Look Out, Here Comes the Inquisition!

[caravel]

My current campaign has had me scratching my head a couple of times now with regard to the numbers of "heretics" that wind up getting burned in inquisitions.

The inquisitors will sit in a province reducing heresy and other religions (in the same way that a Bishop or cardinal does),while propogating catholicism. Heresy in a province is just a type of religion, like judaism, catholicism, orthodox, paganism or islam. So in this respect they are no different to Bishops or Cardinals. The heresy in a province issue is not related to your problem.

Generally I note that there are a few hundred up to a few thousand that perish....but on one instance in this campaign, the death toll soared to a crazy 14,000 plus..I put this down to the fact that all of my Inquisitors (1 x GI, 5 "regulars") happened to wind up in the same province....but then a few years later, one GI and 2 little red-hatted helpers toasted 17,000!

The execution of the population is a weird setup. It's based on the zeal of the province. The Inquisitor will sit there slowly raising zeal, then suddenly when zeal get's too high, he'll start an inquisition and burn a few thousand "people". The important thing to remember here is that you don't have any population anyway! MTW doesn't have populations like RTW does so in fact this figure seems to be some kind of cosmetic figure pulled out of, who knows where.

So what are the factors - zeal of the province, valour of the inquisitorial team, number of inquisitors....I'm guessing that it is (d) all of the above, but is one factor dominant over the others?

When an "Inquisition" occurs in a province with more than one Inquisitor you still only get one report from that province. It may be that the report contains the sum of all the Inquisitors' burnings. Zeal doesn't affect the number burned as far as I know as that would be contradictory. The moment that the Inquisitor starts burning, zeal is high anyway, when he finishes it is reduced, so I can't imagine zeal affecting the number of people executed. It may be related to the valour and number of Inquisitors and whether they are GIs or not.

Also I'm not aware of any effect the mass Inquisition has on the provincial happiness. Someone needs to clarify that.

If there is an existing thread to de-mystify this for me, please direct me there and I will have a read (sorry, really been looking for an excuse to use that icon - I guess I'm just a clown ...yeah, okay, that one too....I guess all is "pharoah" in queries and wargames ....oh dear, I fear I have crossed a line.....)