Act of God?

[Kahn]

I was playing as Milan, getting attacked over and over again by the HRE who were eating my face off while the pope sat back and drank milkshakes, when an HRE princess came up and said "Kill my dad for money"

I said yes. Yes of course. I would love to kill your father for money.

Then we made out.

So taking advantage of this opportunity to get the HRE off my back and make some cash while I was at it, I started an assassin production line and sent waves of them to go take out this old bastard. Eventually I had 6 assassins standing around the town all taking swipes at him, and 3 spies inside of it.

Then I hit "next turn" and when it came back around to me, I had 1 assassin and 0 spies. My faction announcements listed off all the missing characters as having been "caught up in an act of god".

What
the
hell.

[Mythre]

No clue.. possibly a bug? And i assume you did not see any flash floods or anything like that?
I do believe God commands "You shall not murder" so maybe it truly was an act of God.

[Kahn]

No, nothing like that. No flash floods, no noises of people dying, no nothing.

Just dead people that were caught up in an act of god.

[JoeCole3200]

ive had wierd things like that before, recently happened to a priest, there was no floods, storms or earthquakes, my priest just vanished of the face of the earth for no reason whatsoever....maybe its was 'Rapture'?? god only knows lol.....

[nosjo78]

Thats happened to me before too but I dont think it was a bug. I didnt notice but apparently my 3 stacks including faction heir, king, 5 Christian priests, and a bunch of merchants got hit by either an earthquake, storm, or flood. It nearly wiped me out.

[TheJoker]

Happened to me, but everytime there was a storm or flood. Maybe you just missed it on the side bar?

[Shaka]

Act of God happens when non-military units are stampeded to death, ie there was no more space to move and a military unit moves into that space

[Kahn]

Are you kidding me? That is some freaking BS.

I'm stupid upset right now.

Stupid.
Upset.

[kelvintyk]

I lost a 9 piety cardinal for no apparent reason while in the milan region.

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

I once sat a diplomat on the bridge connecting Venice to the rest of the world for a few turns to keep the Venitians locked up, soon enough a storm came and killed him.

[supekele]

Last time my Faction Heir got "caught up in an act of god" he died in a siege in a Crusading army. I figured that made sense...

[loquar]

I was playing as Milan, getting attacked over and over again by the HRE who were eating my face off while the pope sat back and drank milkshakes, when an HRE princess came up and said "Kill my dad for money"

I said yes. Yes of course. I would love to kill your father for money.

Then we made out.

I actually laughed out load at this in the office, wish I could give rep. class

[Renco]

Have you ever made a 10 piety 39 yo violent cardinal that you owned walk across a continent and click stop as he passes over the water?
Don't, he dies.

[krycek]

I had one of these i had a crusade going on a ship down to arce so i clicked end turn and my family member running the crusade had been killed by a random weather storm no other but him!!!! the ship where located neaer silicy and of all the places that storm could have happened it happened over my ship!!!!! ACT OF GOD!!!! no its just the computer cheating again.

[FuriousSpurius]

Floods, earthquakes, storms, and I believe riots can kill those types of characters. I had never heard of the stampede thing that Shaka said, I may have to test that out someday to see if that holds true.

[kelvintyk]

But i lost my cardinal without any apparent reason in wide open space. Couldn't have been stampeded to death.

[pwijnands]

But i lost my cardinal without any apparent reason in wide open space. Couldn't have been stampeded to death.

It happens when an army moves on top of an agent and that agent cannot move to an adjacent tile. The agent dies as a result. Although I find it highly unlickely that 5 assassins and 3 spies die in a single turn in this manner. The AI would have to have dozens of small armies around to block of all escape routs and then manage to flush out all three spies at once.

[kelvintyk]

Like i said, my cardinal was in wide open space with hardly any enemy troops around. God knows why my cardinal died....

[Kahn]

I am a halo fan.

We are now friends.

High five.

[Faris ad Din]

Floods, earthquakes, storms, and I believe riots can kill those types of characters. I had never heard of the stampede thing that Shaka said, I may have to test that out someday to see if that holds true.

I definitely wasn't the first one to discover this exploit (I rediscovered it on my own), but I'll refer you to an old thread I made, "Using armies to crowd out and kill enemy agents." (Not directing you to it out of any conceit either!)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=124998
Check out the series of pictures on it... explains agent squashing in full color.

On the other hand agent squashing can be tricky to pull off intentionally. It's easy on small islands like Crete or Rhodes, especially if they are already crowded with agents, but trickier on the mainland. You have to have the area very enclosed with mountains, rivers, dense forest if it isn't crowded with armies/agents, and even then sometimes enemy/neutral agents manage to escape.

Which brings me to a new theory. I think "Killed in an act of God" is simply a DEFAULT AI message to explain the death of characters that it cannot describe otherwise, just like the infamous "Gray Peasant" unit card. This could include agent squashing, but you described FIVE of six assassins dying in the same turn around a city. The agents may have crowded each other out to some degree but that's sort of hard to pull off. So I'm thinking, they died by some bug that the computer couldn't explain, so it simply gave you the default death system message.