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.

[athanaric]

Your first targets should be enemy assassins. They're usually easy to kill, too, and you'll get a 95% chance even with a low level assassin. Also, low level diplomats are easy targets. After that, it's low level spies. Your border towns should all have a spy each, especially if they have a governor (because the AI loves cowardly behaviour and has a special liking for killing your governors). Possibly a diplomat as well. As for assassins, one or two should be enough to defend your kingdom.

By the way, I've once managed to bribe Mediolanum playing as the Romans. No less than two spies and (IIRC) an FM defected to my side. With enough money, it is possible to bribe spies, so having an ambassador as well probably doesn't hurt.

[vollorix]

@atharic: i didn´t know that spies can defect? wow! good to know ;)