Has this ever happened to you?

[Ludens]

Spy-Rush? If this is the business of bunging multiple spies into a province to trigger rebellion and where they magically get a valour point each (which I pulled off twice the other day, giving me five 2-star and one 3-star) then that's disappointing news but thanks for the warning.

With a spy rush I meant that you put multiple spies in one province to rapidly decrease or boost loyalty. This was possible in MTW, but in VI only the highest valour spy has an influence on loyalty. This was probably added because two or three V3 spies (possible with the brothel upgrades) could send loyalty in an enemy province plummeting. If you kept producing spies you cause a rolling wave of rebellions to sweep over your opponent.

They way spies gain valour is not a straighforward business, I know that. But how it works is a mystery to me. I have seen low valour spies gain valour from rebellions caused by high valour ones (in Portugal, which would have revolted without their help anyway :sigh:).

I'm not clear about what you meant is obvious. Valour 3 survives without fail and valour 2 is 50/50, or worse?

From memory: a V3 spy stand a chance of roughly three in four (or better) of going undetected by a border fort, whereas a valour two spy gets captured around 50% of the times. Keep in mind that these are just guesses, I haven't tested it and I don't think it's possible to test it.

You can train assassins on emissaries (which are cheap) or you can train them on each other. Though building bishops may work I doubt a real medieval lord would consider doing this .

[EatYerGreens]

I did try the suggestion to give them 'practice' on a unit of peasants but the odds for valour-0 assassin on valour-0 peasants started at only 37% and, additionally, the mission dialogue warned me that killing one of my own generals, or even attempting to, could only serve to "spread dissention in the ranks, reduce loyalty of other generals and risk rebellions, or worse".

Now the peasants may be cheap but if I'm going to lose 2 out of 3 assassins (at 200 each) just getting their first star and maybe half of those survivors in the attempt to get the second star, then it seems cheaper to me, overall, to get one assassin up to 2-star by spending 200 on a couple of emissaries, or correspondingly more to get them to 3-star and so on.

The point I made about 'playing the game' is that a fair proportion of assassin attacks are not based on a strategic need to eliminate an enemy agent (they are 'spying' on a province into which their faction should be able to see using their WT/BF anyway) but on the need to get the assassin to the valour level required for attacks on enemy generals to stand some chance of working - which is their real purpose, after all.

AFAIC, the real absurdities are that :-
1) Low valour assassins are rendered redundant by border forts
2) BF's appear very early on in the game because they are so cheap and quick to build - quicker than you can build a tavern.
3) BF's eventually become redundant against high valour assassins, which works both for and against you.
4) You can't 'train' your newest assassins by catching incoming ones in a province where you've built a BF - it seems as if the BF always gets the credit
5) Even with high a high valour assassin, the 6-star plus generals you really want to target still give very low odds of success. After all the work you've put in, you end up valuing them more as a defence against high-valour enemy assassins rather than the offensive purpose for which they've been put into the game.

Life could be made more interesting if watch towers and forts were regarded as 'staffed' and thus came with a corresponding maintainence cost, which would then have to be weighed against maintainance for teams of spies/assassins who are able to do the same job - only at a price.

Lastly, in STW, an enemy BF would stop you getting detailed information about troops and buildings in that province, even if you had a watch-tower or fort of your own to spy on it with. This would encourage you to send in agents of the priest/emissary type to do your reconnaisance. They were vulnerable to attacks but at least wouldn't get automatically caught. I don't see this mutual information blockage happening in MTW.

I'd also like to see a feature whereby princesses are regarded as preoccupied with attending functions and courting, priests busy with preaching, emissaries conducting embassy duties and under constant watch, thus limiting the quality of the information they can send you about buildings and troops in a province - even down to vagueness about precise numbers. Thus there's an incentive to send in a 'proper' spy who works covertly, has no 'front' to maintain or other duties to perform and gives detailed information but with a constant risk of getting caught. Just so long as it's not automatically on the first turn they enter a BF'd province, like it is now!

[Ludens]

EYG, I think you are under the misconception that assassins can actually catch other assassins. This is not the case, or at least, not as far as I know. Only BF and spies can do that. Spies do get the credit, even though it was probably the border fort that did most of the work.

Secondly, assassins are pretty ineffective, but that is intentionally. Their main task is to eliminate enemy agents; killing generals is only a secondary function. It wouldn't be fun if assassins were too effective against generals. Now, it is feasible to kill a high level general that poses a serious threat against your empire using a swarm of cheap assassins, but you can't do it to all rivals in sight. Inquisitors can, but they are vulnerable against, you guessed it, assassins. It is a system of checks and balances.

About bishops and princesses spying: don't you think that those agents would have a retinue to take care of such things. And a spy does send more information: it will warn you of planned attacks (as opposed to opportunistic ones). Though I do agree that you would expect a profesional spy to be more accurate that a diplomat, but the game doesn't allow this. Fortunatly, spies in RTW do work this way (or so I understand).

[Procrustes]

Hi EYG,

All you say is true, so let me ask you – why are you bothering to “train up” assassins instead of just building plain ones and using them in numbers? Some will survive and gain stars naturally, some will die.

I think the economics of this make more sense. Say an assassin costs 200f and a bishop 100f. Say that your assassin will kill your bishop two thirds of the time. So that one star assassin (plus one remaining bishop) costs on average 450f – quite a bit more than your plain assassin. (You have to build three assassins and three bishops to get two one star assassins: [3(200) + 3(100)] / 2 = 450 )

Now lets say you are targeting an enemy general and your two plain assassins have a probability of success of 16% each and your one star assassin has a probability of 33%. (I think these are the numbers you quoted.) Therefore the enemy general has 0.84 X 0.84 = 71% probability of surviving two successive attacks by your plain assassins and a 67% chance of surviving an attack by your one-star assassin. Pretty much a wash, huh?

I know there are other things that could also be included in the model – border forts, etc. – but I think you can see where this will still go. My recommendation would be instead to select a province or two that you aren’t building troops or ships in and start cranking out assassins. Use them in number. If/when you upgrade the castle in that province, make your next build the next spy/assassin building – don’t waste time building troop buildings there unless you think you are apt to need them.

My only word of caution is that I think that assassins are intentionally a little weak - otherwise you could easily cream the AI simply by assassinating it's best generals. I wouldn't try to change that too much or you will unbalance the game and ruin your fun.

HTH,

[EatYerGreens]

EYG, I think you are under the misconception that assassins can actually catch other assassins. This is not the case, or at least, not as far as I know. Only BF and spies can do that. Spies do get the credit, even though it was probably the border fort that did most of the work.

Hi Ludens,

1. The dialogue says that the captured enemy agent was an assassin.
2. Sometimes it also says they "confessed that the XXXX filled their purse"
3. These catches were in provinces where I deliberately had NOT built a BF
4. My 0 or 1-star assassin there gained a star as a result of the capture
5. This began happening long before I'd been able to build the facilities for spies.

You're right that you can't purposely target enemy assassins, because you cannot see them on the strategic map but this 'policing' function is an ability assassins have had ever since STW (spies/shinobi too, of course). Maybe I know the game too well?

[EatYerGreens]

Hi Procrustes,

the reason for training up the assassins is that, in my experience, the odds for hitting the enemy general with a multiple attack are somewhat academic because the 0-valour assassins seem to just get caught by BF's 100% of the time.

To be fair this is just because I've never really attempted a swarm attack. I send them in by themselves, they always get caught so I don't bother to send them into BF'd territory any more. I therefore consider the swarm to be something of an extravagance, on the assumption that most of them will get caught, so if you've had a more positive experience with this technique, I'd be glad to hear about it.

In the meantime, I train them to give them some odds of surviving the BFs and, in practice, I'm not sending them against generals anyway, due to the low odds, as stated earlier.

To be honest, I think I'm trying to do things on the cheap. I don't exactly have money to burn and I'd rather build another ship than 4 extra 'disposable' assassins, for example.

I should add that the attacking own bishop/emissary thing is not something I've actually done myself, just a suggestion as to how to raise the valour of a single assassin rapidly, if you "needed one in a hurry". Odds start at 87% for 0 vs 0, and only get better, so it would be 200 + (4x100) to get a 3-star assassin, with only minimal odds of failure in getting them that far and a good chance they can then get past BF's safely afterwards. The same money gets you only 3 v0 assassins, hardly a 'swarm', with a good chance that all three get caught at the border.

I still take your point though, technique is just a matter of personal preference. Use whatever works for you.

[Ludens]

1. The dialogue says that the captured enemy agent was an assassin.
2. Sometimes it also says they "confessed that the XXXX filled their purse"
3. These catches were in provinces where I deliberately had NOT built a BF
4. My 0 or 1-star assassin there gained a star as a result of the capture
5. This began happening long before I'd been able to build the facilities for spies.

Odd, I have never seen this. Perhaps it is because assassins are always low priority for me. Well, given the evidence, you are right. I think I will include this in my agent guide.

[EatYerGreens]

Odd, I have never seen this. Perhaps it is because assassins are always low priority for me. Well, given the evidence, you are right. I think I will include this in my agent guide.

That would be cool. Thanks.

The thing to emphasise is that you have to set aside a province as a 'training area', with no BF on it and perhaps an emissary or bishop placed there as 'bait', to draw in enemy agents. It will have to be a frontline province in order that the AI factions can see into it, of course.

This is a deliberate policy of mine and it won't necessarily suit all players. Some may prefer to save their money, just build BF's everywhere (same cost as one assassin per province), knowing they can generally be relied upon and just run one or two assassins at any given time, mostly on missions outside friendly territory and only building more whenever they lose one.

The 'policing' function is still important though. I've already lost a couple of bishops within a BF'd province and my only hope of catching the enemy agent was having a high-valour assassin to hand at the time. My highest level spy was only 3-star, may not have been high enough to make the catch and, besides, was busy trying to cause trouble in Portugal at the time. It lacked a port of its own so it would have been 2 years just to get him home, risking passing through a BF'd port province as well, so I used the assassin instead. Not entirely sure if I did catch the culprit but the attacks stopped after the assassin had done a full tour of the country. If other players aren't aware of this function then it would be good to see it in the guide.

[Ludens]

That would be cool. Thanks.

Well, the thing is buried inside an old thread somewhere in the Entrance Hall, so I doubt anyone will notice. I just update it because... Well, because it's my guide. That's about it .

The thing to emphasise is that you have to set aside a province as a 'training area', with no BF on it and perhaps an emissary or bishop placed there as 'bait', to draw in enemy agents. It will have to be a frontline province in order that the AI factions can see into it, of course.

One thing I do know for sure is that bishops (or any religious agents - excepting inquisitors off course) get targetted by the AI far less often than ordinary emissaries. Therefore they make better spies: the AI does not seem bothered by their presence. Even when I am sending in a group of bishops or cardinals to convert the infidels, the Muslim AI does not.

I think a port is more effective in luring those enemy agents.