Spies are really getting out of hand.

**Dunc** · 12-08-2006, 02:51

I'm sick of it. Spies in combination with glitches are making my campaign a chore to play through.

I hold Milan, which is constantly under attack by the Milanese. They constantly have a spy in there, and every single battle a spy opens the gates.

The battles when this happens are a chore. My Cannon towers totally wreck the siege towers, and then the passive AI leads to a full-time limit battle of doing absolutely nothing.

I can't auto resolve because I'll sit through a time limit battle rather than take an unfavourable result because of some stupid glitch.

**GFX707** · 12-08-2006, 02:58

I agree....spies and assassins. It's as if the AI has no agent limit for them....I am sick of every general having an assassination attempt on them every single turn, and I am also sick of having to wait for the animation for the spy leaving a settlement happening every turn.

Just another thing that should have been addressed in playtesting.

**IRONxMortlock** · 12-08-2006, 02:58

Start stacking your own spies in the city and you should be able to get the Milanese spy killed/kicked out of town. I believe having an assassin in town will also make it harder for their spies to infiltrate.

As for the passive AI, yep it's very annoying but we'll just have to wait and hope a fix comes out soon. In the meantime though, I use the tedious trick of sending out some cavalry to lure enemy units to break away and pursue. I then led them back to the walls where my archers/towers can kill them. Do this enough times and you can weaken the AI to the point you can easily sally forth and crush them outside the gates.

**Decker** · 12-08-2006, 03:15

Patience young grasshoppa! Post your own spies, like

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

said, into your own castles/cities and the chances of enemy armies sieging your cities and castles greatly diminishes because you have killed their spy every time(I've personally killed 5 spies attempting to check out Bordeaux). And a good trick that I use sometimes when moving around in a contested area is to have a spy traveling with my army/armies, and when I come into contact with an enemy army I take the spy and send him into the enemy encampment to see if I have a decent chance of beating him without losing to many guys before even fighting. It's worked just about every time and the same goes for attempting sieges. And a decent spy usually does the trick no matter what....unless he is a fruitcake.

**Musashi** · 12-08-2006, 05:50

Yeah, just build 4 or 5 spies and keep them in that city, and his spies won't last long there...

Really it's not like it's cheating or anything... If you lay siege to a city you have a spy in, it shows you whether the spy has the door open that turn or not, so if you wait long enough you'll always be able to attack with the gate open...

And as far as I know there isn't an agent limit on spies and assassins... Or at least if there is I've never found it, and I've had 20 or 30 spies out (Plus about 10 assassins) at a point when I only had 5 or 6 provinces...

**Dunc** · 12-08-2006, 21:54

Thanks for the replies, I'll try this.

I usually have around 2 assassins and 1 spy hanging around in Milan, I'll beef that up.

**Lochar** · 12-08-2006, 23:07

I learned to have at least 2 spies in my frontline territories and at least 1 in my backlines or rove them as a CI source.

The reason I did this wasnt the siege aspect so much as civil unrest. I dont know if its buggy but spies can stir the pot up too much.

With blowing up a church or law structure and few spies you can pretty much cause a revolt.

Its funny tho, attacked Denmarks capital and was 5 assasins sitting there.

**Zenicetus** · 12-08-2006, 23:24

Originally Posted by Lochar

I learned to have at least 2 spies in my frontline territories and at least 1 in my backlines or rove them as a CI source.

The reason I did this wasnt the siege aspect so much as civil unrest. I dont know if its buggy but spies can stir the pot up too much.

I'm getting the feeling CA just wanted more aggressive use of spies in this game, at least compared to RTW. When I got down to Marrakesh, the Moors had four spies in there, which defeated all attempts to get my own spies and assassins into the city. They flooded two of my main cities in Iberia with spies, which took several spies of my own in each city to eventually root out. Any time you see a suspiciously high level of unrest in your settlements (regular unrest, not religious), you're likely to have a spy or two in there.

I enjoy the espionage/assassin side of the game, but this is making me do more micromanagement between turns, and I'm not really thrilled with that. It also tilts the campaign strategy somewhat. Once I clear enemy spies out of my cities (or eliminate the faction), I a have a big army of spies left over that I'm tempted to use to open city gates and cause unrest/flip to rebels, instead of using conventional attacks on my front line of conquest.

So I'm still kinda on the fence about the increased level of spy activity in this game. I enjoy it, but it's a lot of work. I'm sure the modders will figure out ways to adjust it.

**andrewt** · 12-08-2006, 23:35

I use a lot of micromanagement with my spies. If any other faction has diplomats, princesses, merchants, or priests near your settlement, use them to raise your spies' skill level. The success rate is 93% or 100% for these agents usually and your spies get up to 3 more skill levels before you don't see increases anymore. I just let the spy inspect one of them near my settlement then put them back in the settlement. Higher level spies means better chances of detecting enemy spies.