Merchants and Assassins

[phunkbot]

I tend to only train them at the start to get the guilds. Once they are upgraded it seems to help get over the early hurdles. Merchants in particular without any starting bonuses just seem to get hoovered up by some 6-7 finance bloke camping around your cities.

I've had some success with assassins in my current Venetian campaign, getting the guild HQ up in Florence and killing off quie a few generals, including the Holy Roman Emperor twice. I'm not sure it makes that much difference to my campaign though, other factions seem to have no trouble replacing their generals. Has anyone ever managed to remove a faction through assasination? You'd think it's be possible when someone is down to their last province (although pointless by then of course). I slightly suspect the AI would just cheat and sprout new family members as needed.

It is very satisfying being able to deal instantly with foreign diplomats and princess who try for those persistent ( and often completely nonsensical) bribe attempts though.

It works just fine, you just need to have spies in to find where he's hiding his heirs/leader and slice away. I've removed France in this manner (only had conquered about half of it at the time) in my english campaign and Milan has probably sent their leader in outer space because i've killed everyone and they still exist. I wouldnt say assasins are worthless, they are the only counter you have to enemy priests/diplomat/spies and killing a general along with his 20 bodyguard units is pretty cool.

[_Tristan_]

I wouldnt say assasins are worthless, they are the only counter you have to enemy priests/diplomat/spies and killing a general along with his 20 bodyguard units is pretty cool.

Right on the mark... I always tend to send an assassin on any general that I think is gonna take the offensive on me or that I'm thinking on attacking...

Ah....to think of that 20+ 2hp bodyguards gone with one swish of a blade...

So cooooooool.....

[Didz]

I've just had a massive assassin slugfest around Milan, mainly becuase France decided it was going to use massed assassin's against the city and that was my only counter.

My conclusion is that assassin's are seriously unreliable and a waste of money unless you have no choice, as in this case. There seesm to be very little attention paid to the % chance of success when deciding an outcome. Even the few assassin's who made it through the 16% success period died stupid deaths eventually trying to take out noob French assassin's, and despite all my efforts more French assassin's died by their own snakes than were killed by the massive investment I made in trying to kill them.

Mind you the vision of Milan surrounded by 15+ assassin's all hacking at each other was different, if somewhat pointless.

[phunkbot]

i dont think assassins are ment to be used without quicksaving and reloading, at least not in the vanilla version. I've tried that and i have to agree, it does not work.
However, I rarely have to load more than once, generally just moving your assassin next to his target and then attacking (instead of attacking from all the way) does the trick for me. Also i have to add, how on earth are you going to get your cardinals promoted without getting a few slots vacant in the cardinal college ? what? you say those guys die of natural causes? they do? wow, i'll have to look into that

[phunkbot]

also, in my current campaign the growth of my army upkeep about matches the growth of my settlements' income (just 1-2k bellow it), the 5-6k (which is about to double as soon as i find how the heck to i get to bloody timboktu, my ships dont seem to want to go all the way down the cost of africa) i get from merchants is what rakes the money in from me, and thats leaving the extra cash i get every time the AI descides to foolishly send a merchant out of a city anywhere in western and mid-western europe as an extra bonus. So i'd say merchants are not only not worthless, for me they are what gets me money stored for when i need in buckets.

And, since an assassin costs 500 (correct me if im wrong), by the time you get it to 4-5 stars he will probably have delt more than that in priests and diplomats killed, and that only gets better. So i'd say they are pretty cost effective.

i apologise i'm doubleposting, i'd appreciate it if a mod could merge my posts if that matters

[Matty]

... (which is about to double as soon as i find how the heck to i get to bloody timboktu, my ships dont seem to want to go all the way down the cost of africa)

They won't. You have to walk the merchants down from north African landings. Tedious, but good things come to those who wait.

[phunkbot]

They won't. You have to walk the merchants down from north African landings. Tedious, but good things come to those who wait.

hey thanks, you're a lifesaver : )

[_Tristan_]

@phunkbot : Exactly... The quicksave/quickload is your best friend when using agents and particularly merchants and assassins (spies are so much easier, wonder why...)

Most of all, I use them to remove the Ai generals and bodyguards, but rather than leaving them idle any diplomat, cardinal, princess or captain can capture their attention...

If nobody's worth it around those parts, there is certinaly a city where a little spark in the right place (just so...) will make a big great bonfire...

So as a conclusion, I'll say that spies are much too good (even newly created spies generally have a 93-100 % chance of success) and other agents much too bad (you rarely get over the 45-50 %)

[SirMoric]

I usually have no problem getting headquarters for assasins, priests and merchants.

Just make one of your cities dedicated to producing assasins, one for priests and one for merchants. Remember using a city by the sea for merchants. And keep producing until reaching the agent-cap for each. Eventually you'll get the HQ's.

Assasins bad in vanilla?? I like them. They may not be 100 percent good, but often a HQ-trained assasin with a few captains in the belt is enough to start taking out generals and alike.

And being able to produce bishops instead of priests makes own you the cardinal-thing in Rome.

And Merchants? Well, the time they take to move to valuable resources and their stopping every time they encounter other units or are being stepped on by other units isn't really worth it.

rgds

[Didz]

Weird the way peoples perceptions can differ, I suppose thats the sign of a good strategy game. So, many different ways to play. Im currently earning over 1,500 florins from 2 merchants near Constantinople and would hardly call them a waste of time. Whereas, tying up a city producing useless assassins, in the hope of being able to buy a building that gives me the chance to produce slightly less useless assassins seems a total waste of time. Likewise, investing a fortune and one whole city to dominating the Papal College when the payment of the income from 1 x 8* merchant in tribute will keep your Pop-O-Meter rating at 10/10 seems a bit of overkill.

[phunkbot]

i dont really mean "bad", but it doesnt seem all that sensible to have mr. Fraunce the Killer who had been pwning european royaly for 15 years or so loose all his skill when missing on one hit...

[Frederick_I_Barbarossa]

I usually have no problem getting headquarters for assasins, priests and merchants.

Just make one of your cities dedicated to producing assasins, one for priests and one for merchants. Remember using a city by the sea for merchants. And keep producing until reaching the agent-cap for each. Eventually you'll get the HQ's.

I do precisely this exact thing. Generally I try to make my capital city my "Cardinal Factory", as it is generally the largest city and will get to Cathedral or Huge Cathedral stage first.

I'm one of those odd people who get really excited when Guild notices show up...