Spies

[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?

[EatYerGreens]

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

A 2-star spy ought to be equivalent to it.
Lesser spies have reduced individual chances but you can make up for this with greater numbers. Without solid data, I am unable to say whether two 2-star spies are equally as good as one 2-star.

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

I was referring to the assassination mission screen, where you are told the chances of success and get a choice to abort or proceed.

[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.