What has happened to v2.01 spies?

[therother]

Hi

Long time player, first time poster.

I've just come back to TW after a bit and installed the v2.01 VI patch. Is it just me or has the ability of spies to cause mischief in other provinces been massively reduced? #For example, I've just landed 10 rank 2 spies in Sardinia, not a particular stable province at the best of times, when it had a loyalty to the Italians of 102%, low taxation. The turn after the arrival of my spy armada, the loyalty has gone up to 120%, with no increase in Italian troops #In my previous games, such an invasion would have had a catastrophic effect on the loyalty of the province.

What's going on? I'm the Aragonese and I need the province for the points, but don't want to lose the trade with the Italians if I invade #I’ve been using spies as a tactic to gain provinces, harden generals and armies, improve alliances, and generally cause mischief since the days of Shogun. #Why am I being denied my backstabbing fun?

[Crash]

Welcome to the Guild

I guess that it was decided that spies were too powerful compared to the cost of producing them. I too like using spies to stir up rebellions so that I don't actually have to directly attack other factions to gain their provinces. But with the VI patch on, I now sometimes need to use 30 or more rank 2 or 3 spies to cause a rebellion.

But I think that it's a change for the better, because agents in general probably have too large an affect on the game, like the Geisha assassin in STW. A 5 star Grand Inquisitor just throws the game completely off balance.

I wish there was a game option to turn off agents, so you have the choice of having the element of the game active or not.

[Aelwyn]

I think one of the CA people uploaded something that did exactly that, turned off the ability to use agents. Its somewhere on the Org iirc....

[therother]

Thanks

I don't know that the game was unbalanced if you were willing to put the effort into balancing it: there are defences to all the agents. Just put a cardinal in the region and the inquisitor becomes severely handicapped. Try it yourself. Get a heathen general (mercenaries are good for this), stick him in a province with a few cardinals, and see how your inquisitor gets on. And of course this is where those assassins from Syria come very nicely into play. A valour 5 assassin will soon deal with any inquisitor, especially as you can produce them one a turn, so you don't much care if a few of them die in the attempt. In fact, if you can capture a cathedral or two, you can flood the catholic world with cardinals, making the likelihood of a high valour inquisitor extremely unlikely.

Similarly with spies: if you use spies for defence as well as watch towers, you can defend yourself against enemy spies, although the AI never seems to use an agent swarm, or I've never seen it do so. I keep 2 good spies in every region, a cardinal, and half a dozen assassins hovering around killing enemy agents (or my spies if no enemy is available) to gain experience, along with the governor (assuming he isn't a general) and enough cheap troops to make the total forces above 100 if he's not in a peasant or spear unit.

When playing catholic factions, I always try to lower the zeal of my provinces. I never use crusades; they are a waste of time IMHO. About the only good thing are the chivalric foot knights, but I don't think it's worth it as you can't retrain or improve them. Better to build a fleet and carefully plan your invasions. Oh, and capture Switzerland. The Swiss Armoured Spearmen, coupled with some heavy cavarly or knights (preferably Lancers), Pavise Arbalesters, and CMAA are a formidable combination in attack or defence, outwith the desert anyway (for the first two units). I just love the Steppe units as well, if you can capture Khazar or Kiev. If you're the Turks, of course, you have the formidable JHI and JI to replace the CMAA and Arbalesters, so you are laughing. Jihads are also much better fun than crusades, easier to build, more reliable to increase zeal using Imams, as they have no inquisition downside, and are a great way of improving your influence and loyalty. Just invade some weakly province that you don't much care for, withdraw and let them sally, start a jihad or two, easily win, and take your (unjust) reward.

There is nothing more satisfying than watching as your ally squirms under rebellion after rebellion, especially if they are heavily engaged elsewhere, whilst you nip in every while to sort out the rebellion and gain the experience for your troops and general (and hopefully a virtue if you do well enough). Or if it's a useful province (like Flanders, Constantinople, Antioch etc.) waiting until the rebels have taken the province, and then invading en masse to capture it from them and adding it (and their massive income) to your empire without losing an ally, starting a war, or losing trade with their ports. It's especially sweet if your ally brings back his force in time for your invasion: you sit back and let him do all the work, whilst gaining the victory for your general and then still getting the province if you have numerical superiority (that's what those peasants are for).

Destroying the papacy is also a good tactic, assuming you have the troops, as you get a guaranteed battle every 10 years or so with the Pope bringing 4000 or so to the fray, sometimes more than one if he invades any of his other old provinces as well. If you destroy all the troop producers in the appropriate regions, especially the armourers, you have a great opportunity to get the defence virtues when you bring your top men to sort out thousands of poorly trained rabble. Oftentimes it's easier just to auto resolve - particularly if you have a good general - unless you are especially partial to fighting wave after wave every dozen turns or so, but I've seen me take 7000 heads for the loss of less than 400, with 3 generals gaining an extra star via a defending virtue using the auto resolve. I have 5 of my generals up to Field defence Specialist at moment using just this tactic.

It's also a great way to improve your royal line. Say you have a poor rank 3 king (or crown prince). Get him up to rank 6-7 by defending Rome, and at least one of his sons is likely be much better than rank 3. Kill those ahead of him by fair means or foul. Castle assaults are often a good way of ridding yourself of troublesome heirs. Repeat. Repeat again. Now you've got a great stock of high ranked princes to take titles later on. And of course if you use these generals just for defending your frontiers, you can remove the command increasing titles and give them to the attacking generals, hopefully allowing them to get good attacking virtues. When you remove their titles, and so on.

This Papacy tactic has another benefit: there is usually a cathedral in Rome and the Papal States (depending on the starting era), and there is little else you can build except ships, the buildings for which take time, so you might as well pump out cardinals to nullify the power of the inquisitors.

I would probably edit the game to remove crusades if I didn't like eliminating the Pope so much. I think that would be my only major change to the game - the AI's crusades are just an annoyance, especially of you have Constantinople. I would, however, like more automatic management of agents, allowing easier movement and distribution. It can be tiresome moving dozens of spies from province to province or checking which of your provinces could do with another spy, or individually assigning assassins after each of the 10 agents that are currently residing in one of your provinces.

Oh, I'd prefer a more realistic naval side as well, but I hear this may be coming in RTW. I don't much like this black and white system that operates at the moment that each region is completely blockaded by the presence of even one ship, no matter the size of your fleet. I mean, is it realistic for all troop movements and trade to completely cease on the presence of one measly enemy ship, when there are 12 friendly Carracks for protection? I suggest not.

There is nothing in the game more annoying that having an enemy Dromon moving backwards and forwards between Sea Marmara and the Aegean blocking all naval troop movement from ports in the Black sea and Constantinople, as well as all trade from Constantinople, Khazar, Kiev, Moldavia, Bulgaria and Nicaea, to the outside world. It can bankrupt you, cause rebellions, and allow other factions to move in on isolated provinces as you can't reinforce your garrisons. The bottleneck at Gibraltar is almost as bad, but at least it only blockaded half the time. Unless the AI is really sneaky and has two ships on the go...

Even if you have a massive fleet in the surrounding regions there is absolutely nothing you can do, as the ship is faster than anything you can build, unless you are the Italians, Sicilians or Byzantines, or you edit the game to remove the advantage. Which I've been sorely tempted to do on a number of occasions.