Defending against bribes/how to train killer assasins

[Brennus]

Hi everyone,
Can anyone recommend any strategies for preventing settlements being bribed. I am playing as the Aedui and whilst my field army is away conquering the Aquitani and Veneti the Romans have been trying for a while to bribe my eastern settlements. Are there any good ways of sureing up a settlement to make it less susceptible to bribes or even better any way of training up assasins so they actually have a chance of killing diplomats?

Thanks!

[Cute Wolf]

I don't know how to make settlements less suspectible to bribes, but training assassins is rather easy, just train em in combo with a spy, (spy an enemy captain and then assassinate him), it start rough (30-40%) for the assassins, but after couple of killings, he'll increase in subterfuge

[Sylon]

Assassins work, but putting a diplomat in a settlement works to defend it against bribing just as well. Leaving a diplomat in a settlement for several turns will give him a trait that boosts his negotiation skill by 5 and bribe cost by 100%.

[Arjos]

Yes, as Sylon said the best solution is leaving diplomats, usually in the bordering settlements, bonus takes place in one turn, takes much less time than training an assassin properly...

[vollorix]

Temple of Fun line ( along with Taverns, at least for Sweboz spies ) gives nice ancillaries to your spies and assasins. Even if you´ve got a rooky at the start, with a couple of "eyes" he might be sent to his first mission; the best ones are sabotage missions targeting temples ( no enemy spies/FM should be present there, though ) - you get 72% chance on success, which is mostly a lucky number, from my experience. After that you get a promising beginner. Then you can send him to kill a rooky diplomate with 64% ( which also seems a rather lucky number ) chances, and more. Also, if you manage to scout a freshly spawned AI FM ( mostly as a head of an army previously led by a captain ), you might get up to 95% chance even with a quite unexperienced killer.

Concerning bribery: i tent to place 1 of each type of agents in a settlement threatened by an enemy bribery attempts:
- a diplomate ( ambassador after 1 turn, as stated above ), to increase the bribing summ
- a spy to check out the diplomates traits
- an asassin to deal with him if the chances are good enough
Stationing a "loyal" FM in those settlements also might make them "faithfull" / "honest" - a nice trick to gain some positive traits for your administrators/generals who might be stationed far away from your core territories afterwards.

[Brennus]

Thanks for the tips! I will start training up a Gallic diplomatic core. If luck and time are on my side I will try to get an assasin to deal with my problem.