Quote Originally Posted by Betito
Spies are best used in your own faction. Some of the functions are keeping the peace in the troublesome provinces(in fact, 1 spy per province is a must have), or charging of treason to your disloyal generals.

If you want to use it agains the enemies, stay away from provinces with border forts: your spies and assasins will be killed almost always in such provinces, and even if they don't, they won't last for more than... 5 years (believe me, i lost a 7 star assasin that way).

Of course, if there is no border fort, or you really want to try it, do as the above poster says and spam an insane amount of agents, one of them should survive... perhaps.

In my opinion, it's a waste of resources. Forget about the money, you waste a turn that could've been used to train more reliable agents—alims or inquisitors, anyone?—, or an army. But you may not think so...

I concur. As a general rule, I only use spies in my own territory. They're good for improving a province's loyalty and for convicting disloyal generals, but that's about it. The only other use I've ever had for them is that on certain occasions, they've managed to open up a castle's gates so I don't lose men having to assault it. This is a very rare occurence in my experience, however.