Spies

[Dutch_guy]

I have a question concerning spies.:

What use do they have , why would anyone bother using them?

I just started using them , but why would I want to discover any vices of an enemy commander when I can just built a watchtower in a adjecent province an just read his stats and virtues / vice...


And do spies cause unrest like in RTW ?

Also if you have any good tales to tell , concerning spies , feel free to share them.

[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?

[dgfred]

If you already have a border-fort does it benefit to also have the spies in
the province? If the border-fort gets the credit for the capture/kill of the
enemy agent, how do your spies get more stars? Do they just wait to knock
off a weak emissary or what?

[Dutch_guy]

I thought spies got valor when they succesfully discover vices or frame one of your disloyal generals

[EatYerGreens]

EYG, have you had any experiences where you get a spy in an enemy province before they build a BF and leave them there?

Not since starting with MTW. I did have this happen in a Shogun game though. It was a 1* or 2* agent, sitting pretty in a BWT territory for some time, then suddenly he's reported captured. Either I had an emissary in there as well, for an immediate check, or I sent one pronto and found the BF's had been put up.

I've certainly seen agents survive BF's while chasing down a target but never for very long.

In MTW, the other day, I lost TWO 4-star assassins on the same turn, chasing different targets. Soft targets, at that. I was keen to hit them as their missions were to arrange alliances I wanted to thwart. No other faction had the tech for mobile agents capable of out-valouring them and none of my priests have been whacked yet, so I suspect it was the humble BF's which got them both.

Or a province that was yours and was taken over by an enemy?

I've not fallen foul of this yet but if you told me you'd seen it happen, I'd believe you. Say your agent was valour 0 and the province had BF's on it. Their attack will degrade the BF's to BWTs but they're still good enough to immediately capture your low-valour agent.

I only haven't seen this as I have a tendency to keep my borders with enemies limited to BWTs, so if the province is ever lost, they will be degraded to zilch and they will have to spend an extra year (or two) rebuilding to spy on me and protect itself. The length of any siege gives time for spy-spamming as he can't build anything until the siege is over.

Additionally, a V2 agent within BWTs and an enemy across the border gets a better chance of being credited with captures of incoming agents. They're my 'training zones'.

Doesn’t the BF only stop/attempt to kill spies and assassins when they enter?

I've seen this point raised before and I deliberately avoided mentioning it as I don't know the answer for certain. Referring back to to the Shogun descriptions, it describes BWTs as "acting as a spy in all neighbouring province and also a counterspy within the province". BF's are just one level better at the counterspying business.

In Shogun, at least, I vaguely recall that an enemy BF would stop my own BWTs from seeing certain things in their province. I could see the fort icon but not the list of buildings within it. I could see the size of the army stack but not the mix of units within it. This motivates the player to send in an emissary for a closer look, always with the risk of them being whacked. I'm not seeing anything like this information-blocking effect in MTW so the motivations for building BF's of my own is reduced to just protecting against agents.

Whether your agent crosses a border or stays still in the province, it will still be a 'die roll' on every turn, AFAIC. I don't have any reason to think that, once safely in through a border, the agent will be able to sit there indefinitely.

Of course, if you've ever seen this happen (eg V3+ agent not caught by BFs for 50 years on the trot) then I'd be very happy to hear about it.

[EatYerGreens]

If you already have a border-fort does it benefit to also have the spies in
the province? If the border-fort gets the credit for the capture/kill of the
enemy agent, how do your spies get more stars? Do they just wait to knock
off a weak emissary or what?

Spies might be able to report on things like a general preparing to start a Civil War and things like that but, if its captures and getting valour stars onto green agents which you're after then probably not.

I'd regard BWTs as being like a valour-1 spy/assassin and BF's as valour 2.
If this is better than the rating for your trainee agent, then the likelihood is that the BFs will always get given the credit. Train them in a province with no BWTs at all until up to V2, then in a BWT province until V3. After that, they will have better odds of making a catch in a BF province.

Remember that the enemy may have high valour agents (eg Guy de Gisbourne) roving about and even BFs will have relatively low odds of catching them. So there is still a motivation for having an agent within a BF province, but he'd better be high-starred himself, to stand a chance.

I'd be sorely tempted to have such a highly rated agent out on enemy turf, causing trouble to gain further stars. It depends on your priorities. If guarding your latest high-tech development, or that stash of crusade markers you wanted to keep concealed, then they're better kept at home.

Another thing to consider is that a BWT or BF is like one die-roll against an agent. For each extra spy/assassin in position, you are, in effect, getting additional die-rolls against them on every turn. High valour enemies have low odds of being captured but multiple die-rolls against them increases your chances by an amount that will make it worth bothering. If money's no object, then I don't see why not.

When my spy production first comes online, there's always some conflict between the desire to cause a ruckus on enemy lands (my Ems/Priests will be used to survey for provs lacking BWTs/BFs first) and the need for home security. Gradually I'll reach a point where all home territories have at least one spy/assassin on guard, I may have a handful on enemy soil and then I'll stop further production until I suffer losses which need replacing.

The bulk of my actual recon-spying work is done by the priests and emissaries. CA should have altered their properties such that Em/Pst/Princess could only get 'low resolution' info - army size but not unit mixes or unit leader V&Vs etc, so there's more motivation to build and use 'proper' spies - many of which will get caught more often than not!

So far, the only extras you get with spies on enemy lands is proper info about mobilisations for an attack, who is to be attacked and the thing about revealing secret vices of enemy generals.

It would be great if they could also reveal an equivalent of the unit training and building under construction window you see in your own provs. One for the wishlist...

[EatYerGreens]

I thought spies got valor when they succesfully discover vices or frame one of your disloyal generals

That's correct but it's only a part of what they do.

As described in previous posts, they also gain stars for enemy agent captures in friendly territory, exactly the way that your assassins can and, if the captured agent has high valour, they'll get a big stars boost to themselves.

Reports of enemy mobilisations and forthcoming attacks don't gain them any stars but are useful in formulating your own plans or when to time your own next attack.

I've never pulled off the opening castle gates trick myself, so I don't know if they get stars for this or not. For now, I suspect not but would be glad to hear news to the contrary.

[dgfred]

EYG--- Thanks for the excellent tips and info.!

[yesdachi]

I've not fallen foul of this yet but if you told me you'd seen it happen, I'd believe you.

I did have this happen to me a week or so ago. I left my spy there just as an experiment and removed most of my army, I knew the HRE was going to take the province next but I thought that I would get some info from a spy left there. The spy never was captured but he also never told me anything. I took the province back about 25 yrs later and didn’t gain or loose any *’s. I didn’t know if this was a fluke or the rule.

I kind of think that the spies and assassins are somewhat underpowered vs. the BF. It shouldn’t be that hard to sneak into a province. Japan was more militant with all the checkpoints and such but I thought Europe was a bit wilder in the middle ages.

Sorry to hear about your TWO 4-star assassins getting caught in the same turn. It takes a long time for me to get ONE of them to that level I would have been totally over it.

[dgfred]

I currently have a 5-star sittting in Provence in my HRE game . I'm
taking it easy with him until I find just the right target

[CountMRVHS]

I've thought of ways to make Spies a more useful addition to the game. One thing that would be very simple would be to just remove the ability to make Watchtowers or Border Forts altogether. That way, you could see the size of an army in a province next to you, and see whether it's a fort, keep, castle or etc., but you wouldn't be able to see every single building and unit the way you can now with even a simple system of watchtowers. With no towers, spies could move around much easier and have a bigger impact.

I think spies are definitely the hardest strategic unit to use effectively on "offense", for a couple of reasons: Usually, you want them to cause a rebellion in an enemy province, right? Well, it can take several turns for that to happen, and most spies immediately die upon so much as entering a province with a BF. Second, whereas Assassins can get valor relatively easily, by preying on emissaries, priests, and low-level generals, Spies take longer to get valor. A 4 or 5 star assassin is fairly easy to train if you're careful, but it's quite rare to get a spy up to the 4 star range, for me anyway. The only time I can get that to happen is to hope Portugal doesn't have any BFs, and then drop a spy in and watch rebellion after rebellion, each of which gets a star for my spy. But with assassins, you can get them in and out of provinces with BFs because they're only there for a turn at most, they've got the valor to handle it, they do their dirty work, and they get out.

Of course, if you disabled WTs and BFs entirely, you'd still be able to see every detail of a province with a priest or emissary, but these agents in general would become much more important. Ideally, you'd want to bring *some* kind of strategic agent with your invading armies, just so when battle was joined you'd be able to see the composition of the enemy army (in VI). Even Princesses would have a greater use in this way. Plus, it just seems more medieval to use your daughter as a pawn to tell you just who is leading that enemy army, and just what their vices are, rather than relying on something silly like a watchtower. You'd also need spies on your home turf; no more BFs to protect from assassins! So maybe in this way, spies would get valor faster....

Hmm.... think I may try this and see how it works. My only misgiving is that it might make spies and assassins *too* powerful. I'll see what I come up with.

[m52nickerson]

I think spies are just fine to keep your provences happy. Later in the game (passed the 60% mark) you need spies or you are going to have more rebellions then you can deal with. That alone makes them worth the money. Plue you can have a group of spies follow your army stacks. That way you can move stacks out of a newly taken provence quicker.

[Geezer57]

I've never pulled off the opening castle gates trick myself, so I don't know if they get stars for this or not. For now, I suspect not but would be glad to hear news to the contrary.

I've used a spy to open Castle gates numerous times, and can confirm that they do valor-up when sucessful. By the same token, low-valor spies die in the attempt quite frequently.

By the way, there seems to be an increasing difficulty in accomplishing this task with higher-level fortifications. So the low-valor spy that easily opens a Keep, will fail miserably when attempting a Fortress.

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks to Dutch_guy and dgfred for your compliments on the posts. Glad to be of help.

Thanks also to yesdachi and Geezer57 for confirming those things I hadn't been able to test for myself.

@CountMRVHS

Intersting suggestion to remove BWTs/BFs completely. Let us know how it goes.

If making them unbuildable proves problematic, or crashes the game somehow, you could simply alter their price or their build times.

In Shogun, BWTs took four seasons and BFs took an additional eight seasons. This can seem like an eternity, if it's you who wants them and there's lots of combat action going on in the meantime.

I'm not suggesting changing the MTW builds to similar numbers of years though, because this will badly handicap the AI factions in their building programmes, since they'll always attempt to build these as one of the first items in a newly conquered land.

Another approach would be to make BF construction conditional on Castle or Citadel level of fortification. In other words, make it such that the tech level for building spies is achieved some years before the countermeasures are developed. This represents a more logical 'evolution' of the medieval world.

The fun part is it means that there could be a period of some years where there's a lot of mayhem and rebellions breaking out as even the small factions, like Aragon, may find themselves not requiring new troops, or unable to support more but with timeslots and money to spare for training agents...
Portugal may become an unconquerable hell-hole, where not even BWTs will stay standing for long.

[Procrustes]

I've used a spy to open Castle gates numerous times, and can confirm that they do valor-up when sucessful. By the same token, low-valor spies die in the attempt quite frequently.

By the way, there seems to be an increasing difficulty in accomplishing this task with higher-level fortifications. So the low-valor spy that easily opens a Keep, will fail miserably when attempting a Fortress.

I use spies for this whenever I can - it's great to get a province with all the buildings intact - even ports!

The higher level forts are harder, it's true. One trick is to wait until the fort is about to fall - the more years it's been besieged the better chance your spy will have. I also tend to hit the fort with two or three spies at once - cheesy, but your chances go up accordingly.

[Roark]

Excellent contributions here, guys.

Another offensive way to use spies is to tip a faction over the edge into civil war when you are attacking them.

When you attack and defeat two provinces in one year, the target faction leader takes a big hit of disloyalty from his generals. If you have flooded all his OTHER provinces with your own spies, you can get spectacular results inciting civil war and rebellion, after which you are only faced with a whole bunch of isolated, bribable armies instead of a concerted force.

I build Bawdyhouse upgrades as soon as possible. They are essential to my style of conquest.

[yesdachi]

Of course, if you disabled WTs and BFs entirely,

the early boost to happiness would be really missed but it might be more realistic!?!?

[Dutch_guy]

Another offensive way to use spies is to tip a faction over the edge into civil war when you are attacking them.

When you attack and defeat two provinces in one year, the target faction leader takes a big hit of disloyalty from his generals. If you have flooded all his OTHER provinces with your own spies, you can get spectacular results inciting civil war and rebellion, after which you are only faced with a whole bunch of isolated, bribable armies instead of a concerted force.

I really like this Idea, I'm now going to try getting the English and the Danes to re-emmerge in French held territories and maybe also try getting them in a all destrying civil war, so far I managed to get over 3 rebellions in French lands , which were held by the English and the Danes , but no re-emmergence - still not giving up hope though - I''m really loving my 8 , 3 star spies in Denmark.

[dgfred]

An interesting thing happened to me in my HRE campaign . I had to
rid an Italian ship from around Provence so I could Crusade to Palestine ,
but I forgot I had been at war with them about 8 or so years before, thus
I was excommunicated . So since the Pope had NO stars or
abilities I thought I could whack him. . I then sent a 2 star assassin
and a 5 star assassin in the same turn- the 2 star had a 34% chance to kill.
I thought the 2 star would fail and then the 5 star would knock him off .
Oh well, the 2 star killed him and the 5 star was himself killed .
Really hard to swallow, but a kill is a kill I guess, even though I lost my 5-star
hero .

[Roark]

This is really naughty, but if I lose any assassin over 4 stars to something as annoying as a border fort, I consider reloading the game (if there is a very recent autosave). They take so long to build up, and it just boils my blood when they get wasted and they're not even putting the knife into someone in the process.

Of course, if one owns Syria, good assassins are a dime a dozen. If you build a rookery in Syria, you've got VALOUR 5 assassins being spawned like sewer rats.

[EatYerGreens]

I'm playing Byz at the moment, so espionage is a major part of the mix, if I'm to 'role-play' the whole thing properly.

I have Syria and have had to spend several years to rebuild from fort-less up to Tavern level. I knew the assassin valour bonus is 'secret' (as in not marked on the province parchment but it seems well known to regular players) but it still took me by surprise when they came out at 2* (three of them, so far). Nearly every other province bonus is +1 and that's what I had expected.

Rhodes was going to be my agent 'base' but Syria allows two production streams together. Rhodes is shortly to train its first spy and I'm up to 1186.

Given my trading income and military strength, it seems like overkill to use agents too but it's a part of the game that I enjoy indulging myself with. One of my major rivals currently has no border with my lands and I want to maintain trading with the faction sandwiched by us. Agents are the only way to affect factions who are a potential threat but who are militarily out of your reach...