Spies: in your own cities

[motorhead]

I fouund a way of training my sies up to 12 subterfuge really easily, maybe its an exploit...

As one of the romans factions, get your spy into Rome and leave him there for 3-4 years. Voila hes out as 12 subt. spy.

- i think you just had a nice run of luck with traits and retinue. before i attacked rome i plopped 2 spies into it for at least 3 or 4 years, and while they gained a few points of subterfuge (i believe 10 is max for any stat), they didn't come close to 10. i've noticed that spies seem to have a chance every year of gaining a +trait or picking up a retinue. cities seem especially good places for picking up things like monkeys, dancers and courtesans.

Not sure but I think maybe spies do'nt have 100 percent chance of detedting a spy especially when the enemy spy has a high subterfuge, is this correct?

- from what i've seen yes. one city in north africa i was planning to take. sent a lvl 3 or 4 spy down there and he had less than a 20% chance of spying on the city. normally a spy of that level easily gets 100% chance. After I took city, 4 scipii spies popped out, each of them lvl 2-5. I've also seen my spies get kicked out of a city at the beginning of my turn (you hear the gate close sound and you see your spy moved out). Based on those experiences against the AI, i'd say spies are not 100% protection.

[Ulstan]

I've tried to send in assassins to kill enemy spies keeping my spies out, but I have had no luck with that. They don't show up as people to assassinate. How do I get them to appear?

[Spuddicus]

If they have any spies in a city, they should show up in the list of valid targets when select the city with your assassin.
Be careful though, if you have your own spies in there they'll show up as well (accidentally killed a couple of mine this weekend that way).

[Jeanne d'arc]

Some cities i tried to infiltrate had a 9% chanche to succeed, gues they must have had a enemy spy inside it, always thought it was a bug or something.

[therother]

Some cities i tried to infiltrate had a 9% chanche to succeed, gues they must have had a enemy spy inside it, always thought it was a bug or something.

With that low a %, either you have a very poor spy, and/or there are one (or more) good spies in that city! Use an assassin to get rid of them!