Witches and Hertics, Questions?

[Carl]

I'm curious about thse two. The first question is: can hertics attack your presits like you attack them? you'd think so but i've never seen them do it...

The Second Question is: How do you create Whitches, i've never seen even ONE turn up in any of my campaigns, is it princeses going Hertic that does it?

Lastly: I hear theirs a command line to allow you to give yourself units, is it possibile to give yourself a Hertic/Whitch or the enemy one using this, as I don't belive the Rebels are playable.

[FactionHeir]

Heretics don't attack priests. Just stand around converting.
Witches spawn the same way heretics do except that nothing turns into a witch.

Both are controlled by the rebel spawn values in the descr strat. Likely the brigand value as opposed to the pirate value.

[HoreTore]

To add to this:

When I was looking through the data files some time ago, I remember looking at the capabilities of priests. One of them was "denounce". This would be killing a heretic. However, to my memory, BOTH heretic priests and witches had the denounce capability. So it might suggest that they should be able to denounce your priests, however, they are clearly not doing it.

Sorry for not giving you detailed info, it was a while ago and I don't remember...

[JCoyote]

I've seen them do it, you just don't get notified when they do.

[Carl]

Both are controlled by the rebel spawn values in the descr strat. Likely the brigand value as opposed to the pirate value.

That explains it, thanks, i've modded Rebls to not spawn, might put them back in though as it's getting Boring ATM.

Also, is their any way to put the Rebel in game, (playable), or to use a command consle command to give yourself a Hertic/Witch?

I doubt their is but I thought i'd ask BTW.

[HoreTore]

I think that depends on wether the heresy comes from a trait/ability, a special kind of character(ie. a "heretic", not a "catholic priest", or if it's simply the clergy of the rebels. If it's the first, then I suppose yes, if it's the latter, which I believe it is, then no..

[TevashSzat]

heretics can convert your priests into heretics, believe me i have seen this happen. What happened was i had a god squad converting constantinople as the venetians, but i was too busy fighting the turks and didnt look around that much. One priest of 8 piety turned into a heretic and then quickly converted my 8 priests nearby into heretics surrounding my poor cardinal and just utterly creating havoc for my public order in constantinople.

[Armenia_Byzantium]

heretics can convert your priests into heretics, believe me i have seen this happen. What happened was i had a god squad converting constantinople as the venetians, but i was too busy fighting the turks and didnt look around that much. One priest of 8 piety turned into a heretic and then quickly converted my 8 priests nearby into heretics surrounding my poor cardinal and just utterly creating havoc for my public order in constantinople.

damn that is worse than what i had on nicosea when one heritec converted 3 priests and it had created a huge problem there

[TevashSzat]

Lets just say it was not fun retaking Constantinople and then defending it against the full stack Turkish army that appears the next turn...

[Tran]

Since assassin can't turn into heretic then those heretics can be 'target practice' for your assassins. Especially useful if you have 'elite heretic' to deal with.

[Armenia_Byzantium]

i dont think assasins are as quite as powerfull as priests when it comes to killing heretics

[TevashSzat]

It is simply much better to kill heretics with priests since priests are almost guaranteed to gain a good trait when a sucessful denouncing occurs

[Armenia_Byzantium]

exactly!

[Tran]

That's true if you're dealing with low-level wretched heretics, but when it comes to high-level heretic there's always 50% chance your priest will turn into heretic as well, 50% others are either successfully denounce them or they failed but managed to survive and then there's possibility getting bad trait such as 'Poor Prosecutor'. Assassin however can never turn heretic...

[Ciaran]

Yes, but they can - and do - die by the droves. Been there, seen it. I had level 8 assassins get killed by level 2 heretics, and not just the oddball one.
While I think it is perfectly all right that some figures should be hard to assassinate, there are others where I wish this were not so. Heck, a maxed out assassin has only a meagre 20% chance against an Inquisitor, units like priests, merchants and perhaps other assassins (in RTW - not BI though, a zero-skill assassin has 95 % against a maxed-out one, but the hard thing is actually finding them. But once you did, at least you got rid of the bastards) should be soft targets.

[zverzver]

I am 99% sure that cardinals are immune to heresy. Use your cardinals to take out high level heretics.

[Tran]

Yeah, that's true for Cardinal but heretics can appear anywhere, sure you can denounce them but look, you're not going to travel half-way across the map to denounce a single heretic, aren't you? At least that's not how I play. Okay, you might have several cardinals, but what are the odd chance of having many of your priests selected as cardinals...well maybe, if you can take out enemy cardinals...wait, you need to kill them...with assassin! You still need assassin!

Anyway, those priests are walking slow, try to compare them with assassin, assassin has greater walking distance, and therefore can take out targets quicker and more importantly, unseen by enemy. Let's assume you use priest and failed then turned heretic, now you have more troubles to deal with.

Well, that's just my opinion anyway. And no, I'm not anti-priest, don't accuse me of being heretic

[HoreTore]

It's very easy to get all, or at least almost, of the cardinals. Just recruit every single priest you can, send them to a province where they can convert people(ie. below 50% or so catholic), and wait for the other cardinals to die of age. If you have a good standing with the pope, he should appoint your priests. Electing allied cardinals to new popes helps too.

[Musashi]

Yeah... Cardinals are selected based primarily on piety. If you have super high piety priests, they will become cardinals when a cardinal dies. Since the AI doesn't use it's priests well, it's easy to have the highest piety around... I've had darn near the whole college belonging to me more than once... With all my cardinals having maxed out or nearly maxed out piety.

With that many cardinals it's relatively easy to deal with witches and heretics.

[joe4iz]

Witches can kill your priests if they are unsuccessful at denoucing them. Basically, it says something like your priest was found dead , like he had been burned by fire.

The Theological Guilds are very handy for producing priests who are less likely to become heretical. They also have a higher rate of denouncement?. This is one way to quickly stack the College of Cardinals playing as any Catholic faction. Each successful denoucement gives a better chance to raise piety.

[Swordsman]

For my money, witches and heretics are a distraction from the basic game. There have been several suggestions on how to mod them out-- but NOTHING works AFAIK. That includes rebel spawn rate AND the descr_campaign_db.xml file data. The latter DOES seem to work with inquisitors, but the number of heretics & witches seem unaffected by any changes.

Realize they can be good for training up Priests-- but my experience is that by the time you get to the middle-game or so, and are pretty much "number 1", you aren't going to get any more Cardinals no matter what you do.

[TevashSzat]

I say, just use that one trick where u surround an agent then move a military unit on top of it to kill it if u r really desperate

[dopp]

Being in close proximity to a witch or heretic also gives your character some bad traits. Priests lose piety, while family members get stricken with curses.

[Musashi]

but my experience is that by the time you get to the middle-game or so, and are pretty much "number 1", you aren't going to get any more Cardinals no matter what you do.

Completely contrary to my experiences. By the time I'm "number one", the papacy is my puppet and I own the entire college of cardinals.

[Swordsman]

Musashi: Since I probably don't do a very good job of playing the whole Papacy angle, I'm sure a lot of it's me. I did have ONE game where something like you describe happened. However, my usual pattern seems to be:
- get in pretty good shape
- get attacked (usually simultaneously) by a whole bunch of folks who were just my allies-- and who I had "great" relationships with
- aggressively defend myself
- I get excommunicated
- game over a far as having any rational relationship with catholics/papacy-- it's kill or be killed the rest of the way. Even if I get reconciled down the road, I'm still on the sh** list.

Of course, if it bugs me to death I can always play as a non-catholic

Frankly, what I'd REALLY like to be able to do is just get rid of the heretics & witches, and kinda minimize the impact of Priests, etc. I did try a mod once that, once the original Pope died, that was pretty much it-- no more priests, so no more Cardinals, etc. Wasn't great though as it eliminated crusades too.

[Gratian]

Witches can kill your priests if they are unsuccessful at denoucing them. Basically, it says something like your priest was found dead , like he had been burned by fire.

Thats right... But a priest is nothing...

How would you like to lose 7-piety CARDINAL to a 3-level witch?!
Which recently happened in my HRE campaign...
My cardinal just dropped dead before figure in gray and i got "Shamed by a blasphemer" message
I thought it is never possible - even high-piety heretics cannot touch Cardinals...

and the witch has not received magic increase - remained on level 3.
I wonder if a 5-level one could take on a Pope

[Tran]

Thats right... But a priest is nothing...

How would you like to lose 7-piety CARDINAL to a 3-level witch?!
Which recently happened in my HRE campaign...
My cardinal just dropped dead before figure in gray and i got "Shamed by a blasphemer" message
I thought it is never possible - even high-piety heretics cannot touch Cardinals...

and the witch has not received magic increase - remained on level 3.
I wonder if a 5-level one could take on a Pope

Precisely my point

[Carl]

Musashi: Since I probably don't do a very good job of playing the whole Papacy angle, I'm sure a lot of it's me. I did have ONE game where something like you describe happened. However, my usual pattern seems to be:
- get in pretty good shape
- get attacked (usually simultaneously) by a whole bunch of folks who were just my allies-- and who I had "great" relationships with
- aggressively defend myself
- I get excommunicated
- game over a far as having any rational relationship with catholics/papacy-- it's kill or be killed the rest of the way. Even if I get reconciled down the road, I'm still on the sh** list.

Of course, if it bugs me to death I can always play as a non-catholic

Frankly, what I'd REALLY like to be able to do is just get rid of the heretics & witches, and kinda minimize the impact of Priests, etc. I did try a mod once that, once the original Pope died, that was pretty much it-- no more priests, so no more Cardinals, etc. Wasn't great though as it eliminated crusades too.

Your clearly making 2 mistakes here IMHO.

1. Your aggressivlly attack back BEFORE the Pope has Excommunicated your foes, don't even go off your own lands till then.

2. You should have a diplomat permanently camping rome giving the pope a tribute of 100 Florins a turn, plus a few 100 more anytime your relations are NOT perfect.


The basic rules as a catholic regarding the pope are pretty simple, NEVER attack a fellow cathloic that is not excommunicated, and allways give the pope money if your relationship is less than perfect.

[Swordsman]

Carl:

You are absolutely right, I'm sure. My one successful episode as a "good Catholic" I'm pretty sure was along the lines you describe. I guess lately I've just been in a rut of wanting to SMASH anyone with the unmitigated gall to attack innocent old me.

Bad days at work I guess.

[Foz]

The basic rules as a catholic regarding the pope are pretty simple, NEVER attack a fellow cathloic that is not excommunicated, and allways give the pope money if your relationship is less than perfect.

Meh, if you're good at gifting the pope cash to keep relations up, you can easily support attacks into enemy territory. I usually try not to start them, but as the English both France and Milan attacked me (neither one was or became excommed), and I snatched most of France as a result, with almost no papal impact. You eventually get those papal decrees to stop fighting - those are the biggies you have to heed. Your pope rating takes such a huge hit if you ignore them that you end up not being able to do anything at all until you've built your pope rating back up again. If you start with it very high though, you have a lot of breathing room usually before the pope really becomes a concern. My campaigns usually turn into a rollercoaster of pope management - feed the pope, rating goes up. Beat on neighbors, rating goes down. Pope says stop - so I stop. Build rating again, and/or beat on a different neighbor. Pope mission over, commence beating on original target. It's really quite hilarious