Emisarries and Assasins

[BlackHat]

Does the AI get upset by the presence of emissaries in its territories? (ie if i have an emissary in each of France's provinces, 10 provinces with one of my emissaries in each one.) Does their presence have any effect on how the France AI reacts to that? Does it have no effect on the AI's relation with me? (And like wise Religious agents)

I do know the AI can and will sometimes target Emissaries with Assassins, but does having allot of them in the AIs territory, have a negative effect?

Lots of games I will keep getting Emissaries, until I have one stationed in every province in the game, so I can see whats happening everywhere.


And Assassins. How many kills are required for each valor increase. I remember seeing somewhere that it takes 128 to make level 9.

Thus I assume its powers of two.

0->1 = 1
1->2 = 1
2->3 = 2
3->4 = 4
4->5 = 8
5->6 = 16
6->7 = 32
7->8 = 64
8->9 = 128

is this correct?

Thanks,
BlackHat

[caravel]

Does the AI get upset by the presence of emissaries in its territories? (ie if i have an emissary in each of France's provinces, 10 provinces with one of my emissaries in each one.) Does their presence have any effect on how the France AI reacts to that? Does it have no effect on the AI's relation with me? (And like wise Religious agents)

I do know the AI can and will sometimes target Emissaries with Assassins, but does having allot of them in the AIs territory, have a negative effect?

The AI doesn't appear to react to any kinds of agents in it's territories. Of all the agents, only spies affect the happiness of a province. The AI will not start to train assassins to try and get rid of your emissaries. When your emissaries are assassinated it's because rival faction assassins are targeting them out of bloody mindedness and nothing else. It is highly probably that when your emissary is killed in e.g. Scotland, and you are playing as the Egyptians, it wasn't the province's owning faction that did it, it could easily have been any faction, e.g. the Byzantines.

Lots of games I will keep getting Emissaries, until I have one stationed in every province in the game, so I can see whats happening everywhere.

This is usually not necessary. Emissaries tend to be popular assassination targets for the AI, more so than priests. So if you really need to see what the other factions are up to, then send a priest instead as they are less of a target. If you have say four bishops in Syria and one gets assassinated it's time to move the rest out. That assassin will now be targeting one of the other bishops from that province. Constantly retraining new emissaries and sending them out to look at what other factions are doing, involves a lot of micromanagement and provides the AI assassins with a lot of training material. Emissaries should generally be restricted to about 10 agents max, and you should never leave them sitting around. Generally when priests' and emissaries' missions are complete (broker ceasefire/alliance, bribe, strip titles) or if your bishops that are trying to convert a certain province have become targeted by an AI assassin, they should be headed straight back to their base province(s).

The base province(s) should be coastal provinces that have a lot of spies and assassins (preferably spies as they also increase happiness in the province, though you can also valour up your assassins in this way) to counterspy against rival faction assassins. You could use a border fort for this, but I'd advise against the construction of the border fort as it denies your spies the opportunity to catch anything themselves (so they won't gain any valour). A group of high level spies and assassins protecting the province will eventually surpass a border fort anyway, it just takes a bit more work but pays off in the end. When these spies and assassins are well trained they can be used on foreign missions. Now when your emissaries return to this base province after a mission. Chances are they'll lead a few rival faction assassins in with them. One of these assassins on entering the province will first have to pass the border fort (if present), unless he's valour 4 or above he has a very slim chance of passing through. Next he will need to pass every spy or assassin in that province which will be no easy task unless they're all 0 valour and he's about 3 or 4 valour, in which case he has a better chance. Assuming he passes the border fort and spies/assassins he next goes against the target. The chances of success depending on the targets valour and his own valour. If he fails he will be caught and you will see the message:

"your general/emissary/princess/priest/etc evaded death by the blade of an assassin, the wretch was caught and killed trying to flee the scene"

If he'd been caught before that by the border fort or spies and assassins in the province you'd have seen the message:

"your bodyguards have caught and killed an assassin (believed to have been working for some faction or other)"

If you're seeing a lot of the first message and also this one:

"your general/emissary/princess/priest/etc has fallen by the blade of an assassin, security should be stepped up to ensure the culprit is caught"

Then either you emissaries are sitting ducks out in foreign lands or your own provinces are inadequately defended.

Once you've thrown the assassins off the scent or lead them into a trap and got rid of them you can send the emissaries or priests back about their business.

And Assassins. How many kills are required for each valor increase. I remember seeing somewhere that it takes 128 to make level 9.

Thus I assume its powers of two.

0->1 = 1
1->2 = 1
2->3 = 2
3->4 = 4
4->5 = 8
5->6 = 16
6->7 = 32
7->8 = 64
8->9 = 128

is this correct?

Thanks,
BlackHat

I'm not 100% sure on that one. I know that it's something like that, but can't remember the exact figures. The higher levels do take an awful lot of kills to achieve though. I'm pretty sure it takes quite a bit more than 4 kills to get an assassin to level 4 though. Also it depends on the "quality" of the target. I'm sure your assassins level up faster for killing generals, than the do for bumping off an emissary. The valour or command of the target seems to be a factor also. Higher valour or command targets are obviously more difficult to see off, but also seem to give your assassin more valour. The numerology thread will have more info on this.

[BlackHat]

Hmm actually I was not indicating 4 kills to get to valor 4, thats 4 kills to go from 3 to 4. thus its the sum of the kills. (to go from 0 to 4 would be 8 kills by my chart) I will look for the numerology topic. Thanks.

BlackHat

EDIT: Where is the numerology topic? searches on the board, lead me to an ez.board website with an expired link message.

[caravel]

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...ID=12997.topic

[BlackHat]

Got it thanks.

[BlackHat]

Hmm, a review of the numerology topic does not show any numbers for assassins.
(There was a percentage estimator, but I could not make it work for me)

So I did a little charting and number crunching and came up with this percentage chart.


My highest assassin in my test game so far is only level 4 level 6 now.
(I don't have any older saved games of more turns to check any higher level assassins so there are higher %s above 95, I just don't know what they are yet.)

E = Emissaries
R1= Low Religious Agents (Priests, Bishops, Inquisitors, Alims)
AR= Assassins & Advanced Religious Agents (Orthodox Bishops, Cardinals, Grand Inquisitors, Imams)
P = Princesses
G = Generals & Heirs
K = Kings
PO= Pope

99 97 95 93 90 86 83 76 66 50 34 24 17 14 10 07 04 00
__ __ __ __ __ __ E_ R1 AR P_ G_ K_ PO __ __ __ __ __


First assuming your Assassin and target are both valor zero. [V0] (Command for Generals, Heirs & Kings) [C0]

The approve mission screen will show the percentage above. (i.e. A Princess V0 with an Assassin V0 is 50%)

For each level of valor for the assassin, move left (higher) one percentage step.
For each level of valor/Command of the target move right (lower) one percentage step.

Thus an Assassin V5 against a King C2 would be 66%
Or an Assassin V2 against a Grand Inquisitor V4 would be a 34%

This chart has worked for all variations I have seen, Except for High Command Generals.
If the the Command of the General/Heir exceeds the valor of the Assassin by 6,
(i.e. Assassin V2 General C8) the percentage should be 4%, however in the game it comes up as 0%

It maybe that if the valor/command of the target exceeds the Assassin by 6 the failure is automatic.

(I will need to train either an Assassin, or religious agent to V6 and target with a Assassin V0 and see if it still follows the chart (R1=14%, or AR=10%) or is 0%
[An Assassin V0 targeting an Assassin V6, DOES follow the chart (10%). So I still dont know why Generals/Heirs are different from all the others]

Later,
BlackHat

[EDIT: Played the Assassin test game a lot more turns. and have a few more numbers to add above.]

[Vladimir]

Emissaries = Vitamins for assassins.