Opinions on different agents and characters

[46852]

After playing around a bit with the campaign map agents & generals, I've come to these conclusions:

Generals: Working pretty much as expected. Some minor tweaks needed though. Piety does seem to raise very slowly, the traits that add it seem quite rare. Some traits/ancillaries pop up too often, pagan magician anyone? Overall, the amount of different retinues seems quite suitable.

Princesses: Haven't used these beauties that much, not sure what raises charm? Succesful diplomacy? They seem to be quite balanced and useful.

Priests: Raising piety is sometimes arduous but sometimes they gain super abilities. Preaching in heretic / pagan regions seems to trigger these. Balanced and working as they should imo.

Merchants: Haven't used these much either. There's loads of good threads around on how to use them properly, won't repeat that stuff here. At low levels they are maybe a bit too vulnerable, they shouldn't vanish so always when they get acquisitoned, maybe there should be a chance of surviving, applying some negative effect (loss of money for the player and loss in finance skill) and boot the losing merchant back home or something.

Spies: Working as they should, but imo they gain levels even too fast, and the infiltration percentages are too often very high, I find most of my spy missions are 100% success, and I usually gain skill from them too. Small toning down needed. I'd like to see agent limit on spies too, would reduce the micromanagement.

Assassins: Definitely underpowered. Small boost on lower levels to success chances needed. Well, maybe not to success chance, but the chance of getting killed should be a bit lower. Negative traits are maybe a bit too usual too, it's very hard to build up a decent assassin without reloads. High level opponents shouldn't be impossible to kill either, small toning needed in high end "affairs" success rates. Agent limit for assassins would be good too.

Diplomats: Working quite nicely. Succesful treaties give positive abilities, negatives come when you blunder with your requests. Not sure if giving gifts has any effect? A nice bonus would be that high level diplomats would gradually raise your standing with the faction he is located at. Might be hard to add this in though :)

These are my opinions, I'm hoping most of the agent stuff can be modded when we get the unpacker so we can tweak the agents to perfection.

What do you guys think? Are spies too easy and numerous, are diplomats working like they should? Who's the hottest princess?


P.S. I was in a dire situation in my campaign as HRE, both Milan and Venice pressing me hard in North Italy due to me being too "active" there. They both just had declared war on me, and I was low on manpower. Milan and Venice were somehow linked to France through alliances or other weird stuff which I didn't notice. Well, in the meantime I accidentally spotted a real beauty in North Germany, a french princess with charm level 6, so I tried a marriage proposal, first time for me in M2TW. With a little charming words and not so little florins, Constance married my prince, and blam! => Milan and Venice forced to peace due to their relations with France => Holy Roman Empire saved! Long live To-Be-Queen Constance!

As a result, Venice came into terms with me after losing their capital and Zagreb, apparently they loved Constance too, and Milan was forced to re-declare war on me, which resulted into their excommunication which in turn spelled their doom in the coming years. A delicious diplomatic incident if I may say so :)

[Xaziv]

I think assassins work pretty realistically.

The chance to die is not that great, at least in my experience. I didn't have a hard time killing the pope.

They should upgrade maybe a tad faster though, perhaps.

[Daveybaby]

As a bare minimum, i'd like to have the code removed that results in an assassing *losing* skill when failing an assassination attempt. The fact that your assassin can get killed is enough of a negative consequence IMO.

[Debe2233]

Pretty much agree totally.

Merchants are fine but maybe need to make a little more money on trade items at the low end.

Princess seem to be fine but theres a total lack of them, its pure luck if your king has any daughters or not.

Spies tend to have to much of a chance to infiltrate a city, but then they do die instantly if they fail...

Diplomats seem alot more useful now, they skills raise and lower nicely and you understand why they do.

Assasins seem to me to be utterly useless at the moment, their chance of success is too low and if they fail they either die or lose all their skill!

Piety is my major annoyance with generals, it starts off nothing and is incredibly hard to rise, and those damned pagan magicians seem to be EVERYWHERE, im wondering if this isnt bugged and they put the requirement for a good religious settlement way too high and as a result its concluded your general is living in pagan land and is dumped with a pagan magician.

Having said that i've had some great fun with my general some real characters... i had one guy who had an adultress, a foreign fruit cake and was shameless (liked guys) i mean honestly... he was a terrible general (-6 to moral and 0 command) but i cant help but think i shouldnt have left him alone on Rhodes with nothing to do.... hmmm...

[46852]

As a bare minimum, i'd like to have the code removed that results in an assassing *losing* skill when failing an assassination attempt. The fact that your assassin can get killed is enough of a negative consequence IMO.

Well, not removed imo, but the chance of getting a negative trait should be lower.

[Bob the Insane]

Have to agree with all of that...

[chunkynut]

I think the Generals are good except I've got a couple of conflicting retinue members at times i.e.

'Edgar the Cruel' has 'Simon de Rochford' (sp?) +2 Chivalry +2 Command and -2 Loyalty i think (says he's a champion of parliment) and a 'Dread Knight' +2 Dread +1 Command (says if he's riding with your general then his seriously bad a$$)

Piety seems to be an issue but thats not too much of a problem, I'm most of the way through my campaign and have had only 1 general tried for heresy, was successful.

I think Diplomats should be able to bribe any character, not just generals and other Diplomats (like assassins can assassinate everyone and spies can spy on anyone).

Princesses are rare in my game, i tend to accept the general thats offered the hand rather than using a princess, however their charm seems very hard to increase ( i do like the traits the generals get if they get a 'plain' wife etc).

Assassins are difficult to use at some points, and the decrease in stats seems to likely to me, but i've had no real problems except with very high level targets.

Spies do seem to get a lot better increases than other agents but i tend to create my in citys with thieves guilds ... so I can't comment on anything other than I tend to get increases on 100% cities.

Priests are the best of the lot IMO the increases can be slow in areas unlikely to have heritics or witches but in areas of war in the holy lands they seem to appear all the time, and putting 3 priests and a cardinal in a muslim land can increase the catholics in the area to 20% immediately. This in turn increases the piety, one thing I'm unsure of is the affect of violence rating to the holy men. (the popes been my puppet for the last 3 or 4 - but this last ones starting to hate me (must be the extermination of catholic cities :) ))

[Dutch_guy]

Assassins: Definitely underpowered. Small boost on lower levels to success chances needed. Well, maybe not to success chance, but the chance of getting killed should be a bit lower. Negative traits are maybe a bit too usual too, it's very hard to build up a decent assassin without reloads. High level opponents shouldn't be impossible to kill either, small toning needed in high end "affairs" success rates. Agent limit for assassins would be good too.

Not true in my opinion, yes, the low stat assassins are somewhat harder to level up than in Rome, but in my current English campaign I'm pumping out level 5 assassins in London - in which I have a level 2 assassins guild. Killing one moderately hard target raises it to 6 and so forth. I now have two level 10 Pope-Killers on the map, and they weren't even that hard to build up.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Not true in my opinion, yes, the low stat assassins are somewhat harder to level up than in Rome, but in my current English campaign I'm pumping out level 5 assassins in London - in which I have a level 2 assassins guild. Killing one moderately hard target raises it to 6 and so forth. I now have two level 10 Pope-Killers on the map, and they weren't even that hard to build up.

It would be useful if folks could include the game difficulty they are playing on as a point of reference.

[Dutch_guy]

It would be useful if folks could include the game difficulty they are playing on as a point of reference.

Good point, but do you think the levelling up has anything to do with difficulty settings - I don't recall this being the case in Rome.

I'm playing on vh/h. Very hard campaign, hard battles.

[Scipio Africano]

Princesses charm is hard to increase, but that could be my poor diplomatic skills, they all get a secret lover fairly quickly also. What bothers me is that the enemy princesses (M campaign) ALL have 0 charm. Safer for my generals maybe but not good for my royal lineage.

(original poster- Constance is an exception, she is French starting one and already has 5 or so at start)

Generals and Faction Leaders are often much easier to assasinate than your average 3-4 piety priest. I have 4 lvl 8-10 Assassins with Guild headquarters and such so I'm not complaining. I had trouble early on but apart from those hordes of unkillable lvl 10 Imams I have a fair chance of success now.

Pagan Magician pops up early on in places without churches, but havent had one in about 70 turns now.

My kings all automatically go from Chivalrous to Super DREAD every time. I have left mine safely sitting in my Capital for most of the game. May have something to do with my widespread assassin usage, or V. High taxes.

Spies lowest infiltration chance I've seen is 75%.
Also hard to assassinate the enemy buggers. Surely if they're on your land they're free to execute.

[Whacker]

Good point, but do you think the levelling up has anything to do with difficulty settings - I don't recall this being the case in Rome.

I'm playing on vh/h. Very hard campaign, hard battles.

Ugh, I'm playing on easy/medium to get myself started, and my assassins are beyond useless. I wrote a long rant about them in the review that I posted a day or two ago, don't have the link handy. My only other real complaint is that catholic priests also seem to have bugged probabilities for burning heretics and witches, and they don't gain in piety as fast as I'd like to see. Same with merchants who are passively trading resources. Other than that.. /shrug

Cheers!

[Ii Naomasa]

Diplomats: Working quite nicely. Succesful treaties give positive abilities, negatives come when you blunder with your requests. Not sure if giving gifts has any effect? A nice bonus would be that high level diplomats would gradually raise your standing with the faction he is located at. Might be hard to add this in though :)

I like this suggestion a lot. Have diplomats function something like priests, but with standing instead of religious levels. This would make them more useful during 'downtimes' and also provide both a pleasant and realistic way of either maintaining a relationship or fixing a problematic one. All too often you make friends with someone and you ignore them a bit because you need to be elsewhere. Few turns later your standing with your allies has dwindled into 'so-so' or (usually) worse and if someone even hints at attacking, they jump for it. Having a diplomat hang out in a foreign land would ease any current issues and also keep the PR machine rolling (assuming the diplomat's decently skilled). He'd be hanging out with all the local royalty and reminding them at how benevolent you are. Makes more sense than constantly bribing your friends. And they could help ease your two countries towards peace (as long as you don't keep attacking in the meantime). Downside, of course, would be the limited number of diplomats, so some would set up an 'embassy' of sorts, while others were your mobile negotiators...

[Dutch_guy]

Ugh, I'm playing on easy/medium to get myself started, and my assassins are beyond useless. I wrote a long rant about them in the review that I posted a day or two ago, don't have the link handy.

That's unfortunate, but I wouldn't suggest you abandon using them or anything - they really are worth it.

Just keep trying, eventually you'll get that Pope killer, don't worry.

[Whacker]

That's unfortunate, but I wouldn't suggest you abandon using them or anything - they really are worth it.

Just keep trying, eventually you'll get that Pope killer, don't worry.

Greetings my friend. Thanks for the vote of encouragement, but at this point I've set aside the campaign that I was playing until the first patch is out. There were just too many bugs that started to ruin the game for me, the assassins/inquisitors were two of them (playing as English). Hopefully that'll be addressed in the very near future. If not... well... I guess that's what "give_trait" and "give_ancilliary" is for.

Cheers!

[dainjah]

I just finished my first full campaign, as England, and I made extensive use of Assassins.

A few tips/observations on making use of Assassins:

1. You need a lot of assassins. Any area of my territory or enemy territory that I have my eyes on should have at least one assassin able to strike at any given time. I had at least 15-20 running around.

2. You have to babysit them. This is true for all agents of course, but especially so for Assassins. Make sure you give every assassin a mission whenever possible. My favorite training mission is a rebel general. I had several rebel armies in my territory with 3 or 4 assassins surrounding it.

3. Give them 95% missions whenever possible. Chance to succeed seems to have no effect on chance to gain skill. I've skilled from rank 9 to 10 on a 95% mission.

4. Decide which city is going to be your assassin factory early on, and beeline for assassin's guild. With Assassin's guild HQ and Pleasure Palace, assassins regularly pop out with 6 skill and multiple traits that can go up, putting the assassin only a few missions away from rank 10.

At first I was shocked at how weak and useless Assassins were. Then I decided to really try to build them up and was shocked at how easy it is to have a death squadron of assassins early in the game. It's kinda cool to "clean" the map in a few turns. No annoying merchants, diplomats, princesses, etc. running around.....unless they're mine of course. Muhahah.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

My experience with spies has been that they have a very high chance to succeed. Levelling their skill is super easy

Assassins... more difficult. The best way that I have found to level their skill is to send them to a foreign town where you already have a spy. Then have them repeatedly sabotage the religious building in that settlement. For some reason, the religious building always has the highest chance of being successbully sabotaged. Also, don't be afraid to travel your assassins around looking for the low level agents deep in their own homelands.

Generals, I have two complaints here. First, piety is super hard to increase (lost several to an inquisition in french lands after taking Paris as the english /sigh). Secondly, I am seeing an increasing trend of generals receiving conflicting traits. For example, my king has one trait that lowers trade income by 10% and another that raises it by 20%.

Princesses, the best way to raise charm is through diplomacy. Sell maps, alliances, and give donations away. Be sure to check any settlements you pass for potential suitors. Just be careful, I've found any marriage proposal where the percent of success is below 40% often ends with the traitorous wench deserting your faction for theirs.

Merchants, not much to say here other than the AI certainly seems to be able to raise their skill way faster than I can. Whenever I see a foregin merchant approaching my territroy, I pull all of my merchants into my nearest settlement in order not to lose them.

Diplomats, these guys work pretty much as planned. I have yet to be able to determine whether their skill level actually plays any role in the acceptance or refusal of any diplomatic proposal. I would love to see their skill become an important factor in the game.

Priests, get these guys to Islamic lands immediately. I try to train all of my priests in a single settlement which eventually garners me the Theologians Guild. Guild influenced priests took me from abyssmal relations with the Pope, to controlling the College of Cardinals, and eventually electing my own Pope three times in a row.

My overall take on agents is that there is definitely room for improvement. My biggest irritations are the spy/assassin spam that starts to develop around 50 turns in. My frontline settlements are constantly suffering a barrage of infiltration and assassination attempts. Likewise I despise the constant stream of diplomats and foreign princesses that camp at my settlements and appear to be offering something (bribe attempt?) every single turn, but the diplomacy menu never pops up.

[dainjah]

Interesting, I seemed to have an abysmally low rate of skill increase with sabotage missions. But then I did notice a distinct lack of Assassin deaths. I'll have to try this.

Generals I've given up on trying to cultivate anything really. Dread/chivalry is somewhat controllable, Piety not at all. Ostensibly being born in a province with a Huge Cathedral, some Cardinals, and 100% catholic would probably make generals have some piety traits. Just speculation though. Crusading helps of course. But the god-damned Pagan Magician. Seriously, wtf.

Merchants...well the best thing to do really seems to be not to mess with Merchants too much until you have the guilds. Because the only way to raise Finance skill, other than extremely risky takeovers, is by leaving them on a resource for several turns. Which means early in the game, you can't have a high rank merchant before he's about 50 or so. When you start getting those strapping 22-year old MBA graduates then you can level them up on a resource, and have your 30-year old hostile takeover specialist wreak havoc.

A note about Merchants, and Diplomats. There is a nasty tendency for them to pick up "Quite Religious" or something similar, which does nothing but reduce their skill. It can negate the bonus of the guildhouse, which really sucks. I am not sure if it is religion itself, priests, or religious buildings that cause this, but after discovering this, I will be sure to minimize the infulence of the church in the cities that I want to produce merchants and diplomats.