Quote Originally Posted by EatYerGreens
I've been compiling assassination probabilities myself, lately but my table is still incomplete, so I'm glad someone else got there first! The player is told of the success chances before every mission, so the info is more useful in terms of seeing the trends - eg faction heirs having same chance as plain generals and so on - and you've done a thourough job in elucidating these. Thanks.
It's something that I had been trying to figure out myself when I first started. I got the game a while back (probably early March) and played it for a few weeks beat the game with the Italians and then ended up moving to a different game. I had just recently got the Viking Invasion expansion, so I have therefore been playing MTW again.

It's good to know that it's helpful.

Now, I only wished I'd made a note of province zeal myself. I've recently got two separate inquisitors up to 5 valour each, on a variety of targets. One of them got his first star frying one of my own unit leaders (!!) but, since then they've been working on a steady diet of re-emerged Sicilians and - would you believe it - a stack of loyalist rebels who are with the Papacy LOL
Yep. A 1 Piety General in a 100% Zeal province has a 100% chance of getting fried even by a 0 Valour Inquisitor. With equal piety and Zeal levels, Grand Inquisitors seem to double the chance of success, so they are well worth picking up.

My goal will be to inevitably fry the Pope. The pope has been assassinated more times than I can count (there must be a 9 Valor assassin wandering around at this point) so it's not as important.

The criteria I use for selecting a likely target is the general's Piety rating and, the lower the piety, the better the chances. You'll need to add this to the list of factors you asked people to report on.
Yep, Piety is one of the things I asked for. I quickly determined that Command ability had no basis on the general's chance of survival.

"- Target Command Rank and Piety score (possibly the later)."

The one thing outside of your control, with Inquisitors, is that they can only try the leader of a stack. This is handy because, in the absence of leaders with a star rating above zero, the ones with Govenor titles become leader by default, so the ones you fry will be the ones with high acumen, too.
That is interesting to know. What's even more interesting are some of the V&V's like Deep Thinker which increase acumen at the expense of Piety

It definately makes you consider what your general's piety levels are, and to be concerned about low piety generals if the opposition starts to use Inquisitors.

There's another mode, where they simply preach and increase zeal. However, with announcements about Bogomils, Cathars and so forth, 'preacher mode' will eventually lead to them burning the general population. Percentage heresy in the region is reduced but I've found the zeal rating actually decreases, as a result of all the burnings. (This doesn't count as a 'mission' and has no effect on valour rating).
Yeah, Zeal will slowly increase with the Inquisitors presence. At about the 70-80% Zeal mark the Inquisitor will start burning people (this drops the population loyalty by about 25 points), but likewise the Zeal drops the turn afterwards. The loyalty drop is unfortunately only for a turn, and is therefore only useful in a province that is bordering on rebellion. I tried to bring down Constantinople like this (I pumped out so many Bishops and Inquisitors that the entire province of Constantinople was filled with them). Multiple Inquisitors in a province will quickly increase Zeal (but the increase is based on the Catholic population. An inquisitor sitting in a province that is 100% muslim will have a very difficult time with increasing Zeal. I don't know if the Inquisitor increases the Catholic percentage of the population. In any event it's always good when trying to build up Zeal in low Catholic provinces to bring along some Bishops. They will convert the population and the Inquisitors will then increase Zeal. Unfortunately Bishops have a dampening effect on the Inquisitors job so you'll want to get them out of there. Therefore keep lots of Bishops around your low piety generals so that Inquisitors have a much more difficult time putting them on trial.

I've seen threads where the player has set a chain of Inquisitors, along the intended route a Crusade is due to take, to increase zeal. High zeal supposedly decreases the desertion rate and increases the 'troop suckage' rate - handy when passing through lands held by a rival Catholic faction.
How it works is that the percentage of Zeal determines how many troops get drained from local forces. The most that can be drained by a crusade is 50% of the total armies. So, if the Zeal in the province is 100% and you have 2000 troops in the province, a crusade will devastate your forces by stealing 1000 troops. This happened to me in Flanders. I had something like 2200 troops stationed in Flanders. Flanders had a 99% Zeal rate. The Spanish sent a crusade through Flanders (in order to use my port and chain of ships). Of each 100-man unit (say spearmen) I lost 49 of them. I lost 29 men from each group of 60-man units. My total forces went from 2200 to around 1100. then the Spanish sent an additional crusade to a different province and further drained another 550 troops.

As a note, it doesn't matter if you block it or allow the crusade to pass through your province. By the simple matter of it entering the province, it will gain converts.

At 0% Zeal, you don't lose any troops, and likely the crusade loses members (which you might be able to pick up if you have an inn in the province )

Thus what you want to do is try to lower the Zeal rating whenever possible. You may need an Inquisitor to burn some of the population.

While I haven't verified it, I believe that having Bishops in your provinces will slowly reduce the Zeal in the province.