped back up with more bribes.
3. You basically have carte blanche to attack catholic factions as long as the money keeps flowing to the pope. Which I daresay is a depressingly accurate depiction of medieval politics. You may want to combine this method with the sneaky blitzkrieg to minimize the amount of cease hostilities missions that you get, and therefore decrease the amount of money you have to spend to keep the pope happy.
An excellent first draft of my follow up video! Cheers ;)
Can't argue with your points as they're all spot on. I'm sure I'll find something unusual in the files though... Let's see.
Thanks for the enthusiastic comment :D
When I have a cease hostilities directive from the pope, I give him enough florins to get to 8 crosses of favour with him, and that is enough to avoid excommunication. Any lower than that and you're playing with fire.
For the Blitzkrieg method, it could be good to preposition armies in enemy territory, next to your target settlements. It will piss them off, but that's what you want. If they declare war on you, then you are just defending yourself as you take 4 or 5 settlements in one turn. :D And the Pope only cares if you attack fellow Catholics, not if you piss them off by trespassing.
And I usually heed the Pope's call for Peace when he gives it. The AI will usually be so pissed that they will declare war again soon, or break the forced peace and be excommunicated. :D
Genius
3. After getting cease hostilities warning a second time, you will be excommunicated even if your relations with Papal state is perfect.
A feature I especially miss i RTWM II is the ability to assassinate members of your own faction like in rome 2. Would be handy if you quickly needed to remove your leader.
I recall this was possible in version 1.0. There are videos around for it. At some point it was patched. I like it in the game personally.
There's a knowned bug from rome to medieval 2 that doesn't allow you to be ally of the factions that are allied with a Faction that you destroyed. It seems that the diplomacy remains unchanged. That sucks cause in the end you cant ally with anyone, included the papal states. Can you give a solution to this? 😢
Dude, the video about attacking catholics is uploaded?
I really need to not screw up that.
Thank you!
Medieval II is one of my favorite games of all time and I love your videos where I learn deep stuff about the game.
Keep up this amazing work!!!
Talking about the Pope, what I try to do always is send 100gold as a gift each turn... doing that in no time you're best friends hahaha
That's a solid plan. costs you little but just keeps the numbers going upward! :D And thanks a lot for the kind words.
I've an off topic question. Is there anything else I can do to promote marriages and children besides simply declining the adoptions and praying to RNGesus?
More regions = more children/generals. But in terms of modding I am unsure. There is a section about family trees in the descr_campaign_db file but I've not experimented with it as of yet!
TNH's reply is the best above board way to do it. Conquering a few new territories does seem to push things along.
Nothing to help with marriages, but if you have a general that is married but not producing kids and you're in a pinch, you can always open up the command console and give him Fertile x3 and let nature take its course...lol. If you do this for all your generals you will be swimming in kids.
In my current campaing I did ally myself with pope, but at one instance he chose the other faction to remain allied with instead of me and now I can't ally myself with him anymore (even though the faction has been destroyed).
Is it normal?
bro i never knew you could buy votes from other factions???
Good info!
Thanks! :D
I think I still prefer the LOTW method.
Great stuff. Looking forward to the next part!
It's already in production!
This is another great video! Thank you!!!
Btw, would you happen to have a zip file of all your mods for download?
Honestly, no. I've always been about making casual editing to the files so never organised it into mod folders. If this changes then I'll update the channel.
Hi! Love your videos! Could you please make a video tutorial on how to add special abilities from one mod to another (for example, from the Crusades campaign: the ability of Richard the Lionheart “Heart of the Lion”, Saladin’s ability “Righteousness of Faith“ and the others)? Thanks!
This is definitely interesting. I'll look into it! :D
Nice video thx for that !!
I have questions on medieval total war 2 it's really to improve your reputation to reliable on more 100 turn you now how you can improve your reputation faster in make trades and aliance easly??
Keeping your reputation reliable is key if you want any diplomacy in the game. The previous diplomacy video talks about reputation in more detail: ua-cam.com/video/PAOZ2zERcJE/v-deo.htmlsi=Xl2x-tEnAPUdcrId
Even without adjusting files, you can have a good reputation in the game, if you prefer that route. Don't form too many alliances as your reputation suffers when your allies attack each other and you're forced to break one. Be strategic with them.
For instance, as England I will ally with France, Papal States, Hungary, and you could do Turkey, I suppose.
These factions are very unlikely to get into it with each orher until much later on, if at all. France may seem strange, but by the time I finish off Scotland and Denmark, France has usually attacked me at Caen or Rennes, and them breaking our alliance does not affect our reputation. If Papal States are aggressive they may get into it with France too, but usually by then France has attacked me anyway.
Also wait until your allies get into a war and then give them florins through diplomacy to attack their enemy. It builds your reputation big time and improves your relations by quite a bit. Doesn't even have to be alot. Like 2000 will usually do. However, you need a place to dump florins anyway as having too much in the state coffers starts to give your generals negative traits.
Occupy or worst case sack cities (the big ones where public order will be an issue or other religion, etc), never exterminate, release captives and never attack an ally.
I have no trouble keeping my reputation as "Immaculate".
You make excellent videos about M2TW and RTW. Subscribed!
Cheers! Thanks for joining.
I have been battling both Milan and the Danes for what seems like an eternity only for the Pope to recently encourage me to cease hostilities with both. However, all attempts at peace are roundly denied by both factions. What do I do? Any hints or ideas much appreciated. Thanks.
You just have to hold off aggressive acts for the duration of the mission. You can still defend your own territory though! Bets solution is to keep high relationship with pope and plan for a quick simultaneous attack to take multiple targets at once.
Ah-thanks for that, much appreciated.@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH
Was cool to have a premier again. Great job!
Thanks for coming along.
I played Roar of Conquest mod as Venice and Pope attacked me out of blue while I had 5 crosses favor with him. Is there a way to fix Pope not to be aggressive like in Stainless Steel?
A hundred florin as a gift once a while, alternating with map plus assistance against rebels as a gift: keeps the man pleased.
Is there a way to pack all your bugfixes into some kind of mod ?
Is this bug never patched in the later releases?