Getting Roman Settlements

[Jonny Dangerously]

Over the course of the game I nurture a small entourage of about six spies, a pair of assassins and a diplomat, getting their ratings up as high as is possible. As a group they are pretty effective at ruinning any city's day. The effect the spies have on happiness is massively increased with experience, plus the assassin helps take care of any counter spies, enemy assassins etc. Furthermore he can sabotage morale-increasing or revinue-generating buildings to further encourage rebellion. It can work against even fairly happy cities with large garrisons.

Don't over-do it with the sabotage though. One time I got so into sabotaging the entire infrastructure of a city that I had to spend all the money I gained from slaughtering the populace on repairing the damage.

I've only recently got heavily into espionage and it is a fastly under-rated aspect to the game. Not only can you swipe territories from your "allies" without getting into trouble but you can seriously undermine your enemies war efforts and economy for the price of a pair of assassins, a diplomat and a few spies....