Spies!

[element]

I just read somthing cool about spies and their abilities. They seem to be much more usefull in RTW than in MTW. It seems that spies can follow enemy armies to show you their troop movements. If you put a spy in an enemy town and attack the town the spy will open the gates for you!

[battletrap]

Woh, I put a spy into some Gaul town earlier but never attacked it. I think I'll get on that asap!

They can report to you the troop movements of enemy armies as well.

[Doug-Thompson]

The combination of spies and the R-TW movement system is a very potent one.

You can move your spy along for part of his movement allowance. If he spots something interesting, then you can have him go to it and scout it out with the rest of his move.

They are also MUCH more effective for opening gates, at least in lower-level forts.

Finally, spies are now absolutely vital. You don't automatically see everything in a province any more if you just occupy the province next to it.

[Oaty]

Do'nt know what happened but the Gauls kicked 1 of my spies out opf there town. What I do'nt understand is why did'nt they kill him. I've had spies killed also

[Silver Rusher]

Yes, I feel that the only real point in keeping spies in a province in MTW is to see who the enemy are planning to attack (it's this kind of thing that couldn't be used in MP campaign) but now from what you all have said spies are incredibly useful, as I prefer winning any strategy game using underhand and devious tactics than anything else. I was disappointed by spies because in MTW they rarely told you anything about the enemy's plans and they were only otherwise useful for

a) Revealing v&v (how pointless is that???)
b) Opening castles (yeah, alright, but it was the only thing they could really do that was in any way useful, especially compared to assasins and inqs)
c) Keeping loyalty and finding enemy spies and assasins (1, you can use assasins for this and 2, loyalty can be kept by loads of other things, like bishops)