Assassins, Inquisitors, and Popes - Oh My

Okay, so my first campaign (short, M/M) I’m having some problems. I played Rome TW so I am somewhat familiar with elements of the game, but right now I don’t know if I’m just very newbie or if by chance a lot of bad things are happening to me in my game.
I’m playing England, around turn 40-45 or so. I have all of the British Isles and 5 settlements on the continent- the three ones against the English channel and Paris and Angers.
I’m currently at war with France (they declared).

I’ve had French assassins swarming all over the place around Paris (recently took) and Angers. I can’t seem to assassinate them, even though I’m producing fleets of my own assassins. I don’t have any other easier targets for my assassins to train up on, so it takes about 5 of my own assassins to get rid of one French assassin. They haven’t done much damage since I have at least one spy in every settlement, and two in Paris and Angers, but it still worries me having them around.

Additionally, I have an Inquisitor that just seems to want to either sit right in the middle of my lands on the continent or chase my generals around. Again, how do I get rid of him? After a few failed attempts to assassinate him, my standing with the papal states went down and I decided to stop. Do we know when an Inquisitor is sent to our lands specifically as their target? After turn 7 or 8 I either had good to great standing with the pope, so I don’t think the inquisitor was sent at me. It is making things very difficult to keep my generals away from him while waging war against France.

On top of all of that, I get a cease and desist order from the Pope to stop attacking France when it was France that started the war with me. I’ve tried offering peace agreements with the French to no avail. So, I stopped sieging one of their cities. After 2 turns with no aggressive actions towards the French they are now sieging Paris with 4 more turns until the Pope says I can start attacking again. So, can I attack the sieging army with an army outside of Paris or even my Paris army or do I have to just sit back and take it?

Oh, and does the pope consider assassinating (or attempting to assassinate) an aggressive action?

Like I said, it is my first MTW2 campaign. I seem to remember the learning curve for RTW to be pretty steep as well (at least for me), but worth it- right folks? :)

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

ALWAYS give money to the enemy. They will accept it no matter what.
Oh, and contribute heavily to the Pope. Having a Perfect relationship with the Pope means maximum + (cross) at the Pope standing.

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Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

ALWAYS give money to the enemy. They will accept it no matter what.
Oh, and contribute heavily to the Pope. Having a Perfect relationship with the Pope means maximum + (cross) at the Pope standing.

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What this man said. In fact I always have a diplomat who's job it is only to sit outside Rome handing the Pope cash every now and then.
Building churches, priests and crusading also helps your Papal Standing but nothing like cold hard cash.

Yup, I've had a diplomat doing just that outside of Rome. Giving 1000 florins every so often. Like I said, I’ve had good to great standing with the Pope since around turn 8, I think my lowest since rating was 3 crosses away from the top. Usually I’m two crosses away and once I was only one cross away from the top.

So, I’m supposed to give money to France now? That kinda sucks. I know our relations aren’t that great at the moment, but it is a little frustrating to have to pay money to my enemy when they started the war and I just handed them their butts. They should be paying me to stop. That is just a mini-rant. Sorry about that :)

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Originally Posted by Darkgreen

Yup, I've had a diplomat doing just that outside of Rome. Giving 1000 florins every so often. Like I said, I’ve had good to great standing with the Pope since around turn 8, I think my lowest since rating was 3 crosses away from the top. Usually I’m two crosses away and once I was only one cross away from the top.

So, I’m supposed to give money to France now? That kinda sucks. I know our relations aren’t that great at the moment, but it is a little frustrating to have to pay money to my enemy when they started the war and I just handed them their butts. They should be paying me to stop. That is just a mini-rant. Sorry about that :)

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Something weird happened to me in my current campaign. The Scots attacked me and I offered them a ceasefire. At first it was "Very Demanding" and they refused. But then I offered a ceasefire again in the same diplomacy session and it was "Very Generous" and they accepted :inquisitive: So that might be worth trying.

And yeah it's a pain in the arse giving cash to your enemies. At the moment Im giving cash to Milan, Spain, Portugal, the Papal States and Denmark to keep them sweet. I just know Im paying for the military that will one day soon crush me :shame:

I can crush them immediately, but I wanna keep my armies. Anyhow, good thing you told me. Denmark will be steamrollered tomorrow.

Goodbye Aarhus...

Keep repelling attacks until they get excomed. Then make hay. Never been above five mainly at one or two but i simply sit out the time limit and start again.

Inquisitors. Take any eight units and box him in like so,


Unit Unit Unit
Unit inq Unit
Unit Unit Unit
Then stick another one in the middle and bye bye. Will also work with assassins. May not be fair but then if was a fair game then there would be no need.

Hey, that’s a great tip, and I might try it. I just wish there was something else I could do first to solve my inquisitor and assassin problem.

So if my city is sieged I can’t sally out against the French since that would be considered an aggressive act?

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Originally Posted by Darkgreen

So if my city is sieged I can’t sally out against the French since that would be considered an aggressive act?

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You might get away with that. But it gives you a pop-up warning if an attack you order will piss off the Pope so you can always change your mind.

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Originally Posted by Quickening

You might get away with that. But it gives you a pop-up warning if an attack you order will piss off the Pope so you can always change your mind.

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Hey, that's good to know. Thanks :)


Anyone have any more ideas on how to handle Inquisitors and enemy assassins?

Does having inquisitors around mean the Pope is mad at you ro is it related to the level of heresy in the province ?

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Originally Posted by Sinan

Does having inquisitors around mean the Pope is mad at you ro is it related to the level of heresy in the province ?

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Theoretically the Inquisitors come along to kill all heretics and only then do they start looking at your faction for blasphemy. In practise though, they show up quite randomly and will happily burn your King whilst a group of heretics and witches have an orgy nearby.
I have found however that with a good Papal standing, the Inquisitors leave me alone. But I know others have had experiences which contradict that.

hey everyone, :balloon2:

@Darkgreen :

as for leveling up your assassins, sabotages for the first star or two and then captains captains captains save save save
if you cant seem to get someone, move one of your army stacks a bit and try again, repeat until successful

saving is crucial (especially if you play vanilla) if you dont want to be breaking your pc's perifferals when your brand new totaly pwning 8 lvl Fred the Killer goes to Fred The NooB after missing a hit against a one-eyed brain damaged deaf captain you disliked, but it will take you some extra time

low-level (killable rather) spies assassins and inquisitors are my favorite targets (in that order) but for higher level ones (unkillable) you will have to resort to the killer chess move of surround and walk over. I agree with Quickening that inqusitors seem to be less of a pain provided you keep the Pope happy with regular tributes of 100-200 florins per turn


--Cheers

Okay, thanks for the advice. I appreciate it :)

I don’t have any enemy captains around at the moment, which is part of my problem, but I will try to sabotage some enemy buildings.

I don’t think I will do the save and re-load strategy, I hate to play that way. Though that is not a judgment of other people that play that way, that is just something that personally takes the fun away for me.

I may just stock up on spies and try to ignore enemy assassins. I may resort to the killer chess move for inquisitors, or this particular inquisitor anyway.

I seldom have inquisitors in my territory, but I do something unique that may be causing them to go elsewhere. I evangilize. I choose one province to produce priests and I start building up the church tree. I hold of on making ANY priests until I have about 10 or 15 provinces with churches in them. Then I start pumping out a priest every turn with that one province and I send them ALL outside of my territory.

By having lots of priests going into Muslim or Orthodox provinces my priests raise their piety quickly due to conversion. They also tend to start with rather high piety once I get a Theologins Guild going in my chosen province. That means I can normally have one Cardinal running around cleaning up Heretics while the rest of the pack are out causing religious trouble for others.

As a side effect, Inquisitors seem to leave me alone.

The Inquisitors killed my faction heir and 2 generals. This is stupid really. They had 4 at piety, they can't be heretics.

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Originally Posted by Quickening

Theoretically the Inquisitors come along to kill all heretics and only then do they start looking at your faction for blasphemy. In practise though, they show up quite randomly and will happily burn your King whilst a group of heretics and witches have an orgy nearby.
I have found however that with a good Papal standing, the Inquisitors leave me alone. But I know others have had experiences which contradict that.

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Yep. happening now. 8* heretic surrounded by three bishops equal rating but cannot fry him. Inq nearby doing nothing but trailing my gen who 3-4 piety but you know whose going to get it. Its annoying because the region is 100% catholic. Will have to resort to boxing and stamping to get rid of him. It a wish list for the improvements that this should not happen

Inquisitors pop in related to the level of heresy in the province I think. You have about 5-10 turns to get above 85% or they start teleporting in. Once there they do not leave to fast. I find it takes longer for them to show up if the pope likes me. The few I see now come in from next door province and tend to wander back out. SadCat :book:

In my experience it's safe to attack an enemy who's on your land even if under the papal ban. It's not safe to do naval attacks, though, as no sea is your land. But I do tend to have very high relations with the pope, so this may only be true at 8+ crosses.

So if Paris is besieged, you should be able to sally, or hit the besieger with another army. What you can't do is step off your own land and attack someone. You can step off your own land, but you cannot attack someone the pope has banned you from attacking without a risk of excom. It can be useful to send a one unit sacrifice army to stand next to a banned enemy city to dare him to attack it ~;).

A good trick is to have a priest accompany your general. The Inquisitor will target your priest first, giving your general an extra turn to get the h.. (can't say that with an inquisitor present) away.

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Originally Posted by Philbert

A good trick is to have a priest accompany your general. The Inquisitor will target your priest first, giving your general an extra turn to get the h.. (can't say that with an inquisitor present) away.

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Haha! Yeah I remember that happening one time. I put a good priest with one of my Generals who was the least pious man in my Empire. An Inquisitor comes along and I think, "Oh shit, here we go". Then during the course of the Papal States turn I saw him kill someone. I assumed it was my totally unpious General but no, it was the poor pious priest who was accompanying him :laugh4:

You got the wrong guy Pope boy.

Nifty idea, thanks.

As an update, things are going much better. I’ve decided to ignore the French assassins and just add a couple more spies. I boxed in the inquisitor and got rid of him.
I’ve taken a couple more French settlements and managed to convince the pope to call a crusade on Marseilles, though right before my full crusading army of cavalry, mortars, and culverins arrived the pope died and the new pope decided to call of the crusade- doh! So now that army is just hanging out on a hill outside of Marseilles waiting until I can manage another crusade to be called against Marseilles or until I get bored and I just try to rush the last 3-4 French settlements.
Denmark decided to attack me, five times now, but they only do so at Antwerp, and my 5 mortars there often cause their army of mostly heavy infantry (6-7 units) to retreat before I even release my cavalry on them.

Papal standing: Use a diplomat to gift him 50 gold per turn for 20+ turns.
Just obey his edicts, then when the edicts expire blitz the enemy in one turn. You will need siege equipment to do this. Prepare for the next acquision while you wait out the next edict to expire. You can attack any army in your land, or blockading your ports without fear of being excommunicated irregardless. Rinse and repeat.

Inquisitors: Someone who is clueless about history, power, and reality dreamed up inquisitors. Can't believe that this fantasy ever made it into the game. Use the 9 unit box described above , or teleport him out like he teleported in -
move_character "John de_Joe" 252,187

Assassins: Pretty worthless as assassins in vanilla unless you save before each mission first. In vanilla I only used them to protect high value generals, and to keep a disloyal general from rebelling (a stack never rebels with an assassin in the stack). Get one of the vnv fixers to correct this problem and many other problems in vanilla with the vnvs'.

Diplomacy: On VH diplomacy is borked: The only way to keep allies is to bribe them continually. I prefer to kick their butt instead of giving them money to tech up, or use on armies against me later. This is total war, and it is usually gang up on the human faction in this game on VH. No logical reasoning to it (like survival of the AI faction). I am usually at war with most of AI factions all of the time. As long as you can kick their butt in the battles it is not a problem. Keeps the game interesting :juggle2:
*Note: Marriage alliances usually last for the lifetime of the Princess/Prince, but no guarantee here either. Some factions appear to never be trustworthy (Portugual and Milan for instance).

I have found that sometimes it is better to ignore excommunication. The unrest caused is bearable in comparison to having to endure a grave military threat. Even with the diplomatic improvements of the leaked 1.2 the ai is configured to be hostile towards the most successful factions. Each and every faction will need to be humbled militarily regardless. Relations with the Papacy, particularly one without land can be restored fairly quickly if I can afford to donate provinces to the Church. Usually the conventional strategy of creating as many priests and churches as possible, evangelising when the risk of heresy is low, and giving spiritual gifts to the Holy Father is what I follow. Yet sometimes that just isn't possible.

Dear Gang:

Good evening from Canada!! I hope this finds you and yours well. As for me, I could complain...yadda, yadda, yadda.

I'm sorry I've been missing for a while, but I guess you've know where I've been. I learned just today another way of keeping His Hatness ecstatically happy. It's simply this: DON'T DEAL WITH ANY CATHOLIC NATION THAT HE'S EXCOMMED!!!
This is guaranteed to keep your relationship with the Papal States in the PERFECT to OUTSTANDING categories. As Spain, Venice killed one of my Princessess and then expected a ceasefire with a small string attached--they wanted money. I told them--twice--to go whistle up a stump.I'm now sending part of my whole army after them. With apologies to those playing as Venice, I want that faction HISTORY!!!! No one is going to kill my Princess and expect to get away with it!!!! ~:pissed:

Live long and prosper, take care, and thank you kindly!!!

Sincerely yours always,

Indy.

Been playing/testing car's problemSolver where you can play the Papal states.

Great fun with Inquisitors - not only do they operate on remote control but during the Pope's turn you can target them at your enemies.

Inquisitors get extra traits and retinue like priests.

You don't recruit them - they just appear (and then mysteriously disappear.)

Nobody exp....