How do I kill Spies which are in a settlement?

[Lorenzo_H]

As the French, I am enemies with Milan, and I recently noticed that Marseille is a red face, when it has always been green. I suspected that Milan had put a Spy there, so I stationed one of my own in Marseille. Sure enough, there was a Milanese Spy, making the city unhappy. He has been there a while now, and I can see him at the end of every turn. I also put an assasin in Marseille, with the hopes that he would be able to kill him, but no such luck yet. How do I end the life of this wretched filth of a diseased vermin who is sliming his troublesome way through my city???

[Unorthodox]

Well, having your own spy should eventually lead to the death of the enemy spy, so that might take a while.

What I suggest is that you keep your spy in Marseille, but every turn (where possible), take out the spy and perform a spying mission on any nearby enemy characters to boost his skill rating, and then return to Marseille. That way your spy will get better every turn, and eventually be good enough to catch and kill the enemy spy.

[Lorenzo_H]

Yeah hes not a very good Spy to be honest. Until recently he only had a 46% chance of infiltrating a settlement!

Another question; Can Spies and Assasins work together? ie does putting a spy inside an enemy stack increase the assasin's odds of success?

[gardibolt]

I found that I really needed to keep 2 spies in cities that were anywhere near Milan in order to have a good shot at stopping infiltration. Not only are they aggressive with their usage of spies and assassins, but because they're used so much they tend to be pretty powerful. Milan is the one faction that the AI plays pretty well.

[TevashSzat]

For an assasin to kill someone, you have to actually click on the assasin and tell him to try to assasinate someone

[Lorenzo_H]

Yeah I knew that, but I couldn't do that with this spy.

[JCoyote]

Honestly, spies and merchants are far too hard for assassins to kill. They should be two or three times easier to kill, at least.

[Lorenzo_H]

Actually, Merchants are really easy to kill for me. The last one I targeted had a 95% chance of success, and worked.

[Budwise]

I know they are a pain to deal with. Its even funny how you can "see" the spy and know he is one, it seems like your army should be able to kill him while they are nearby. But all in all, I was sick of the "Border Forts" of MTW and I was tired of having assasins/spys die in one failed attempt.

[HoreTore]

If you can't kill the spy with one spy in your settlement, add another one. If you still can't kill him, aadd another one. and so on....

Just keep chucking in spies, and it will be spyproof eventually. Also, remember to have them spy on something while they are counterspying, like a diplomat, so they gain skill.

[vonsch]

I know they are a pain to deal with. Its even funny how you can "see" the spy and know he is one, it seems like your army should be able to kill him while they are nearby. But all in all, I was sick of the "Border Forts" of MTW and I was tired of having assasins/spys die in one failed attempt.

Heh, you can kill spies with armies. At least if they aren't in a settlement.

[Lorenzo_H]

Heh, you can kill spies with armies. At least if they aren't in a settlement.

Can you???? How?

[TevashSzat]

Surround the agent on all sides with a military unit and then move a unit onto the agent. Agents can't move through military units so it instantly dies

[Whacker]

Can you???? How?

You can kill any non-military unit with the "box of 8" trick. You basically surround them like so:

UUU
UTU
UUU

Where U stands for your military units, and T stands for the target character. Then you simply move your 9th Unit to where T is, and it'll kill them, so it'll end up looking like:

UUU
UUU
UUU

Kind of lame but it works. It also works with Impassible terrain as well, say for example your target is standing next to mountains. You'd set it up to look like this:

UUI
UTI
UUI

Where in this case I stands for Impassable terrain. Works just like above.

Enjoy.

[SultanSaladin]

You can kill any non-military unit with the "box of 8" trick. You basically surround them like so:

UUU
UTU
UUU

Where U stands for your military units, and T stands for the target character. Then you simply move your 9th Unit to where T is, and it'll kill them, so it'll end up looking like:

UUU
UUU
UUU

Kind of lame but it works. It also works with Impassible terrain as well, say for example your target is standing next to mountains. You'd set it up to look like this:

UUI
UTI
UUI

Where in this case I stands for Impassable terrain. Works just like above.

Enjoy.

It is kind of kame but sometimes you got to do it. Especially when you see a spy or an assassin with 7 or higher skill. You just can't kill them normaly and you got to "cheat".

[Lorenzo_H]

Ok that is cool ill try that.

[Discoman]

Yea Assasins level up too slowly to take out an experienced spy. And taking out a cardinal or merchant is near impossiable. I wish it was more like RTW when you could actually kill of family members and agents.

[Whacker]

Yea Assasins level up too slowly to take out an experienced spy. And taking out a cardinal or merchant is near impossiable. I wish it was more like RTW when you could actually kill of family members and agents.

I just got sick of how nerfed the assassins were, and tweaked their base kill percentage up from 12 to 25 in that one xml file, "desc_campaign_ai.xml" or something like that, I forget. That seemed to do the trick and they function much closer to what should, at least in my personal view.

[Lorenzo_H]

ahhh I think assassins are just about the right level of efficiency for me. It takes a bit of pain and labour to get them up to skill, but its kind of satisfying going aroung with a 10 subterfuge assassin and slaying random people like a madman.