Spies

[Knight Templar]

Spies are very important.
They increase hapiness in your provinces are decrease it in provinces of other players. When put in enemy provinces, they can inform you about enemy's plans (for example: The Spanish are mobilising a major attack. The Almohads appear to be the target.). They can organise trial to your generals (a good way to eliminate them if they are unloyal), find vices to enemy generals (my spies once found enemy general to be assassinator (hapiness -40), which caused a rebellion in his province). If you are besieging a castle, they can try to open a gate (useful ehen you're besieging a Citadel with a small garrison)

[DensterNY]

Spies are great I just started using them... I know they have a lot of potential to do damage but I wished they didn't take so much development to get them. You'd figure most nations would develop spies as a first priority even before clergy... I guess its the whole historical accuracy versus gameplay debate... their presence too early in the game would make it too much of a pain to develop any kind of empire.

[yesdachi]

find vices to enemy generals (my spies once found enemy general to be assassinator (hapiness -40), which caused a rebellion in his province).

Important to note that you can see the hidden vices that generals have but the “people” cannot. When a spy uncovers the generals vice the “people” now know about it too. I currently have a Spanish King that has a secret adultery vice that I am hoping doesn’t get uncovered.

[dgfred]

Spies are very important.
They increase hapiness in your provinces are decrease it in provinces of other players. When put in enemy provinces, they can inform you about enemy's plans (for example: The Spanish are mobilising a major attack. The Almohads appear to be the target.). They can organise trial to your generals (a good way to eliminate them if they are unloyal), find vices to enemy generals (my spies once found enemy general to be assassinator (hapiness -40), which caused a rebellion in his province). If you are besieging a castle, they can try to open a gate (useful ehen you're besieging a Citadel with a small garrison)

Terrific stuff to know! Thanks! I keep them in all my
provinces and some in the AIs, but they seem to wacked very easily . I'll have to try the gate opening deal .

[Knight Templar]

Terrific stuff to know! Thanks! I keep them in all my
provinces and some in the AIs, but they seem to wacked very easily . I'll have to try the gate opening deal .

Thanks
If you don't have VI, then the spies are great (mine destoyed the enemy faction by causing massive rebellions, I moved 15 spies from one region to another). However, after I installed VI, I found 9/10 of my spies will be killed by enemy bodyguards if I put them in enemy province with Border Fort

[ichi]

That was nice response Knight Templar ; in addition it seems that spies help root out enemy spies and assassins as they enter your provinces. I keep a spy in every province once I get built up.

ichi

ps nice choice for an avatar

[Knight Templar]

Thanks

[EatYerGreens]

My policy with both assassins and spies, especially when they are still being built at valour 0 is to keep them policing home territory until they've made enough captures of enemies to get them up to at least valour 3 before risking them on foreign soil.

This is because, by the time you have the tech to build them, most of the opposing factions will have spent the piffling amount of time and money required for BF's on every territory they own.

Spies gain most of their valour stars for triggering revolts and you'll have a long wait for the 'policing' captures I described above, so it is worth taking the risk and sending 0-star agents into enemy lands.

Just remember to use your Emissaries or priests to do the reconnaisance beforehand, check for BF's in the target province and along the route from the nearest port to it. Do not use the agent 'autopilot' and make all your moves manually. The auto-routing often makes whacky detours, which typically land your spy in an unexpected place with a port - and a BF!!!

From what I've been told, an agent within an enemy province with a BF, or a defending agent, is basically getting a die-roll against them for every year they stay put.

Border watch towers are equivalent to a 1* counter-agent
Border Forts are equivalent to a 2* counter-agent
The other faction's defending agents may have even higher valour ratings but you can't even see them.

The valour of secret policeman or BF versus your agent is probably resolved like a combat but the result is a capture probability.

At valour 0 : - probably less than 5% chance of surviving longer than one turn
At valour 1 : - better percentage chance but I don't know the figures
... : - probably exponential progression in survival chances
At valour 4 :- probably approaching 90-95% survival chances

Basically, no matter how high the valour rating, there is still a risk that they will be caught, if left hanging around long enough.

Cumulative probabilites are tricky to explain but say a V4 spy in a BF'd province has a 5% (1 in 20) probability of being captured per year and stays put for 10 consecutive years. If you rolled a 20-sided die 10 times, the odds of getting any specific number at least once is actually about 31% and the odds of not getting the required number are about 60%. Yes this doesn't add up to a hundred because other, less probable possibilities exist, like getting the required number 2, 3, 4, 5 times over and so on. The odds of all possibilities added together adds up to 100%.

The BF, or policeman only needs one successful 'die-roll' to kill him so, over a 10 year period, your agent has a 60% chance of surviving into a second decade but a 31% chance of being caught before the first ten years are up. That could mean he's caught in the very first year....

For comparison, if a valour 0 agent, has a 5% chance of surviving the first year, his odds of surviving two years are 0.25% and surviving three years 0.01% (1 in 10,000). So save your money or wait until you've built the more advanced spy buildings.

Worse yet, the business of 'valour transference' means that, should your hypothetically capture-proof V4 spy be captured by a lowly V1 enemy faction policeman, however long the odds of that might seem, the enemy agent acquires a big valour boost (fortunately BF's don't acquire valour in this way). Probably not up to valour 5, in this case, though. I'd guess that transference never makes them any better than the agent they caught. If you ever see one of your home agents jump in valour by two or three stars in one go, it's because they caught a big fish...

If I'm right, catching a long string of all-V0 enemies will take 1,2,4,8,16,32 catches to move them up the valour rankings.

HTH

[Dutch_guy]

well thanks for your tips guy's , and my compliments on your post EYG - very informative

well I'm going to use the spies to start a revolt in England which is held by the French.
Also I heard in my game that some generals were planning a Civil War, and thanks to my spy I managed to thwart them by assasinating the unloyal ones ;)

[yesdachi]

My policy with both assassins and spies, especially when they are still being built at valour 0 is to keep them policing home territory until they've made enough captures of enemies to get them up to at least valour 3 before risking them on foreign soil.

EYG, have you had any experiences where you get a spy in an enemy province before they build a BF and leave them there? Or a province that was yours and was taken over by an enemy? Doesn’t the BF only stop/attempt to kill spies and assassins when they enter?