Please note: The following is not a complaint regarding balance or design, it is a question regarding strategy 
Honestly, I don't feel I've played enough different culture-religion combinations to comment on balance, especially since everywhere I have ruled has seemed AWESOME-FUN in one way or another :rofl:
I've been playing Catholics because I wanted to try out the college of cardinals mechanic, and... bishops seem pretty useless. I've found that 90% of the time, the pope that gets elected gets 100 approval from all of my clergy, making it impossible for me to earn their loyalty (pope wins in a tie at 100). Also, the church vassal tax malus means it would take a lot of law-changing, modifiers (eg well-respected), and tech in order to get -anything- from them.
This has led me to the following strategy:
Change clergy to full martial focus. The character modifier reduces levies, but province modifiers give some of them back. You get proportionally more levies than tax as a percent.
Don't change to free investiture, as usually the pope has 100+ relations anyway, so it's more important to keep the pope happy. There may come a time when it makes sense to switch, but it would probably be just a couple decades and then I'd have to switch back again.
Does anybody have anything additional to add about Catholic strategy?
Can you vassalize the pope?
Does "the Holy" nickname have any special effects?
Anybody else that has questions about Catholics, feel free to post!
Honestly, I don't feel I've played enough different culture-religion combinations to comment on balance, especially since everywhere I have ruled has seemed AWESOME-FUN in one way or another :rofl:I've been playing Catholics because I wanted to try out the college of cardinals mechanic, and... bishops seem pretty useless. I've found that 90% of the time, the pope that gets elected gets 100 approval from all of my clergy, making it impossible for me to earn their loyalty (pope wins in a tie at 100). Also, the church vassal tax malus means it would take a lot of law-changing, modifiers (eg well-respected), and tech in order to get -anything- from them.
This has led me to the following strategy:
Change clergy to full martial focus. The character modifier reduces levies, but province modifiers give some of them back. You get proportionally more levies than tax as a percent.
Don't change to free investiture, as usually the pope has 100+ relations anyway, so it's more important to keep the pope happy. There may come a time when it makes sense to switch, but it would probably be just a couple decades and then I'd have to switch back again.
Does anybody have anything additional to add about Catholic strategy?
Can you vassalize the pope?
Does "the Holy" nickname have any special effects?
Anybody else that has questions about Catholics, feel free to post!
