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Playable (Dynastic) Theocracies

Start as a lowly prince bishop and make your dynasty control the whole Holy Roman Church for many generations - or die out and by forgotten forever

There've always been people asking for playable theocracies. The main argument against them is that they don't work well together with the dynasty system of CK2.

So question is: Can playing a theocracy and playing a dynasty go hand in hand? Well, it did in the real world. Check out this article about Cardinal-newphews on Wikipedia[en.wikipedia.org]. Promoting their own family was something that many Popes did: " Every Renaissance pope who created cardinals appointed a relative to the College of Cardinals, and the nephew was the most common choice, although one of Alexander VI's creations was his own son. ". Also, during the 10th century (so just a few decades before the vanilla start of Ck2), the Papacy was in a period called Saeculum obscurum[en.wikipedia.org], where one family controlled the Holy See. (Thanks to Rowan for this information).
So why not play this Game of Nepotism in CK2?
Therefore, in this mod, you play a dynasty. When you die, you will not continue to play as an non dynastic heir. If your dynasty has no power in the church anymore, you'll game over. But how can you ensure that your dynasty stays in power, when you've got the investiture succession law?

Feature Overview 5.2:

• Play as a catholic bishop
  
• Play as a catholic Holy Order (playable, but no extra features)
  
• "Elective" Investiture Succession
  
• Bribe your liege / the pope so that your dynasty stays in power
  
• Become Cardinal
  
• New scripted Succession for the Pope - now there's a sede vacante and an event based election
  
• Bribe other Cardinals (Gold, Lands, Church Offices)
  
• Become the Pope
  
• Some features when playing the Pope: Ask for Papal Investiture, Invest Bishops, Appoint Cardinals, Coronations and Baptism, Get all kinds of stuff for lifting someones excommunication, Ask your staff to take care of the indulgence requests of lowly characters.
  
• Use "Seigniory over Bishopric"-CBs to create an earthly realm
  
• A Church Interface, with custom interactions and a new currency Church Influence. The Church Interface can be accessed using the little button with the papal hat on the left side of the minimap.[\b]
  
• A discussion system, allowing you to change the policy of the church and maybe even allow close family marriage. Additionally, the church has different statuses, changing dynamically over time.
  Mend the schism and make the orthodox faith a catholic heresy.
  
• Fight with or against antipopes.
  
• Lead the Inquisition and burn 'heretics'
  
• Not interested in dynasties? Non Dynastic Theocracies (using game rule) are possible too.

About Holy Orders
As of 3.13 this mod enables you to play Holy Orders (but you cannot select them from the loading screen...). So in order to play as one, there are two ways:
You can play as a normal theocracy and send one of your dynasty members to a holy order (and murder a few grandmasters). Once he is grandmaster himself, you can mark him as your preferred dynasty member. Then you've got to make sure, that no one of your dynasty inherits your title. Upon your death, you will continue to play as the grandmaster. More info on the forums.

Due to the length limit of the steam workshop, most information about this mod can only be found on the paradox forums. There the information should be up to date... Check it out: Entry on the Paradox Forums for a detailled description.[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Short Guide on how to not game over

• In case your character has no dynasty (lowborn), there's a decision to create one. Use it.
  
• After that, you may use the "Spawn Family" decision, if you haven't disabled it with a game rule or already have a large dynasty. It will create a father, brother and might create a nephew, too.
  
• And/Or: Use seduction to get yourself a family. That's the true way to handle it: Starting from nothing.
  
• There's no guarantee that the pope / your liege will vote for somebody of your dynasty as your successor - if your heir is particulary bad and the AI hates you, they will probabily not vote for him even if you bribe them. A few solutions:
  Only your vassals / courtiers are eligible. If you kill off anyone who is not of your dynasty, everyone might hate you, but the succession is almost secure. (dejure vassals are eligible too).
  It's not problematic to loose your title - if you've set up your dynasty in other places. Grant titles to your dynasts, to make sure there's always a living playable dynasty member.
  Setting up a feudal ruler of your dynasty could be helpful as a fallback option, since he's much more likely to keep the lands in the hand of your dynasty.
  In case you have lot's of landed dynasty members, you can choose your preferred dynasty member. If you don't inherit your titles, you will play as that person.
  
• If your last character was the Pope, you must have another landed character to play next, since you will not continue as the Holy See. But that should not be a problem, since you can invest bishops in realms with papal investiture as the pope.
  
• When trying to bribe people, don't give away your last landed title. Should be obvious, but just in case.
  
• There is a difficulty setting...

If you are not interested in the dynastic play at all, check out the mod called Divine Intervention. Or don't, since this mod allows non dynastic play as well. But if you don't like playing as a chair (holy see), use DI. :-)

Please feel free to improve this mod, or adapt it, or incorporate the mechanics. There seem to be many people wanting real playable theocracies - guys, this is you chance. If you've got additions/changes, feel free to upload them, I would appreciate to see play them.
Suggestions and comments too.

Irritating Stuff & Known Bugs
Another irritating GUI element is the "Your best candidate" of the religious screen. It'll not display your character, even if you are better than "your best candidate" (you are displayed for your liege...).
During the first days of the game, every bishop will have your government type (so that you can select anyone to play as) and they will not wear the appropriate clothing. They will change their government back to a real theocracy soon.
If you start as the Pope, the College of Cardinals will be empty, therefore you are in the unusual position to be able to appoint lot's of cardinals yourself. You must decide if that's god or bad.
You cannot nominate King-Level Bishops (Patriarchs, like they are now called) as cardinals. Seems to be a bug in the give_minor_title command related to the fact that the popacy is king-level. Ask Paradox to fix it.
Some of the very old vanilla events are a bit broken for the pope (localisation wise, scopes). But they are too much of a mess to clean up.
Keep in mind that the 'votes last round' will only update once you are prompted to vote again. Thus it's lagging behind by one election round. You can see the real results using 'charinfo'.


Current Version: 5.2
Read the changelog for more information.

HIP Compatibility (by Cody): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1909651273
Russian Translation (by Kodeks): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034058117


Other mods: Animal diversity: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1885000132