Inquisitors - problems & solutions (was Crusading when I meet inquisitor)

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

I have to say that I am finding Inqusitors a major issue.

My biggest complaint being that I cannot understand their actions:

I have great relations with the Pope.
I have top-level (for the citie/castle) churches.
Maximum Priest.
No heresey, no heretics in my provinces or in visible adjacent ones.
Most of my heirs are pious.

Yet the inquisitor still burns them.

Inquisitors also burned my crusading leader - despite him having a piety of 5 and a load of accompanying priests.

IN one turn Inquisitors burned 2 family members and a priest - what was interesting there was that this was literally the first turn for those characters, none of whom had any "bad" traits at all.

I now have an Inquisitor parked outside of remmes: whenever I make a priest and move it out of the city the Inquistor kills it, every time, irrespective of piety.

I succeeded with a crusade - my reputation with the Pope went down and still the Inqusitors burn my priests.

I "cheated" (load/relaod) an Assassin to master +5, with 3 extra entourage and sub rating close to max - took him to kill a low-level Inquistor and the chance to succeed was %12.

A "Maxed" assassin v low level Inquisitor and he didnt stand a chance... and how hard is it to get a maxed assassin without cheating!!??




So, No - Im not happy with Inquisitors, especially due to their inexplicable actions against pious priest, characters and crusaders.

If there was some rhyme or reason to their actions Iwould be less bothered, OR if assassins actually stood a chance there would be some way to counter them effectively - then fine.
As it stands now though I am finding that really dont want to play the campaign any longer as, other than in the UK where there are no Inquisitors atm, whenever I move an agent or character out of a city it seems they get burned alive.

I mean, take the priests, brand new, no negatives, first move in the game - how the hell did they do anything wrong?!! (Especially given the relation ship with the pope and abscence of heresy etc)

(h/vh/eng)

[Mahrabals apprentice]

Same problem here.
Playing as Venice on M/M
I am the Popes joint first favourite faction (with 1 cross off the maximum). Anything he asks of me I do. I have 2 cardinals in the college and wille asily get a 3rd when someone else dies becasue all my Priests are sent off the Byzantine lands to spread the faith, and earning Piety fast. Churches are very high on my building priorities.
Milan get excommunicated. I declare war. I send a large stack to siege Milan and a smaller one to siege Genoa. Then the Inquisitors dispatched by the Pope to deal with the excommunicated Milanesse decide to burn the generals of both my armies from Uber-Catholic Venice who are forfilling the Popes wishes by destroying Catholesisms enemies.
Why?
Just tell me why?

Inquisitors are a menace to every faction no matter what you do it seems.

EDIT: spelling

[46852]

I "cheated" (load/relaod) an Assassin to master +5, with 3 extra entourage and sub rating close to max - took him to kill a low-level Inquistor and the chance to succeed was %12.

A "Maxed" assassin v low level Inquisitor and he didnt stand a chance... and how hard is it to get a maxed assassin without cheating!!??

Ouch... If the chance is really that low, assassin kill success% really should be raised a bit. I didn't expect it to be that low on high level agents!

It should be lowish on level 0 agents, but should be around 80% on a level 10 agent vs level 0-2 scenario imo. Well, maybe the success% shouldn't be that high, but the chances of getting caught should be very low for a high level assassin.

[urbancohort]

Agree with what is being said here. Am playing as the Venetians atm and have lost 3 family members and 2 priests in 7 turns. I now only have 2 family members left one being my king

There seems to be no reasons why the inquisitor picks out the charachters for "burning" aside from the peity rating, but how are you supposed to move your people around if they keep getting burned.....very annoying. Relations with the pope are good, only faction i'm at war with are the Milanese and they attacked first !!! Will not play as the Venetians again

[Fridgebadger]

Agree with everything said here - except someone said a good way of grooming assasins is doing easy sabotage missions. I've done a load, and have never had an assasin's trait go up after a succesful bit of sabotage...

[NihilisticCow]

I had an army on a boat heading off to Jerusalem, it strayed to close to the coastline at the end of the turn, an inquistor was there and he burned my faction heir... I wasn't very impressed...

[Oshidashi]

The inquisitors already ruined my first game killing 3 generals and two priests.

Even when my general was on a Cog, positioned at the coast on the nord sea, the inquisitor managed to burn him.

Major spoiler, for the rest, I love the game so far!

[econ21]

I agree inquisitors seem a bit much, but am I the only one who finds humour in these two stories of inquisitors swimming from the shore to burn unsuspecting captains at sea? It reminds me of the crocodile in Peter Pan.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Agree with everything said here - except someone said a good way of grooming assasins is doing easy sabotage missions. I've done a load, and have never had an assasin's trait go up after a succesful bit of sabotage...

Nor have I, ive done 11 successful sabotage mission in Paris and - nada in terms of assassin going up in level.

Too be honest I dont mind the assassins being weak, its probably better for the game that way.

However what other way is there to counter these uber-inquisitors?


So the combination of over-zealous Inquisitors and weak Assassins generates a rather unfortunate set of problems.

Now if Cardinals or Priests could counter Inquisitors... different ball game.
As it stands now priests just seem to be an easy way for inquisitors to "level up".

Ah well, might just play NWN2 until the patch comes out.

[Scottn72]

Almost every time one of my assassins manages to sabotage a building he gains a rating increase. The problem I have is when they fail at something else a few turns later ther rating decreases again.

If you have a spy in the city your planning to sabotage, the chance of success is quite high if your assassin is level 1-2, about 80% for a church and 60% for other buildings.

Just discovered this tactic last night and it's improving things a little.

[Quillan]

I've not yet got an assassin to a 10 ranking, but I did get one to 9 before he died of old age. Against a diplomat with a 0 rating (must have picked up a bunch of negative traits there) he had a 95% chance. Against a priest with a 4 piety, he had a 33% chance, IIRC. Against a merchant with an 8 finance, it was only something like 15%. Personally, I think it needs to be a little higher.

Also, the ups/downs of the ranking seem a little skewed. I've done one reload after a failed assassination. This was with the aforementioned assassin, before he got as high as he was. At the time, he'd reached the +3 skill mark. I sent him to assassinate a 1 piety priest, he had a 75% chance and failed. He lost ALL of his skill! The entire +3 went away on one failure! Not fair.

[46852]

Almost every time one of my assassins manages to sabotage a building he gains a rating increase. The problem I have is when they fail at something else a few turns later ther rating decreases again.

If you have a spy in the city your planning to sabotage, the chance of success is quite high if your assassin is level 1-2, about 80% for a church and 60% for other buildings.

Just discovered this tactic last night and it's improving things a little.

Yep, that's true, I tested it out again and succesful sabotages definitely raise the agent skill. First skill-up name is "Plotter". But as Scott said, I got more familiar with the "Poor Plotter" and "Silly Schemes" traits

Good point on Scott's post was also that churches have better chances to be sabotaged for some reason, good for training your agents!

[Doug-Thompson]

And people wonder why I play Muslims.

[Husar]

In my current French campaign I had a lot of generals burned at the start, but since heresy started rising and my relation with the pope got lower down to zero and excommunication, the burnings seem to have stopped or become fewer...

[lars573]

You know whne you all started venting about Inquisitors I had a though. What if the campagin difficulty is what makes Inquisistors so good? Well it seems to pan out. I've had 3 run ins Inquisitors and they all failed to burn my generals and diplomat. Medium difficulty=Inquisition blunted.

[Casmin]

Playing as Venice I had high Papal standing for a long time and never saw an inquisitor in my lands. Once my standing with the Pope dropped down to like 4 and inquisitors sprouted all over the place. I thought it had something to do with piety or how strong the Catholic faith is in a province but basically it seems to be a punishment for being on bad terms with the Pope.

[The Teacher]

On the inquisitors debate.

The problem I see is that they are a little unpredictable, but would they not be in real life? These characters are meant to burn people that must unhinge them a little if you had to do that for a day job. Think of Hanibal Lector visiting a Art School - we would all know the results but the fun of it would be the unpredictability of it.

In short these guys must be a little mad to do the job so lets keep them unpredictable, adds more of an edge to the game - dont patch them sane !

my 2 c :)

[Eques]

Allright guys, while they dont fix this inquisitor problem i got some sugestions

- First Sugestion
The pope is crazy and he really thinks that your family is satanic, or maybe he just plays to have good relations with you while he is allied with your enemys!!!
In any case, you, as the king, should fight this and adopt the pope as your enemy killing all inquisitors and so on.

- Second Sugestion
You truly believe in the pope, you believe he speaks for God himself and after see your suns burn to ashes you agree with the inquisitors and also believe that your sons and good generals had, indeed, a pact with the Satan! See them all dead is a blessing and you own it to the Pope!

Call it RPGistic style of play if you want... but could be cool huh?

[Debe2233]

A little situation report about Mr FlameHappy...

I took Jeruselem quite easily won the crusade i was happy, the pope was happy, all was good... then a heretic poped up... well no surprised i suppose, i had a few priests around converting the population and Mr FlameHappy seemed to be amuseing himself elsewhere.

My priest went up and quickly got turned into a heretic... damn... ok send another... another heretic, ah...

Now the Holylands have around 9 heretics running around giggleing and generally being a pain in the bottom i had to evacuate Jeruselem because of the problems with unrest they were causeing and headed north to the near inland city (demascus?) decideing to send priests after the heretics... but wait!... Mr FlameHappy is back with a few friends and he's decided the best course of action for dealing with heretics.... is to burn my priests. What a genius.

So now im swamped with heretics and i cant actually do anything about them because the inquisitors seem to be totally ignoreing them and roasting every priest i make as soon as he's finished training (Jeruselem is at 87% herasy) my faction leader has headed off into the far east to escape a roasting, oh well... i have a son ready to go in 2 turns... as long as my leader can survive that long in the desert *sigh*.

[Fisherking]

Has anyone noticed how far those jokers can move!!! Caen to Hamburg without breaking a sweat!

I agree they should fix them or take them out all together, but I did try the sure fire Inquisitor killer method and they grown really loud... But that was just after they killed my faction heir, then I moved to kill a rebel stack with an other general...and their was an other one skulking in the brush...so I broke up the stack in all directions with the general in the middle...I'll see if that works because he can't get next to him that I can see.

[Aenlic]

If the game cheats by killing noble family members, which is about as historically inaccurate as it gets, then I cheat by 8 boxing them with cheap militia and sending them to hell. Tit for tat. There is something seriously wrong with the implementation of inquisitors. Trying captains and even generals, I can live with; but burning faction heirs and crusaders armies at the stake is outrageous.

[Kraxis]

The stories of Mr FlameHappy made me laugh so hard I nearly woke up my girlfriend (and perhaps some neighbours). Same goes for the crazy naval burnings.

Anyway, my own crazy encounter can easily join these for pure "huh?!?!?!" 'ness.

I am still playing the first campaign, HRE (fond memories). And as we know the HRE is pretty bad off with the Pope. And it being my first campaign I have no idea how important churches and priests are. So I move ahead on a loyalty basis for the cities and castles. That means churches and chapels here and there, but not everywhere.

Suddenly I seems to be watching a monochromic screen. There are black and white men with widebrimmed hats everywhere. Especially near Staufen (I had apparently let herecy go a bit wild there 12% or some such, more than enough it seems). Incidentally I had two of my three priests there (the third and my cardinal were actively converting people at Stettin). One turns heretic and one inquisitor burns the other. The other inquisitor scatter and burn what they find here and there. A French general, a couple merchants ect ect.

Just around then the Pope had announced a Crusade to Jerusalem.
He had barely gotten a single mouthful of air before he yanked poor Emperor Heinrich the Chivalrous before him and yelled, "HEINRICH! If you are not on that crusade within 10 turns I will send your poor excuse for a rear end to Hell faster than you can say 'Excommunication'!!!"
In his endless wisdom my empror decided that it was the time for Germany to join the Crusade to Jerusalem. And as such he collected all the mailed knights he could, even the first Teutonic Knights in Germany, and moved south from Hamburg.

In the meantime the inquisitors made realtions between Germany and the west impossible. No diplomat, merchant or whatever managed to get past their wall of fire. I even lost a general who was laying siege to Bern (had to call that off) and a prince who came to salvage that situation. Oddly the heretic walked around safely as other targets went up in flames. Thus the inquisition managed to be kept alive (inquisitors cleaning up heretics, heretic creating new heretics).

I had by then understood the seriousness of the Inquisitors, but counted my interior safe. As soon as I could join the crusade, I did. I quickly hired all the good crusader mercs I could (saved a spot for later better troops I hoped). But Heinrich was out of moves.

The nearest inquisitor finally tried the heretic and obviously failed. That sort of made him look around for easier targets, like a bully that has just been punched in the nose. Someone had to pay. So he moved inland.

Heinrich had to move and did so, ending up near Nürnberg. Then the inquisitor turned the bend in the forest and promptly built a stake of gilded wood for my dear emperor. And that was the end of Emperor Heinrich the Chilvarous (btw the last chivalrous emperor... maybe a reason for that).
I managed to salvage the crusade, but the prince that took over also got tried, and luckily made it (as I had no more generals around to save the troops). He even got a nice little +1 piety trait (Conforming).

To see the inquisitor chase after the emperor now that he was about to get away, especially after failing to kill a heretic was half amusing, half infuriating. It was like he had a mission. Kill Heinrich before his crusade leaves Germany.

Btw I managed to lose another general near Bern to inquisitors (and later I pruned an emperor and his heir outside the walls, but that is another story).

The result of all this made me cheat with some assassins to create the Pope-killer Fritz. Enough was enough...