Papal States Guide: Breaking Free of the Avignon Captivity

Like our Poland guide, this page is upfront about a real limitation: the wiki’s Papal States entry has no strategy content, just an empty template. Unlike Poland, though, the situation the game hands you is richly documented in its own startup narrative — which turns out to be enough to build a genuinely useful page around, even without tested strategic doctrine yet.

The crisis you’re actually inheriting

The game’s own framing, transcribed from the startup text: since the Donation of Pepin, the Papal States existed to govern and aid the faithful under the Pope’s leadership. But the death of Pope Boniface VIII forced the papal court to relocate to the exclave of Avignon, where it fell under the influence of King Philippe IV of France. Meanwhile, the Papacy’s holdings back in Italy became dominated by squabbling noble families. The game states the central question outright: will the Pope become a puppet of the temporal power of France, or break free and claim the authority the Church is meant to hold?

That is not scene-setting. It’s the campaign brief.

What you actually start with

Structurally, the documented position is a real asset wrapped in a real problem. You control twenty locations, nine of them urban — a genuinely strong potential economic base by the standards our buildings and economy guides describe, since urban locations generally carry denser building capacity. But your capital sits in Avignon, an exclave, disconnected from that Italian core, and the wiki is explicit that this significantly reduces your proximity — the exact mechanic our control guide covers, where distance from capital and governors directly caps how much of your own territory you can effectively administer.

You lead the Guelphs international organization, inside the Guelphs and Ghibellines situation — the game’s mechanical treatment of the historical Papal-versus-Imperial factional conflict in Italy. You also start with one vassal, Faenza.

What the Guelphs and Ghibellines situation actually does

The wiki’s Situations documentation answers several of this page’s open questions directly. The situation starts 1 May 1337 and affects the Papal States, the Holy Roman Emperor, and every country located in the Italy region or already in one of the two international organizations. The Papal States is always on the Guelph side and the Emperor always on the Ghibelline side; 20 days in, every other affected country picks a side, and countries drawn in later have a 2% monthly chance of being asked to choose. Leadership of each organization goes to the member with the most tax-base contribution — and the wiki notes that at game start this means Naples, not the Papal States, usually leads the Guelphs, with Upper Bavaria usually leading the Ghibellines. (The Papal States country page describes you as the Guelph leader; the Situations page explains why that often isn’t true in practice. We flag the discrepancy rather than resolve it.)

Progress tracks each side’s total tax income against every country with its capital in Italy: forcing a country to switch sides gains 0.5% progress, while declaring war on a same-side country costs 1%. The endings matter to you directly. A Guelph victory — 100% progress, or the Ghibellines ceasing to exist — pulls every Italian-capital country out of the Holy Roman Empire, and lets the Guelph leader form Italy with a reduced location requirement for 200 years. A Ghibelline victory folds most of Italy — everything outside the southern areas — into the Empire instead, with the Ghibelline leader able to acquire a Kingdom of Italy title inside the HRE on similar terms. And if neither side gets there by 1437, everyone involved takes −10 prestige and −5 government power, and Italian countries sitting in both the Guelphs and the HRE are removed from both.

The Western Schism: the Avignon question comes due

The Avignon tension has a documented second act. The Western Schism situation fires after 1360, once your ruler dies, and it affects every country with Catholicism as its primary religion. While it runs, the Schism in the Catholic Church modifier blocks Curia actions and adds +0.05% monthly reform desire across the religion. France receives an event when it starts: support the Toulouse Papacy (the historical-AI choice — +10% clergy estate satisfaction, −50 opinion with the Papal States, and a 24-year Sided Against Rome modifier trading religious influence for prestige and tolerance of the true faith) or refuse, at a cost of −20 prestige and −100 religious influence.

The sides are Rome, always led by the Papal States, and Toulouse, led by whichever other country holds the most cardinals when the situation begins. Cardinals drive each side’s vote progress, and estates in countries backing Toulouse pay their church tithes to Toulouse’s leader instead of Rome’s. The endings resolve the Avignon question mechanically: Rome reaching 100% grants the Papal States +100 prestige and religious influence, a new Median-culture ruler, and moves your capital back to Rome if you still own it; Toulouse reaching 100% hands the same rewards to Toulouse’s main supporter and moves your capital to Avignon under a French-culture ruler. In other words, the campaign’s central question — puppet of France or sovereign of the Church — has a scoreboard, a deadline, and a documented payoff in both directions.

The open strategic questions

Here’s where we’re honest about the gap. The documented situation raises several obvious strategic questions that we don’t yet have tested answers for:

• Does the France relationship actually constrain you mechanically, or is “under the influence of Philippe IV” primarily narrative framing that a capable player can ignore? We don’t know yet.
• Is moving the capital back to Italy viable or advisable, given what our economy guide says about capital relocation costs, and would it meaningfully fix the proximity problem the wiki flags?
• Is Faenza worth integrating early, or does it serve better as a buffer while you deal with the bigger Avignon problem first?

We’d rather list these clearly as open questions than invent confident answers we haven’t seen tested. If you’ve played current-patch Papal States and have real answers, this is exactly the page we’d want to update.

Common questions, honestly answered

Sources checked

The startup narrative, location count, urban/rural split, and starting diplomatic situation (Guelphs membership, Faenza vassal) are transcribed directly from the wiki, and the Guelphs and Ghibellines and Western Schism mechanics above come from the wiki’s Situations documentation. No strategy content exists on the country page itself, and we have no independent community source for the Papal States yet — this page will be substantially expanded the moment tested strategic guidance becomes available, following the same policy as our Poland guide.