Heretics & witches

[Herezjarcha]

Hello everyone, my first post here

I play SS 6.1 , I've changed early campaign to 0.5 year per turn. No submods other than this "eye candy" for faction banners.

I'm playing Poland difficulty set to medium, turn 40, not even a single heretic or witch appeared on my lands so far. I could see them few times on other faction's territories, but they never tried to cross the border.

I also can't see many spies or assasins, but maybe it's because I have only one spy. In vanilla Medieval at this point Europe was full of assasins and I wouldn't be alive with so poor intelligence.

Question is: is it the matter of difficulty setting, or maybe AI changes in SS ?

[Rean]

For spies and assasins i think its because you dont have spies because only they can see assasins and other spies. For heretics wait till you go to holy land..Almost every turn from my priest army of about ~40 priests at least 1 of them turned heretic.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

Welcome Herezjarcha....


Dunnow bout the settings having a hand in this....but it seems to me to vary somewhat game to game. Yes In vanilla if your general did not travel with a strong spy/assassin escort he would probably fall to assassin, inquisitor, or Both!!!! Yes I think that the heretics manifest somewhat less in Stainless Steel. {at least in vanilla}.

also I have noticed that if you don't spam assassins/spies the AI doesn't seem to either. Like others say perhaps their still there in force , I just can't see them... you didn't mention the changes in merchants. no longer does the AI hunt your merchants like a scorned lover. Let's not even speak of broken crescent where endless Numbers of level 10 merchants will cross an entire continent just to put your level one merchant out of business...Mumma Mia!!!!...

[Herezjarcha]

Ha!

I just got one heretic

Ok, so it's SS itself. Good, it was a bit annoying in vanilla - some provinces were so crowded I had problems with selecting correct characters


thank you guys

.

[Tetsu]

Gotta love it when my lvl 9 or 10 peity priest goes heretic.. Good thing I have the priest factory in Paris which regularly puts out priests of the same skill level

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

"They will spread their heretical Filth no more!!!!!

[JohnDoe5x5]

SS relies much less on agents than vanilla. And I think this is a good thing, in vanilla every single nation had a ton of agents of all kind, especially merchants.. I needed 10-15 minutes every turn to micro my agents and reload the game if something went wrong Also, the campaign map looked very ugly with that overcrowding.

[JorisofHolland]

You simply need less agents, because the AI uses less agents (or at least, I think it does?)

[gluteus maximus aurelius]

The AI definitely don't seem to be using as many spies/assassins as they did in Vanilla, where heretics are concerned I seem to get them all the time in newly conquered areas, but less so in provinces that I've held for a long time

[JorisofHolland]

High amounts of heresy (in %) increase the changes of spawning heretics/witches, and the changes of (your) priests turning into heretics. Cardinals and priests with more than a certain level of piety (6 or 7) are immune to this.

[hereagain]

really my 6 star cardinal turned into a heretic

[Ichon]

The amount of heresy in a province makes priests of lower piety or with unorthodox traits turn heretic more quickly and early in the game the cardinals most Catholic factions start with can take out witches easily and the AI does good job hunting them down. The further you get into a campaign and also the more bankrupt the AI is I think it puts lower priority on hunting heresy. I've even seen France one campaign which had 2 provinces go almost 90% heretical with 2-3 witches in both provinces.

I've had cardinal turn heretic only once- usually the unorthodox traits have to be really high to overcome the piety level of most cardinals though if the chance of putting a heretic/witch on trial is relatively low I think it might be impossible for a cardinal to be turned during the trial- just he can still turn sitting in a high heresy province.

[JohnDoe5x5]

Hmmm.. speaking of religion, does anyone know what's with the -purity, -unorthodoxy, -violence and other priest traits exactly ? I would really like to know. Also, if you got a thread, all the better.

[Ichon]

As far as I know the -purity makes unorthodox traits more likely which in turn makes heresy more likely. I think the violence and purity also applies to eligibility for cardinal and Pope elevation but totally sure there. I don't know how it works with Imams and Shaman or if they simply don't get some of those traits or if they do it doesn't matter as much.

[JohnDoe5x5]

As far as I know the -purity makes unorthodox traits more likely which in turn makes heresy more likely. I think the violence and purity also applies to eligibility for cardinal and Pope elevation but totally sure there. I don't know how it works with Imams and Shaman or if they simply don't get some of those traits or if they do it doesn't matter as much.

I'm not really convinced, but it makes some sense. Thanx.

[Herezjarcha]

I can see another possible reason for lower amount of agents - there is limit of them! I simply can't recruit more priest than number of provinces with churches I own. There's also limit for spies and merchants, and probably for diplomats too. Anybody knows exact rules?

[Caesar Clivus]

I can see another possible reason for lower amount of agents - there is limit of them! I simply can't recruit more priest than number of provinces with churches I own. There's also limit for spies and merchants, and probably for diplomats too. Anybody knows exact rules?

You are correct. Each church and church upgrade increases the number of priests you can recruit by one. For merchants its the market building tree, diplomats the town hall building tree and for spies and assassins it's the tavern building line

[fumle]

About heretics, i just started a french campaing and then jsut suddenyl in one turn i find one of my cites surrounded by heritics...but they are all from Bulgaria? and they all sucks (not a single level in piety-.-)
I execute on of them and conteniu (sorry my horrible english) my turn and then i find another one coming towards french ground...and thats not it! i found a second one on the march towards my poor catholic lands!
The heretic invasion of France from Bulgari has just begun! who will prevail in this epic battle of religion and faith!
have anyone else experienced a crazy thing like this?

[Caesar Clivus]

fumle: It's because you have RR/RC installed (and it's a bug)

[fumle]

ah thanx, its true i have RR/RC installed. How come i never heard of that bug before?-.- quite embarrasing...sorry wasting you guys time.