Medieval 2: Total Subterfuge Guide

A while back I worked on, but never got around to completing a guide on agents for MTW. I'm unsure if I will have time to get around to completing it, but with Medieval 2 taking much of my focus, I decided it would be a good time to initiate development of an "agent" guide to Medieval 2. Having just completed an England campaign, I've gotten a basic understanding of the various agents, and am now looking to compile my knowledge and the knowledge of others into a useful resource for the benefit of the community.

With that said, I would like to start this thread off by discussing the various agents. I'm pretty sure that there has been some discussion into the mechanics of agents, but it's most likely spread out through various threads. If you come across a thread with some useful information like how the game calculates various chances of success or other useful details, post a link to that thread. This guide will follow a similar organization as the previous Medieval: Total Subterfuge guide, but will be expanded to include related information to make full use out of your agents.

So far these are the topics that will be covered:

Agents
- Diplomat
- Princess
- Spy
- Assassin
- Priest/Bishop/Cardinal/Imam
- Merchant
- Inquisitors (Papal only)

Economics
- When or when not to train Merchants
- Where to send Merchants
- Acquisitions
- Effects of Markets and Merchant Wharves

I decided to add an economics section as it does relate to merchants.

Edit: I will be including a section on diplomacy, including Vassals as well as what kind of things you can extort from the AI (ie. sell map information for big cash :yes: ) .

More to come later.

Are you planning on holding off until the 1.2 patch? If not it might be a good idea. There's a number of "rebalancing" items listed on the fix list, as well as some real bugs. Hopefully assassins won't be @#$@ useless anymore. Can't wait to see your final guide version.

Cheers!

I figured it might as well be a good time as any to start up the discussion, as I have a feeling that the upcoming patch will be out well before a draft version of the guide gets put together.