Not Dumb Newb Frustration

Read all about M2TW today and thought I was ready for "Medium/Hard-battles". Truth is, I am ready for hard battles - great stuff on cavalry charges, thanks.

Guess I'm not ready for Medium diff yet, but the next level down is way too easy.

I had two giant frustrations in this evening's attempts to enjoy the game:

My merchants can't do crap and my assassins can't kill anything but themselves.

Okay, on Merchants, I read on that. I guess the recommendation not to use them in early game was violated. What's "early game"? I guess turn 25 is still early...

Assassins:
They seem pointless. I spend more time moving them to attempt to kill a target than I do managing my empire (france). They miss, sometimes they die. In roughly 20 attempts cumulative with 8 assassins, I got one kill, four dead assassins. I was attempting on targets between 8 percent and 23 percent - never had anything higher than that. I was using spies to ensure I avoided targets with extra security (but it seems as soon as I fail, I give the target extra security...)

My priests can kill heretics. My faction leaders can withstand inquisitors. My spies can spy and gain talent. My princess gains charm. I played Rome TW, and was quite respectable at VH:VH...

I can't seem to grasp how to get extra skill to merchants, assassins, diplomats.:wall:

I've spent the last two days trying to give myself a reason to like this game, and I'm fighting the urge to say it's like Rome: TW with less fun...:help:

A side question about ransom:
If I ransom back my prisoners, do they go right back into the army and come at me again?

In my experience, don't bother with merchants unless you can really capitalize on a great resource; people have reported luck with the gold in Timbuktu or the resources in the Americas.

I've had frustration with my diplomats too; you can try simply having them tribute other factions every so often - since they're technically successful deals, that should help some of your diplomats improve.


And yes, if you ransom off enemy prisoners and the ransom is accepted, they appear on the campaign map and retreat as far as they can; essentially, it is as if you never encountered them on the battle map at all.

There are a number of threads on how to train assassin's the best way, check them out.

Assasins should be trained up via sabotaging buildings and/or targeting 0 charm princesses/0 rank diplomats. Crank all your assasins from a single town and you should be offered an assasin's guild there which helps a lot.

Merchants need the same thing. Only build them from one city to get the Merchants guild and it's upgrades. Also leave them on a trade resource. Preferably far from the capital. This means they can get more finance quicker. But not too far or loyal to coin comes along.