Spyder's web

[gollum]

I think I of the Storm is right on target here. I edited out watchtowers and boarder forts because I was tired of spies being not so useful. I then discovered that they were too good (for my tastes anyway) and put the watchtowers and boarder forts back in. The way I see it, the AI doesn't know how to use spies properly, so editing out the WT/BFs gives the player too much advantage, or at least requires that spies be used with restraint. But if you do want to get the best out of spies, then getting rid of those buildings really helps.

That's exactly right. The border forts are a means to protect teh AI in vanilla and if not present he is at the mercy of the player that is using much better and consistently his spies. This is also the reason why i left the borderforts in the Caravel mod. However, it is true that the agent game is far more enhanced without them. So its "having fun" having a free hand to beating the AI versus "having fun" by not being able to have a free hand beating the AI :) A tough dillema.

By the way if you have modded out the BFs in vanilla you doubly hurt the AI as he gets a +30 happiness that he can't make up from other buildings there and so he is much less stable without them, unless you relegate the bonus to some other early building (say town watch or the fort etc)

I mean, I see the main objective of the besiegers avoiding casualties as much as possible while trying to get hold of the castle.

Not always though. Sometimes the most important objective is gaining the castle asap in a strategic location either tech wise or economically so you can start using it your self. Hence there are cases when assault is actually worth the cost in blood for the prize.

EDIT:
This is especially so when rushing an opponent that has a relatively low level castles that can be assaulted with minor casualties or if you are rushing an opponent with relatively high level castles but have brought siege engines to help you bypass the walls in the assault.

Generally speaking when assaulting, the best is to time the assault to happen from multiple directions so that you can sandwitch the besieged quickly. A bit of heavy cavalry charging in can be very useful in that context. Dispatching of besieged quickly is paramount as the longer you fight frontally, the more they will last and you will receive casualties from towers and artillery.

[caravel]

You need watchtowers or the AI will rarely attack due to lack of "intel". The AI requires this as it needs to check your armies against it's own when calculating as to whether to invade or not.

It's a double edged sword. One approach is to put watchtowers in every province from the start by editing the startpos file and remove border forts from the game altogether. You will then have a greater number of AI spies and assassins running about. The AI does not know how to avoid border forts and loses most of it's agents to them so this seems like a good idea.

This introduces another problem however in that it makes the AI a very easy target for your assassins and spies. In essence agreeing with what gollum has stated above. I would argue that instead of the border forts being the misfit it is in fact the spies that are the problem.

The AI is quite simply unable to use spies effectively. Firstly it cannot do the orchestrate treason plot, reveal vices or open the gates missions. The AI also moves spies around (entering border fort provinces) or leaves them in useless locations - it never coordinates them properly. Spies are in fact a massive exploit for the player and if you want a fairer game, remove them altogether and leave only the assassins which the AI can use quite effectively.

[gollum]

I would argue that instead of the border forts being the misfit it is in fact the spies that are the problem.

An interesting perspective. In the Caravel mod i left the spies in (and the BFs of course as mentioned) in order to retain the vanilla flavor of playing with them, while protecting the AI sufficiently via the BFs, but taking the spies out could be something to try out in my own Caravel Mod mod :)

[Brandy Blue]

What if you are playing a Viking era campaign? Spies are really useful if you want rapid expansion, which is quite important for the Welsh early on, for example. Also, the AI tends to put up boarder forts or at least watchtowers, limiting the offensive use of your spies, IIRC. I think that the balance is not too bad in Viking era, though I wonder if the AI would make more effective offensives if it used spies to help hold down conquered territory.

[gollum]

In the latest VI campaign i played as the Scotts. I was able to train spies after i had reached the bottom (wessex) and eradicated in order teh Picts, teh Northumbrians, the Mercians, teh Saxons and Welsh and was preparing to invade all Irish provinces at once to kill them off. It took something like 60-70 turns with good rushing.

You can expand very quickly without agents too. Just after you become really big need to watch out where your leader is. Also need to build the early happy buildings fast.

In the main campaign this is not always possible due to religious/cultural differences and the Pope.

[Brandy Blue]

That's not at all how I remember it Gollum. Viking era spies are not hard to tech up to IIRC, and I don't see why you couldn't get them before you reached Wessex, unless you just wanted to spend your money on something else. Viking era provinces tend to be rebellious until you've held them a while, so spies are handy, but not essential of course.

I did not find spies as useful in early/high/late for improving loyalty really. Peasants are available everywhere there's a fort, and so cheap that the upkeep doesn't matter too much. Just find something to do with them after they are not needed in their current province, such as garrisoning a different province. That way you do not have to train too many. Since peasants offer a reasonable alternative to spies, I would use peasants so I could put other things in my castles' build queque, like teched up troops that neither spies nor peasants can replace. Not that this is an option once I started playing without peasants, but when you've got a mod, it all depends on how its modded.

Substituting peasants for spies is less attractive in Viking era, because peasants require their own special building that ties up your building queue anyway, so you might as well go all the way and tech up to a spy building. Also, a spy in Jutland is a handy way to keep the Vikings out of your hair, though not essential of course.

[gollum]

unless you just wanted to spend your money on something else.

I hadn;t modded the game in that campaign BB.

Yep, i've spent them monies on a steady stream of troops to keep rushing the other factions :) In general for a good rush you need to balance between making more troops to feed the attacks (which is the priority investment), and teching up to get better troops so the attacks won't stall if you meet a faction that has been teching up all the while (as it will eventually happen with the Saxons and perhaps teh Mercians).

Everything else is secondary. You can sidetrack agents completely if the momentum and speed are to be maintained, and also build boats only to the point they protect your troop-making shores and shorten the distances to the front lines; you can also relatively ignore economic buildings too except for a very few selected provinces in your core lands (the richest) with good governors, as conquering new land both adds to your income (even with lower taxes) but most importantly takes from teh income of your foes.

Peasants i do not bother with at all in general - only in very few cases as garrisons. With the Scotts you have the perfect rushing/garrison unit - the Highlanders: dirt cheap to build and maintain and also pretty competent for that money on the field. Building them in large quntities in a steady production stream does the trick.

While spies were certainly useful once i got big of course, equally useful as the spies were the brothels that made them, that i did in every province i could. Iirc they have a happiness bonus, and also of course can make the spies that contribute to the same for provinces. of course all early happy buildings (shrine, watchtowers etc) were also built everywhere (to allow me to keep attacking).

Edit: With the Picts and the Scotts, i use rushing strategies big time for two reasons; one is that once you have taken with one the other (the Picts as the Scotts or the Scotts as the Picts), you are on a bottleneck and so the geography favors concentration of troops and hence attacking. The other of course is that the southern factions are both rich and can get tech wise pretty good (Huscarles etc), and so the sooner i take out their high tech troop centers and wealth the better.
A similar logic - although more hazardous due to lack of bottleneck) applies to teh Welsh, unless one takes on Ireland first.