Regicide Mission Bug

[NeutralZone940]

Hahaha! Sorry, I just got a mental image...

Crown Prince Henry: "Gosh, it's about bloody time I get to be King of good old blighty, don't you think chaps?"
Yes-men: "Yes, certainly so m'lord."
Henry: "Damned inconsiderate of my father to keep going after all these years! You'd think he'd have given up the ghost by now, what what?"
Yes-men: "Certainly m'lord. Most inconsiderate."
Henry: "Tell the King of France I would most appreciate if he sped along my ascension to the throne, chaps. I'll slip him a bit of cash of course!"

...two years later...

Messenger: "M'lord, the French have invaded Wessex, and sacked London! The King was beheaded and his body cast from the Tower of London! The Southern army has been destroyed and the survivors nailed to the city walls! The Royal Treasury has been siezed by the invaders and the countryside pillaged!"
Henry: "Dear God in Heaven!"
Messenger: "Oh, and the King of France wants to know if you'll be paying him by cheque or credit card for helping you towards the throne."
Henry: "Um..."

See, that's *exactly* what was going on in my mind at the time.

Betcha the lack of a credit card network was what screwed me over...

[Snoil The Mighty]

Hahaha! Sorry, I just got a mental image...

Crown Prince Henry: "Gosh, it's about bloody time I get to be King of good old blighty, don't you think chaps?"
Yes-men: "Yes, certainly so m'lord."
Henry: "Damned inconsiderate of my father to keep going after all these years! You'd think he'd have given up the ghost by now, what what?"
Yes-men: "Certainly m'lord. Most inconsiderate."
Henry: "Tell the King of France I would most appreciate if he sped along my ascension to the throne, chaps. I'll slip him a bit of cash of course!"

...two years later...

Messenger: "M'lord, the French have invaded Wessex, and sacked London! The King was beheaded and his body cast from the Tower of London! The Southern army has been destroyed and the survivors nailed to the city walls! The Royal Treasury has been siezed by the invaders and the countryside pillaged!"
Henry: "Dear God in Heaven!"
Messenger: "Oh, and the King of France wants to know if you'll be paying him by cheque or credit card for helping you towards the throne."
Henry: "Um..."

Why do I hear Rowan Atkinson's and Tony Robbins' voices in my head when I read this??!!

[OMGLAZERS]

Why do I hear Rowan Atkinson's and Tony Robbins' voices in my head when I read this??!!

Fear not, I have a cunning plan.

[sapi]

Why do I hear Rowan Atkinson's and Tony Robbins' voices in my head when I read this??!!

No idea, but it happened to me too

[Antipodean]

If you are about to perform a mission such as an assassination (or a subterfuge, aquisition etc) and save just before you do it, then fail, and reload to try again, the random seed will be reset to a different value. However, the random seed will be the same new different value on every subsequent reload from that particular save, or another subsequent save where nothing else happened on the map. So reload and try again can work, but will always give the same result if done multiple times.

To reset the random seed, all you need to do is march the garrison out of any city and back in again (if you're low on movement, one square will do it). For a given agent mission, this appears to have a bigger effect if you do it with whichever of your cities is nearest to the target. It's as if the random seed for that action moves further from it's start position, when something is changed near that action. If you do it further away it seems to have less statistical effect. Moving multiple or different garrisons in and out of different cities makes further changes to the seed and if you save again before you attempt the mission you also get another shot with a different seed on the reload. In effect, with amount of movement available to a garrison, you can try, try, try again until you're bored witless of reloading. Doing the exact same movement from the exact same starting seed (as in a reload) may give you the exact same resultant random seed (I haven't done that enough to map the probability for sure). The random seed does not seem to be effected by position or changes to position of characters or armies on the map, outside of settlements, with the exception of the starting position of the character performing the mission, but again, I haven't tested this definitively.

There appears to be a very significant difference between the reported probability of a mission success and the actual probability, for missions with success below 25% (are much less probable than reported) and missions above 93% (slightly less probable than reported). Between these ranges missions seem to be slightly more probable than reported.

I'm not positive, but I think that under the speal from the miffed prince who wants dad offed, there is a line that summarises and says, "assassinate king Bob" or similar. I'm pretty sure I read this when it tells me to assassinate king Bob the first time. Even an HRE prince is not likely to be so stupid as to pay you to use an army to steal his inheritance and kill is surfs.

The annex settlement mission expects you to buy, bribe or negotiate for the settlement, but doesn't reward a military solution. I've never succeeded at this one, I'm just not one of life's natural non-contact negotiators.

[NeutralZone940]

Re: the reload thing. Yeah, I thought I mentioned that earlier. ;)

Oh wait, yes I did - although I could've written it more clearly. :)

My apologies if this sounds obvious and you're already tried it, but when you do the save-reload dance, do you have the assassin run in and try every time, or do you try some other missions first (another assassin attacking another characters, or a priest attacking heretics/witches)?

If not, try that to 'randomize' the random number generator (I'm assuming it's like Colonization and other games where the "random" number used to determine victory is identical with every attempt after a reload, unless you mix it up by having other characters "do stuff".

I'm not positive, but I think that under the speal from the miffed prince who wants dad offed, there is a line that summarises and says, "assassinate king Bob" or similar. I'm pretty sure I read this when it tells me to assassinate king Bob the first time. Even an HRE prince is not likely to be so stupid as to pay you to use an army to steal his inheritance and kill is surfs.

The annex settlement mission expects you to buy, bribe or negotiate for the settlement, but doesn't reward a military solution. I've never succeeded at this one, I'm just not one of life's natural non-contact negotiators.

It doesn't actually say assassinate. I treat a military execution solution to regicide the very same you would any other way of killing your enemy. But I suppose if someone blew up the White House they'd call it a "terrorist attack" rather than a presidential assassination... no wait, I take it back.

I think they'd still call it an assassination, even if they do take out dozens or hundreds of people at the same time.

[Or is there a difference between how we treat "regicide" and "presidential assassinations"? ... perhaps if Bush got shot down over Iraq while flying to visit Baghdad we'd treat it as a "combat death" rather than an assasination... hmm...]

Regardless, I've accepted the game's logic and have moved on. Amusing thread, though. :)