Gate oil effectiveness

Remember also , just as a 20 unit stack represents an army many times its' size {that full stack of Romans is meant to stand in for a fully supported Legion of over 10,000 men} , so too does one spy stand in for what would today be often refered to as a spy master and the various underlings , dupes , associates etc that he would use to do his "dirty work" for him .

One man alone cannot open four heavily defended gates in an alerted castle {the presence of an entire enemy army outside the city walls typically alerts the guards in most population centres to the likely hood someone has it in for them ~D } . However , every city has its' malcontents , criminals , easily corrupted and plain loonatic inhabitants and the spy should be assumed to have entered with a small team of underlings , thus it is a number of men doing the sabotage which , combined with the obvious factor that the oil needs time to heat up {keeping it boiling 24/7 would simply evaporate the oil suppily in a few days or weeks at best and then there would be none left} but given the gates are thrown open without warning and the attackers can rush in without preamble nor prelude {Khorak is quite correct : a normal assault give plenty of warning , whereas infiltrators opening the gates does not} then not only should the oil be cold and useless {how about it just drops and makes everyone slip over :oops: } but the defenders should have little choice in their deployment {they are scattered at Random throughout the town/city or suchlike} . This would require a tweak to A.I. behaviour vis-a-vis training and deploying spys in a counter insurgency role {though it isn't too bad at that considering} perhaps , but it would be more realistic .

A spy team {what is actually represented , that's why the blurb says "Your spys have infiltrated the enemy city ..." not " your spy ..."} opening the gates should be a potential disaster for the defenders {which it was in real life typically} , not a virtual non-event for a player attacking , or sure fire way to see an A.I. army fry and lose if the walls are stone !