eh, why are people hysterical about Inquisiters?

[Headlocked]

Ive played three campaigns so far, english, milan, and well along on spanish.
All VH/VH, all Full lenght.

Not once,Ever, have I lost a commander of a crusade to an inquistor.

Not once, have I been inundated with Inquistors.
Max 2, ever. That was Milan, and i was at war with 4 catholic factions. And had missed a crusade. And the Pope hated me.

Not Once, ever, have I lost a family member who was more than 2-3 pious.
-ANY member that was burnt was ALWAYS heretical to some degree; i.e with a Pagan Magician, a Heretic trait, or once, memorably, Muslim! (lol)

I HAVE assassinated Inquistors.
They can be tough, but wtf would i want an uber-super-dooper-schwarzenegger of an assasin every time i trained one? Inquisitors are MEANT to be tough, and make you fear them. It was their primary weapon- fear.

So, I fear them, and keep my lands clean of heretics and imams, go on crusades and usually obey the pope. Ergo, no Inqs.

Ive just come from my spanish campaing where an Inq arrived, wandered around for a bit, then left. No problems.
Nice high rating with the pope, no heretics, no magician ancilaries on the nearby family, and my leader was on a crusade.

Therefore, if you follow what the game suggests, and get involved a little in the historical atmosphere, you should have no problems.

Just for laughs, my next campaign Im gonna be a complete heretic, destroying churches etc, allowing heresy, fighting catholics, yadda yadda.
THEN we'll see how many Inqs land on top of me.

I bet itll be tonnes :)

[Quillan]

Well, in my current Venetian campaign, I allied with the Papal States on turn 2. I've kept my pope-o-meter between 8 and 10 all the time. I went on the crusade that was called. I built churches in every settlement I had, maxxed out the number of priests I could have, and put them to quashing the heresy that was in the regions at the start. There were two inquisitors in northern Italy early in the game. Mostly they were there because of the Milanese and Holy Roman Empire, but I lost at least 6 priests this game because for no apparent reason they'd just try to denounce someone. They tried both my initial faction leader and heir, both of whom had high piety (4 for the leader and 6 for the heir who'd just come back from a crusade!) but those were both found innocent.

Now, when they finally wandered out of the area, I haven't seen any since. But, as long as they are hanging around, they seem to just pick a random target and try him. 3 of the priests they burned were ON THEIR FIRST TURN AFTER BEING CREATED! There are some questions about the power of inquisitors, and they might be a little too good at doing what they do. My question is about the way they choose their targets. I think it's far far too random.

[Headlocked]

fair 'nuff.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

Well guess it depends on everyones personal experience..

But the ist campaign I did as the english..they took out my faction leader...then later a gereral on a crusade...(which meant everyone deserted)..then a faction heir....and 5 priests..

So...um I didnt like that a whole lot! lol

[RZST]

i lost my scottish crusader heir to an inquisitor =(
he was on frances kingdom yknow, making his way to antioch and all when tragedy struck. an overpious zealot o a inquisitor decided to "try" my crusading heir. well guess what? MY HEIR GOT STAKED! bah, needless to say i re-loaded and made sure to take another route =P

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Ive played three campaigns so far, english, milan, and well along on spanish.
All VH/VH, all Full lenght.

Not once,Ever, have I lost a commander of a crusade to an inquistor.

Not once, have I been inundated with Inquistors.
Max 2, ever. That was Milan, and i was at war with 4 catholic factions. And had missed a crusade. And the Pope hated me.

Not Once, ever, have I lost a family member who was more than 2-3 pious.
-ANY member that was burnt was ALWAYS heretical to some degree; i.e with a Pagan Magician, a Heretic trait, or once, memorably, Muslim! (lol)

I HAVE assassinated Inquistors.
They can be tough, but wtf would i want an uber-super-dooper-schwarzenegger of an assasin every time i trained one? Inquisitors are MEANT to be tough, and make you fear them. It was their primary weapon- fear.

So, I fear them, and keep my lands clean of heretics and imams, go on crusades and usually obey the pope. Ergo, no Inqs.

Ive just come from my spanish campaing where an Inq arrived, wandered around for a bit, then left. No problems.
Nice high rating with the pope, no heretics, no magician ancilaries on the nearby family, and my leader was on a crusade.

Therefore, if you follow what the game suggests, and get involved a little in the historical atmosphere, you should have no problems.

everybody else is clearly just making it up and bad at playing at the same time.

obvious really

wonder why nobody noticed that before.

[Quickening]

everybody else is clearly just making it up and crap at playing at the same time.

obvious really

wonder why nobody noticed that before.

I noticed!

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

well, that proves it then.

[castle]

you take ten moves to get a general to a city then inquisitor pops up and kills him half an inch from destination. Is this supposed to be an improvement in med 2.

[Ice]

Well good for you. I have level 10 assassins trying to assassinate them, but I continuly fail. They killed numerous amount of 4-5 start generals, including my faction heir. I'd be going to invade a region and an inquisiter would pop up and kill my leading general. VERY ANNOYING, especially when it happens 3 times in a row and halts my attack, even though the Pope loves me. So I'd say you are just lucky, they are indeed very annoying.

[tobigforyou]

I used to have a problem with the inquisitors, but then i just gave the pope some money, now they just stand there, and kill off muslim commanders, and rebel priests and witches.

[Oaty]

The other problem is, harder difficulties causes extra problems. And for most of us we want the AI to have an edge, not something that's going to plow through your generals.

I had cardinals fried at the stake and not even 8 peity is safe. perhaps 10 peity may be near immune. That is just plain wrong when it is a cardinal getting fried

[Mr Frost]

I used to have a problem with the inquisitors, but then i just gave the pope some money, now they just stand there, and kill off muslim commanders, and rebel priests and witches.

Do you mean "Christian" generals with the Muslim trait or actual Islamic generals , because if the inquisitors are able to kill non-catholic generals , then they are hella-bugged {if a group of inquisitors tried to enter a non-christian army camp and put the general on trial , the army would simply kill them} .

[Kraxis]

Do you mean "Christian" generals with the Muslim trait or actual Islamic generals , because if the inquisitors are able to kill non-catholic generals , then they are hella-bugged {if a group of inquisitors tried to enter a non-christian army camp and put the general on trial , the army would simply kill them} .

Islamic Guard: "Hey! Where are you two going!?!?"
Inquisitor: "We are heading for the general's tent obviously, what else could we be doing?"
Islamic Guard: "You could be spies or assassins, I won't let you in!" *Raises weapon*
Inquisitor: "Please... no need for that." *Waves hand casually in front of himself* "We are merely inquisitors here to try your general for herecy against the Catholic church, nothing to be afraid of."
Islamic Guard: "You are merely inquisitors here to try my general for herecy agianst the Catholic church... Nothing to be afraid of."
Inquisitor: "See... Nothing bad. Oh, by the way..." *Waves hand again* "You didn't see the pile of wood we brought to burn him with.... *mumbles to companion as they walk away towards the tent* This one should be easy... he's a muslim!"

[Razor1952]

I was annoyed when a flameburner got my best Merchant, a guy who doesn't even have a piety rating, now I've learn to head for the hills anytime I want to preserve someone, a minor inconvenience.

But also following others advice , bribing the pope, killing every heretic quickly and making heresy is low all help to keep the flamers at bay and good strategic game design IMHO.


And if all else fails surround him with troops and pop another unit on top of him and ...poof.. no more flameburner... and yes a bit of a cheat but then getting merchants is not really the go either....

[Kobal2fr]

The problem is threefold :

1) Piety for generals is somewhat borked.

All generals should start off with 3 piety, but they don't because (as I understand from what... was it dopp ? I think it was dopp ... said from studying the files) the trigger for starterPiety doesn't work like it should. Apart from that, it's easy to raise piety - build churches, train priests, sit in a town with a big church + theologian guild for a few years, go on crusade, be chivalrous, all of that raises piety over some time.

Now that I know how Pagan Magicians are triggered (ie random chance in any settlement below 90% your_faith), I find it rather easy to wind up with 2-4 piety generals consistently, even without the help of a crusades, and to keep them there too. If starterPiety worked, they would be 5-7 and they'd have very little to fear from the occasional inquisitor, who would probably even raise their piety some more through granting them the Conformist trait line. At 5-7, their piety would also be high enough to be genetically passed down to their sons, making my general pool even MORE Pious over the course of the campaign.

2) Inquisitors exp ultrafast.

Since they randomly attack every turn and rarely ever fail (on account of that piety thing + Pagan Magicians & Astrologers everywhere in you're not carefull), they in turn gain piety almost every turn. Snowball burning effect. A 10 skill, nigh unkillable Inqui is not a rare sight, by a long shot.

3) (and arguably most important) Inquis are fire-and-forget WMDs.

The fact is that once spawned, they WILL blindly attack anyone in their movement range, no matter what his standing with the Pope is, or his personnal stance on witch-burning. Which is theoretically a good, realistic thing - but.

Agreed, they'll only spawn in areas with high, unchecked heresy/witchery, or in the lands of people the pope dislike, so again it's very doable to keep Inquis off your own lands.

Problem being, when your low_piety_cause_it's_borked generals cross the lands of these non-witchburning, pope-unfriendly factions on crusades, ballistic Inquis spawned there will target you too, indifferently (just a passing thought, maybe packing a few priests in crusade stacks might draw fire ? - Inquis seem to have an inordinate fondness for priests).
And of course, in killing the general, they also destroy the whole crusading stack if you haven't been allowing for that sort of thing and sent 4 or 5 generals on that dang crusade in the first place.
I think this is what irks people the most : losing crusaders, the holiest of the holy warriors, sanctified by the Pope himself, so religious they left their own lands and duties behind to spread the faith as best they can, killed by inquis because they were "not pious 'nuff, guv".

Also, if you happen to share a close border with those aforementionned popebashing factions (northern Italy comes to mind, as well as eastern France and northern Germany, all packed with very small regions closely bunched), Inquis'll spawn in their lands, but their movement range will encompass yours too, and they will have no qualms to cross the border and burn your peeps right inside your very cities if they are easier, more flamable targets.
And that's even if you the Pope would marry you.

[todorp]

I have seen Inquisiters wondering around, but they only once since the MTW2 relesase, killed one of my diplomats. I think they don't bother me, because I always upgrade churces, make enough priests to have >99% catholic and after 50 turns own the pope :)

[Husar]

Not Once, ever, have I lost a family member who was more than 2-3 pious.
-ANY member that was burnt was ALWAYS heretical to some degree; i.e with a Pagan Magician, a Heretic trait, or once, memorably, Muslim! (lol)

That's my problem, I have yet to see any general with more than 3 piety...
Most generals I got in my french and HRE campaign were between 0 and 2 piety, very seldom 3.