Diplomacy, Agents and Campaign Map AI

[Don Jacopo Caldora]

Hi. Well, as most of you should know, these units, so called "agents", have being, in my modest opinion :P, allways pointless, if not completely useless.
- Assassins
Kill a general... i believe its their only use (i mean, kill diplomats? kill bishops? isnt that a total waste of time?). But can you kill a gen when in most cases you got 2% of chance?
Spys
Oh, you can see the personality of some gen, his skills, how many soldiers are under his command and whats their type... call me noob, i may be completely wrong, but, who cares if a gen is crazy, a gluton, of a blody heretic? Who cares if they got knights or peasants inside their walls? :P

So, about these "special agents", do you think they will play a diferent role now? Maybe someting usefull this time?

Ah, i also wanna ask about the campaign AI (i believe this is the right term). Well, in the previous games, im sure that you remember the behavior of the AI as an ally or protetorate. They wold be on "your side" till you weak your borders (in which case they wold burn your capital do ashes).
A bad thing in my opinion... i hope this is diferent now. What do you think about it? Think it may be changed?
Do you think diferent factions wold have diferent relations? Like, hated by the english loved by the danish? I mean... can you imagine if we could develop some kind of "relationship" between nations? That wold be so cool. We could have true allyances.
If you know something about these matters wold you like to share? Thanks :)

I have to disagree with your opinions here. I have always found the special agents to be useful to my goals. Assassins are very useful. You see killing diplomats and bishops was a waste of time. I see killing the other agents as practice for the real target. Often in my games, I would go for the the non general captains, diplomats, princesses (MTW) and as my assassin gained experience, he became ready for the juicy target that came along. While the HIgh ranked generals were difficult to assassinate, it was a good possibility you could be successful when you used an assassin with skill. I do think that at times it seemed the assination function was unbalanced when attacking with a good chance of success and failing more often than the percentage seemed to indicate you should. But it was a means of eliminating both the ability of the AI to conduct its own diplomacy and actions against you and helping to get rid of generals and leaders eventually who had high stats.

Spys are very useful, they can identify those who were easy to bribe, those who werent, revealing information about vices that had a negative effect on that character, title stripping in MTW, and showing you what forces are located in cities. Knowing your enemy can help you pick appropriate forces to seige a city, possibly enter the city without needing siege equipment. It allows you to know if it is easier to wait the seige out and attempt to force the ai to sally forth as your army is better for defense, or to attack as you know your forces can easily take the city/castle. Never forget: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

I could go on, but I will get off my soap box.

[satchef1]

Spies are useless? In MTW a spy could tell you where and when the enemy was going to attack a few years in advance! They could also cause discent in enemy nations (amongst the population and armies) and allow you to spark off a civil war quickly (usefull for removing weak royal lines). The only downside of them is they get caught too easily by border forts :(

Im not that big a fan of the Assasin, a Grand Inquisitor does the same job but in a much cleaner way