Spies

[Roark]

Border forts steal potential valour from your counterspying agents. Don't build them in thoroughfares.

[Zild]

Can anybody give any more info on the Syria valor bonus for spies, please? In my many years of playing and visiting these forums, I'd never actually heard about it!

Are there any other such 'hidden bonuses'?

Any idea why they are hidden?

[Knight Templar]

Syria has valor bonus for training assassins. No province has valor bonus for spies.

[Roark]

EYG: I try to be succinct, because I'm posting from work. (Naughty naughty...)

Kudos to you, though mate. Your thorough explanations have resolved many an issue for me concerning game mechanics. Keep up the good work.

Can anybody give any more info on the Syria valor bonus for spies, please? In my many years of playing and visiting these forums, I'd never actually heard about it!

Are there any other such 'hidden bonuses'?

Any idea why they are hidden?

All assassins trained in Syria start with 2 stars, plus any upgrades you give them (via Alehouse, Drinking Den and/or Rookery).

My guess is that this is supposed to be representative of the presence of the Old Man of the Mountain, effectively the "Grandmaster" of the Hashashin. Nasty guys.

[dgfred]

EYG: I try to be succinct, because I'm posting from work. (Naughty naughty...)

Kudos to you, though mate. Your thorough explanations have resolved many an issue for me concerning game mechanics. Keep up the good work.



All assassins trained in Syria start with 2 stars, plus any upgrades you give them (via Alehouse, Drinking Den and/or Rookery).

My guess is that this is supposed to be representative of the presence of the Old Man of the Mountain, effectively the "Grandmaster" of the Hashashin. Nasty guys.

I second that on the Kudos! Thanks EYG.

[yesdachi]

I second that on the Kudos! Thanks EYG.

Kudos from me too!

and i also post from work. sshhhhh, alt tab.

[EatYerGreens]

Many thanks for your appreciation guys.

But it's not over yet!

Knight Templar's post blows a rather l a r g e hole in my thinking about how BF's operate, in terms of how many catch attempts can be made per turn. I would have expected that 'swamping' like that would have allowed almost all to get through unhindered.

Call me over-cautious but it would never have occurred to me to send that many agents all on the same mission so I'd have missed the opportunity he took to come out with some interesting and very conclusive data.

It seems like there's a capture 'die roll' against every single agent you send into the province and any that do survive the journey have an additional die roll for the mission itself. As we see, one got through the BF but the King killed him while defending himself. That variation might never have shown up if only five had been used, for example.

The one unknown factor is whether the target king had his own counterspy, who succeeded, 25 times over. If so, there is now a rather nasty 5 or 6 star agent at large in that game (valour transference of that many 1s, 2s & 3s), unless it was faction elimination time?

I'd love to have 30 agents to spare in my current campaign.
In fact, I'd love to have 30 agents. All in good time, I suppose but it'll be a long while before I can come close to testing on this scale. Hopefully I'll remember to hang onto a gamesave where I'm well stocked with assassins and there are still faction leaders left to attack.

Kudos to KT for sharing that info with us, not to mention trying it in the first place.

[Patron]

I never use spies, they never seem to do anything. I once put 40 spies in 1 province, most of them valour 3 and it never went into rebellion. They very rarely manage to reveal a general's vices or open a castle's gates, because they are either killed by BFs or just fail over and over again and when they do they usually reveal pride and create jedi princes, or even worse jedi kataphraktoi and boyars.

The only usage for spies I can see is for your own personal pleasure, annoying your generals and for defense. They seem like a more functional replacement for border forts so you don't have to spend a few turns guarding a province after you've conquerred it whilst you build your BF and also once a spy captures loads of assassins you can send it out to attempt to do one of the useless things I mentionned.

How many spies equals the agent capturing power of a BF?

Where do you get all this information about the possibility of success?

[Knight Templar]

Kudos to KT for sharing that info with us, not to mention trying it in the first place.

Thanks

Call me over-cautious but it would never have occurred to me to send that many agents all on the same mission so I'd have missed the opportunity he took to come out with some interesting and very conclusive data.

I'd love to have 30 agents to spare in my current campaign.
In fact, I'd love to have 30 agents.

It was 16-years old Sicilian king, when I killed him I eliminated Sicilians as a faction. I had to be sure he'll be killed.

It seems like there's a capture 'die roll' against every single agent you send into the province and any that do survive the journey have an additional die roll for the mission itself. As we see, one got through the BF but the King killed him while defending himself. That variation might never have shown up if only five had been used, for example.
The one unknown factor is whether the target king had his own counterspy, who succeeded, 25 times over. If so, there is now a rather nasty 5 or 6 star agent at large in that game (valour transference of that many 1s, 2s & 3s), unless it was faction elimination time?

I looked in ex-Sicilian provinces I had occupied and found no Tavern (before the catsle was taken)...
Many times I send 2-star or even 1-star assassin in a province with BF just to do one kill and in the next move I call them back. The BF catches him in 1/5 cases. So I suprised a lot when BF found 5/6 my assassins in case with Sic king.

[EatYerGreens]

Border forts steal potential valour from your counterspying agents. Don't build them in thoroughfares.

I've repeated this advice many times. I only wish I could have done it in as few words.

To expand slightly, ports are like magnets to all travelling agents. Use one of your own as a 'training zone' and, at most put a BWT on it, since BWT plus counterspy (ideally, better than 1*) means two chances of making a capture.

As enemy Emissaries pass through your port, enemy assassins may follow a year behind them (you know what it's like when you're the one on the chase). Behave as if you were trying to protect your own Emissary from a 'tail' and move your trainee assassin (or, optionally, your best one for further advancement) to that port on that turn. He should make any potential catch the following year.

Also, I tend to avoid putting BFs on any province bordering on enemy/neutral/allied territory. In the event that they captured such a BF'd province off me, even with 'facilities damaged' that just gifts them a free BWT to immediately spy into my interior provinces and advances their building programme by one year, assuming I'm somehow unable to regain it rapidly.

Not forgetting that a 0* spy/assassin of yours, within the lost province, might be caught immediately, if BWT's were still up. IIRC, facility damages aren't inflicted until the castle/fort finally falls, so it's not even safe to send in no-star spies to trigger a populist revolt until whatever BWTs or BFs you had built are finally broken down.