Problems with enemy spies

[andrewt]

I'm playing as Venice and am having problems with enemy spies. They're infiltrating my huge cities (Constantinople, Thessalonica and Venice) and causing all sorts of unrest problems. My unrest goes up to 60% on these cities and usually hovers around 20-25%. I'm not sure what causes it to go up to 20-25% but I'm sure it's spies causing it to go up to 60%. I hear the spy entering sound and sometimes see spies going into these settlements on the AI's turn. It's usually followed by a spike in unrest.

I already got into the red a few times. My taxes are at low and I'm building as much happiness/order buildings as possible. It takes a while to build all these buildings, though, and they are expensive. Garrisoning more troops is very expensive as I need to build around 3-4 just to have 5% order. I have around 4 spies on each of those 3 cities and another 4 on Nicaea (almost huge) but they can't catch those enemy spies.

What should I do to catch those enemy spies?

[Quillan]

Station spies of your own in those cities. I'm not sure what the entire cause is, as lots of cities in my empire have 15% unrest no matter what I do, but above that it's spies. A spy will cause 5% unrest for each point of subterfuge he has, so a big bad rating 10 spy will give 50%(!) unrest when he infiltrates a settlement. Build lots of spies. Do you have a Thieves Guild? If you do, build them there since they'll get bonuses to skill. Put 3-4 spies in the city they seem to be targeting, and 1 each in ones that have been popular. You'll eventually get them.

[Werner]

I'm playing as Venice and am having problems with enemy spies. They're infiltrating my huge cities (Constantinople, Thessalonica and Venice) and causing all sorts of unrest problems.

Halarious, thats what I just did to Venice last night. I stocked their cities full of spys and they were already having unrest problems so the riots hit the roof. On top of it I started blowing up all their civil buildings with assasins. Oh man, you'd hate to play me :smash:

To answer your question, recruit your own spys and assasins and keep them around your big cities at all times. Try to build up both of their ratings spying on diplomats or lowly generals. Before long you'll have a spy who has a 6 or 7 rating and an assasin to match. Then when your spy spots another spy, you can use your assasin to kill him. ~:cheers:

[therother]

In RTW, some provinces had a base unrest value reflecting the rebelliousness of the rebels assigned to that province. You'd be afflicted with the penalty (15 or 30%) if your faction was not the of the same ethnicity as the rebels in descr_regions.txt. It seems likely a similar system exists in M2TW, although we don't yet get to see all the necessary files. See here for more details about the situation in RTW.

[andrewt]

I know about the base unrest thing. I think it's been around since the original M:TW. Portugal and other regions in MT:W have base unrest. I don't think any region has higher than 15% in R:TW (entire Iberian peninsula, for example), though I may be mistaken.

I think my problem is that my spies are too weak. I have around 4 spies, but they're all 1-3 stars only.

Oh, and Werner, takes so much on the training tip. I had lots of 1 rating spies gain another rating from spying on the same merchant and princess. Hopefully, 4 2-rating spies has better chance of detecting compared to 4 1-rating spies. I have only so few with 3-4 rating right now. My faction leader in Constantinople also gained a spymaster retinue member doing that.

[suleo]

Train them on other factions' army stacks. Even at level 1, they have a decent chance of success, and at level 2-3 it saturates at 100%.

I had a couple of spy problems after I took Antioch during a crusade. I trained 3 of them and kept sending them against egyptian stacks and diplomats. After a few turns, they were all 4-5 stars and kicked the 2 egyptians spies out of Antioch.

Seriously, spy training is very easy in this game. Can't say the same for assassins though (or priests).

[therother]

I don't think any region has higher than 15% in R:TW (entire Iberian peninsula, for example), though I may be mistaken.Epistolary Richard made a nice little map of the provinces with base unrest in RTW:

http://www.geocities.com/epistolaryrichard/unrest.jpg.

Provinces in red have 30% base unrest. Of course, if we had access to the M2TW files it would all be much simplier. But that's only the six thousandth time I've said that since the game was released... :devilish:

[ConjurerDragon]

Epistolary Richard made a nice little map of the provinces with base unrest in RTW:

http://www.geocities.com/epistolaryrichard/unrest.jpg.

Provinces in red have 30% base unrest. Of course, if we had access to the M2TW files it would all be much simplier. But that's only the six thousandth time I've said that since the game was released... :devilish:

Is that map still available somewhere?