Does the team have any plans for spies/dips/assassins?

I was wondering if the team had any major plans for the campaign map characters (spies/diplomats/assassins) in future builds? I mean both cosmetically and fundamentally.

Cosmetically, I read rumours on other threads that ye were considering changing the gargantuan dudes for more sophisticated anims. Any previews?

Fundamentally, it occurs to me that these three characters are capable of being pretty seriously modded in ways that could add a lot to the game. I don't know what the hardcode is on these, but with the ancillaries, traits, and stars/wreaths that they can pick up, any one of the three could be turned into some kind of minor 'family' member or a more sophisticated kind of ancillary. If for example, you modded the diplomat so they had a bigger area where they lifted the FOW, the spy would be redundant and could be used for something else.

There are many possibilities, but the one that is my fav is to mod the diplomat or the spy so as to combine their abilities, and use the leftover in the following way.
1. Make them unrecruitable
2. Have them represent all the historical characters that now appear as ancillaries.
3. Have them preexist or be spawned (can that be done with scripts?) at the appropriate time or place.
4. You could then try to collect them by bribing them to your faction, or having them killed. It wouldn't affect the outcome of the game but would be more immersive I think. Too bad they don't have a battlefield presence.

Another possibility is to use one of the characters to (finally) represent the women of the world of EB. They could have female portraits, names, traits, everything except the ability to lead an army. That would certainly be a lot more egalitarian.

Lots of other possibilities. Would it be possible, for example, for different factions to have different characters to recruit? That would be sweet. What I mean is not everybody used professional killers- so why can everybody recruit assassins? Maybe each faction could have a diplomat/spy, an assassin, and one character type unique to that faction or culture.

May I also suggest some name changes and increased recruitment costs? The names are anachronisms for the EB period, as 'assassins' dates from the 8th century AD, and while 'diplomat' has a Greek root, it wasn't used in its modern professional sense until the late 18th century. The best would be of course faction specific names for these characters, but that is probably hardcoded.

Change the spies to scouts and increase the cost a lot. If you made watchtowers cost 2000 mnai, it's an obvious dodge to recruit 3 spies for that cost. I'd say 750 - 1000 mnai for a spy. That may seem like a lot but for the player the strategic advantage of a lot of spies is huge and unrealistic. You could even eliminate the spy, forcing the player to use cheap light cav units as scouts, which is of course their primary role in real life.
Change the diplomats to ambassadors or explorers and increase the cost a little.
Change the assassin to hired killer or murderer. Ot maybe just eliminate the assassin. There are relatively few instances (in the Hellenistic period) that I can think of major 'faction members' being deliberately killed by another faction. The best example I can think of is the murder of Parmenion by Alexander's order, and that's within the same faction (and the wrong time period).

A lot of ideas thrown out there I know, I am really more interested in the team's plans.

Ta.

Wow! Great ideas oudysseos! However I am awfully sorry to break the news to you, but I presume that most of your ideas are probably hardcoded in R:TW. Fortunately, I am pretty sure, that your ideas could be included for EB2.

One thing we would like to do is make new models for the diplomats/spies/assassins, but our modeller/skinners are too busy with units right now - if someone who has some skill wanted to volunteer, we'd love to work with you on it. We're talking about possibly trying some big new things out there, like litters for diplomats (small ones) instead of one big dude. We'd love to even work on possibly something like the Crusades has for armies - groups of people. But that might be quite a challenge. Still we'd like to try and it would look good with our new resources and the RG cities. If you're not a skinner/modeller, then try to talk a friend who is into working on it. :grin:

You have a lot of good/interesting ideas oudysseos.

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Originally Posted by oudysseos

Another possibility is to use one of the characters to (finally) represent the women of the world of EB. They could have female portraits, names, traits, everything except the ability to lead an army. That would certainly be a lot more egalitarian.

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I'm not sure of the reality of this (due to ignorance) but i'd say that this was an uncommon occurance at best (and probably even less likey in the Greek world). Perhaps there could be a few women added say, 5-10% of the portraits.

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Originally Posted by oudysseos

Lots of other possibilities. Would it be possible, for example, for different factions to have different characters to recruit? That would be sweet. What I mean is not everybody used professional killers- so why can everybody recruit assassins? Maybe each faction could have a diplomat/spy, an assassin, and one character type unique to that faction or culture.

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This may affect the balance of factions to an unfair position for some. Also IMO the player should have the choice to play in the style of their choice-- as in with lots or little Spy, Dip., Ass., usage.

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Originally Posted by oudysseos

Too bad they don't have a battlefield presence.

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Yeah I'm thinking of 390 B.C with the Fabii brothers-- one of which slew a celtic chieftain which lead to the Celts turning on the Romans and defeating them at Allia then sacking Rome. Anyway this is why Diplomats/Ambassadors aren't supposed to have a battlefield presence-- as it breaches "international law".

But i'm liking the other ideas-- scouts in particular (and raising cost of forts/lookouts).

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Originally Posted by Caratacos

I'm not sure of the reality of this (due to ignorance) but i'd say that this was an uncommon occurance at best (and probably even less likey in the Greek world). Perhaps there could be a few women added say, 5-10% of the portraits.

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I'm *pretty sure* this can't be done, simply because agents are assigned names and/or portraits randomly. So you 'd have women with men's names and vice versa. (As opposed to ancillaries where name and picture are aligned.)

As to the group as a whole, yes, they definitely need to be replaced with non-vanilla models. At a minimum we have to get the colors of cards and models to at least align with the factions (at least that's being worked)

I'd like to see assassins and spys take on a greater role in the game myself. If you send a spy to trail a family member, say in the city, or at least in the province, if he remains there for a long time, make him either paranoid, or easy to assassinate. Assassins in the game as they are now are, or close enough anyways, worthless.

I am thinking more and more that spies in particular should be modded into something else, leaving that role vacant. Light cavalry scouts could more realistically fill that niche: the could be recruited not from MIC but directly from the government building as diplomats now are. As the level of government increases, the quality of the scout cavalry could also increase. The units themselves could be the lowest level of skirmisher cav available to each faction and thus not take up a unit slot.

One side effect of using light cav for spy duties is that the presence of spies in another factions province would become a causus belli. Currently you can put a hundred spies into even your bitterest enemy's homeland and they will do diddly squat. Try that with a single cav unit and it'll be attacked, possible even causing a neutral or aligned faction to go to war. This is (IMO) a much more realistic result of being caught at espionage. For those cases where a secret agent is more realistic or desirable, use the assassin, especially if you can bump up their 'radius of light'.


Woot! 200 posts!

They're good to kill those pesky enemy spies who carry the plague...

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

One thing we would like to do is make new models for the diplomats/spies/assassins, but our modeller/skinners are too busy with units right now - if someone who has some skill wanted to volunteer, we'd love to work with you on it. We're talking about possibly trying some big new things out there, like litters for diplomats (small ones) instead of one big dude. We'd love to even work on possibly something like the Crusades has for armies - groups of people. But that might be quite a challenge. Still we'd like to try and it would look good with our new resources and the RG cities. If you're not a skinner/modeller, then try to talk a friend who is into working on it. :grin:

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I don't really like the idea of litters of troops representing the unit, keep the huge towering dude!