Quote Originally Posted by Uesugi Kenshin
I personally think it would be really hard for the spy to disable the oil, it would be dropped by troops and spies were not shock troops. Plus how do you ruin the oil? Spill it all when the gaurds are not looking? Hell it would work well with boiling water, just not as well.

But I do not feel strongly about this, I always use siege towers and the AI rarely uses spies.
BY your theory then, why don't the troops just simply close the pre-opened gates?!

The way I always imagined it was the spy opening the gates signalled an assault that was catching the defenders unaware (after all it is subterfuge). In this case is easily feasible that the spy would also be able to disable the oil. As to "ruining" oil - use you imagination - he could spill it, hide it or simply light it up in the place it's kept.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs however, from the perspective of the AI it's absolutely essential that the oil is disabled when a spy has pre-opened the gates. Under these sitautions the AI troops simply drop their siege equipment and charge headlong through the open gate(s). With the oil in place it's plain suicide and they'd be better of using their siege equipment (in many ways they'd still be better using both). As a result, what you found then was that spies were actually detrimental to AI assaults.