Regicide Mission Bug

[OMGLAZERS]

Killing off a king in an assigned Regicide mission does not work if you invade the castle he is sitting in and butcher his butt. At least, I auto resolved mine, and it did not work.

Another bug to investigate.

It seems like missions and the pope are two things that are just totally borked.

[Dooz]

You probably have to take him out with an assasin, be a bit more... subtle... rather than storming in with the whole kit and kaboodle.

[monkian]

I thought it would be failry obvious that you had to assasinate him.

I mean, its HIS faction heir asking you to kill him, why would he want you to invade one of his settlements, loot his coffers and slaughter his civillians when he just wants to seize power ?

The only problem is that Assasins have been nerfed SO much that killing off a faction leader is going to be nigh on impossible.

Besides, would you risk an agent thats taken god knows howlong to train for a measly 5000 florins ?

[Dave1984]

Killing off a king in an assigned Regicide mission does not work if you invade the castle he is sitting in and butcher his butt. At least, I auto resolved mine, and it did not work.
.

You can't really call it a bug until you've tested it several times, several different ways, can you?

[Ludivico Sforza]

It works just fine. The Milanese faction heir asked me, as the King of France, to bump of the Mad old Duke of Milan. My assassin despatched his prey with a knife to the back.

NOTE: The chance of success percentages seem somewhat wide of the margin IMO. He was only given a 26% chance, but managed it anyway.

[alpaca]

It works just fine. The Milanese faction heir asked me, as the King of France, to bump of the Mad old Duke of Milan. My assassin despatched his prey with a knife to the back.

NOTE: The chance of success percentages seem somewhat wide of the margin IMO. He was only given a 26% chance, but managed it anyway.
So what, you were lucky :P
26% is quite good actually.

[Daveybaby]

Yeah, a bit annoying. Had that happen myself (not with a king though, just some pleb). I killed the guy, what does it matter if i used an assassin, a huge stack of troops, or fired a cannon at his head?

[Ludivico Sforza]

Quite possibly I was lucky, yes. But my point is the mission is not bugged. I killed the target, got my 5000 florins and the promised improvement in relations with the faction.

[Bob the Insane]

But the OP also killed the guy and did not get payed or peace...

I mean, what if it was not in a settlement, what if you caught him out with his army and killed him there?

What if he was attacking you and got killed...

Personally I would have thought that as long as you killed the king and didn't kill the heir the all should be good whatever method you used...

But if it takes an assassin then that is what it takes... It would be nice if the mission made it obvious...

edit: actually, thinking back to how missions where discribed and how that are supposed to be given in context of what you are able to do, does this mean you only get this mission type if you have a capable assassin in your employ?

[alpaca]

Quite possibly I was lucky, yes. But my point is the mission is not bugged. I killed the target, got my 5000 florins and the promised improvement in relations with the faction.
I know, I just don't like it when people say that the chances of success are off when something worked that should work with a chance of 25% :laugh4:

[Derfal Cadarn]

Whilst I can understand what people are saying that killing a king following a request from an heir, in battle, means that you have in theory achieved your objective, I think the OP just needs to consider the actual task itself, as opposed to saying that it is a bug.

What is your objective here. To kill the requested target, receive the reward, for as little damage to your faction as possible

Why is the heir asking you to kill the king, why doesnt he just launch his own civil war (even tho I dont think this is possible in the game). The obvious answer other than just a game issue, is that if he openly opposed the king then due to the population either supporting the king or the rebels then maybe half the kingdom could be lost for quite a while.

So instead of openly rebelling, the heir asks you to take rid of the King instead. Now I would imagine that the heir would therefore not then expect you to go on the rampage in a bid to solve his problem, as that would stir up the population against yourself, and also once the mission is achieved, how could the heir/new king then make peace with the faction that just killed the old king. If that happened then it would be obvious that the new king had been part of the plot and again the population would be in uproar.

The other point made is if the king attacks you and you kill him, then why shouldnt you get the reward. The only thing I can consider here, is that in those circumstances, you wouldnt actually be doing anything special to kill the king, its just one of those day to day battles against another faction, and hence why should you get paid for it.

Therefore he would expect you to use some discretion and hence use the assasin. If the assasin fails then obviously you take the consequences, however if he succeeds then you get the reward and no one other than the actual plotters knows who is involved.

I'm sure that CA when they introduced this option never considered that using warfare as opposed to deviousness to achieve the objective, and hence the reason that they didnt state in black and white that the mission is to be accomplished by an assasin

[OMGLAZERS]

Sorry, I had posted it as a bug because I read the mission twice, and had not seen anything explicitly saying, 'Hey, use an assassian!' So I was rather miffed to find that by doing this, I had let the French capture a minor city by diverting my troops, but I could not get that ceasefire I was dying to get.

I think CA only needs to make it more black/white really. I'm not the only one with this problemhttps://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72223

I think they should have considered that dispatching an army would be a method to use because, uh, well, the game is about your armies! :)

I just hope they fix this, despite it not being a huge issue.

[Monarch]

I got a similiar request from Denmark, playing as English.

My assassin, with a 7% (no typo) chance, took out the Danish king :beam:

[NeutralZone940]

I was INCREDIBLY irritated last night when I encountered this, and instead of doing the smart thing and running a google search for "regicide" on the forums (I <3 google!), I decided to keep rerunning the turn with every different scenario.

Fight the battle, auto-resolve, no difference: no money.

:furious3:

Assassin! Use the assassin - boom, money.

This was especially irritating because I was about to besiege the town of Toulouse to kill the French king anyway - so I thought I was about to get a sweet bonus.

:idea2:

I hate to say it, but Derfal Cadarn hit the nail on the head: if relations improved, that would logically be a bad thing - although I would argue that stupider things have happened in Real Life, so I wouldn't put all my money on logic. :no:

Anyway, after losing a few priests to a heretic (to mix up the random number generator and re-load the game so my assassin could "win"), I saw how it really works and I wasn't really impressed.

I don't give a flying frack about improved relations. I have the biggest army in the world (go Spain!), and they're.... France.

I was glad to vent about this on teh forum, though, because now I can go back to MTW2 - just have to decide whether I want to load the saved game from 'just after the original battle that annoyed me', or from before it.

Oh, and don't get me started on "the Pope is disappointed you didn't stop hostilities" just because I didn't break a siege in progress. Next time, I'll just load up on catapults and bombards and storm the castle on the first turn to avoid that problem in the first place (I think I've just figured out which saved game I want to load). :2thumbsup:

[lars573]

Sorry, I had posted it as a bug because I read the mission twice, and had not seen anything explicitly saying, 'Hey, use an assassian!' So I was rather miffed to find that by doing this, I had let the French capture a minor city by diverting my troops, but I could not get that ceasefire I was dying to get.

I think CA only needs to make it more black/white really. I'm not the only one with this problemhttps://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72223

I think they should have considered that dispatching an army would be a method to use because, uh, well, the game is about your armies! :)

I just hope they fix this, despite it not being a huge issue.
Regicide missions are not in anyway vague. If you read the mission text. Unlike annex this settlement which is vague. Or I just haven't figured out what they mean by annex yet.

[NeutralZone940]

Ah, I "may not edit" my posts; that's a shame, I just wanted to add a couple of points:
- the bug is in the official buglist, https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73566
and is sagely described as

"Grammar error in the details of a successful Regicide mission."

I fully respect that interpretation.

Also, I didn't realize this:

"A successful regicide mission doesn't raise the relations between the factions as it should."

Makes sense, a actually - I didn't see any of this "we will stand side by side forever" crap after I had my successful assassination mission. Oh well.


To add a little more content, I have to share my battle story: I besieged with my main large army. I then had a small (6 units) force join as a "reinforcement" siege unit.

Being lazy (it was late at night - and I was already sleep deprived), I decided to wait until the next turn to see what happens.

WELL!

The French king sallied - nice. And he went straight for my 6-unit force (2 archers, 3 militia infantry, 1 group of feudal knights).

Oh crap.

:help:

To my surprise, the enemy moved at a 45 degree angle PAST my forces, towards the corner of the map.

Were they fleeing? Or running headlong into my reinforcements on purpose.

Were it the latter, then the AI acted stupid, because their units were slaughtered by my AI reinforcements (I forgot to enable "manual control" for my other army... although in retrospect, I don't think I even had the option because it was a "sally" battle).

While the bulk of the armies clashed, I used the archers to fire flaming arrows at the passing troops, and my knights to engage some weak foot units. I kept the other three infantry units "sort of" in reserve... until the knights routed some foot soldiers who ran back to the castle.

My guys chased after them and mopped the floor with the survivors - once they had waltzed into the castle in the process!

Here's where it gets weird - and I'm guessing this is another v1.0 bug: rather than keep the gates closed (they finally went into 'my hands' after having been sitting in the French hands even though my units were all over the wall!), the gates opened up again.

At this point in the story, it would've been helpful had I already mentioned that during this part of the battle the French king had hurried back to the castle to retake the town square.

Well nuts - I can't keep him locked out even though only my troops are inside.

No matter - I had a full unit of spear militia... and I think you know what's about to happen - they slaughtered the French King!

I was incredibly happy - 5000 here I come, and after such an unusual battle too!

And then the battle ended and I learned I lost my prize. :wall:

[Aelwyn]

I've gotten the same mission many times, and it seemed fairly obvious to me that the heir wanted it done with an assassin. But I can see how it could be mistaken.

But when you get this mission it seems that assassinating the guy becomes a bit harder. I checked just before this misson came up, and I had about a 24% chance. After the heir asked me to kill him, the very next turn, I had about a 9% chance.

[Zenicetus]

I'm working on a regicide mission now. I have a 10 rank assassin trying to kill a 5-star faction leader sitting alone in a fortress, with two of my spies in there. I can't do it. It shows a 15% kill chance. I've tried the save/reload dance, and it just doesn't ever give me the kill.

If a lvl 10 assassin can't kill a 5-star general (granted, a faction leader), then CA should either boost assassins or else remove this mission from the list.

[Vlad Tzepes]

What I don't understand about those missions is the promise of a "brotherhood relation after" that never happens.

My assassin took out a king, I got the nice "thank you + money" message and hoped for a ceasefire.

Relations were still "abysmal" and the ceasefire + trade rights + map + money + a couple of sweet looking regions got rejected as "very demanding"...

You cannot trust that heir, now a fresh king, don't you?

[FactionHeir]

To clarify the two bugs I had added to the buglist NeutralZone quoted, the not gaining an improvement in relations one is obvious.
The grammar error is actually about the way the wording stands in the success message after the regicide, not about "not mentioning assassination".
Thats something different entirely which I have not reported, mainly because I found the text to be quite clear that they wanted him assassinated.

But feel free to request that added to the list.

[Aspect]

The thing that bothered me the most about regicide missions is the penalty for not carrying them out. Generally, I get told "relations with the faction will suffer" (or words to that effect) if I don't complete the mission.

That makes little sense - if you don't commit regicide, then the old king is still in place - why would he like you any less for not completing a mission that he knew nothing about (or, if he did find out about it, why would he like you less for not killing him?!?)

What should happen is that failing the mission leaves relations exactly the same, but if the king later dies and the prince who gave you the mission ascends to the throne, then they drop significantly. I don't know if this could be handled by adding a trait to the prince or something.

Not sure if this is a bug or just me being picky, but it does seem more logical.

[Lovasìjász]

I'm working on a regicide mission now. I have a 10 rank assassin trying to kill a 5-star faction leader sitting alone in a fortress, with two of my spies in there. I can't do it. It shows a 15% kill chance. I've tried the save/reload dance, and it just doesn't ever give me the kill.

If a lvl 10 assassin can't kill a 5-star general (granted, a faction leader), then CA should either boost assassins or else remove this mission from the list.

Same here. I actually had a 20% chance (max, I can't get more) and I could not kill the king.

The assassins are horrible in this game. I don't even try to do these missions anymore, because I loose my assassins, which were pain to get somewhat trained to begin with.

[FactionHeir]

Part of the problem is that even 1 point in personal security drastically, if not actually exponentially reduces the chance of the mission being a success.
For generals, it also seems that its their piety rating, not their command rating which affects the assassination chance or so - as if god protects them against the assassin.

[vaultdweller]

I mean, its HIS faction heir asking you to kill him, why would he want you to invade one of his settlements, loot his coffers and slaughter his civillians when he just wants to seize power ?

Uhm... how about because he wants to seize power?

[NeutralZone940]

Same here. I actually had a 20% chance (max, I can't get more) and I could not kill the king.

The assassins are horrible in this game. I don't even try to do these missions anymore, because I loose my assassins, which were pain to get somewhat trained to begin with.

My apologies if this sounds obvious and you're already tried it, but when you do the save-reload dance, do you have the assassin run in and try every time, or do you try some other missions first (another assassin attacking another characters, or a priest attacking heretics/witches)?

If not, try that to 'randomize' the random number generator (I'm assuming it's like Colonization and other games where the "random" number used to determine victory is identical with every attempt after a reload, unless you mix it up by having other characters "do stuff".

Of course save/reload is the oldest exploit/cheat in the book, but if it's really annoying you, it's an option. ;)

[Wizzie]

Uhm... how about because he wants to seize power?

Hahaha! Sorry, I just got a mental image...

Crown Prince Henry: "Gosh, it's about bloody time I get to be King of good old blighty, don't you think chaps?"
Yes-men: "Yes, certainly so m'lord."
Henry: "Damned inconsiderate of my father to keep going after all these years! You'd think he'd have given up the ghost by now, what what?"
Yes-men: "Certainly m'lord. Most inconsiderate."
Henry: "Tell the King of France I would most appreciate if he sped along my ascension to the throne, chaps. I'll slip him a bit of cash of course!"

...two years later...

Messenger: "M'lord, the French have invaded Wessex, and sacked London! The King was beheaded and his body cast from the Tower of London! The Southern army has been destroyed and the survivors nailed to the city walls! The Royal Treasury has been siezed by the invaders and the countryside pillaged!"
Henry: "Dear God in Heaven!"
Messenger: "Oh, and the King of France wants to know if you'll be paying him by cheque or credit card for helping you towards the throne."
Henry: "Um..."

[Snoil The Mighty]

I'm working on a regicide mission now. I have a 10 rank assassin trying to kill a 5-star faction leader sitting alone in a fortress, with two of my spies in there. I can't do it. It shows a 15% kill chance. I've tried the save/reload dance, and it just doesn't ever give me the kill.

If a lvl 10 assassin can't kill a 5-star general (granted, a faction leader), then CA should either boost assassins or else remove this mission from the list.

I don't think the save/reload thing changes the situation much, IF you just continuously do the same thing with the same agent each reload. Now, I am nowhere near 100% on this but it might be that the numbers are hard loaded (or more likely RANGE range of numbers is hard loaded-this will become clearer) so that it wont change, unless you perform a different mission with a different agent. Kinda like CIV battles. Unless you marked it to randomize each reload, you'd get the same outcome everytime of the same battle in CIV. There is a caveat however. I have done this with repeated failure in a couple cases (even at 42% odds in one case-no change in 10 trials-to wit, 10 straight failures @ 42%) BUT, when I performed another mission with a different agent elsewhere, then came back to the agent I was doing trials with, bingo, success where once had been only failure. Not sure if this constitutes a proof, I'm sure there's more to it. And I have have save/reload/use same unit work a few times so I don't think whatever randomizing numbers get loaded are as hard-and-fast as the CIV battle numbers were, I think there are ranges that give the reload a small chance to work if a winning chance was in the loaded range. But give it a whirl and you might see some different outcomes. In fact I'd be interested to know if others can repeat these kind of outcomes I've seen.

[sapi]

Hahaha! Sorry, I just got a mental image...

Crown Prince Henry: "Gosh, it's about bloody time I get to be King of good old blighty, don't you think chaps?"
Yes-men: "Yes, certainly so m'lord."
Henry: "Damned inconsiderate of my father to keep going after all these years! You'd think he'd have given up the ghost by now, what what?"
Yes-men: "Certainly m'lord. Most inconsiderate."
Henry: "Tell the King of France I would most appreciate if he sped along my ascension to the throne, chaps. I'll slip him a bit of cash of course!"

...two years later...

Messenger: "M'lord, the French have invaded Wessex, and sacked London! The King was beheaded and his body cast from the Tower of London! The Southern army has been destroyed and the survivors nailed to the city walls! The Royal Treasury has been siezed by the invaders and the countryside pillaged!"
Henry: "Dear God in Heaven!"
Messenger: "Oh, and the King of France wants to know if you'll be paying him by cheque or credit card for helping you towards the throne."
Henry: "Um..."
:laugh4: When you put it like that..... :beam:

[Durallan]

Heyas, finally got my account working! Anyway the way to reset the randomizer after a reload is to do a mission with another agent. I always choose a Spy because the mission will nearly always succeed, you shouldn't lose him and thus allows you to quickly continue to trying your luck to kill the king.

I must admit I do find it hard to succeed in this although I recently in my English campaign got the HRE emperor asassinated and won the mission! I don't think it has improved my relations with the HRE though, I will have to check, because I am hoping to send a diplomat to get a ceasefire or vassalship. I hope. I find diplomacy impossible even on med difficulty and with a reliable global standing or a very reliable global standing!

[katank]

Battles also reset the random seed. If you are feeling really cheesy, try all the assassinations at the beginning of the turn. Reload, fight a battle or do a spy mission, and try again etc. if it doesn't work out.

[NeutralZone940]

Hahaha! Sorry, I just got a mental image...

Crown Prince Henry: "Gosh, it's about bloody time I get to be King of good old blighty, don't you think chaps?"
Yes-men: "Yes, certainly so m'lord."
Henry: "Damned inconsiderate of my father to keep going after all these years! You'd think he'd have given up the ghost by now, what what?"
Yes-men: "Certainly m'lord. Most inconsiderate."
Henry: "Tell the King of France I would most appreciate if he sped along my ascension to the throne, chaps. I'll slip him a bit of cash of course!"

...two years later...

Messenger: "M'lord, the French have invaded Wessex, and sacked London! The King was beheaded and his body cast from the Tower of London! The Southern army has been destroyed and the survivors nailed to the city walls! The Royal Treasury has been siezed by the invaders and the countryside pillaged!"
Henry: "Dear God in Heaven!"
Messenger: "Oh, and the King of France wants to know if you'll be paying him by cheque or credit card for helping you towards the throne."
Henry: "Um..."

See, that's *exactly* what was going on in my mind at the time.

Betcha the lack of a credit card network was what screwed me over... :sweatdrop:

[Snoil The Mighty]

Hahaha! Sorry, I just got a mental image...

Crown Prince Henry: "Gosh, it's about bloody time I get to be King of good old blighty, don't you think chaps?"
Yes-men: "Yes, certainly so m'lord."
Henry: "Damned inconsiderate of my father to keep going after all these years! You'd think he'd have given up the ghost by now, what what?"
Yes-men: "Certainly m'lord. Most inconsiderate."
Henry: "Tell the King of France I would most appreciate if he sped along my ascension to the throne, chaps. I'll slip him a bit of cash of course!"

...two years later...

Messenger: "M'lord, the French have invaded Wessex, and sacked London! The King was beheaded and his body cast from the Tower of London! The Southern army has been destroyed and the survivors nailed to the city walls! The Royal Treasury has been siezed by the invaders and the countryside pillaged!"
Henry: "Dear God in Heaven!"
Messenger: "Oh, and the King of France wants to know if you'll be paying him by cheque or credit card for helping you towards the throne."
Henry: "Um..."

Why do I hear Rowan Atkinson's and Tony Robbins' voices in my head when I read this??!!

:laugh4:

[OMGLAZERS]

Why do I hear Rowan Atkinson's and Tony Robbins' voices in my head when I read this??!!

:laugh4:

Fear not, I have a cunning plan.

[sapi]

Why do I hear Rowan Atkinson's and Tony Robbins' voices in my head when I read this??!!

:laugh4:No idea, but it happened to me too :laugh4:

[Antipodean]

If you are about to perform a mission such as an assassination (or a subterfuge, aquisition etc) and save just before you do it, then fail, and reload to try again, the random seed will be reset to a different value. However, the random seed will be the same new different value on every subsequent reload from that particular save, or another subsequent save where nothing else happened on the map. So reload and try again can work, but will always give the same result if done multiple times.

To reset the random seed, all you need to do is march the garrison out of any city and back in again (if you're low on movement, one square will do it). For a given agent mission, this appears to have a bigger effect if you do it with whichever of your cities is nearest to the target. It's as if the random seed for that action moves further from it's start position, when something is changed near that action. If you do it further away it seems to have less statistical effect. Moving multiple or different garrisons in and out of different cities makes further changes to the seed and if you save again before you attempt the mission you also get another shot with a different seed on the reload. In effect, with amount of movement available to a garrison, you can try, try, try again until you're bored witless of reloading. Doing the exact same movement from the exact same starting seed (as in a reload) may give you the exact same resultant random seed (I haven't done that enough to map the probability for sure). The random seed does not seem to be effected by position or changes to position of characters or armies on the map, outside of settlements, with the exception of the starting position of the character performing the mission, but again, I haven't tested this definitively.

There appears to be a very significant difference between the reported probability of a mission success and the actual probability, for missions with success below 25% (are much less probable than reported) and missions above 93% (slightly less probable than reported). Between these ranges missions seem to be slightly more probable than reported.

I'm not positive, but I think that under the speal from the miffed prince who wants dad offed, there is a line that summarises and says, "assassinate king Bob" or similar. I'm pretty sure I read this when it tells me to assassinate king Bob the first time. Even an HRE prince is not likely to be so stupid as to pay you to use an army to steal his inheritance and kill is surfs.

The annex settlement mission expects you to buy, bribe or negotiate for the settlement, but doesn't reward a military solution. I've never succeeded at this one, I'm just not one of life's natural non-contact negotiators.

[NeutralZone940]

Re: the reload thing. Yeah, I thought I mentioned that earlier. ;)

Oh wait, yes I did - although I could've written it more clearly. :)


My apologies if this sounds obvious and you're already tried it, but when you do the save-reload dance, do you have the assassin run in and try every time, or do you try some other missions first (another assassin attacking another characters, or a priest attacking heretics/witches)?

If not, try that to 'randomize' the random number generator (I'm assuming it's like Colonization and other games where the "random" number used to determine victory is identical with every attempt after a reload, unless you mix it up by having other characters "do stuff".


I'm not positive, but I think that under the speal from the miffed prince who wants dad offed, there is a line that summarises and says, "assassinate king Bob" or similar. I'm pretty sure I read this when it tells me to assassinate king Bob the first time. Even an HRE prince is not likely to be so stupid as to pay you to use an army to steal his inheritance and kill is surfs.

The annex settlement mission expects you to buy, bribe or negotiate for the settlement, but doesn't reward a military solution. I've never succeeded at this one, I'm just not one of life's natural non-contact negotiators.


It doesn't actually say assassinate. I treat a military execution solution to regicide the very same you would any other way of killing your enemy. But I suppose if someone blew up the White House they'd call it a "terrorist attack" rather than a presidential assassination... no wait, I take it back.

I think they'd still call it an assassination, even if they do take out dozens or hundreds of people at the same time.

[Or is there a difference between how we treat "regicide" and "presidential assassinations"? ... perhaps if Bush got shot down over Iraq while flying to visit Baghdad we'd treat it as a "combat death" rather than an assasination... hmm...]

Regardless, I've accepted the game's logic and have moved on. Amusing thread, though. :)