Damn the medieval popes

[Martok]

First off, welcome the Org Calgacus. As Kavhan already said, there's no specific vices/virtues attached to assassinating the Pope....which I admit I find unfortunate from a gameplay persective.

As for vices & virtues in general, probably the main reason they're hard to understand is that they're not all applied in the same way. Some are applied randomly (such as Silver-Toungued, Killer Instinct, or Sybarite), whereas others (such as Scant Mercy, Skilled Risky Attacks, and Great Builder) are a direct result of your king/prince/general's actions. The trick is to figure out which ones are which.

Analysis of kill probabilities noted - thanks Kavhan....another point of curiousity - it appears that even if you send an army of inquisitors against one specific faction, they never take offence....why is this? Is it that they are assuming that the state has no power over the church and that these inquisitors are therefore operating independently to fry all of their generals?

I think you've pretty much nailed it, bamff. It's always been my impression that factions don't react to inquisitors since they're church officials, and that (theoretically, at least) they're not under the control of a monarch.

I wish that actually was the case, as Inquisitors in the hands of other factions are simply overpowered--even more so when they're from my faction. (I admit I find the fact that Medieval 2 is restricting them to just the Papacy to be an improvement.) As it is, I try not to train more than a handful of them, including Grand Inquisitors. They're almost unstoppable once they've got a couple heresy convictions under their belt.

A general note on using GI's to burn the Pope: Even with Grand Inquisitors, it's going to be hard to convict the Pope of heresy if they're rookies--their odds will be greatly helped if they have at least a couple stars first.