Spies [Archive]

dgfred

08-11-2005, 14:48

Spies are very important.
They increase hapiness in your provinces are decrease it in provinces of other players. When put in enemy provinces, they can inform you about enemy's plans (for example: The Spanish are mobilising a major attack. The Almohads appear to be the target.). They can organise trial to your generals (a good way to eliminate them if they are unloyal), find vices to enemy generals (my spies once found enemy general to be assassinator (hapiness -40), which caused a rebellion in his province). If you are besieging a castle, they can try to open a gate (useful ehen you're besieging a Citadel with a small garrison)

Terrific stuff to know! :smart: Thanks! ~:cheers: I keep them in all my
provinces and some in the AIs, but they seem to wacked very easily ~:confused: . I'll have to try the gate opening deal ~:cool: .

Knight Templar

08-11-2005, 14:58

Terrific stuff to know! :smart: Thanks! ~:cheers: I keep them in all my
provinces and some in the AIs, but they seem to wacked very easily ~:confused: . I'll have to try the gate opening deal ~:cool: .

Thanks ~:cool:
If you don't have VI, then the spies are great (mine destoyed the enemy faction by causing massive rebellions, I moved 15 spies from one region to another). However, after I installed VI, I found 9/10 of my spies will be killed by enemy bodyguards if I put them in enemy province with Border Fort :furious3:

ichi

08-11-2005, 18:27

That was nice response Knight Templar ; in addition it seems that spies help root out enemy spies and assassins as they enter your provinces. I keep a spy in every province once I get built up.

ichi :bow:

ps nice choice for an avatar

Knight Templar

08-11-2005, 19:36

Thanks ~:cool:

EatYerGreens

08-12-2005, 03:40

My policy with both assassins and spies, especially when they are still being built at valour 0 is to keep them policing home territory until they've made enough captures of enemies to get them up to at least valour 3 before risking them on foreign soil.

This is because, by the time you have the tech to build them, most of the opposing factions will have spent the piffling amount of time and money required for BF's on every territory they own.

Spies gain most of their valour stars for triggering revolts and you'll have a long wait for the 'policing' captures I described above, so it is worth taking the risk and sending 0-star agents into enemy lands.

Just remember to use your Emissaries or priests to do the reconnaisance beforehand, check for BF's in the target province and along the route from the nearest port to it. Do not use the agent 'autopilot' and make all your moves manually. The auto-routing often makes whacky detours, which typically land your spy in an unexpected place with a port - and a BF!!!

From what I've been told, an agent within an enemy province with a BF, or a defending agent, is basically getting a die-roll against them for every year they stay put.

Border watch towers are equivalent to a 1* counter-agent
Border Forts are equivalent to a 2* counter-agent
The other faction's defending agents may have even higher valour ratings but you can't even see them.

The valour of secret policeman or BF versus your agent is probably resolved like a combat but the result is a capture probability.

At valour 0 : - probably less than 5% chance of surviving longer than one turn
At valour 1 : - better percentage chance but I don't know the figures
... : - probably exponential progression in survival chances
At valour 4 :- probably approaching 90-95% survival chances

Basically, no matter how high the valour rating, there is still a risk that they will be caught, if left hanging around long enough.

Cumulative probabilites are tricky to explain but say a V4 spy in a BF'd province has a 5% (1 in 20) probability of being captured per year and stays put for 10 consecutive years. If you rolled a 20-sided die 10 times, the odds of getting any specific number at least once is actually about 31% and the odds of not getting the required number are about 60%. Yes this doesn't add up to a hundred because other, less probable possibilities exist, like getting the required number 2, 3, 4, 5 times over and so on. The odds of all possibilities added together adds up to 100%.

The BF, or policeman only needs one successful 'die-roll' to kill him so, over a 10 year period, your agent has a 60% chance of surviving into a second decade but a 31% chance of being caught before the first ten years are up. That could mean he's caught in the very first year....

For comparison, if a valour 0 agent, has a 5% chance of surviving the first year, his odds of surviving two years are 0.25% and surviving three years 0.01% (1 in 10,000). So save your money or wait until you've built the more advanced spy buildings.

Worse yet, the business of 'valour transference' means that, should your hypothetically capture-proof V4 spy be captured by a lowly V1 enemy faction policeman, however long the odds of that might seem, the enemy agent acquires a big valour boost (fortunately BF's don't acquire valour in this way). Probably not up to valour 5, in this case, though. I'd guess that transference never makes them any better than the agent they caught. If you ever see one of your home agents jump in valour by two or three stars in one go, it's because they caught a big fish...

If I'm right, catching a long string of all-V0 enemies will take 1,2,4,8,16,32 catches to move them up the valour rankings.

HTH

Dutch_guy

08-12-2005, 11:53

well thanks for your tips guy's , and my compliments on your post EYG - very informative :bow:

well I'm going to use the spies to start a revolt in England which is held by the French.
Also I heard in my game that some generals were planning a Civil War, and thanks to my spy I managed to thwart them by assasinating the unloyal ones ;)

:balloon2:

yesdachi

08-12-2005, 13:37

My policy with both assassins and spies, especially when they are still being built at valour 0 is to keep them policing home territory until they've made enough captures of enemies to get them up to at least valour 3 before risking them on foreign soil.
EYG, have you had any experiences where you get a spy in an enemy province before they build a BF and leave them there? Or a province that was yours and was taken over by an enemy? Doesn’t the BF only stop/attempt to kill spies and assassins when they enter?

dgfred

08-12-2005, 18:12

Dutch_guy

08-12-2005, 19:04

I thought spies got valor when they succesfully discover vices or frame one of your disloyal generals

:balloon2:

EatYerGreens

08-12-2005, 20:26

EYG, have you had any experiences where you get a spy in an enemy province before they build a BF and leave them there?

Not since starting with MTW. I did have this happen in a Shogun game though. It was a 1* or 2* agent, sitting pretty in a BWT territory for some time, then suddenly he's reported captured. Either I had an emissary in there as well, for an immediate check, or I sent one pronto and found the BF's had been put up.

I've certainly seen agents survive BF's while chasing down a target but never for very long.

In MTW, the other day, I lost TWO 4-star assassins on the same turn, chasing different targets. Soft targets, at that. I was keen to hit them as their missions were to arrange alliances I wanted to thwart. No other faction had the tech for mobile agents capable of out-valouring them and none of my priests have been whacked yet, so I suspect it was the humble BF's which got them both.

Or a province that was yours and was taken over by an enemy?

I've not fallen foul of this yet but if you told me you'd seen it happen, I'd believe you. Say your agent was valour 0 and the province had BF's on it. Their attack will degrade the BF's to BWTs but they're still good enough to immediately capture your low-valour agent.

I only haven't seen this as I have a tendency to keep my borders with enemies limited to BWTs, so if the province is ever lost, they will be degraded to zilch and they will have to spend an extra year (or two) rebuilding to spy on me and protect itself. The length of any siege gives time for spy-spamming as he can't build anything until the siege is over.

Additionally, a V2 agent within BWTs and an enemy across the border gets a better chance of being credited with captures of incoming agents. They're my 'training zones'.

Doesn’t the BF only stop/attempt to kill spies and assassins when they enter?

I've seen this point raised before and I deliberately avoided mentioning it as I don't know the answer for certain. Referring back to to the Shogun descriptions, it describes BWTs as "acting as a spy in all neighbouring province and also a counterspy within the province". BF's are just one level better at the counterspying business.

In Shogun, at least, I vaguely recall that an enemy BF would stop my own BWTs from seeing certain things in their province. I could see the fort icon but not the list of buildings within it. I could see the size of the army stack but not the mix of units within it. This motivates the player to send in an emissary for a closer look, always with the risk of them being whacked. I'm not seeing anything like this information-blocking effect in MTW so the motivations for building BF's of my own is reduced to just protecting against agents.

Whether your agent crosses a border or stays still in the province, it will still be a 'die roll' on every turn, AFAIC. I don't have any reason to think that, once safely in through a border, the agent will be able to sit there indefinitely.

Of course, if you've ever seen this happen (eg V3+ agent not caught by BFs for 50 years on the trot) then I'd be very happy to hear about it.

EatYerGreens

08-12-2005, 20:53

If you already have a border-fort does it benefit to also have the spies in
the province? If the border-fort gets the credit for the capture/kill of the
enemy agent, how do your spies get more stars? Do they just wait to knock
off a weak emissary or what? ~:confused:

Spies might be able to report on things like a general preparing to start a Civil War and things like that but, if its captures and getting valour stars onto green agents which you're after then probably not.

I'd regard BWTs as being like a valour-1 spy/assassin and BF's as valour 2.
If this is better than the rating for your trainee agent, then the likelihood is that the BFs will always get given the credit. Train them in a province with no BWTs at all until up to V2, then in a BWT province until V3. After that, they will have better odds of making a catch in a BF province.

Remember that the enemy may have high valour agents (eg Guy de Gisbourne) roving about and even BFs will have relatively low odds of catching them. So there is still a motivation for having an agent within a BF province, but he'd better be high-starred himself, to stand a chance.

I'd be sorely tempted to have such a highly rated agent out on enemy turf, causing trouble to gain further stars. It depends on your priorities. If guarding your latest high-tech development, or that stash of crusade markers you wanted to keep concealed, then they're better kept at home.

Another thing to consider is that a BWT or BF is like one die-roll against an agent. For each extra spy/assassin in position, you are, in effect, getting additional die-rolls against them on every turn. High valour enemies have low odds of being captured but multiple die-rolls against them increases your chances by an amount that will make it worth bothering. If money's no object, then I don't see why not.

When my spy production first comes online, there's always some conflict between the desire to cause a ruckus on enemy lands (my Ems/Priests will be used to survey for provs lacking BWTs/BFs first) and the need for home security. Gradually I'll reach a point where all home territories have at least one spy/assassin on guard, I may have a handful on enemy soil and then I'll stop further production until I suffer losses which need replacing.

The bulk of my actual recon-spying work is done by the priests and emissaries. CA should have altered their properties such that Em/Pst/Princess could only get 'low resolution' info - army size but not unit mixes or unit leader V&Vs etc, so there's more motivation to build and use 'proper' spies - many of which will get caught more often than not!

So far, the only extras you get with spies on enemy lands is proper info about mobilisations for an attack, who is to be attacked and the thing about revealing secret vices of enemy generals.

It would be great if they could also reveal an equivalent of the unit training and building under construction window you see in your own provs. One for the wishlist...

EatYerGreens

08-12-2005, 20:59

I thought spies got valor when they succesfully discover vices or frame one of your disloyal generals

:balloon2:

That's correct but it's only a part of what they do.

As described in previous posts, they also gain stars for enemy agent captures in friendly territory, exactly the way that your assassins can and, if the captured agent has high valour, they'll get a big stars boost to themselves.

Reports of enemy mobilisations and forthcoming attacks don't gain them any stars but are useful in formulating your own plans or when to time your own next attack.

I've never pulled off the opening castle gates trick myself, so I don't know if they get stars for this or not. For now, I suspect not but would be glad to hear news to the contrary.

dgfred

08-12-2005, 21:17

EYG--- Thanks for the excellent tips and info.! :scholar:

yesdachi

08-12-2005, 21:21

I've not fallen foul of this yet but if you told me you'd seen it happen, I'd believe you.
I did have this happen to me a week or so ago. I left my spy there just as an experiment and removed most of my army, I knew the HRE was going to take the province next but I thought that I would get some info from a spy left there. The spy never was captured but he also never told me anything. I took the province back about 25 yrs later and didn’t gain or loose any *’s. I didn’t know if this was a fluke or the rule.

I kind of think that the spies and assassins are somewhat underpowered vs. the BF. It shouldn’t be that hard to sneak into a province. Japan was more militant with all the checkpoints and such but I thought Europe was a bit wilder in the middle ages.

Sorry to hear about your TWO 4-star assassins getting caught in the same turn. It takes a long time for me to get ONE of them to that level I would have been totally :furious3: over it.

dgfred

08-12-2005, 21:46

I currently have a 5-star sittting in Provence in my HRE game ~:cool: . I'm
taking it easy with him until I find just the right target ~;) :mask:

CountMRVHS

08-12-2005, 23:31

I've thought of ways to make Spies a more useful addition to the game. One thing that would be very simple would be to just remove the ability to make Watchtowers or Border Forts altogether. That way, you could see the size of an army in a province next to you, and see whether it's a fort, keep, castle or etc., but you wouldn't be able to see every single building and unit the way you can now with even a simple system of watchtowers. With no towers, spies could move around much easier and have a bigger impact.

I think spies are definitely the hardest strategic unit to use effectively on "offense", for a couple of reasons: Usually, you want them to cause a rebellion in an enemy province, right? Well, it can take several turns for that to happen, and most spies immediately die upon so much as entering a province with a BF. Second, whereas Assassins can get valor relatively easily, by preying on emissaries, priests, and low-level generals, Spies take longer to get valor. A 4 or 5 star assassin is fairly easy to train if you're careful, but it's quite rare to get a spy up to the 4 star range, for me anyway. The only time I can get that to happen is to hope Portugal doesn't have any BFs, and then drop a spy in and watch rebellion after rebellion, each of which gets a star for my spy. But with assassins, you can get them in and out of provinces with BFs because they're only there for a turn at most, they've got the valor to handle it, they do their dirty work, and they get out.

Of course, if you disabled WTs and BFs entirely, you'd still be able to see every detail of a province with a priest or emissary, but these agents in general would become much more important. Ideally, you'd want to bring *some* kind of strategic agent with your invading armies, just so when battle was joined you'd be able to see the composition of the enemy army (in VI). Even Princesses would have a greater use in this way. Plus, it just seems more medieval to use your daughter as a pawn to tell you just who is leading that enemy army, and just what their vices are, rather than relying on something silly like a watchtower. You'd also need spies on your home turf; no more BFs to protect from assassins! So maybe in this way, spies would get valor faster....

Hmm.... think I may try this and see how it works. My only misgiving is that it might make spies and assassins *too* powerful. I'll see what I come up with.

m52nickerson

08-12-2005, 23:56

I think spies are just fine to keep your provences happy. Later in the game (passed the 60% mark) you need spies or you are going to have more rebellions then you can deal with. That alone makes them worth the money. Plue you can have a group of spies follow your army stacks. That way you can move stacks out of a newly taken provence quicker.

Geezer57

08-13-2005, 00:29

I've never pulled off the opening castle gates trick myself, so I don't know if they get stars for this or not. For now, I suspect not but would be glad to hear news to the contrary.
I've used a spy to open Castle gates numerous times, and can confirm that they do valor-up when sucessful. By the same token, low-valor spies die in the attempt quite frequently. ~D

By the way, there seems to be an increasing difficulty in accomplishing this task with higher-level fortifications. So the low-valor spy that easily opens a Keep, will fail miserably when attempting a Fortress.

EatYerGreens

08-13-2005, 07:33

Thanks to Dutch_guy and dgfred for your compliments on the posts. Glad to be of help.

Thanks also to yesdachi and Geezer57 for confirming those things I hadn't been able to test for myself.

@CountMRVHS

Intersting suggestion to remove BWTs/BFs completely. Let us know how it goes.

If making them unbuildable proves problematic, or crashes the game somehow, you could simply alter their price or their build times.

In Shogun, BWTs took four seasons and BFs took an additional eight seasons. This can seem like an eternity, if it's you who wants them and there's lots of combat action going on in the meantime.

I'm not suggesting changing the MTW builds to similar numbers of years though, because this will badly handicap the AI factions in their building programmes, since they'll always attempt to build these as one of the first items in a newly conquered land.

Another approach would be to make BF construction conditional on Castle or Citadel level of fortification. In other words, make it such that the tech level for building spies is achieved some years before the countermeasures are developed. This represents a more logical 'evolution' of the medieval world.

The fun part is it means that there could be a period of some years where there's a lot of mayhem and rebellions breaking out as even the small factions, like Aragon, may find themselves not requiring new troops, or unable to support more but with timeslots and money to spare for training agents...
Portugal may become an unconquerable hell-hole, where not even BWTs will stay standing for long. ~;)

Procrustes

08-13-2005, 08:02

I've used a spy to open Castle gates numerous times, and can confirm that they do valor-up when sucessful. By the same token, low-valor spies die in the attempt quite frequently. ~D

By the way, there seems to be an increasing difficulty in accomplishing this task with higher-level fortifications. So the low-valor spy that easily opens a Keep, will fail miserably when attempting a Fortress.

I use spies for this whenever I can - it's great to get a province with all the buildings intact - even ports!

The higher level forts are harder, it's true. One trick is to wait until the fort is about to fall - the more years it's been besieged the better chance your spy will have. I also tend to hit the fort with two or three spies at once - cheesy, but your chances go up accordingly.

Roark

08-15-2005, 02:29

Excellent contributions here, guys.

Another offensive way to use spies is to tip a faction over the edge into civil war when you are attacking them.

When you attack and defeat two provinces in one year, the target faction leader takes a big hit of disloyalty from his generals. If you have flooded all his OTHER provinces with your own spies, you can get spectacular results inciting civil war and rebellion, after which you are only faced with a whole bunch of isolated, bribable armies instead of a concerted force.

I build Bawdyhouse upgrades as soon as possible. They are essential to my style of conquest.

yesdachi

08-15-2005, 13:42

Of course, if you disabled WTs and BFs entirely,
the early boost to happiness would be really missed but it might be more realistic!?!?

Dutch_guy

08-15-2005, 15:59

Another offensive way to use spies is to tip a faction over the edge into civil war when you are attacking them.

When you attack and defeat two provinces in one year, the target faction leader takes a big hit of disloyalty from his generals. If you have flooded all his OTHER provinces with your own spies, you can get spectacular results inciting civil war and rebellion, after which you are only faced with a whole bunch of isolated, bribable armies instead of a concerted force.

I really like this Idea, I'm now going to try getting the English and the Danes to re-emmerge in French held territories and maybe also try getting them in a all destrying civil war, so far I managed to get over 3 rebellions in French lands , which were held by the English and the Danes , but no re-emmergence - still not giving up hope though - I''m really loving my 8 , 3 star spies in Denmark. ~:)

:balloon2:

dgfred

08-15-2005, 17:25

An interesting thing happened to me in my HRE campaign ~:eek: . I had to
rid an Italian ship from around Provence so I could Crusade to Palestine ~;) ,
but I forgot I had been at war with them about 8 or so years before, thus
I was excommunicated :furious3: . So since the Pope had NO stars or
abilities I thought I could whack him. :idea: . I then sent a 2 star assassin
and a 5 star assassin in the same turn- the 2 star had a 34% chance to kill.
I thought the 2 star would fail and then the 5 star would knock him off ~;) .
Oh well, the 2 star killed him and the 5 star was himself killed ~:confused: .
Really hard to swallow, but a kill is a kill I guess, even though I lost my 5-star
hero :bigcry: .

Roark

08-16-2005, 00:25

This is really naughty, but if I lose any assassin over 4 stars to something as annoying as a border fort, I consider reloading the game (if there is a very recent autosave). They take so long to build up, and it just boils my blood when they get wasted and they're not even putting the knife into someone in the process.

Of course, if one owns Syria, good assassins are a dime a dozen. If you build a rookery in Syria, you've got VALOUR 5 assassins being spawned like sewer rats.

EatYerGreens

08-16-2005, 23:06

I'm playing Byz at the moment, so espionage is a major part of the mix, if I'm to 'role-play' the whole thing properly.

I have Syria and have had to spend several years to rebuild from fort-less up to Tavern level. I knew the assassin valour bonus is 'secret' (as in not marked on the province parchment but it seems well known to regular players) but it still took me by surprise when they came out at 2* (three of them, so far). Nearly every other province bonus is +1 and that's what I had expected.

Rhodes was going to be my agent 'base' but Syria allows two production streams together. Rhodes is shortly to train its first spy and I'm up to 1186.

Given my trading income and military strength, it seems like overkill to use agents too but it's a part of the game that I enjoy indulging myself with. :devilish: One of my major rivals currently has no border with my lands and I want to maintain trading with the faction sandwiched by us. Agents are the only way to affect factions who are a potential threat but who are militarily out of your reach...

Marquis de Said

08-17-2005, 01:07

EYG, have you had any experiences where you get a spy in an enemy province before they build a BF and leave them there? Or a province that was yours and was taken over by an enemy? Doesn’t the BF only stop/attempt to kill spies and assassins when they enter?

If a spy enters a province without a border fort, and later the BF is built he will have the normal chance of getting killed. I've lost 5-star spies that way. When I checked the following year, the AI had built a border fort.

I know this doesn't directly answer your second question, but it reminded me of a couple of instances where I've lost a spy in a province with a BF that I had just taken over that turn. For example, in the same year, I sent a spy and an invading army to, say, Constantinople which had a BF. After ending the year and winning the battle I received a message telling me that my spy had been caught by enemy bodyguards.

Marquis de Said

08-17-2005, 01:14

Careful training and about 30 - 40 rebellions, revealed vices, treason trials and warnings about attacks can eventually produce guys like this.

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v497/said_dakash/6StarSpy.jpg

My name's al-Ikhshid, Hisham al-Ikhshid.

EatYerGreens

08-17-2005, 03:33

Kewl.

My bet is that it'll take the 65th event, or several 'big-fish' enemy agent captures to get him his 7th star.

Based on geometric progression, six stars means 32 successful events.
I guess that enemy agents are worth so many points, according to their star rating, such that a caught 3-star enemy is worth 4 'points' even though it's only one event. I could be wrong though.

It's risky to second-guess how CA implemented it but you could also apply the geometric progression to an agent's capture probability, with each extra star halving the likelihood.

Say, for the sake of argument, that it's 95% chance of capture at level zero, versus BF's. Halving 0.95 six times in a row (ie {0.5^6}) takes it down to 0.0148 (1.48%), or about one year in 67.

Not utterly uncatchable but very comfortable odds.

Roark

08-17-2005, 04:52

littlebktruck

08-17-2005, 04:55

One way I've found of safely training spies is to hire a useless merc unit. In my game i've used a unit of turcoman foot. This unit has exceptionally low loyalty, so it is easy for low valour spies to get the leader executed. If I have a particularly bad run and the leader gets very high spy resistance, I'll just disband him and get another.

EatYerGreens

08-17-2005, 05:47

The "extra points" apply to generals and faction leaders too, IIRC. Remember that bloke who came on the forum and said his assassin went up 2 ranks after one kill (I think it was Guy of Gisbourne vs a V6 pope)?

Yep, that makes perfect sense to me. I don't remember the actual message but could search it soon enough.

I neglected to mention generals and leaders only because I rarely bother attacking them myself. That is mainly due to the rotten odds you get offered even with a 4-star agent against a lowly 1*, 2* target. I've had it up to the eyeballs with "83% chance of success" missions failing miserably on a suspiciously regular basis (on home soil too, so BWT/BF not a factor) so, anything below 50:50 I consider to be a potential waste of a perfectly good agent. Typically, I have my best agents as leader/heir/top-general's bodyguard, until a worthy mission target gets sighted abroad, so I'm doubly aggrieved by the loss of any of them, especially against supposedly 'soft' targets.

It's interesting you described that as VALOUR-6 Pope, not COMMAND-6.
I need to research into this more deeply as valour and Command stars do not always correlate. In previous threads, people used the words 'stars' and 'valour' interchangeably when talking about their agents but for generals and leaders they have distinct and different meanings.

Thinking about it, assuming Guy was 4*, no previous kills, thus 8 points and Pope was 6V, or 6*, signifying "32 victories, nil defeats" (see footnote) and thus 32 points, Guy moves up to 8+32(+1??) = 40 (41?) points, making him jump from 4* to 6* in one go. Other permutations are possible but a jump from 5* to 7* is that much harder to explain, unless both Guy and the Pope were just a few points shy of receiving their next star at the time. It's been a while since I've had GdeG and forget what rating he starts at. I'm convinced it's 5* but could be wrong.

Footnote:
Shogun players will recall how daimyos/generals showed a tally of battles fought, won and lost on their info parchment. Thus you could see how close a target was to losing a star, should you defeat them soon, or to gaining a star making it imperative that you make an assassin attack soon, before the odds against it succeeding drop down yet another notch. No such luxury in MTW/VI.

Roark

08-18-2005, 00:19

Come to think of it, it may have been on the ezyboard...

I can't find the post here. ~:confused:

dgfred

08-18-2005, 00:53

I've tried to keep 2 or 3 star assassins and a spy/bishop/border fort in each
province after reading great post here from you guys ~;) . Although I get the
messages of enemy assassins/spies getting killed off in the empire ~D , none
of my assassins or spies seem to be getting any credit for it. Also if I move
an assassins or its target moves somewhere with a border fort in the province, they are dead meat ~:confused: . What are your thoughts on it?

Joshwa

08-18-2005, 01:04

It's damn annoying that's what! I always check what the target's mission is. Sometimes, an emmisary can be just passing through on his way somewhere else, and it would be suicide to send your man trekking through europe after him. It the mission is just spying, however, its a good chance theyll be staying put

Roark

08-18-2005, 03:06

Border forts steal potential valour from your counterspying agents. Don't build them in thoroughfares.

Zild

08-18-2005, 11:14

Can anybody give any more info on the Syria valor bonus for spies, please? In my many years of playing and visiting these forums, I'd never actually heard about it!

Are there any other such 'hidden bonuses'?

Any idea why they are hidden?

Knight Templar

08-18-2005, 11:39

Syria has valor bonus for training assassins. No province has valor bonus for spies.

EatYerGreens

08-19-2005, 00:39

Border forts steal potential valour from your counterspying agents. Don't build them in thoroughfares.

I've repeated this advice many times. I only wish I could have done it in as few words. ~;)

To expand slightly, ports are like magnets to all travelling agents. Use one of your own as a 'training zone' and, at most put a BWT on it, since BWT plus counterspy (ideally, better than 1*) means two chances of making a capture.

As enemy Emissaries pass through your port, enemy assassins may follow a year behind them (you know what it's like when you're the one on the chase). Behave as if you were trying to protect your own Emissary from a 'tail' and move your trainee assassin (or, optionally, your best one for further advancement) to that port on that turn. He should make any potential catch the following year.

Also, I tend to avoid putting BFs on any province bordering on enemy/neutral/allied territory. In the event that they captured such a BF'd province off me, even with 'facilities damaged' that just gifts them a free BWT to immediately spy into my interior provinces and advances their building programme by one year, assuming I'm somehow unable to regain it rapidly.

Not forgetting that a 0* spy/assassin of yours, within the lost province, might be caught immediately, if BWT's were still up. IIRC, facility damages aren't inflicted until the castle/fort finally falls, so it's not even safe to send in no-star spies to trigger a populist revolt until whatever BWTs or BFs you had built are finally broken down.

EatYerGreens

08-19-2005, 01:02

Also if I move an assassins or its target moves somewhere with a border fort in the province, they are dead meat ~:confused: . What are your thoughts on it?

BFs are equivalent to a Valour-2 spy/assassin and I've a feeling the odds are stacked in favour of the defending counterspy, such that 2* spy isn't good enough to beat BF's. I'd say get them to 3*, as a minimum, before letting them stray into enemy territory.

WHen the target and your assassin start the turn in the same province and you order the attack, sometimes you find that, after End Year, you find the target has moved and your assassin is still where he was. If you see that, just pick him up and drop him, to cancel the mission. He has achieved the objective of getting the enemy agent off your lands. Rather than risk an almost certain loss, in a now pointless pursuit, just set him back to counterspying.

The AI does appear to 'cheat' in that it will leave an Emissary/Priest on spying duty and not move them for years, then you move your assassin into the province and order an attack. Suddenly they decide to bugger off and suck you into the BF trap. Where no port is involved, they always manage to keep one province ahead and don't stop moving again until your agent is dead. Evidently, it knows what you're doing! With ports present, it's the same result, only quicker, since they know where all the 'safe' ports are located.

Here's an example of a method I found to work just about infallibly (only exceptions being failures by 0* vs 0* on 86% chance of success).

Enemy target is in Naples, my territory, which has a port. It thinks it's safe due to BWTs and ability to do the port-escape trick.
My assassin is in any one of my other ports. I do not move him to Naples then drop on the target, I pick him up where he is and drop him on the target. He will move on autopilot and make the attack. Port to port is unambiguously a direct route (overland they take seemingly crazy paths). Mission success after end year, since the AI didn't see it coming and hadn't planned to move out that turn. If they did move, the attack 'misses' and can be cancelled at that point and, being my province, he doesn't get caught.
Even if other easy targets are in Naples, I move that assassin out to another home port and use a different one for the next attack.
Alternate the attacks in this manner until the Pope stops sending his Ems/Bishops/Inquisitors onto my turf.

I got a pair rapidly up from 0* to 4* in this manner but the game got its own back when I ventured to let both of them out of friendly territory for the first time, in pursuit of alliance missions and lost both of them on the same turn, having passed through maybe two BF ports on the way.
:furious3:

Roark

08-19-2005, 01:06

EYG: I try to be succinct, because I'm posting from work. (Naughty naughty...)

Kudos to you, though mate. Your thorough explanations have resolved many an issue for me concerning game mechanics. Keep up the good work.

Can anybody give any more info on the Syria valor bonus for spies, please? In my many years of playing and visiting these forums, I'd never actually heard about it!

Are there any other such 'hidden bonuses'?

Any idea why they are hidden?

All assassins trained in Syria start with 2 stars, plus any upgrades you give them (via Alehouse, Drinking Den and/or Rookery).

My guess is that this is supposed to be representative of the presence of the Old Man of the Mountain, effectively the "Grandmaster" of the Hashashin. Nasty guys.

dgfred

08-19-2005, 04:15

EYG: I try to be succinct, because I'm posting from work. (Naughty naughty...)

Kudos to you, though mate. Your thorough explanations have resolved many an issue for me concerning game mechanics. Keep up the good work.

All assassins trained in Syria start with 2 stars, plus any upgrades you give them (via Alehouse, Drinking Den and/or Rookery).

My guess is that this is supposed to be representative of the presence of the Old Man of the Mountain, effectively the "Grandmaster" of the Hashashin. Nasty guys.

I second that on the Kudos! Thanks EYG. ~:cheers:

Knight Templar

08-19-2005, 10:53

Also if I move an assassins or its target moves somewhere with a border fort in the province, they are dead meat ~:confused: . What are your thoughts on it?

Today I sent 30 assassins, mostly ranks 1 and 2, three of them had rank 3, in province with BF to kill Sicilian king. Result: 1 assassin caught while trying to kill the king, 1 assassin managed to assassinate king ~:cheers: ~:cheers: , 25 assassins killed by BF :furious3: :furious3: :furious3: and 3 assassins left. In total.......4/30 alive

dgfred

08-19-2005, 14:39

Today I sent 30 assassins, mostly ranks 1 and 2, three of them had rank 3, in province with BF to kill Sicilian king. Result: 1 assassin caught while trying to kill the king, 1 assassin managed to assassinate king ~:cheers: ~:cheers: , 25 assassins killed by BF :furious3: :furious3: :furious3: and 3 assassins left. In total.......4/30 alive

Holy mackeral ~:eek: , I knew it was bad, but not that bad ~:confused: .

Are you testing on normal, hard or expert?

Knight Templar

08-19-2005, 16:05

Holy mackeral ~:eek: , I knew it was bad, but not that bad ~:confused: .

Are you testing on normal, hard or expert?

I was playing on normal

yesdachi

08-19-2005, 17:34

4/30 alive
Training cost vs. result is still a good deal for a dead king. right?

yesdachi

08-19-2005, 17:41

I second that on the Kudos! Thanks EYG. ~:cheers:
Kudos from me too!

and i also post from work. sshhhhh, alt tab. ~D

EatYerGreens

08-20-2005, 01:17

Many thanks for your appreciation guys. :bow:

But it's not over yet!

Knight Templar's post blows a rather l a r g e hole in my thinking about how BF's operate, in terms of how many catch attempts can be made per turn. I would have expected that 'swamping' like that would have allowed almost all to get through unhindered.

Call me over-cautious but it would never have occurred to me to send that many agents all on the same mission so I'd have missed the opportunity he took to come out with some interesting and very conclusive data.

It seems like there's a capture 'die roll' against every single agent you send into the province and any that do survive the journey have an additional die roll for the mission itself. As we see, one got through the BF but the King killed him while defending himself. That variation might never have shown up if only five had been used, for example.

The one unknown factor is whether the target king had his own counterspy, who succeeded, 25 times over. If so, there is now a rather nasty 5 or 6 star agent at large in that game (valour transference of that many 1s, 2s & 3s), unless it was faction elimination time?

I'd love to have 30 agents to spare in my current campaign.
In fact, I'd love to have 30 agents. ~D All in good time, I suppose but it'll be a long while before I can come close to testing on this scale. Hopefully I'll remember to hang onto a gamesave where I'm well stocked with assassins and there are still faction leaders left to attack.

Kudos to KT for sharing that info with us, not to mention trying it in the first place.

Patron

08-20-2005, 10:03

I never use spies, they never seem to do anything. I once put 40 spies in 1 province, most of them valour 3 and it never went into rebellion. They very rarely manage to reveal a general's vices or open a castle's gates, because they are either killed by BFs or just fail over and over again and when they do they usually reveal pride and create jedi princes, or even worse jedi kataphraktoi and boyars.

The only usage for spies I can see is for your own personal pleasure, annoying your generals and for defense. They seem like a more functional replacement for border forts so you don't have to spend a few turns guarding a province after you've conquerred it whilst you build your BF and also once a spy captures loads of assassins you can send it out to attempt to do one of the useless things I mentionned.

How many spies equals the agent capturing power of a BF?

Where do you get all this information about the possibility of success?

Knight Templar

08-20-2005, 13:43

Kudos to KT for sharing that info with us, not to mention trying it in the first place.

Thanks ~:cheers: ~:)

Call me over-cautious but it would never have occurred to me to send that many agents all on the same mission so I'd have missed the opportunity he took to come out with some interesting and very conclusive data.

I'd love to have 30 agents to spare in my current campaign.
In fact, I'd love to have 30 agents. ~D

It was 16-years old Sicilian king, when I killed him I eliminated Sicilians as a faction. I had to be sure he'll be killed.

It seems like there's a capture 'die roll' against every single agent you send into the province and any that do survive the journey have an additional die roll for the mission itself. As we see, one got through the BF but the King killed him while defending himself. That variation might never have shown up if only five had been used, for example.
The one unknown factor is whether the target king had his own counterspy, who succeeded, 25 times over. If so, there is now a rather nasty 5 or 6 star agent at large in that game (valour transference of that many 1s, 2s & 3s), unless it was faction elimination time?

I looked in ex-Sicilian provinces I had occupied and found no Tavern (before the catsle was taken)...
Many times I send 2-star or even 1-star assassin in a province with BF just to do one kill and in the next move I call them back. The BF catches him in 1/5 cases. So I suprised a lot when BF found 5/6 my assassins in case with Sic king.

EatYerGreens

08-21-2005, 01:15

How many spies equals the agent capturing power of a BF?

A 2-star spy ought to be equivalent to it.
Lesser spies have reduced individual chances but you can make up for this with greater numbers. Without solid data, I am unable to say whether two 2-star spies are equally as good as one 2-star.

Where do you get all this information about the possibility of success?

I was referring to the assassination mission screen, where you are told the chances of success and get a choice to abort or proceed.

Advo-san

08-22-2005, 09:24

I m getting the feeling spies are more efficient in captuling enemy agents than border forts. Once I place a spy in a port province, in every turn he smokes out an enemy spy or assassin. I also mass use spies against the enemy general when attacking a province, I got valour lowers every now and then.

EatYerGreens

08-23-2005, 01:21

I m getting the feeling spies are more efficient in captuling enemy agents than border forts.

Certainly so. After 4 captures, they should be up to at least 3-star, which makes them better than a BF, AFAIC.

You're going to need them with high star ratings too. Remember that the AI will have as much success in sneaking their better agents through your BF's as you have getting yours past theirs. So some of your 3-star-plus agents may be better employed patrolling to and fro, on friendly territory.

To the best of my knowledge, BF's do not accrue valour stars in the way that spies and assassins can.

As illustrated by KnightTemplar's example, they are capable of catching a shipload of agents in one go but its capture odds, whilst reasonably good against 1,2 & 3-star agents, will never improve as a consequence of making lots of catches.

At least I hope not! ~:eek: