The Mechanics of Assasination

[Vidar]

Can Anyone give me some insight into how MTW/VI(Xl) works out if an assassin is successful or not. Im playing as the english in the early period and doing ok, One of my assassins - six star - has just offed the entire almohad royal family thus saving me from having to fight their vast army, but ive been sending assassins,inquisitors,and spies in to ireland and scotland for eons with very limited success - ok i could just invade but the pope usually whines and threatens to excommunicate me, which I dont want yet. any help much appreciated any info on how best to use inquisitors also greatly appreciated

[nick_maxell]

Can Anyone give me some insight into how MTW/VI(Xl) works out if an assassin is successful or not. Im playing as the english in the early period and doing ok, One of my assassins - six star - has just offed the entire almohad royal family thus saving me from having to fight their vast army, but ive been sending assassins,inquisitors,and spies in to ireland and scotland for eons with very limited success - ok i could just invade but the pope usually whines and threatens to excommunicate me, which I dont want yet. any help much appreciated any info on how best to use inquisitors also greatly appreciated

I can only tell you from the Vanillia MTW side and I m not sure if that is still true for VI. The assasin probability is calculated by matching his "stars" vs the command stars of the victim with added difficulty (not shown to you) if assasins(/spies?) of the faction are present, (I assume you know about the security buildings), and the V&V s of the victim. If you tried to murder the same Irishman/Scot over and over again his V&V will prob be max security and so on - if you tried different ones there is probably an own asassin around.

Inquisitors work about the same - if you have a newbie inquisitor get him some stars by burning victims with no/verylittle piety (own mercs/bribed units work surprisingly well there) - as soon as he got 2 or 3 stars let him loose on low piety targets (the more stars he has the more difficult he gets to asassinate - so either spam inquisitors or build one up at home) there is a decrease of efficiency of inquisitors if bishops/cardinals are around and if you fail the victim will get piety rising V&V making the next attempt harder.

Spies have been changed in VI as far as I know so setting up revolts is not as easy as it is in MTW - somebody else will help you there and correct any mistake I made.

[danfda]

Well, if you want to be a tad less than subtle, you can simply invade either the Scots or Irish, crush the enemy army, and sack the castle the very next turn. The Pope gets testy and warns you, but if the faction dies the next turn (by sacking the castle) you do not get excommed.

And I have terrible luck with inquisitors...assassins are a bit easier, in my experience. You do have to churn out a bunch though.

[sbroadbent]

I can only tell you from the Vanillia MTW side and I m not sure if that is still true for VI. The assasin probability is calculated by matching his "stars" vs the command stars of the victim with added difficulty (not shown to you) if assasins(/spies?) of the faction are present, (I assume you know about the security buildings), and the V&V s of the victim. If you tried to murder the same Irishman/Scot over and over again his V&V will prob be max security and so on - if you tried different ones there is probably an own asassin around.

Inquisitors work about the same - if you have a newbie inquisitor get him some stars by burning victims with no/verylittle piety (own mercs/bribed units work surprisingly well there) - as soon as he got 2 or 3 stars let him loose on low piety targets (the more stars he has the more difficult he gets to asassinate - so either spam inquisitors or build one up at home) there is a decrease of efficiency of inquisitors if bishops/cardinals are around and if you fail the victim will get piety rising V&V making the next attempt harder.

Spies have been changed in VI as far as I know so setting up revolts is not as easy as it is in MTW - somebody else will help you there and correct any mistake I made.

First, go to this thread: MTW: Subterfuge Guide in the Entrance Hall. I am currently working on a more polished version of this, but it'll take a little bit of time. With that said, what you need to know about how MTW determines the percentages for assassination attempts is there.

Second, your enemy having spies and assassins "protecting" his units won't make the assassin's job more difficult. He'll have the same chance. The problem comes in that your Assassin needs to avoid detection by the enemy spies and asssassins before he can attempt his mission.

There is also information on Inquisitors, though not as much. We've basically determined that there are 3 main factors. Zeal in the province, Piety score of the target, and whether the Inquisitor is a normal or Grand Inquisitor.

First, the higher the Zeal, the better the chance of success. Second, the more Piety a general has, the harder it is to succeed.

What I do know is that it takes a Zeal of 100%, 0 Piety, and be using a Grand Inquisitor to have a 25% chance at burning a Faction Leader. Normal Inquisitors have no chance at all to burn a Leader. The Valor of the Inquisitor I believe does not affect it (test this out though by using two Inquisitors with different Valor ratings to see if there is any difference), and the command rating of the target definately doesn't.

Against all other targets, an Inquisitor only has half the Grand Inquisitor's chance of Success. If the Grand Inquisitor would have a 60% chance of success, a normal Inquisitor will only have a 30% chance. So why doesn't a regular Inquisitor have up to a 12% chance to burn a Faction leader? Maybe CA wanted you to tech up to the Grand Inquisitors, and give a reason for using them.

As to the target getting a VnV (such as God Fearing which grants a +6 Piety bonus) after a failed attempt, all you have to do is keep trying, and they'll soon become an Athiest (-8 Piety), and will wipe out all their Piety. Then, the next turn even a Faction Leader becomes Open season, and it's just a matter of gang-banging with a group of GI's.

When I'm trying to bring down a faction with GI's, I usually train up something like 7 GI's and send them after him. What usually happens is that they get the God Fearing VnV, and a followup attempt (in the same round will give them the Athiest VnV. It is important to note that the game does not track Piety above 9 or Below 0. A general who has 5 Piety and gains the Athiest VnV will drop to 0 with the other 3 Piety disappearing. If they later gain God Fearing (Piety +6), I believe that they will go to 6 Piety, rather than 3, though I have not verified that fact. Fortunately the God Fearing trait is usually gained before Athiest. Just keep trying.

The only thing about spies that make it difficult to setup a revolt is that only the highest Valor Spy will count. Otherwise 3 spies with a Valor of 2 would give a province -240% Loyalty, making it almost an instant success.

If after reading the thread I mention above, you still have questions, I'll see if I've already answered them in the guide I'm writing, and post the answers. Otherwise, depending on how much time I will have, I'll see about posting a preliminary guide, which currently details, assassins, spies, and emmissaries.

[caravel]

Border forts in MTW seriously imbalance the whole spy/assassination thing, and if you send 20 0 valour assassins or spies into a border forted province you can expect hear that "whip, whip, singe, arghhhh" sequence 20 times, and then see all of your spies/assassins disappear. The spies/assassins wouldn't have even had an opportunity to start there missions (if assigned), they were simply caught 'crossing the border'.

I have a feeling that border forts, introduced in the first game STW, were a kind of 'patch' to the poor performance of these agents, and a kind of a 'vacuum cleaner' to keep their numbers down to acceptable levels.

The AI uses spies and assassins extremely badly, sending them one by one on hopless suicide missions. You will probably only encounter dangerous spys/assassins in an MTW Viking Era campaign. This is because the Tavern/Brothel tech tree is different and not restricted to castle levels. The AI can, potentially, tech up to the "cunny warren" and send out valour 3 assassins against you.

Removing border forts would be absolutely ideal, but unworkable because the AI would probably not be able to defend it's provinces well from espionage. Also 0 valour agents would swamp the map possibly causing big slow downs.

As a compromise, in my games, the AI uses border forts but I don't.

[Vidar]

Cheers folks,It sounds like it works pretty much how i guessed it would. Ive Finally managed to get rid of the scottish king, it took a long time but I basically swamped scotland with spies, and inquisitors and eventually Grand inquisitors when i had them - Assassins just seemed to get killed "whip, whip, singe, arghhhh", over and over and over - eventually I got a line who all turned out to be naughty atheists and murderers, The Inquisition did its work Im sure sbroadbent is right about normal inquisitors not having a chance at killing a faction leader because it was only after I sent in the GI's
that I got the result I was looking for. I too hate enemy border forts many an honest assassin has been stop in his legitimate business by them, Im not sure if I have the courage not to use them myself however at the moment in MTW
Its as if my generals have been dipped in assassin attracting pheromone - I hear "whip, whip, singe, arghhhh" almost as much as the background music.

The Irish seem to have some kind of sixth sense, I can take out generals easily with GI,s but not the royal family, every time i try they fail and then shortly after the GI is killed by assassins - Every assassin i send in fails miserably too, I will persevere though - or maybe just invade

I'll check out The guide sounds like a good idea, I do have another question relating to my assassin attracting pheromone but I'll check out the guide first

once again cheers Keep those daggers sharp