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.

[percy13]

A real problem is that even when your faction is religiously zealot the family members are never pious at all. I've been playing Venice for 200 turns (modded for 2 turns per year) and I have priests and churches everywhere, 9 Caridnals, the Pope is Venetian and he loves me yet I still lose the odd leader to Inquistors. This seems to be down to that most of my leaders have 1 or 2 piety. This does seem a bit odd considering.

[Fisherking]

It happens!!! There are several work around usually but once you loose a full stack or a faction leader or 3 you aren't likely to forget it the next dozen or so campaigns after...yah know!

[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.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

A real problem is that even when your faction is religiously zealot the family members are never pious at all. I've been playing Venice for 200 turns (modded for 2 turns per year) and I have priests and churches everywhere, 9 Caridnals, the Pope is Venetian and he loves me yet I still lose the odd leader to Inquistors. This seems to be down to that most of my leaders have 1 or 2 piety. This does seem a bit odd considering.

That's because, too date, nobody, including the "inquisitors are underpowered you're just a woeful player" people haven't managed to show exactly what is the determining factor for individual character piety.

And, given the total absence of documentation on that from CA, it is quite probably that the mechanism doesn't, currently, exist or is totally broken.

[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

[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 :)

[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.

[percy13]

I do think it is a bit daft that they attack Faction leaders and at all when you're in perfect harmony with the Pope. To have done so would never have been sanctioned by the Church, so it seems a bit daft that it can happen nevertheless.

[Daveybaby]

I'm pretty sure there's only a limited amount of inquisitors around at any one time - there's probably either a hard limit or a financial limit on how many the pope can support.

So, what you have to do is make your lands less likely to attract their attention than other factions. If all of your lands have very low heresy levels, and somebody else's have slightly higher levels, then guess where the inquisitors are gonna go hunting?

I make sure every settlement has at least the 1st level church/chapel and one priest - i ALWAYS have my priests at the maximum agent limit. If a heretic appears then i immediately mob him with priests from the surrounding provinces. And of course i keep the pope buttered up with regular cash payments.

The ONLY people i find are at risk from inquisitors are those agents i have sitting around in far off lands, i.e. mainly diplomats and merchants - and merchants tend to get ignored, i've found. Obviously your generals are at risk when youre invading enemy territory, but you can reduce this risk by scouting out the area with your spies in advance, and using a hit squad of priests to prepare the ground before the attack, and maybe stick around to make sure everything's ok afterwards.

If i follow these rules i find that inquistors are rarely a problem after the early stages of the game, when youre quickly taking a lot of rebel settlements (which tend to have high heresy values) and you havent pumped out enough priests yet to take care of them all at once.

[akinkhoo]

i now follow wise advice of surrounding that poor pokers with militia troops on all sides! this suggestion given on another thread has made me understand how to use the military against pesky but unarmed agents! :D

what can he do against militia? burn them all while they point their sharpy looking things at him...

[Carl]

what can he do against militia? burn them all while they point their sharpy looking things at him...

Don't give him ideas.

[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.

[KristianSax]

Reading all the opinions regarding inquisitors, I think it rather boils down to the time of day when you installed the game and the start chard being in your favour.

I only had problems with the inquisitors in my first game when I didn't pay attention to religion, priests or relations with the Papal States. Then they were all over me. I also played quite aggressively against other factions and the pope wasn't all that pleased with me. (dif: med; faction: Britons)

Now I try to get the papal states as my allies as soon as possible, give them trinkets and gifts and try to keep 'em happy. I also have all the priests available and keep upgrading the churches. I'm beginning to miss the suspense of seeing an inquisitor. Well, ok I saw one hanging around in Livonia where two of my priests were training, and even though the inquisitor was near them, it didn't even hold a trial. (dif: hard, faction: Scotland).

I also have a VH camp as Spain, the catholicism percentage sucks in my provinces (75-90% with the average of 80%) but my relations with the Papal States are v.good or perfect and no inquisitors.

Then again I've read about players who pay a lot of attention to religion but are still burdened by the inquisitors.

Is it another roll of the dice at the beginning of the campaign which defines whether you have to deal with inquisitors or not?

[Von Nanega]

When too many are around, move_character this x,y to the deep sahara works fine. I only do this when I am following the church line and they are getting too nosey.

[dopp]

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.

Erm why does everyone think my sig is funny and have it highlighted in bold? English is not my native language, so cut me some slack here... if it's like obscene or something let me know...

The triggers *should* be working but isn't. One is even called the Birth_Fixed trigger. Still broke is what it is. I have tried adding new triggers, changing the chances, changing the level awarded.. nothing works. All generals should have 3 piety just to start with. Fix this by bringing down the console after selecting the character (move him outside the settlement/boat first) and type "give_trait this ReligionStarter 1" to fix the problem. Let those inquisitors try to burn you now! My king was tried for heresy every turn and is now a living saint from all those failed trials (you get some trait like untouchable faith which gives piety, plus he was a grand crusader to begin with).

Pagan magician is like 5-10% chance every turn you spend in a province which has less than 90% of your religion, which is super-high. I often play Spanish and even my very own starting provinces are like 70% Catholic...

If you crack open the campaign text file you will find that the inquisitor initial success rate is 3 times that of assassins, 35% compared to 12%, plus spies don't seem to stop them. Way overpowered. Two of them killed every general (3, including my heir) in my crusade to take Jerusalem, plus all the accompanying priests (3 bishops and 2 cardinals), instead of the two obvious heretics and one witch wandering around. And the population was 95% muslim, not heretic. Nuts.

[Carl]

@Dopp: the word Dopp is in no way obscene or offensive in English at all. In fact I don't think it's a word at all in English, so don't worry about it, don't ask me why they highlight it, but it's nothing your doing.

[Kraxis]

At worst it is but a funny sound.

Inquisitors tend to be a problem early on. Then you often have relatively high herecy and/or rebel provinces with lots of pagans ect. You also have few if any churches and religious agents. So if your relations with the Pope is anything but stellar you run a good risk of inquisitors.

Add to that the small provinces and the inquisitors might very well take notice of your lands. And once there they don't seem to leave. It should be possible to lead inquisitors to enemy lands by leaving them a 'breadcrumb' trail of priests.
Now that could be fun in a sense.

And I think we can all agree that when inquisitors wipe out a faction, it is pretty bad.