Generals' Piety and King's Authority

[htothehh]

I remember seeing a thread like this before, but couldn't find it. Anyway, how do you increase a General's piety? How do you increase a King's authority? What does authority do?

[Bacon!]

Generals can get + piety from been in a settelment when a religious building is completed (chruch, chapel etc). They can also get the Religiously Proper trait from occupying settelments i think.

An easy way for Generals to get + Authority is to fight alot of battles, they will get traits like VictorVirtue. Also traits that give alot of chivalry or dread also give small authority bonus's. Battle and Strategy Dread and Chivalry for example give, +1 Chiv/read, +2 chiv/dread, +3 chiv/dread, +4 chiv/dread +1 Authority, +5 chiv/dread +2 Authority.

[moosey]

another good way to get "free" piety is to make youre general finish a turn in certain cities/regions (salamanca, constantinople, rome, jerusalem, etc...) to get the pilgrim to ..... place trait and +3 piety. great if youre playing a game as portugal or byzantium with a university in those cities as you can send everyone over to them upon coming of age.

for authority, do battles; battle scars, victor traits, if you manage to get lots of alliances you can get the GoodDiplomacy trait too. In all though it can be a bit random, also a good way to get Chivalry Strategy is to capture settlements and not sack or pillage them, do that 4 times and youve got youreself some more authority (useful at start of game when you should send youre prince out to do some conquering)

[Musthavename]

Slightly off topic but other than Inquisitors, does Piety serve any purpose at all?

Regarding Authority, the easiest thing to do is just focus on battles and raising either dread or chivalry. When a certain Chiv / Dread trait gets to four, it starts giving Authority. Similarly, Battle Scars give Authority and so do a few other traits picked up by battle. It doesn't matter if you focus on Chivalry or Dread though (though Dread is a little easier in my experience, i've had max chivalry / max authority Kings before).

Another thing to do is certain factions have a crown ancillary. England, France, Spain (and Aragon aswell, but I can't get this to work), HRE, Denmark / Norway, Byzantium, Russia / Kievan Rus all gain a crown if they conquer specific territories around their areas. These crowns will give +3 authority and +1 command and are well worth getting.

[moosey]

yes, i forgot about those, the crowns are really good to get. speaking of ancillaries, sometimes youre generals will get some +authority ancillaries (biographer etc...) so you should transfer them to youre prince or king to maximise their influence.

Piety i find doesnt have a huge impact on the game (apart from inquisition) i read that a high piety general will keep a very religious settlement happier but in my experience youre better off with a few extra chivalry points. It is however very dangerous to have a family full of unholy blasphemers when the inquisition comes to town, i once lost half of my family members that way.

[Musthavename]

Actually strangely i've never have an inquisitor do anything in my SS games. I once had about 3 inquisitors running around my lands with 2 or less piety Generals, and they didn't touch them! Just wandered around aimlessly.

[ginger_hammer]

Does a prince's loyalty turn into Authority when they become king? Or is this a separate trait that just ends up in the same place? (as in kings don't show their loyalty and all others don't show Authority).

re: inquisitors - they seem to have been nerfed somewhat from vanilla as I used to fear them but now thay very rarely succeed against even very low piety generals, and are pretty easy to assisinate.

[Musthavename]

Does a prince's loyalty turn into Authority when they become king? Or is this a separate trait that just ends up in the same place? (as in kings don't show their loyalty and all others don't show Authority).

re: inquisitors - they seem to have been nerfed somewhat from vanilla as I used to fear them but now thay very rarely succeed against even very low piety generals, and are pretty easy to assisinate.

No. Loyalty and Authority are completely different, its just Kings don't have Loyalty (after all, they're the King, they can't rebel), and everyone else can't have Authority. As an example, in one campaign a Prince with max loyalty became a King with 3 Authority. My next Prince had about 5 loyalty but upon being crowned (and he was even a Regent, so he didn't get the +3 from the faction leader trait), had max Authority instantly.

[ginger_hammer]

No. Loyalty and Authority are completely different, its just Kings don't have Loyalty (after all, they're the King, they can't rebel), and everyone else can't have Authority. As an example, in one campaign a Prince with max loyalty became a King with 3 Authority. My next Prince had about 5 loyalty but upon being crowned (and he was even a Regent, so he didn't get the +3 from the faction leader trait), had max Authority instantly.

Ah ok, thought as much.
So does this mean that you cannot tell a Prince's potential Authority before becoming king?
How much effect does Authority have? I've never noticed any real difference between a max/none authority king. Does it just effect general's loyality?

[Jarus]

IIRC Faction Leaders can get Authority if you use assassins successfully a lot. You also get Dread as a result, though.

[Mjr Phil]

About piety:
So how do diplomats defend against Inquisitors? Only on their diplomacy traits?

[Musthavename]

Actually, while browsing the online database for traits. I found one trait that gave +10 piety to spies, princesses, merchants & assassins (which is ofcourse hidden). I'm assuming thats there to help them defend against them.

[caralampio]

All agents get 1 piety upon creation. I suppose there are other things that will modify their piety, but you'll never know since it is hidden. According to the manual, assassins have very low piety...

Another thing is that you can't hide from God's justice! I once had an inquisitor develop an interest in one of my spies. Now a spy is supposedly stealthy and disappears from sight if you move him away. But the inquisitor would follow my spy wherever he went, across borders, across mountains. After two failed trials, he got him on the third (after the agent got tired of running away and thought that the inquisitor had forgotten about him).

[htothehh]

OK, so Kings should be sent out onto the battle field rather than having him sit in the capital being the adultress that he is.

[Bacon!]

OK, so Kings should be sent out onto the battle field rather than having him sit in the capital being the adultress that he is.

i suppose, unless its a very advanced city

[moosey]

you can usually tell what authority a prince will have from his traits remembering to give him +2 he automatically gets for being a faction leader. I tend to leave my king where he is unless i particularly dislike him, i tend to have my prince doing most of my planned battles to build them up for the future.

[Jarus]

Lotsa assassins helps, like I said.

[obbob]

probably the fastest way to get authority is to take a bunch of diplomats and bribe anyone they see. They'll probably fail, and will lose like all their influence. But your faction leader will get two political traits (political animal and politically powerful) and the Total Deceiver trait, which can in total increase for i think 7-9 authority.

However, you may get some dread traits like mean leader.

[Toonces]

So... as to the unanswered part of the original poster's question... what exactly does Authority do? I'm really curious about this myself... My hunch would be that it acts as the loyalty value of captains but my intuition and actual implementation aren't always the same.