Has this ever happened to you?

[MongolWarrior]

OK, the other day I started a campaign with England in early.After about 20 turns or so, I built a tavern and trained an assasin.Well, the next turn I click on him and he has 5 valour! I was able to kill like 3 3 star heirs right off the bat! Has this ever happened to anyone?

[King Edward]

Yup that would be Guy of Gisborne he is an English Hero assasin and always pops up around 1110ish if you train assasins. he kicks ass!!

[English assassin]

Just think if you modded the game to keep going to the 1960's and trained an assassin you'd get James Bond and the rest of the game would be a cakewalk

[MongolWarrior]

Yup that would be Guy of Gisborne he is an English Hero assasin and always pops up around 1110ish if you train assasins. he kicks ass!!

Thats awesome! Was he a famous assasin or somethin?

[Lonewarrior]

Amazing simply amazing

[EatYerGreens]

MW,

He may be a genuine historical character but, as to whether he was actually an assassin? I have no idea. Fame doesn't really sit well with the job description though ;)

I'm playing my first ever MTW campaign at the moment, also as the English. I had him but he didn't last long enough to get as far as Valour 6. I lost him attacking a lousy 3-star general, at something like 76% odds in favour... :(

I find it odd that, although spies are cheaper per unit, the expense of moving up the tech tree to get them is surprisingly high, not to mention the build time taken. It may be in the interests of game balance, owing to the rebellion effects you can pull off with a bunch of them working together.

I was very disappointed to discover that, having got at least one of them up to 2-valour, he still couldn't get through a province with a border fort on it without getting caught.

This could have just been bad luck, as in a high valour assassin was guarding that province but, generally, I don't send my assassins or spies outside friendly territory until they are up to at least valour-2 from catching incoming agents. Border forts are ludicrously cheap and they are up just about everywhere until territories start changing hands and taking damage. I deliberately leave my frontier and a few port-provinces at watchtower-only level, otherwise the border fort catches the incoming agents and the 'trainee' spy/assassin never seems to get the credit.

The best use for Gisbourne is for bullet-proof zapping of 'easy meat' emissaries priests/Alims which have snuck into one of your port territories. If you don't command an attack they will happily stick around and spy/preach. It's as if the AI knows what you're up to because as soon as you DO set your valour-0 assassin on them, it heads straight to a home port with border fort and he's a goner. Guy gets them every time :D

[Procrustes]

Thats awesome! Was he a famous assasin or somethin?

Um, somethin.... Guy of Gisborne was a villian from the Robin Hood tales - he was the assassin sent by the Sheriff of Nottingham to kill RH. RH kills him instead, and puts his head on the end of his bow - at least in a popular ballad.

[Procrustes]

You can get your spy valor up by trying your generals for treason or by using them to open castle gates during a siege. I have little luck with treason trials, but I use them all the time to end sieges. Move three or four of them into a province the turn after you invade it (or the same turn if you are expecting a pope warning.) It helps to wait a year or two, but when it looks like you have good odds or have run out of time then drop all your spies on the castle - one is likely to get through. I've got a couple of four star spies wandering around my current game that way.

Watch towers and border forts are murder on spies and assassins - I don't even try to sneak them into provinces that have them.

You can also get valor upgrades for spies after you build to the citadel and fortress levels. (You get the first one for assassins at the castle level.)

[EatYerGreens]

You can get your spy valor up by trying your generals for treason or by using them to open castle gates during a siege. I have little luck with treason trials, but I use them all the time to end sieges. Move three or four of them into a province the turn after you invade it (or the same turn if you are expecting a pope warning.) It helps to wait a year or two, but when it looks like you have good odds or have run out of time then drop all your spies on the castle - one is likely to get through. I've got a couple of four star spies wandering around my current game that way.

Watch towers and border forts are murder on spies and assassins - I don't even try to sneak them into provinces that have them.

You can also get valor upgrades for spies after you build to the citadel and fortress levels. (You get the first one for assassins at the castle level.)

I haven't had many opportunities to try the castle trick so far (either no spies built yet or the few I had were in the worng place - put that down to bad planning!) and the one time I did, I didn't like the odds, so didn't bother.

Not done any treason trials yet, so may have to give that a try. As long as the spy isn't killed, should the attempt fail, then that's okay.

It occurs to me that, if you needed a high valour assassin in a hurry, you could train a string of bishops and send your low-valour assassin after them, one by one. Not exactly sporting behaviour to kill people on your own side and it is rather 'playing the game' rather than doing something any king would do for real, but it should still work.

I think the one time I tried to bump off one of my own generals (low loyalty but 3-stars), it backfired on me badly. Come to think of it, that may have been how I lost Guy of Gisbourne! Arrgghh :Furious3:

I have had 0-valour spies survive watch towers (unlike in STW) but border forts are another matter. Minimum 3-valour to survive those and that means at least 4 kills on home turf, which may take many years of waiting for incoming atacks.

There may be some kind of catch-probability attached to border forts and sometimes you get away with it. A few times, I've sent a 1-star assassin after an agent on my turf, who then drags them off to some far-off port. They get the 2nd valour star as a result of the kill but the province they're in has a border fort, which they've somehow survived so I make sure to get them home on the next turn, otherwise it's a roll of the dice every year until they get caught. Maybe it's just that ports are a weak spot? In other words, when you make them cross a land frontier, into a BF'd province, that's how they get caught, even at 2-valour. The port isn't a 'border', as such.

[EatYerGreens]

You can also get valor upgrades for spies after you build to the citadel and fortress levels. (You get the first one for assassins at the castle level.)

That's interesting to know. I chose to upgrade one province to Citadel level (now just 3 years from reaching Fortress grade) for the purposes of high quality troop production. I don't like interrupting troop mobilisation for the sake of agents and so I omitted to construct the inn/brothel completely. These went into another province, so I could build things in parallel.

That one (Wales) only needed to go to Castle level, to get +1 valour on Longbowmen and assassins/spies/Inquisitors are a sideline there, for quieter years. A Citadel is a big expense and a long wait just to get ONE extra star on all my fresh agents. Eights thou buys a lot of agents and you could just spam them, play the odds and build them up in the usual way. 1-Valour still won't survive the border forts, after all.

However, now you've pointed this out, I could reconsider my options for the Fortress province. Thanks for the tip.

[Ludens]

EYG, upgrades for brothel and alehouse were only included in VI, you won't find them in vanilla MTW. Same goes for boiling oil at castle gates . The spy-rush has also been disabled in VI, only the highest-valour spy counts for loyalty calculations.

High valour spies and assassins do stand a lower chance for getting caught by border forts, though it takes valour 3 for it to become obvious. Then again, you might get unlucky. Border forts do guard sea-sides; I lost many assassins who followed their targets overseas.

About your signature: it's... uh... nice. But don't you think it's a bit of an overkill ?

[Procrustes]

Hi,

I haven't had many opportunities to try the castle trick so far (either no spies built yet or the few I had were in the worng place - put that down to bad planning!) and the one time I did, I didn't like the odds, so didn't bother.

Your odds go up the longer you seige the castle. I like this trick, mostly because it saves all the technology builds in the province for you - not much is apt to get destroyed when a seige ends this way. (Great way to preserve ports.) In order to ensure success set several spies on the gates at once. The border forts/watchtowers in the province you are invading will still be effective the year you invade, so wait a year to move your agents in if you can.

Another trick that you may like is that if you assassinate an enemy general his stack takes a moral penalty for a year. I often set assassins after generals I'm about to fight, or castles I'm about to assault.

Not done any treason trials yet, so may have to give that a try. As long as the spy isn't killed, should the attempt fail, then that's okay.

I don't think your spies die after unsuccessful treason trials, but your general may become more disloyal, and he is apt to start picking up vices that make it harder to pin treason on him next time around.

It occurs to me that, if you needed a high valour assassin in a hurry, you could train a string of bishops and send your low-valour assassin after them, one by one. Not exactly sporting behaviour to kill people on your own side and it is rather 'playing the game' rather than doing something any king would do for real, but it should still work.

I think the one time I tried to bump off one of my own generals (low loyalty but 3-stars), it backfired on me badly. Come to think of it, that may have been how I lost Guy of Gisbourne! Arrgghh :Furious3:

If you are going to train your assassins that way, it would probably be wiser to train them on a unit of peasants. They are cheaper than bishops, easier to kill, and you only have to pay for them once. Also, your odds will be higher if you put the target in a stack by itself.

I have had 0-valour spies survive watch towers (unlike in STW) but border forts are another matter. Minimum 3-valour to survive those and that means at least 4 kills on home turf, which may take many years of waiting for incoming atacks.

There may be some kind of catch-probability attached to border forts and sometimes you get away with it. A few times, I've sent a 1-star assassin after an agent on my turf, who then drags them off to some far-off port. They get the 2nd valour star as a result of the kill but the province they're in has a border fort, which they've somehow survived so I make sure to get them home on the next turn, otherwise it's a roll of the dice every year until they get caught. Maybe it's just that ports are a weak spot? In other words, when you make them cross a land frontier, into a BF'd province, that's how they get caught, even at 2-valour. The port isn't a 'border', as such.

Ports are magnets for foriegn agents - I always make sure my province has border forts and plenty of spies, assassins and emisaries in it before I build a port.


BTW, I'm sorry - I didn't realize that the upgrades for spies and assassins were only available in the Viking Invasion edition. If you have the opportunity you should really try to grab it - the game is much improved over the original. (Several new units, the viking campaigns, some rule tweaks, etc.)

Best,

[EatYerGreens]

EYG, upgrades for brothel and alehouse were only included in VI, you won't find them in vanilla MTW. Same goes for boiling oil at castle gates . The spy-rush has also been disabled in VI, only the highest-valour spy counts for loyalty calculations.

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. Common sense tells you that half a dozen troublemakers bring on rebellion that much faster but if the idea of the valour star is that it's an award for 'single-handedly' triggering a revolt then, by rights, a team of them should only get a fractional credit each.

The trouble with that is that it just means more data to be stored (floating point versus integer), more complex programming for calculating spy-effects on next provinces, calculating capture probabilites and so forth. It's also less clear to the player what is to be gained from using them at all.

My guess is that players developed the spy-rush in the first place because the game manual (back in STW days) said 'spies can trigger rebellions' but they found, in practice, one on his own barely had an effect on loyalty, so you shove in more and more until it goes bang and they go up a level. Thereafter just send in a team of them all in one go.

High valour spies and assassins do stand a lower chance for getting caught by border forts, though it takes valour 3 for it to become obvious.

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

Then again, you might get unlucky.

To a certain extent, I'd expect that. It would be frustrating if you had one at V4, which would take a lot of work if the levels are exponential 1,2,4,8 successes etc, then sent them on a routine mission and they still got caught but, when the boot's on the other foot and the AI has one of these floating about your territories, you'd be glad to know that there's still a risk that it's undertaking. Exactly the same risk you have to take into account when asking yourself whether a high-valour agent, maybe the only one you have to hand at the time, would be better used at home or abroad at any given moment.

Border forts do guard sea-sides; I lost many assassins who followed their targets overseas.

As I said, it seems I've been getting away with it, even with low-valour ones. I'm okay as long as I pay attention to the bit where the unit pieces animate across the board and make a mental note of what happened. If there's a battle to be dealt it may be some time before I'm back at the map. I dread the time where I simply forget to retrieve them and they get caught at the next end-turn.

About your signature: it's... uh... nice. But don't you think it's a bit of an overkill ?

Ahhh, it was going to be a one-off but I've now realized that it's gone into all my previous postings and is just chewing up bandwidth, so I've gone and changed it back again. A pity, since I had to hand-type all that. Something in my IE settings is stopping me from inserting smilies by clicking on them. Every page in these forums never properly finishes loading and that may have something to do with it. I'll have to speak to one of the admins about it.

[EatYerGreens]

Hi,

If you are going to train your assassins that way, it would probably be wiser to train them on a unit of peasants. They are cheaper than bishops, easier to kill, and you only have to pay for them once. Also, your odds will be higher if you put the target in a stack by itself.


Ports are magnets for foriegn agents - I always make sure my province has border forts and plenty of spies, assassins and emisaries in it before I build a port.


BTW, I'm sorry - I didn't realize that the upgrades for spies and assassins were only available in the Viking Invasion edition. If you have the opportunity you should really try to grab it - the game is much improved over the original. (Several new units, the viking campaigns, some rule tweaks, etc.)

Best,

Thanks for those tips.

You're right about bisops being the expensive way to do it but I only thought of them because the success rating for V-0 assassins versus V-0 emissaries and bishops starts at 86% or something. Not that it ever seems to get any better as the assassin's valour goes up but it's pretty surefire, whilst even a V-0 peasant general's odds start at 76%. Many's the time, since STW, where I've seen that and it still didn't work, so I'm more wary than most players might be. Certainly is the cheaper option though.

Too right that the unit has to be by itself. Once it's part of a stack the game assumes you're targeting the general of a particular 'army'. Thus, whenever you have a 16-unit stack in a province and more units left over, it pays to tidy up the loose units into a second stack and put a starred general into it (assuming there's a spare one there) as he'd be marginally less vulnerable as a target.

[EatYerGreens]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I do own a copy of VI, I just haven't installed it yet. I didn't think I was quite ready for multiplayer stuff and thought that was all I had to gain by installing it, so I was going to wait.

It sounds like there are some game features that I like which I will lose and others I won't like (until I get beseiged, that is!!) which are added, so I'm going to put it off for now, at least until I've got one campaign under my belt.

Just out of interest, were the changes you mentioned found by trial-and-error or are they made clear in the VI manual?

[Procrustes]

Go ahead and install VI – I think you will like it a lot. The changes are mostly detailed in a text file that you can find on the CD and that will be copied to your install directory. Some things I can think of off the top of my head:

· Spies are toned-down, but still very effective.
· New units – slav and spanish javelins, huscarles, carls, thralls, organ guns, swabian swordsmen, and a dozen others.
· New factions – Argon and Hungary.
· New buildings – for spy and assassin upgrades.
· New pre-battle screen and somewhat improved way of handling reinforcements.
· New keyboard commands – Z, X, C and V now have functions to help you move around the strategic screen.
· Some multiplayer stuff I haven’t payed attention to.
· The Viking Campaign - Lots of fun!

The "unit guide" by Frogbeastegg lists all the new VI units - you may want to leaf through.

Best,

[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.

[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.