Has this ever happened to you?

[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.

[lugh]

When I do bother with agents (normally when Im bored of the normal invade your way to victory game)
I leave my king in an nonBF ported province. Commence slaying of emmisaries! Or there alway seems to be Alim in my North Eastern holding, no matter who I play, so I have an assasin wander around there picking them off.

[Procrustes]

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

I agree - build a port and they show up the next turn.

[EatYerGreens]

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

That's an important point about the non-BF'd province which I forgot to mention. I was going to edit my post but you've done it for me. Thanks for drawing attention to it.

I was having a right old laugh in my first campaign (English) when I built a port in Flanders and kept catching HRE assassins virtually every year or two. After wasting easily more than 1000 florins, they finally have the sense to build their own port in order to ship them out.

Actually, it may have had more to do with the pre-programmed building priorities the AI have been left with and I'm pretty sure you would end up with the same thing if you were to activate "auto-construct buildings".

In my current (Byz) campaign, the Almos invaded Ireland, destroying the port in the process (the daftest thing about port/island invasions, unless it's the defenders who are supposedly doing the wrecking). I then couldn't get any agents in to observe the goings-on but it must have been more than a decade before the port got reconstructed. When I took the English into Ireland it was probably the first thing I built.