Quote Originally Posted by antipope
Out of curiosity (and the fact that the Pope is really ticking me off) I reload the save game and try again. Fails. Again. Fails, fails , fails some more. And everytime he's got a 66% chance of success. Nice friggin' random number generator, huh!?
What gives. Anybody else try this before?
(P.S. Ive already got patch 1.1).
I've assassinated the Pope lots of times, even got rid of him with high-level Grand Inquisitors on numerous occasions. But if you reload to give your Assassins another chance, keep in mind several things.
This game, like almost all games, uses a "seed number" to set up the random number generator. Unless you change one of the conditions that impacts the seed number, the results from the random number generator will be the same. When you reload, if you don't change the seed number, nothing will be different from your last try. So move a Princess, reorder your build queues, change your Emmissary's assignment, etc., etc.
And, as KukriKhan said, your Assassins have to slip by any Border Forts present in the target province, then escape the defensive gauntlet of any enemy agents present (there's a reason they default to "counterspying"), finally avoid the Pope's personal bodyguard before making an attack with the 66% chance of success you see in the parchment. Generally, a pack of 20 zero-star killers will have better odds than one or two 5-star ones.
For Inquisitor attacks on the Pope, the province needs good zeal, the Pope's piety should be fairly low, Bishops/Cardinals shouldn't be present (not a deal-breaker, but helpful), and your Inquisitor or GI should have lots of valor stars. If your target has some piety, don't just send one Inquisitor, send them in packs. When you trail for heresy repeatedly, the subject gains positive piety virtues at first, then gets the Atheist line of vices, which drop piety by -8. Your trial should succeed after that, unless you're very unlucky.