Why another Black Bishop achievement guide? The Black Bishop is maybe the most annoying achievement for those of us who play Catholic only for certain achievements. This guide will let you reach your goal in a short time even if you never played a Christian ruler before. It took me just a bit more time to write this guide than it took to get the achievement using the method presented here.

If you want to do other achievements such as SPQR and Persistent Survivor after you are done, you will be able do so as the guide doesn't gimp you in any way. On the contrary with the strongest army in Europe, a Heretic Pope as your vassal and a holy war casus belli against Pagans and Catholics you will be a Fraticelli Charlemagne in no time should you so choose.

Thanks goes to Elvaril for making the Black Bishop Achievement guide. Although I didn't use his method it gave me an idea to formulate my own. His approach works just as well as mine, but requires more time and thinking than mine does.

1. Select the Old Gods bookmark and pick the Magyars. Tick on Ironman. I recommend taking a cloud save.

2. Win the war against Bulgaria. Take a few provinces nearest to you with assault and destroy the Bulgarian stack. It should be nice and easy.

3. Create Hungary from the intrigue tab moving the Capital to Pest, gaining 1K gold and prestige and event troops twice the size of your levies. You will now have enough troops to keep you safe while doing the achievement, raid and enough to men to conquer Rome without problems. If you want to maximize the event stacks you receive, see information about the Magyar horde on ckiiwiki[www.ckiiwiki.com]. Even 10K event troops is enough for the achievement, but they will come in handy should you want to continue your game after you're done.

4. Move one of your event stacks near Rome and declare war using the invasion Casus Belli. (Thanks to Racketeer for pointing this out!)

5. Convert to Catholic. Fastest way is to raid Catholic neighbors for a Catholic concubine and use
intrigue tab decision convert to Catholicism. You can also try finding an unmarried Catholic in a Sunni court in Andalusia to marry. The liege won't care if infidels of different religions marry each other.

6. From Crown Laws select Free Investiture. Also change the succession law so you don't have multiple heirs. These will make things easier for you later on.

7. Convert to Fraticelli. The easy but slow way is to have a skilled priest(13+ learning) study culture in the Capital. You will need to get the Fraticelli heresy to pop up and choose to follow in your court chaplains footsteps. This might take alot of time if you are unlucky. Convert only your heir and do not give him land. Do not convert your vassals or it will make things more difficult for you later on.

Another way is trying to see if there are any Fraticelli heretics on the map or in courts and invite them to yours. Especially zealous, diligent ones will have a chance to convert you. Give them land and have them educate your heirs. If you find any landed Fraticelli send your heirs to them to be educated by theologians with zealous or diligent trait.

If you are presented with a chance to convert to another heresy you might want to take that to give Catholic moral authority a hit which will give more chances for Fraticelli heretics to appear on the map.

8. Once you are Fraticelli, create the Fraticelli Papacy from the intrigue tab. Remember to convert your heirs to Fraticelli so you won't to do step 7 again.

9. Invite holy men from the intrigue tab. A dozen will probably be enough. You will want a few low(2 or less) intrigue and diplomacy priests with one sinful traits(cynical, lustful, gluttonous, greedy, slothful, envious, wroth, proud, lunatic, possessed, homosexual and hedonist).

10. Unless you've manage to invite a wicked priest to your court, put a few of the sinful holy men described above in jail. You don't need to jail priests with diplomacy 2 or less since they will develop the trait on their own. The only thing imprisoning does that is relevant is lower their diplomacy. Once in jail the sinful holy men gain the wicked priest trait rather quickly. When you have a wicked priest, pause.

Give a bishopric to your wicked priest and appoint a successor with potential to be a wicked priest. You will need to give your bishop a Campaign Fund or the achievement won't trigger. Go to the College of Cardinals screen in the Religion tab. It's located in the upper left corner. Fund your bishop for 10 gold. Now you can press play again.

Once your bishop is elected a cardinal he will be a Preferatus which means he is next in line to inherit the Fraticelli Papacy. There shouldn't be any competition and he should be the only Cardinal and Preferatus. If your Cardinal loses the wicked priest trait, put him back in prison until he becomes wicked again.

11. The freshly created Pope starts the game in his 30s so it will take alot of time for him to die naturally. You will need him to have courtiers so you can assassinate him. Give him a county somewhere and plot his assassination, A baron and mayor with a non-Fraticelli religion and different culture to the Pope are a plus in making them join your plot. Send your spymaster to help with the plot and your chancellor to sow dissent to the Fraticelli Papacy. You can pick the intrigue focus here if you have the Way of Life DLC. Once the Pope dies you will be presented with the Black Bishop achievement Steam pop up. Congrats!

Alternatively if you have no luck with assassinations or there are Cardinals in bishoprics not under your control, create an Anti-Pope and push the Anti-Pope's claim to vassalize him. Just imprison your vassal Pope and execute him, repeat until you have a wicked priest as Pope. Just remember to fund those wicked priests before they become Cardinals!


Two extra Cardinals is no problem. I made the mistake of giving my sons land so they had a bishop each elected Cardinal. If somehow there is competition for Cardinals you need to keep imprisoning and executing them or the Pope until your guy is Preferatus.

After you are done with the Black Bishop you may wish to continue the game and go for other Christian-only achievements SPQR and Pentarch. You will want to start by creating an anti-pope and pushing his claim to the Fraticelli papacy. Now that you have a Heretic Pope as a vassal and a horde of loyal troops you can be the Fraticelli version of Charlemagne or the next Caesar.

You could get the Restoring Rome and SPQR achievement quite easily using your event troops to conquer all of non-Orthodox continental Europe with Holy Wars before taking on the Byzantines. Other achievements that go well with SPQR are Pilgrim, Pentarch, United the Kingdoms, Prester John and Protector of Holy Places.

Hope you find this guide useful. Happy achievement hunting,
Doomcheese