Agent missions and skill points

[therother]

Opening this thread on what determines the success percentage for agents, their skill progression and so on.

Initial questions:

1. Does every mission give 15 points if successful? Is there any scaling with difficulty?
2. What determines whether you get any points (and how many) for failing but escaping?
3. What factors influence the mission success and are they reflected in the reported odds?
4. Which character is better at disposing of enemy agents: meksuke, monk or ninja?

Had a quick look around, and points to level up appear to be:

[xploring]

1. Does every mission give 15 points if successful? Is there any scaling with difficulty?
2. What determines whether you get any points (and how many) for failing but escaping?

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...l=1#post154388

-If an agent succeeds in a mission, the get 15 points (on Normal Difficulty).
-If an agent partially succeeds (Wounding assassination targets, perplexing convert targets or imprisoning) they receive 15 experience points.
-"Failed" missions (Failed Sabotage, Subversion, or Convert attempts) Gives 3 points.
-Agents assigned to armies or towns ("passive missions") gain one point per turn.
-Agents that get caught and executed get zero experience, on account of being dead.

Note that this is constant: that is, whether the successful mission is killing a highly levelled general or demoralizing a single depleted unit army, success will ALWAYS be 15 points, failure will ALWAYS be 1 point, and so forth, even on higher levels. Nothing affects the amount of experienced gained aside from the above. So if you're only interesting in levelling up your agents, choose the easiest missions because there is no difference in the points given on a successful mission.

For question 3, religious agents have better odds if the target is of the same religion. Not sure how they compare with metsuke and ninja though.

What about Geisha and Missionary? Do they have the same leveling requirements?

[therother]

Thanks xploring!

[econ21]

A few tidbits that are relevant to this broad topic:

- You can recruit level 4 agents with the right buildings: +2 for province speciality buildings; +2 for top tier of agent building. However, you don't get the two retinue you would normally get by levelling up generically.

- Monks (and I guess missionaries) seem the easiest to level: they can demoralise armies at zero cost in gold and success rates are decent (my only agent loss so far came from this though, so it is not entirely without risk). Ninjas can level fast too by sabotaging buildings or armies, albeit at some monetary cost. Metsuke seem hardest to level - the only active mission you can spam seems to be bribe and that is costly.

- The game says monks are vulnerable to ninjas/geishas; ninjas to metsuke and metsuke to monks. However, the RPS aspect does not seem strict. High level ninjas can have good assassination chances against all lower level agents. High level monks/missionaries are very powerful against lower level agents of the opposite religion.

For question 3, religious agents have better odds if the target is of the same religion.

Are you sure about this? They have an action "character conversion" that in the encyclopedia (and logic) says works on characters of the opposite faith. I'd assumed it was like incitement to revolt - you get better odds if the target is of a different religion. I will look out for how to fares.

[xploring]

- You can recruit level 4 agents with the right buildings: +2 for province speciality buildings; +2 for top tier of agent building. However, you don't get the two retinue you would normally get by levelling up generically.

Are you sure about this? They have an action "character conversion" that in the encyclopedia (and logic) says works on characters of the opposite faith. I'd assumed it was like incitement to revolt - you get better odds if the target is of a different religion. I will look out for how to fares.

Actually not sure. I was told by someone else, may be I misunderstood. Although it makes sense in my mind, with the reasoning that religious message would be more persuasive if the person preached to share the same religious belief.



Do you get back those missing retinue when you level those level 4 agents?

[RedKnight]

Nice thread. The only thing I can add is that the three agent types seem very "rock scissors paper" to me. One thing in particular that wasn't(?) emphasized (past what you said, econ) is that monks have the ability to convert (a.k.a. kill) ninja and metsuke, which to me is kind of cool (maybe I'm a closet buddhist?).

I am not seeing mentioned here, the very nice effect that high level metsuke can have on town income - put them in towns with your highest income. Hover your cursor over the Tax Rate for a town to see their "character effect". Also of course, use monks to rid your provinces of those insidious christians. But then, these points don't directly impact agent advancement.

RK