100% Chance of Success = Dead Spy?

[Landwalker]

As you can probably guess from the title of this thread, a very peculiar thing has just happened to me: A spy, ordered to work his magic in Mediolanium, was granted a 100% chance of success. And yet, his death marked his failure. Has this happened to anybody else? How incompetent do you have to be to fail at something when you're guaranteed success?

Cheers.

[HopliteElite]

Maybe he was depressed or couldn't stand to work for you anymore and killed himself?

[Elminster12]

It may not be a 100% chance as the game tells you...it could be 99.9%. In fact, they removed 100% chance of victory from the combat display in Civ4 and replaced with >99.9% due to complaints about units losing 100% chance of victory battles. It is possible the same thing is in play here.

[Beefy187]

Did it come up with the message "Spy got killed during the mission" ?

Otherwise it could be that city was rioting and he got killed in it or maybe he was assasinated.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
The 0% chance struck. :wall:

Seriously, IIRC, your spy (mine at least) would absolutely get killed if the chances were 93%.

TW games have never been good at chance calculations. My MTW inquisitors burn princes with 5% chances. ~:handball:
.

[Landwalker]

Beefy: Yes, the spy was certainly killed in-mission.

Well, it just happened again, this time in Syracusai. I think, however, I have discerned the reasoning. In both instances, the spies were already in the cities, and I was ordering them to "re-spy", as it were, to try to build their experience. I believe the problem is that the spy did not truly have a 100% chance of success, but that since he was already in the city, it displayed it as such (since he was, in fact, in the process of succeeding).

The short of it: Don't "respy" without moving out of the city first, so you know your true odds.

Cheers.

[bovi]

100% chance is insane anyway.

[Pharnakes]

Can you put spies in (hostile) forts?

[different_13]

I've never even seen anything about 30 or 40% chance of success.. (in EB).

As a result, I just use spies to find out where cities are and who holds what province.
(and I sure as hell never have even recruited an assassin!)

[Hooahguy]

how is the chance of success calculated? the number of troops in that town? distance away?

[Strategos Alexandros]

I think the governor's traits have something to do with it and if there is an enemy spy already there.

[Puupertti Ruma]

I wish spy could fail a mission and NOT get killed, as the assassins can.

[Malik of Sindh]

Can you put spies in (hostile) forts?

Yes

[Gugus]

I've never even seen anything about 30 or 40% chance of success.. (in EB).

As a result, I just use spies to find out where cities are and who holds what province.
(and I sure as hell never have even recruited an assassin!)

Yesterday an assasin saved my city from sure capture - I play as Carthage and am at war with Ptolies, they besiged one of my desert towns in Africa with a family member (big retinue - 60 companion cavalry) and three units of native spearman. In that city I have a garrisone of a client ruler (retinue of 47), depleted unit of mercenary peltastai and two units of numidian skirmishers. My field army was too far to assist the garrison in time but i had a well trained assasin in the vincity. He had like 25% chance of success - I decided to give him a try and he managed to kill Ptolemaic general witch shifted the odds decisivly into my favour. For his success the assasin will live the rest of his life in luxury in Carthage :).

[Mister V]

I think the chance percentage is bugged...I've had numerous attempts to enter a city at 80%, only to have them fail. I'm not even talking about 60%, that's almost impossible to enter (yes I save/load to see if it works, and it doesn't).

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I take the percentages as what the spy/assassin thinks his chances are. Most times, however, he forgot to take something into account and dies because of it.

[Michaelis]

From what I've seen, chance of success depends primarily on the qualifications of the agent. If the agent has plenty of "eyes" (the agent's equivalent of a general's stars), he also enjoys increased chances of success.

I've succeeded with spies with chances of between 20% and 30%, which nb. always resulted in the agent's gaining an extra "eye" plus, quite often, a new retinue member. So, it's possible to gain two "eyes" in a single mission if the odds are high enough.

[Zenith Darksea]

I have to say that unless my spies have 100% chance of success, they always seem to get killed, especially when it's 93%!

[bovi]

Well, we all know that to ensure success you need to have odds of a million to one.