BI notes

[Ludens]

Welcome to the Org, Rhubarbmisterwellington . I hope you will enjoy your stay here.

Now - finally (!) some questions:
When I watch the taking turns screen, I often see a progression of enemy agents appear from nowhere, enter a city and stir up civil unrest. Some cities are maxxed out on happiness/law bonux buildings, have a govenor that isn't too venal, a garrison (not too big of course) and a coterie of all three types of agents, yet are constantly suceptible to enemy agent attack. How do I stop this, and for that matter, how do I do it back?

Placing one ore more spies (preferably with high subterfuge values) is the best way, as Dutch_guy pointed out, but what I think you see is one or more enemy spies being expelled by your spy and then trying to reenter. Your spy is apparently not good enough to catch them, but his presence forces them out each turn. If this is correct, you should get a message each turn that a spy was found, but escaped.

Why when I take a city and put the population to the sword/ship them off as slaves, do I face unrest and culture penalties? Surely the incoming population is from my own lands and consequently loyal - and of my own culture? Any ideas?

Culture penalty is determined by the number of "foreign" and own buildings in a city. IIRC it maxes out at 80%. The most important building is the governor's building. So yes, you do face them, but because the population is small a garrison should be able to supress it easily.

[teja]

Good posts folks, including the initial one! As for me I will not bother to fortify my borders that much. You need a lot of forces to do so and a lot of money to build the forts. However it may suits in some cases. I prefer to set 1-2 units at the bridge and in most times it is enough to keep out maurading small armies. To keep Hordes away, make big armies with numerous men to scare them. Cheap peasants fit as well for it. You may use them later as garrison when their job is done.

[symball]

for defending- use forts on bridges/passes with 4-6 peasant units inside. if you seal off the borders you will find most hordes don't bother to attack the fort and just walk on by

[GrimSta]

When i am playing as the Berbers i head to spain and build forts into the only ways to Spain, its a very strong defensive position is Iberia. and i love it for that :P

[teja]

For me all peninsulas in BI rock da house. Spain and Italy are both easy to defend with good income. Those are the prime locations for setteling down your Horde after your purse starts to burst after all the plundered cities around.

[econ21]

Thoughtful initial post - welcome to the Org Rhubarbmisterwellington. But once you've played the game a fair amount you may start to look for ways to make the game more challenging to give it legs and that would imply NOT doing a lot of what you suggest. For example, never retraining units makes campaigns quite interesting - as you can't magically resurrect your veterans.

In BI (at least, as Romans),I find sieges and rivers seem to become important than in RTW vanilla. But the AI often does not seem to be able to cope with them despite a massive numerical edge with a horde. I'm not sure what houserules would be best to try to offset these AI flaws, as to totally forgo river defences and autoresolve sieges sounds a little extreme.