what is the point of a holy crusade?

doge is easy to gain at the start and is useful if you want to be paid to own an army you can then take over citys freely :)

The holy crusade gives ya a crusader army for your personal use... Remember of 4th crusade?

About doge, its hard to take but having at least one senator gives ya a post. I prefer to get the counsil until i build up my political faction since you can accuse too cheap/enemy senators and they will be hanged.

I have a problem with saved games. Everytime I load one of them, all the events that happen inbetween turns get repeated. For example, if in 1345 I get one of my cardinals assasinated, then move my groups, then save the game before ending turn, then restart the game & load => there's a second assasination and I lose two cardinals instead of one. Kinda sucks. Is this a known bug? Any way I can avoid it? I'm playing in DosBox 0.70 with loadfix if that's any relevant.

Papal Elections
 

What are the restrictions on the elections for Pope?

I controlled almost all cardinals and my pope died. When papal elections came up, my house was not included among the options. Anyone know the rules for that election? Like is there a limit to the number of cardinals you control? Or you cannot hold the papacy consecutively?

Too bad that game froze and I was not able to save it. I can't remember the exact number of cardinals I controlled because I just got every available one.

Thanks in advance.

As far as I remember you can not place your own candidate as a pope, but if you have more then 50% of all the cardinals you can select one of the possible candidates - and that candidate is your candidate then (the candidate of Venice - doesn't matter who the guy acctually is).

It's normal that the turn is re-run every time you load the game, it's a feature not a bug. I guess it's intended to discourage abusive loading.

If the Pope wasn't elected in your family, then it has to be because you didn't have most of the votes. Getting every available one isn't necessarily enough, not until you have got more than half of the total. Although your family can still be elected without an absolute majority of cardinals, because another power may vote for you depending on the situation. And remember that cardinals as well as the Pope himself can be assassinated, both by you or by your rivals.

WOW, Japo you mastered all the games that i like.... maybe i should kill ya

Yeah I noticed our tastes for games coincide quite a lot. This game can be multi-played by e-mail, we could see who kills whom. :D

Abusive loading? So if I can only play like an hour per day & save the game to continue some other time, that's "abusive"? :doh:

Sorry, but this feature then sucks big times :(.

The most you will lose is one turn, and, if you save at the end of the turn instead of the start, you won't lose anything.

Personally I don't like games limiting saves... If I want a challenge I can limit myself, otherwise they're taking options from me.