Killing a King

[Tony Furze]

I m playing as the French MTW 1.1 Early/Conquest/Normal.

First time I m playing. My latest king has two crowns and has just been excommunicated for zapping The English too many times. Im not too keen on him but I ve never assassinated a King before:

is it advisable?

what are the consequences?

what should I look out for before commiting myself to such a heinous Macbethian action?

[sbroadbent]

I m playing as the French MTW 1.1 Early/Conquest/Normal.

First time I m playing. My latest king has two crowns and has just been excommunicated for zapping The English too many times. Im not too keen on him but I ve never assassinated a King before:

is it advisable?

what are the consequences?

what should I look out for before commiting myself to such a heinous Macbethian action?

Sure it is advisable.

Consequences? Well, if you don't have an heir, your game will come to an abrupt halt. Other than that, you'll have alot of dead assassins.

An assassin has a 17% chance of success against a faction leader (ie your King). Having a V4 assassin will boost your chances to 66%. This presumes that your king has no command stars. If he has lots of command stars, then things will be much more difficult for your assassins... as I said, lots of dead assassins.

If you can access them, I'd also consider building Inquisitors. Find your province with the highest Zeal rating, and move your king there. Train a bunch of Grand Inquisitors. The regular one's won't be able to to do the job.

After a couple attempts, your king should have a few VnV's such as Athiest, and have 0 Piety. You would need 0 Piety, 100% Zeal and a Grand Inquisitor to get at best a 25% chance of success.

One thing I'd be curious is if your excommed status might give your Inquisitors a better chance.

I'd be curious to know if being excommed makes it easier to succeed. It'd would seem to make sense. If you do go this route, please post your results if you have a chance of success above 0%. Send me information on the following:

Province Zeal
Piety Score of the King
Chance of Success

I plan to do some tests myself, but it'd be useful to know if your standing with the Pope will make a difference.

[Ironside]

If you can access them, I'd also consider building Inquisitors. Find your province with the highest Zeal rating, and move your king there. Train a bunch of Grand Inquisitors. The regular one's won't be able to to do the job.

After a couple attempts, your king should have a few VnV's such as Athiest, and have 0 Piety. You would need 0 Piety, 100% Zeal and a Grand Inquisitor to get at best a 25% chance of success.


Good covering, but a few notes. A high star grand inquisitor doesn't need to bother much about the piety of the king.
And to rise piety in a province use inquisitors. To make sure that they doesn't burn the population, make them busy with trials.

[Tony Furze]

Well out of impatience I sent the King into battle with the English. He had two crowns and two (broken ) crosses-thats it. No feathers, no skulls, no stars.

He did pretty well on the battlefield-crept up to 6 valour, but alas he s dead.

Of course his death was helped by the heir bribing the Mil Sgts to withdraw as soon as the battle began, leaving him with one ugly son and a few hobilars.

OK sb: I ve saved the games so I might backtrack to find out some of your queries. I ve not got any inq s, the economy s too fragile for too many upgrades.

My assassin is 4 star by now and he did get 66% as his likelihood but I chose not to go due to possibiliies of rebellion/civil war.

Thanks for the excellent replies.

[sbroadbent]

Good covering, but a few notes. A high star grand inquisitor doesn't need to bother much about the piety of the king.
And to rise piety in a province use inquisitors. To make sure that they doesn't burn the population, make them busy with trials.

Based on discussions during the Subterfuge guide thread, one person noted that the Valor score of the Inquisitor made little difference to the chance of success. It was primarily the provincial Zeal and the Piety score of the general that made the difference. Here is the relevant quote:


Incidentally, I had a session after seeing your previous post and did a few trial targetings with my pair (actually one's a 5* and one's 4*) and was interested to note that province zeal seemed to be the only factor in determining burn probability. The Pope has had a pair of Inquisitors in Naples for about 20 years (now Sicilian) but none of his have any valour. Mine nip in and fry half a dozen individuals, on and off, with no problems. Meantime, all that preaching and frying has reduced zeal to 30% and that's the probability I get even for my 5* one.

Now, if you're saying a GI with more Valor actually has a better chance than a GI with less Valor, I'd be curious to see the numbers between say a V1, V2, and V3 GI, trying to go after a king. I plan to do some indepth work on using Inquisitors in my current game, so I should have more details when I get around to building the buildings to train them.

[Ironside]

High valour GI counters the piety of the target, while zeal as noted affects the maximum percentage.

My 7-star GI did always get the maximum percentage (25% in the case of kings), even when the kings had 4-5 in piety.
Was a while since I played with inquisitors so I don't know exactly how much piety the stars counters, but I suspect it's linear (meaning that my 7-star one could burn 7 piety kings exactly as good as 0 piety ones).

2000 posts again!! ~:cheers: ~:thumb:

[macsen rufus]

Best way to kill a king is to let him invade the neighbours all on his own, and try to find some nice spears to charge him into, or some arbalesters he can stand and wave at..... Messing about with assasins etc can give you more trouble than it solves, as there's more chance he'd survive and precipitate civil war or something.

The only time I've used Inquisitors with any sense of purpose was against the Papacy, where they first raised zeal to the hundred percent mark, then I set them to burning all the Pope's governors and generals. In the end he had no governor better than 2 feathers and no generals with more than one star. It seemed like all the replacements got lower and lower piety scores as well. Command rating of the tartget doesn't seem to save them from Inquisitors in the way it does against assassins. Interesting to see the figures people have been working on, thanks for sharing your results! I think I'll use inquisitors a bit more now :2thumbsup:

[Geezer57]

My latest king has two crowns and has just been excommunicated for zapping The English too many times.

Just a reminder to everyone following this thread - if the target King is excommunicated, Inquisitors won't attack. You can only be tried for heresy if still in good standing with the Church.

So excommunication can be a good thing, if you're being plagued by enemy Inquisitors. It gives you a temporary reprieve from their attacks.