Diplomacy, Agents and Campaign Map AI

Hi. Well, as most of you should know, these units, so called "agents", have being, in my modest opinion :P, allways pointless, if not completely useless.
- Assassins
Kill a general... i believe its their only use (i mean, kill diplomats? kill bishops? isnt that a total waste of time?). But can you kill a gen when in most cases you got 2% of chance?
Spys
Oh, you can see the personality of some gen, his skills, how many soldiers are under his command and whats their type... call me noob, i may be completely wrong, but, who cares if a gen is crazy, a gluton, of a blody heretic? Who cares if they got knights or peasants inside their walls? :P

So, about these "special agents", do you think they will play a diferent role now? Maybe someting usefull this time?

Ah, i also wanna ask about the campaign AI (i believe this is the right term). Well, in the previous games, im sure that you remember the behavior of the AI as an ally or protetorate. They wold be on "your side" till you weak your borders (in which case they wold burn your capital do ashes).
A bad thing in my opinion... i hope this is diferent now. What do you think about it? Think it may be changed?
Do you think diferent factions wold have diferent relations? Like, hated by the english loved by the danish? I mean... can you imagine if we could develop some kind of "relationship" between nations? That wold be so cool. We could have true allyances.
If you know something about these matters wold you like to share? Thanks :)

If you think agents are useless, then you clearly just aren't using them to their full potential. I've always found them to be indispensable (more so in Rome than the original Medieval, perhaps). On harder settings, diplomats are a real pain since they'll try to bribe settlements. Assassins are just a very effective way of dealing with this threat. Also, once they've gained experience from knocking off lowly diplomats and captains, they can start working on enemy generals with a reasonable chance of success. In at least one instance in BI, I was able to knock out an entire horde faction on its way to my territory by simply assassinating the entire ruling family. As for spies, they come in very handy for poking around a city and opening the gates from within during a siege.

As for alliances, its only natural that the AI turn on you if you're the wealthiest and least defended neighbor, given a lack of bigger threats. That said, I do think the campaign AI could use improvement, like perhaps becoming more loyal and less likely to back stab the longer an alliance has lasted.

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Originally Posted by Eques

Hi. Well, as most of you should know, these units, so called "agents", have being, in my modest opinion :P, allways pointless, if not completely useless.
- Assassins
Kill a general... i believe its their only use (i mean, kill diplomats? kill bishops? isnt that a total waste of time?). But can you kill a gen when in most cases you got 2% of chance?

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Assassins have to start somewhere. I don't know how MTW worked (didn't play it), but in RTW you had to train up beginner assassins on lesser targets like diplomats and captains (non-generals commanding enemy stacks). Then you can think about taking on the tougher targets like high-star generals, or family members. You can severely deplete the combat effectiveness of an enemy stack by killing the general, and leaving it with just a captain in command.

Also, don't knock the utility of killing ambassadors. It's a good way to prevent the enemy from bribing away any of your armies.

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Spys
Oh, you can see the personality of some gen, his skills, how many soldiers are under his command and whats their type... call me noob, i may be completely wrong, but, who cares if a gen is crazy, a gluton, of a blody heretic? Who cares if they got knights or peasants inside their walls? :P

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It does help sometimes to see what you're up against. Spies are also good for opening gates, and causing unrest in a city before a siege. In RTW I cranked out as many assassins and spies as I could afford, and usually sent them out in pairs, as a team.

I would guess you either play vanilla RTW or under easy/med difficulties, because espionage is one of the greatest parts of the game. Obviously in real life assasins werent born perfect, they trained to get that way. Which is represented by how you need to kill in order to up your game.

I do understand though how it seems impossible to kill heirs and leaders, but thats only to prevent wiping out a faction with an army of assasins.

Not to mention they are a good prevention (and, from what I tell, intimidation) from your enemy to send in diplomats and generals.

Diplomats are essential, they are (unless you use spies) your eyes around the campaign. They assure trade rights, map info, they can even get you some extra money.

Trade rights, assasinating generals and spying out the enemies' strengths were really important for me :o. It'd be hard for me to play without; far less trade early on (which is always your biggest cash cow), some real tough cookies to face, and even worse you don't know if you're running into twenty peasant units or twenty generals.

Even if you didn't find them useful, I thought they were, and obviously a lot of other people did.

Maybe in Rome assassins aren't fantastic. However in EB they are the only way to stop your whole empire being bribed by diplomats.

Even on medium they are really useful, on harder difficulties you can't win without them. Though I will admit that diplomats are useless, after all if the AI doesn't except peace treaties whats the point of being able to offer them, and spy's are better at recon. Also before any siege I send in one or two or even spies to make sure that the gate is open (much easier and better than building siege equipent and wreaking the city).

I find that all 3 agents types are useful and use them on all total war games I've played. The Assassin's role is the pretty much the same in both MTW and RTW; killing other agents and characters/generals. Spies were slighty less effective in RTW cuz they don't increase public order like they do in MTW but still usefull cuz they have huge "line-of-sight" for exploring and a high level spy can cause serious unrest in a rival's settlement.

Now Diplomats, on the other hand, I find very useful in RTW. If you're you're a filthy rich kingdom with lots and lots of cash to burn then your diplomat can be a deadly weapon. I've bribed away countless stacks of armies that I would otherwise have problems dealing with cuz my armies were elsewhere fighting. Also, who said that money can't buy friendship?~:rolleyes: If you offer huge sums of money you can often secure alliances you normally wouldn't get. I also found it very usefull to fund other kingdoms who are enemies of my enemies. That way my opponent will be distracted trying to subdue the other kingdoms while I pummel/bribe the rest of his armies to dust. I also rescued a number of factions on the brink of oblivian by giving them hordes of cash this way and most of the time they end up with decent a decent sized kingdom and armies to annoy my enemies after that.:2thumbsup: Just watch out though cuz they might turn on you if they become too powerful lol.

Yeah well I prefer to use my money to build up my empire or cut taxes, rather than splurge money to my future enemies (everyone is a future enemy after all).

Well thats true but I always find myself with a huge surplus of cash. I could just keep it but theres a downside to it; governors and generals will become corrupt if you start hording money. I think it makes the campaign a bit more interesting if you spread some wealth around with your diplomats.

I hope to do this again in M2TW. Eg. Playing as the French and funding Scottish insurgents.:2thumbsup:

Yes plus as we know from video's this time I see a couple brand new ways to use assassins. One I can use him to assinate the other canidates I don't like for pope hat so I can get a pope who is mine or one of my allies. Secondly if there's a certain general my princess I would like to coherce and assasin can make sure no other princesses get there first

Diplomats are going to be unique this time around I think because supposedly computer remebers more things. So if I see my ally start to buff up his borders I definetly want somebody to talk him out of it.

Spies I love for same reasons others said. I mean you thought Rome was bad, I've a good chunk of demo battles but they cost alot of men, and that wasn't even against a 3 ring wall tower of doom hammer. So if seige weapons fail and I have no spy my men resort to :wall:

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Originally Posted by Eques

Hi. Well, as most of you should know, these units, so called "agents", have being, in my modest opinion :P, allways pointless, if not completely useless.
- Assassins
Kill a general... i believe its their only use (i mean, kill diplomats? kill bishops? isnt that a total waste of time?). But can you kill a gen when in most cases you got 2% of chance?
Spys
Oh, you can see the personality of some gen, his skills, how many soldiers are under his command and whats their type... call me noob, i may be completely wrong, but, who cares if a gen is crazy, a gluton, of a blody heretic? Who cares if they got knights or peasants inside their walls? :P

So, about these "special agents", do you think they will play a diferent role now? Maybe someting usefull this time?

Ah, i also wanna ask about the campaign AI (i believe this is the right term). Well, in the previous games, im sure that you remember the behavior of the AI as an ally or protetorate. They wold be on "your side" till you weak your borders (in which case they wold burn your capital do ashes).
A bad thing in my opinion... i hope this is diferent now. What do you think about it? Think it may be changed?
Do you think diferent factions wold have diferent relations? Like, hated by the english loved by the danish? I mean... can you imagine if we could develop some kind of "relationship" between nations? That wold be so cool. We could have true allyances.
If you know something about these matters wold you like to share? Thanks :)

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I have to disagree with your opinions here. I have always found the special agents to be useful to my goals. Assassins are very useful. You see killing diplomats and bishops was a waste of time. I see killing the other agents as practice for the real target. Often in my games, I would go for the the non general captains, diplomats, princesses (MTW) and as my assassin gained experience, he became ready for the juicy target that came along. While the HIgh ranked generals were difficult to assassinate, it was a good possibility you could be successful when you used an assassin with skill. I do think that at times it seemed the assination function was unbalanced when attacking with a good chance of success and failing more often than the percentage seemed to indicate you should. But it was a means of eliminating both the ability of the AI to conduct its own diplomacy and actions against you and helping to get rid of generals and leaders eventually who had high stats.

Spys are very useful, they can identify those who were easy to bribe, those who werent, revealing information about vices that had a negative effect on that character, title stripping in MTW, and showing you what forces are located in cities. Knowing your enemy can help you pick appropriate forces to seige a city, possibly enter the city without needing siege equipment. It allows you to know if it is easier to wait the seige out and attempt to force the ai to sally forth as your army is better for defense, or to attack as you know your forces can easily take the city/castle. Never forget: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

I could go on, but I will get off my soap box.

Spies are useless? In MTW a spy could tell you where and when the enemy was going to attack a few years in advance! They could also cause discent in enemy nations (amongst the population and armies) and allow you to spark off a civil war quickly (usefull for removing weak royal lines). The only downside of them is they get caught too easily by border forts :(

Im not that big a fan of the Assasin, a Grand Inquisitor does the same job but in a much cleaner way

Just as long as they don't bring back geisha or anything like them. I quit playing STW solely because they were totally overpowered. It had been a long long war which i was finally winning and geisha proceeded to kill each one of my generals and heirs off till the game was over. Just out of nowhere they all died. There's no way of stopping them and they are so overpowered its insane, since they don't die if they fail and they have a large chance of succeeding. i hate stw for that sole reason.

^You avoid that via the Geisha arms race. Train more than the AI does. Plus there is the absolute prospect of Geisha-MAD.

Allright!!! I believe i must, obviously, reconceive my point of view over assasins and spys (at least before you start trowing rocks on me!). I mean, I couldnt imagine that im the only one who fells like that about these units... but it seens like it is so.
Well guys, if you dont mind i wold like to explain my first words ^^

Assassins:
OK. You can train your "hitman" killing small targets (lets say, everything he finds on his way using diferent colors). Yeah, its true, but dont you find it a bit... "irrealistic" ? I mean, kill the poor greek diplomat, wich is on your side to earn some experience? Kill everything? Guess i may have a diferent style of play, but i like to play a role in my in game actions instead of take advantage of the AI (wich is not very smart). And come on! Tell me how much chance has any assassin of killing, lets say, a 3 stars gen? I may be totaly wrong, but i dont believe its higher then 10%, trained assassin or not.

Spys:
Yes, they can open city gates (wich you could destroy using a mere battleram anyway). That is of some use, i agree. But if you can use watchtowers to watch your lands, why to use a spy-chain and pay a LOT for that?
As for units recon, does anyone start an army thinking about "the stinky gauls inside narbo matius walls" ? Does anyone think: "They only got missile units! I will start an army of horses" come on! I like to make an army using all 3 forces and i wont change it cuz "they got thousands of pigs".
I believe you can see if a general is greedy (and more like to be bribed) or not just sometimes. In most times you will probably see if he prefers the company of boys rather than girls (wich is a good reason for assassination!) and other stuff i just find... useless...

Hell yeah, in medieval they were more like spys!!! You got messages like "there is a rumor that your sons plan a revolt..." or "Spain will attack very soon" or... "your spy discovered a conspiration, the leader of that conspiration is bla bla" yeah... that was nice! THAT was more like spys stuff. Not just open gates or give details about the "burning-pigs army coming from the east".

But, after so many people coming to defend assassins and spys, i decided to give them another chance ^^. So spare the rocks, drop the torches! Im not a heretic, i believe in CA!!! Yeah... i have faith on M2TW
But i still believe these units need some improvements.

The chances can be pretty high. 3 stars aren't much. I've had fully trained assasins, and I reckon I'd have a greater than 50% chance. Probably ~90%? I forget the numbers.

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Originally Posted by Eques

Spys:
Yes, they can open city gates (wich you could destroy using a mere battleram anyway). That is of some use, i agree. But if you can use watchtowers to watch your lands, why to use a spy-chain and pay a LOT for that?
As for units recon, does anyone start an army thinking about "the stinky gauls inside narbo matius walls" ? Does anyone think: "They only got missile units! I will start an army of horses" come on! I like to make an army using all 3 forces and i wont change it cuz "they got thousands of pigs".
I believe you can see if a general is greedy (and more like to be bribed) or not just sometimes. In most times you will probably see if he prefers the company of boys rather than girls (wich is a good reason for assassination!) and other stuff i just find... useless...

Hell yeah, in medieval they were more like spys!!! You got messages like "there is a rumor that your sons plan a revolt..." or "Spain will attack very soon" or... "your spy discovered a conspiration, the leader of that conspiration is bla bla" yeah... that was nice! THAT was more like spys stuff. Not just open gates or give details about the "burning-pigs army coming from the east".

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I would pay a "LOT" for that, because firstly it's not much and secondly watchtowers only work in your lands. It's helpful to see if a big bloody army just got dispached from the enemy's city - towards you, towards someone else? Should I get a defensive army up quick, or try and peg it with a city-taker?

And yes, I do change my armies against the enemy. You'd be a fool not to. If you play as the Seleucids, for example, you'll be facing the Greek Cities, Pontus, Egypt, Armenia and Parthia. Armenia and Parthia are almost exclusively weak infantry and horse archers. The Greeks and Pontus have a lot of strong infantry, some horse archers and some cavalry. Egypt has slightly inferior phalanxes but chariots. They all require different armies to defeat them efficiently. I challenge you to defeat 20 horse archers with one of your "balanced" armies!

Those messages were useful, yes. But you could work all that out using your spies in RTW, too, by spying on the enemy (not that your sons were planning a revolt - but I never had anything like that anyway?).

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Originally Posted by Eques

Hell yeah, in medieval they were more like spys!!! You got messages like "there is a rumor that your sons plan a revolt..." or "Spain will attack very soon" or... "your spy discovered a conspiration, the leader of that conspiration is bla bla" yeah... that was nice! THAT was more like spys stuff. Not just open gates or give details about the "burning-pigs army coming from the east".

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Ah, now i see your point. Your right, Rome's spys aint any good. Supprisingly like everything else in Rome :sweatdrop:
Same deal with assasins, Shogun theyre overpowered. Medieval theyre about right (valour 3 assasin stands about a 40% chance of killing valour 3 general) and in Rome theyre just rubbish!

Assasins are about right in Rome, not overpowered killing machines but not ineffectual muppets. Spy's are really glorified recon units not actual spies, they are better done MTW, but they are still very useful and a good addition to the game. Diplomats are also a bit useless in Rome, they arn't as good spies at recon and talking to people doesn't get you anywhere (You have one city left, and no armies and I have three full stack Roman legions converging on you and you still won't sign a ceasefire!)

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Originally Posted by satchef1

Ah, now i see your point. Your right, Rome's spys aint any good. Supprisingly like everything else in Rome :sweatdrop:
Same deal with assasins, Shogun theyre overpowered. Medieval theyre about right (valour 3 assasin stands about a 40% chance of killing valour 3 general) and in Rome theyre just rubbish!

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I really don't care what you think about RTW. No need to bring it in all the time. :furious3:

Whether they're underpowered or not, they're still damned useful. Anyway, does anyone have the actual numbers for comparison?

I hope they work on these agents, to make them good as before. They wold make the game a LOT funyer. Right now rome is just about make armys, conquer and put chains on everybody. Its just ridiculous! They are earning millions and cant the make the game good as before!? Sometimes it seens like CA was sold to Bill Gates... maybe worse!!! To Bill Gates mother!!!
Unafortunately, i believe they dont care much for the comunity. I believe its all about profit! They just dont care if some STW as MTW nerds dont like the game... cuz they know we will buy it... and YES we will!!! :sweatdrop:
Anyway, if we dont, they will still have a large profit. Blame the magazines...
Lets hope... lets just hope they did it right this time...
Do they need a powerfull engine to bring Campaign Replays back? Do they need a LOT of money to give the blody spys and assassins the efectiveness they had before? To dismount knights? :furious3:
Atleast there are some nice things on this one ^^ like... princess!!! :laugh4:
And... princess... , ah, and yeah, its pretty.

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Originally Posted by Eques

Assassins:
OK. You can train your "hitman" killing small targets (lets say, everything he finds on his way using diferent colors). Yeah, its true, but dont you find it a bit... "irrealistic" ? I mean, kill the poor greek diplomat, wich is on your side to earn some experience? Kill everything? Guess i may have a diferent style of play, but i like to play a role in my in game actions instead of take advantage of the AI (wich is not very smart). And come on! Tell me how much chance has any assassin of killing, lets say, a 3 stars gen? I may be totaly wrong, but i dont believe its higher then 10%, trained assassin or not.

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Well, killing as a profession requires training on the easy stuff before you tackle the hard stuff, like any profession. So I don't find it all that unrealistic. I don't send assassins after allied diplomats or army captain, but just about anyone else is fair game. It's been a while since I've played RTW/BI, but I remember killing 3 star generals and lower-ranking family members wasn't that tough, with a fully-trained, older assassin. The only targets I had a hard time with, using my best assassins, were the heads of family.

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Spys:
Yes, they can open city gates (wich you could destroy using a mere battleram anyway). That is of some use, i agree. But if you can use watchtowers to watch your lands, why to use a spy-chain and pay a LOT for that?

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Why not use both? Towers for static surveillance, and spies for roving surveillance? The ability to open city gates is also very important if you're not looking for a long, drawn-out siege and just want to take a city quickly. Actually, I think that ability is overpowered in RTW. It makes it just too easy, although it is nice when I'm in a hurry. Also, don't forget that spies are the only way to spot an enemy spy who has snuck into one of your cities and is stirring up trouble.

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As for units recon, does anyone start an army thinking about "the stinky gauls inside narbo matius walls" ? Does anyone think: "They only got missile units! I will start an army of horses" come on! I like to make an army using all 3 forces and i wont change it cuz "they got thousands of pigs".

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Spies are useful for strategic as well as tactical (single battle planning) reasons. If I see three enemy stacks roving around within striking distance of my cities, it's very useful to know just what's in those stacks, so I can plan how heavily to fortify cities, or move in relief units.

It may just be a question of different styles of play, but I like to take risks by deploying smaller, under-strength armies (so there is at least some challenge in the actual battle), instead of a standard stack of uber-strength units that I know can tackle anything. This requires more campaign map intelligence about what the enemy is doing, and how strong their armies are.

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Hell yeah, in medieval they were more like spys!!! You got messages like "there is a rumor that your sons plan a revolt..." or "Spain will attack very soon" or... "your spy discovered a conspiration, the leader of that conspiration is bla bla" yeah... that was nice! THAT was more like spys stuff. Not just open gates or give details about the "burning-pigs army coming from the east".

But, after so many people coming to defend assassins and spys, i decided to give them another chance ^^. So spare the rocks, drop the torches! Im not a heretic, i believe in CA!!! Yeah... i have faith on M2TW
But i still believe these units need some improvements.

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Hey, no rocks and torches here, just explaining how some of us have found these guys useful and more importantly, fun! We don't all have to play the game the same way. Also, I agree it would be nice to see more info like "Spain will attack soon" if you have spies in the right place to get that info.

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Originally Posted by Aracnid

Diplomats are also a bit useless in Rome, they arn't as good spies at recon and talking to people doesn't get you anywhere (You have one city left, and no armies and I have three full stack Roman legions converging on you and you still won't sign a ceasefire!)

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Like I said in my previous post, if you got plenty of cash to burn your diplomat can be a deadly weapon.


@ Eques
Give me a break! Just cuz they nerfed a few good features doesn't make them profit mongers who care little about the community. Have you even read the blogs at tw.com? Have you considered all the other fantastic features they've included in game and the AI they're trying so hard to fix from RTW?

Of course I have a few beefs about what they've not included or fixed in the M2TW (namely dismounting) but that doesn't justify making such petty assumptions about CA commitment to the fanbase. CA and TW are still at the top of my list as far as strategy games go. The only way that'll screw it up is that if TW becomes BFME or Rise of Nations.

WOW! I can't believe anybody would think the agents are useless. In Medieval I, I used spies to basically wipe out my main competitors. I played a campaign as the Byzantines and saturated Turkish lands with spies and orthodox priests. In a couple decades or so all their lands had rebelled and the sultan was killed in a battle against rebels. I wiped out the Turk faction with barely a battle.

Fighting is a much more fun way to defeat an enemy, but it's also fun to experiment with different ways to take on an enemy. I wouldn't even play Total War if it didn't have agents.

As I think more about the use of agents from my previous post in this thread, Diplomats are also very useful agents. I have one games in MTW just bribing away armies into my faction. In Rome though, bribing just became a bit ineffective a method, It took way to much $$$ to bribe anyone and the diplomats seemed to have a much harder time of it getting anything else accomplished. I hope they are more effective this time around.

I am really looking forward to using the princessess this time around as well, The ability to marry them to other generals to bring them into the faction would be a major aid in the old uses of haveing them to help from alliances in MTW, and occasionally securing the loyalty of good generals. They also were effective at the time in helping to scout out territory of the enemy as well.

I am hoping the use of the religious agents in MTW2 will be vastly improved with what I have heard of the use of religion. To have one of my own bishops made pope? So much better than having to march accross the map to eliminate the pope myself.

you can have your own bishop made pope? All right! also, any nitwit assasin can kill a pope in the original medival. (very good for getting rid of excommunicated status and potential crusades launched your way,if your catholic)

i mainly find spies because they can open city gates and avoid you having to build seige equipment. this is useful when the ai leaves a settlement hopelessly undefended.

as people mentioned asasin can be trained up, i just finished off the sassanid faction with assasins, when they had two cities remaining.