How to train agents? Please give some clue!

[bretwalda]

Hi there!

I lack any good valour agents, though I am able to produce cartloads of them. So how do I train them on 'easy' missions? I guess (though I am not sure) that with assassins it is just killing enemy emissaries, priests and such, with emissaries just sending them around with tasks. But what to do with bishops, inquisitors, spies and whatever else is there? Especially spies interest me but I would appreciate thoughts on all of the agents. Thanks a lot!

[Tomcat]

Try 2 of your Assassins against each other. That way you will always have a winner increasing in valour - and also unfortunately a loser! Depends if you think it is worth it.....

Tomcat

[bretwalda]

Well, I 'd rather do it on the enemy... ;) and getting the extra benefit of actually killing some. But with assassins its pretty straight forward - but what to do with spies and all the rest?

Try 2 of your Assassins against each other. That way you will always have a winner increasing in valour - and also unfortunately a loser! Depends if you think it is worth it.....

Tomcat

[el_slapper]

you'd better do that on a peasant unit, this is faaaar cheaper. Even with the upkeep cost, you only lose 33 per turn instead of 200..... plus you can train your spies on them too. Just don't rely over that unit!!!

[bretwalda]

Doesn't that get my king awful vices? I heard that killing you own men has some very disturbing consequences...

you'd better do that on a peasant unit, this is faaaar cheaper. Even with the upkeep cost, you only lose 33 per turn instead of 200..... plus you can train your spies on them too. Just don't rely over that unit!!!

[metatron]

Inqusitors can get them for investigating heresey, but I think I've seen them get it if they have a succesful inquisition running. Bishops, Priests, and Cardinals can only get them from diplomatic missions; same for Princesses and Emissaries.

Spies have to try generals/get information. Assassins, you know. And yes, they're hard to get, but high valor spies are worth it.

PS: There are provinces that have bonuses (listed and not listed) to agents. Castile (I think) and Portugal give them to Inquisitors and Grand Inquisitors respectively. Check the forums.

[Ludens]

If you install VI you can build upgrades for the brothel and the drinking den. Also, Syria gives a +2 bonus to assassins (again with VI installed) and Castile a +1 to inquisitors and grand inquisitors. Portugal gives bonus to caravels, not inquisitors.

You can train spies by letting them cause revolts in rebellious provinces (like Portugal) or by having them catch assassins and other spies. The valour calculation system is not entirely logical, so they will gain stars even if a border fort or higher valour spy is present. There are other ways of letting them gain valour, but these are risky.

For assassin only training helps, but you can train them on emissaries or on themselves. Attacking peasants will result in a lot of dead assassins and a paranoid, disloyal peasant commander, but it might just work .

Emissaries can be trained by sending them to a monarch that is sending you an offer of alliance. If you see an emissary that is heading for you, move your king away and send one of your men to their king. Success is guaranteed, and your emissary gets the valour bonus.

[Procrustes]

The way I see it it's a waste to purposely train your agents - just let them do their job and they will train themselves. I mean, two plain assassins have about as much chance of success as one one-star assassin - so instead of spending all the time and money to train a one star assassin, send two plain assassins against the target. If one succeeds then you have trained him and accomplished a goal.

I do build towards the upper level agent buildings, though - get VI if you can.

Regarding spies, I routinely use them to end seiges - great way to gain stars. Each year you wait the odds of success go up. When you succeed you get all the tech in the province - little or nothing gets destroyed.

Assassins may gain more than one star if they manage to murder a high-value target like a king. Also, the odds of a successful assassination are pretty good when you target a general who is under seige. I routinely assassinate and inquisit beseiged generals - makes the waiting more fun and demoralizes the enemy.

[EatYerGreens]

We've had a lot of similar discussion in another thread recently.

I think the cheapest and most harmless way of training assassins and spies to at least their second star is to have them on 'guard duty', ie strictly on friendly territory until they've caught a couple of incoming enemy agents.

I had a lot of success with this in my current campaign where it seemed that I was one of the first European factions to have built ports. I was catching a lot of incoming agents but this dwindled as soon as they had built their own ports so it seems the sole reason they were coming into my lands was to get to the port, to chase some target or other, rather than attack any of my units.

I have yet to install VI and in the vanilla MTW, contrary to what was said earlier, when I have a low valour agent on guard in a province with a border fort, I get the report of an enemy agent being captured but my agent is NOT getting the valour star, so its as if the BF is getting the credit. As a result of seeing this I've deliberately left a number of provinces at Watchtower-only level, so that my trainee agents can get a chance. I'll also leave a bishop or emissary in that province as 'bait'.

After they've got 2 stars, they're more likely to get past an enemy BF and stand a chance of reaching their target. I think sending more than one agent at a time is also a good idea. They each stand certain odds of getting caught by the BFs but the more you send, the greater the chances one might get through.

For spies, use your bishops and emissaries to search for provinces where recent conflict has degraded BFs to WTs which then never got repaired and ideally there's a port to get your spy in directly. I gather that, post-VI, sending in half a dozen spies will not gain them all a credit if a rebellion goes off. In the vanilla-MTW this certainly does work and I got five gaining a star all at once. In the meantime with just one spy at a time, at the very least you can force an opposing faction to reduce its taxation level in that province to maintain loyalty and the loss of income, relative to the cost of your spy, makes their use very cost effective, even if they end up getting caught - just send in another as and when necessary.

Once they've got a couple of stars, it should be safe to send them around enemy territory uncovering secret V&V's of generals. These may hit their acumen rating, personal valour level, command rating, loyalty and so on. I found one enemy general who actually had "Heretic" listed in his V&V's. Not the work of my spies, probably another faction's, but I sent an inquisitor after him ASAP, with 100% chance of frying him.

Spies will also give you information about enemy mobilisations, forthcoming attack plans and so on, which none of the other agents can do.

That thing where inquisitors who've been left in preaching mode report burning x-hundred civilians in a province, I've yet to see them gain any stars for that and it can also happen when you've 'parked' them on home turf too. If they are there, or in the territory of an ally, it may be a good idea to keep them on the move until you can identify a suitable unit leader as a target.