Brainstorming in relation to TW15

Well if the money amount stays nice and small I am sure we can handle it. 

Frederick the Great , think of the Cardinals almost like the house of Representatives you have in Canberra. The Cardinals comes from places of Catholic citizens, and basically the more citizens you have on your side, the more cardinals (or votes) you will have. If you have more Cardinals following you, then you will have a better chance of getting one of your cardinals becoming the next pope (and a new cardinal comes from the same city as the old one), or the net effect is you gain a pope while keeping the same number of cardinals.

This is a bit simpler than the Catholic influence system in EU4, and it was modified to fit a TW.

Btw here in my TW, I remind you...
The problem is... a man normally has to go through the hierarchy of the clergy for so many years, he tends to be old and frail when he finally is coronated as the big bad pope. So it's logical to me that if any mishaps comes to the dear old pope, he croaks. Tough luck, hope you get a new pope if someone else doesn't get the next one.

Sounds neat?

(Do you mind not quote a LONG post next time? It kinda eats up space)

Edit: I added the list of 20 locations of where the Cardinals would be from.

Edit:
Simony in the Church
I thought about the Simony crimes happening in the Catholic Church a lot during that era. The definition of Simony is paying someone in order to get an office in the hierarchy of the clergy, as in buying his way into the office. I decided to allow for a sale of a Cardinal from a player to another player. The sold cardinals will always revert back to their normal locations in every cycle of electing a new Pope.

I haven't decided if there should be a specific value range or leave it up to the players. I'm leaning towards letting the players themselves decide what number of ducats should be charge for a cardinal.

Edit:
Excommunication from the Church
the Pope may only excommunicate one Catholic nation/city-state at the wishes of the Papal controller. The excommunicated player is forced out of the church. He can't uses the votes of his cardinals to elect a pope into his control. He is effectively cut off from the poltics of Rome until the death of the pope.

Due to the effects of the leader being excommunicated by the head of the Catholic Church, the mercenaries are wary to fight for a blemished name. They now asks for more gold, increasing their yearly maintenance by 1 ducat for that player. Even though the citizens may still be loyal to their nation, they waver in doubt of the greatness of their leader's standing. Their resistance to a bribe by a different ruler is down to the normal level of a mercenary army. Elite Professional Armies will ask for the increase of gold to line their pockets and doesn't resist the bribes that well either.

Fortunately, the excommunicated player still can commit simony crimes, selling the now useless cardinals to other players possibly at a reduced rate since the other players knows that he has no use for his cardinals until the Pope finally dies.

Censure by the Pope
Censures is another way of causing a player to get excommunicated by the Pope. If an event occurs and a player takes some certain actions, and if the pope as a NPC disapproves the behavior, the pope will issues a censure via Papal Bull. If the player accumulates enough Censures from the pope, eventually the player will trigger an Excommunication. The papal controller enjoys a multiplier of 1.5x of that capacity, so he's a little safer than everybody else, but if he loses the control of the pope his capacity for holding censures goes down to normal. It may trigger an excommunication due to the lowered limit.

Right now I'm considering a limit of 2 to 3 censures for normal player. I will figure it out later.

Edit: 
Extraordinary Offerings in the Church
Many projects like St. Paul Cathedral or a Crusade to the Middle East were enormous undertaking that took vast quantities of money outstripping the normal resources of even the wealthy Church of Rome itself. Many Catholic rulers also sometimes faces a shortage of cash to pay for a large expensive projects. With the permission of the Pope, a ruler could raise funds that wouldn't be normally available. It became theoretically possible for the ruler to construct the cathedral with the money from the collections. Who doesn't like the idea of receiving a donation to fund a good cause?

In the TW, Extraordinary Offerings is an action that is available only to the Papal Controller. It can be only activated once during a pope's reign. The controller would have to wait until a new pope comes in (and hopefully still in his control) before he can request another offerings. When an Extraordinary Offering is called, each Catholic faction pays 1 ducat to the Papal Controller. He will then take that money to fund a special project like building a cathedral in one of his major cities. The left over ducats (1/3 rounded down) will then goes into the pockets of the papal controller. That particular city gives the owner 2 ducats for each year in 3 years (totaling 6 ducats). Beyond that, the tourists goes back down to normal levels and the nominal income of tourism pays itself for the everyday functions and maintenance of the cathedral.

Example: Modena builds a cathedral for St. George in Ferrara. The cathedral of St. George in Ferrara attracts tourists viewing the brand-new facade, this then gives 2 ducats to the owner of the city each year for 3 years as a portion of the profits from the surge in tourism.

Indulgences in the Church
Giving money to the Pope to grant a pardon, "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins" in return for the good deeds done by someone like a certain large donation to the Church. In this specific aspect... Sometimes, it's possible to make the pope look the other way in event of a crime. If a pope issues a censure to a player, the player may pay 3 ducats to appease the Pope and the censure is annulled.

You should Sardinia as well Desophaeus,

Sardinia IS a province in this TW. But it never was a big player until it had Genoa (and part of Savoy) then swallowing up the rest of the northern Italian cities, eventually unifying the whole pensulia of Italy with the army of Redshirts in the South joining. That's a wholly different era.

This is more of 1370, 1454, 1500, not 1848.

Sardinia's history is...complicated. For a while, it was under the control of the Aragonese crown (Think of Aragon as Medieval Catalonia) and then under Spanish rule when Aragon and Castille united. It was like this for a while until the Italians took it over (I.e, Italian states), and I believe it was Savoy which actually took over the island and from there proclaimed Sardinia-Piedmont. Sardinia-Piedmont went on to defeat the Austrians with French assistance and eventually united the Italian peninsula, proclaiming the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Should I nerf Venice and buff Swiss? I'm also considering additional ducats from France and HRE's homelands as an income boost.

Here's a new list of powers and their cities, I decided to spilt the Papal States surrounding Rome into western and eastern factions (we have 12 factions in total now). The #d is yearly income of that city/province in ducats.


Foreigners -
France: Avignon-2d, Marseille-2d, Swiss -1d, 5 ducats
HRE/Austria: Tyrolea-2d, Austria-2d, Hungary-1d, 5 ducats
Turkey: Tunis-4d, Durazzo-2d, Albania-1d, 7 ducats

Italians -
Modena: Ferrara-2d, Mantua-2d, Modena-2d, 6 ducats
Genoa/Savoy: Genoa-5d, Savoy-2d, Turin-2d, 9 ducats
Milan: Milan-5d, Cremona-2d, Pavia-2d, 9 ducats
Venice: Venice-5d, Padua-2d, Treviso-2d, Dalmatia-1d, 10 ducats
Romagna/Eastern Papal States: Romagna-1d, Urbino-1d, Bologna-2d, 4 ducats
Perugia/Western Papal States: Perugia-2d, Patrimony-1d, Tivoli-1d, 4 ducats
Florence: Florence-5d, Arezzo-2d, 7 ducats
Naples: Naples-4d, Salerno-1d, 5 ducats
Sicily: Palermo-2d, Messina-2d, 4 ducats

Edit: gave France Switzerland, but created new faction between Venice and Milan: Ferrara.

Edit: Removed Pisa from Florence and Salerno from Naples, for a bit more of balance in the regional level.

Edit: Replace Brescia with Modena for Ferrara. Changes name of faction to Modena. This strengthens Ferrara/Modena. Also tweaked a few cities' income upward, Replace Bari with Salerno for Naples.