Units

[Vercingetorix]

How can I get better units? Like from spear militia to dismounted feudal knights? It's turn 50 and I'm still stuck with spear militia and can't get dismounted feudal knights. Can I only get them in castles? Do I need certain buildings? Please help.

[One Sun Mirror]

You are spot on! There are two kinds of settlements in the game, cities and castles. Cities tend towards making more money, while castles tend towards making better troops. The troops you can make in cities will always tend towards militia-level troops, whereas castles will be able to give you more professional and effective troops.

The best advice I can give you is to go into the building browser and right click on each of the buildings. This opens a scroll showing what that building actually does. The ones in castles are likely to be of greatest interest to you if you want better troops. But remember that better troops are more expensive, so you'll always need good cities to fund them.

As you upgrade your castle, you'll gain access to better troops and better buildings to build better kinds of troops. Your castle can't be upgraded until its population reaches a certain level. If you mouse over the population (on the building browser scroll), it should tell you what the next level of settlement is available at.

At the bottom of the building browser are three little buttons. One of them (I forget which) opens a scroll that shows you all the kinds of buildings you can ever build and what level settlement you need for each of them. I suggest checking it out.

Hope that helps somewhat. :)

[Vercingetorix]

Lol thanks. Because in my Spain campaign I could only recruit dismounted feudal knights in only ONE of my castles. In the other castle, Granda, I can't recruit them which kind of confused me.

[One Sun Mirror]

At the start of the game you mean? It's probably because Granada is a lower level castle than Toledo is. I think Valencia (rebel controlled castle to your east) is also a pretty nice castle, although it's very well defended.

[Vercingetorix]

Ah I see. I took Valencia very early like on turn 4 or something. Rebels sally forthed and I won lol.

[One Sun Mirror]

Oh well, in that case you're golden! The AI tends to be able to grow their castles at a fairly alarming rate, so the castles you capture as the game goes on are generally superior to the rest you own.
Sounds like you've caught onto how it works enough to charge onward to glory!

[Vercingetorix]

Yeah but Granada takes forever to grow. Should I remove the governor and put it on growth policy? I'm not sure that would even work lmao.

[Vercingetorix]

Also just wanted to ask another question, if the Pope excommunicates you, will anything serious happen? I hate how I'm raping France and Milan then the Pope steps in and now I can't attack them without getting excommuncated. Now they can recover while I just sit there and watch my economy drain.

[One Sun Mirror]

Personally I wouldn't worry too much about growing Granada. It's going to become isolated as you grow. Better to use your general in other parts of your kingdom. I prefer to play with "manage all settlements" on so I can decide how my settlements will grow though, so usually I can't do much about castle growth. Remember that generals only affect growth if they have chivalry!

If the Pope excommunicates you, you'll take a public order hit on all your provinces (even the ones that aren't predominantly Catholic... which is suspicious) and other Catholic factions will be able to attack you without worrying about the usual Papal intervention. If you're especially unlucky, you might end up being the target of a Crusade, which means you end up at war with a lot of Catholic Europe. Not a pleasant situation.
It's a matter of risk really. The Crusade thing won't happen EVERY time, but it's a possibilty.

You can get reconciled (ie. un-excommunicated) by either the Pope dying (my, aren't assassins useful?), your King dying (what an unfortunate battle that was where the king charged a mass of spearmen... alone), or you can go to the Pope and try to get him to reconcile you for a price diplomatically.

If you're concerned about it, save the game then go nuts and see what happens. You can always come back to your save if things get too out of hand. :)

If your economy relies upon you sacking settlements, you probably have too many armies. :P
Are the Moors gone? You can always fight them without the Pope getting involved. You can also go and make diplomatic deals with the Pope to up your standing with him. But remember, by attacking other Catholic factions, you'll lose standing. It's a good idea to plan out massive strikes against them in waves, especially if you have siege equipment. That way, you take the settlement before the Pope can get involved.

As I hinted at before, it can be devilishly east to be reconciled if your King were to have an "accident" in battle somewhere... if you decide to go down the excommunication road.

[Vercingetorix]

LMAO yeah I'll hire an assassin from my theives guild and kill the Pope. I suspect my Pope (the one everyone voted from Spain) got assassisnated since not many people like me. I only got majority vote because I had trade rights with people who I wasn't at war with, I guess. So yeah now Milan has the papacy (meaning I'm screwed).

[CHE]

Only the last 2 levels of castle have a population requirement.

As well as chivalry, there are certain governor traits that affect population growth in a castle (some negatively, some positively), and I guess you know that farms help, too.

[Vercingetorix]

Yeah lol. But I've built everything and pop growth is at 2%, which gets me frustrated sometimes lmao.