Defeating the enemy with spies

[History Geek]

Hello everyone,

Since I've been reading the forum for quite a while now, perhaps it was time to post a question.

In my current campaign as the Turks (late era vanilla MTW/VI GA) I've found that even though I now (1401) hold a quarter of the map, I'm waaay behind in the GA race. To be precise, the Rus and the Spanish are both 20+ points ahead of me, and this made me wonder: Since they are at each end of the map, it would be quite difficult to assult them both in time, perhaps it would be fruitful to try to make the Almos reemerge in Spain? I've done a bit of spying with some imams, and found a province (Cordoba) without BF.

So my question is; Can you really make it happen with a lot of 0-valour spies (my current stock). Does assasination of province guvenor help? Should there be a "support-mission" consisting of holy men to shift the province religion (back) to Islam? Is it really worthwhile??? I don't mind the micro-management, it would be quite fun in role-playing terms

Your History Geek

PS As a side note - I most really say I love this game; I've played games for 15 years, and this is one of the very best (I have MTW2 installed as well - no need to talk about that)

[ULC]

I suggest a sound Naval attack for the Spanish. If the Spanish are to powerful, then bringing back the Almos may do nothing. More then likely though, your just going to start revolts, with the majority of them peasant. For the Rus, it's not to late to wipe them out if you take strong military action against them now. The Rus also have problems with loyalty just like the HRE, so stategic agents will be extremely useful against them if done correctly. In either case, a form of military action is recommend against either of them since GA points don't go down. The spies/imams/assassins can help, but they can't do it alone.

[Deus ret.]

Welcome to the .org, History Geek ! Hope you enjoy your stay.

As far as your problem is concerned, you're in a tricky situation indeed. Against the Russians, a massed military strike as suggested by YourLordandConqueror would probalby be the best option, although depending on your size and resources it may well consume all your available strength. But it should be possible to bring them down before 1453.

With the Spanish, the situation is trickier. If you can't attack them directly you could resort to a somewhat cheesy method - taking them down by assassination of their royal line. Use v2 assassins (+ brothel etc.) from Syria for this, you'll have to push them to v5+ to give them a reasonable chance against the BFs, though. Pick off the monarch several times and they may fall into a civil war, facilitating their removal or at least preventing them from amassing more GA points. If they don't, try and extinct them. I'm afraid that if you can't attack them there's not much else you can do except for praying that their royal line's not overly blessed with command stars. If you could provoke them to send crusades and beat off several of those the effects (civil war) may be the same, but this is difficult to attain.

Playing GA in vanilla Late is nasty because it's a merciless race against the Russians who soon emerge as the dominant faction regularly. I never had a similar problem with the Spanish, at least as far as I can still remember....

[Martok]

Welcome to the Org, History Geek.

For as powerful as the Russians are in you campaign right now, I would actually recommend taking military action against the Spanish if you're able. I've found they're rather vulnerable to civil war once they've lost a few provinces, so an expedition into the Iberian peninsula could pay big dividends. As an added bonus, their lands tend to be quite wealthy, and would add a nice chunk of income to the Sultan's treasury (although you probably don't really need the money at this point).

It's also been my experience that the Spanish are somewhat more aggressive than the Russians, especially against Muslim factions. So in this case, I'd say it's better to launch a pre-emptive strike and get at them first before they do the same to you.

[Roark]

It is possible to disrupt an enemy empire with spies alone, but if you've only got low valour spies, you can really only do it in naturally-rebellious provinces (eg: Estonia), or provinces with small garrisons that you've already primed with your Imams.

The best way (that I know) to use spies to foment rebellion is to use them in conjunction with Imams and an invading force... and you've gotta plan ahead for it to be really effective.

1. Plant Imams in as many Russian provinces as possible for about 10 years
2. Plant spies in as many Russian provinces as possible for about 4-5 years.
3. Take and keep two (or more) of their provinces in one year.

[History Geek]

Thanks for the input,

I hadn't really considered taking on the Rus with spies, as I considered a reemergence a more powerfull cloak-and-dagger move. Furthermore, I am already enganged in war with the Rus along our shared borders.

The problem, sorry challenge , would be that to take on the "we've got two full stacks in almost every province" iberic peninsular, I would have to divert quite a lot of units from that war. But then again, perhaps I should do just that, considering I resently won three major battles and they would take a while to pose a real threat again. But on the other hand - the clock is ticking, and there's only two counts left...

I think such a dilemma is really why this game rocks - I've been the richest/most powerfull on the board for 30 turns, and I'm still losing

Do you know if assasinating the gov'ner would have any impact on rebellion?

[Martok]

Do you know if assasinating the gov'ner would have any impact on rebellion?

It might, depending on his stats and what traits he has. If you a assassinate a governor with high piety and/or dread (which helps keep up his province's loyalty).....and/or he has happiness-improving traits (Charitable, Great Builder, Great Steward, etc.), then killing him could certainly help lower a province's happiness to the point that they might revolt. Assassinating a governor alone probably won't spur a province to rebellion, however -- you'll still probably want a few spies/imams as well.

[Deus ret.]

But then again, perhaps I should do just that, considering I resently won three major battles and they would take a while to pose a real threat again. But on the other hand - the clock is ticking

It is indeed, so just don't do it. You're playing GA in Late, and if I got you right your situation doesn't ask for tactical victories which can buy you some time for the next couple of tactical victories on another front. Now that they're weakened, go ahead and crush them utterly ASAP. Don't relent until this is done, however costly it might be, and don't care about possible reemergences since they will start over with 0 points. You likely won't stand a chance without taking decisive action now.

As for the Spanish, deal with (=exterminate) them any way you like. Depending on the overall scores probably nothing short of annihilating will do the job, so you could try the assassin variant I suggested (difficult to pull off with many BFs) or else wage an all-out war against them once you've finished the Russians. Even if the last remnant of their royal line isn't extincted until 1452 you'll have secured victory, but given the standing and the date you'll have to be committed to some kind of all-out effort to overcome them.

If all this isn't possible, as a last resort you could go on an insane conquering spree against whoever is in range and doesn't really pose a threat on the military side of things. This way, you might secure at least a domination victory before the clock runs out. Admittedly that's somewhat cheap but won is won

[EatYerGreens]

I would concur with the advice to take military action as being your number one priority, with the espionage side on the back-burner: Given regular attention but not in any way relied upon as the way to win. It is something which can pay off but can, equally often, go utterly wrong.

So lay waste to Russia, possibly holding the lands until the next points count, then abandon it to rebels (combine high taxes with nil garrison and no governor) or to re-emergences/other factions so that you can redistribute troops in such a way as to be able to surprise-attack Spain in strength and deprive it of its homelands and any point-goal buildings, just in time for the penultimate and final point counts.


If you only have valour-0 spies at the moment, I have serious doubts that you will be able to valour them up in time to be able to do any serious harm with them by the end of the game (not that this should stop you from trying, regardless).

For starters, if you send in low valour spies (to Cordoba), they are just going to get caught by any counterspying agents Spain has stationed there. All this does is valour-up their assassins/spies and only increases the chances that your next spy also gets caught. Your spies need to be 4 or 5-star to stand a reasonable chance of eluding these enemy agents for long enough to do any useful harm. Although the odds are very low (7% or less) they *can* still get caught by a low-valour counterspy.

In the event that you lose a 5-star spy on enemy soil, wait a few years before sending the next one in. 'Valour transference' means you've just turned a merely average agent of theirs (who got lucky) into a high-star one. Given time, he will set off on a killing spree of his own until he gets caught trying to bump off some faction leader. He may even come gunning for your leader...

Also beware that, whilst scouting for BF's and other things, your Imams may attract the attentions of Spain's assassins. Keep them constantly on the move, bring them back to a home port frequently, in the hope they're being followed (so your home agents get a chance to pick up a star from a capture) and make sure they do not visit the same foreign province as your spy, once he's in place, or they'll only serve to draw the counterspy activity towards him.

Speaking of home ports, demolish your own BF's (if you have them) in these port-provinces and, at most, rebuild BWT's, where needed. BF's steal the credit for agent-capture from your own agents, stopping them from gaining valour.

So place several spies in the ports and leave them there to catch incoming foreign agents and gain their first couple of stars. See if you can work out which ports have more agent traffic than others and concentrate your spies there. In the meantime, to stop them competing for captures, place your assassins on guard mainly around your leader, princes, top generals and in landlocked provinces, to look after the occasional ones the spies failed to catch.

When one spy reaches 3 stars, move him out (to give the others a chance) and get him doing treason trials on any low-loyalty generals you can find (difficult when you're doing well). A failed treason plot can backfire on you very badly and start an outbreak of disloyalty, if you're unlucky, so ensure the Sultan's influence can withstand the odd dent. In time, you can have an agent worthy of going abroad but will 50 years be enough?


Notwithstanding that, at a guess, I'd say you are still going to have a hard time getting a revolt in a province with two stacks in it, even for a 5-star spy in Portugal. Harder still, anywhere else. A civil war would obviously help thin out those numbers, so assassinations may have to come first.

If my top spy failed to spark a revolt in 3 to 5 years of trying, I'd seriously consider bringing him home, to avoid risk of capture, send in an Imam to monitor the situation and wait for conditions to change - troop numbers reduced in response to the loyalty returning to normal, for example. Then alternate them in 2-year stints. Who knows? The constant troop movements could set off a war with a neighbouring faction...

[seireikhaan]

Do you have naval superiority over the Spanish? If so, I would raid them to ruin, as they likely have a VERY long coastline. Plus, some of their GA goals relate to having a certain # of buildings or citadels in certain provinces. I frequently employ this strategy as Italy, Denmark, and sometimes England. Just continually hit weakly defended provinces(there will be some) with small guerilla forces, pillage, and pull back. It may take a while, but its a sure fire way to wear them down while you continue to build more units. I have often found the AI will have a whole bunch of full stack armies moving together in one MASSIVE army, instead of splitting them up, making them more vulnerable to this strategy.

[The Unknown Guy]

As I mentioned in another thread, the Russian GA score is a pain, not only in Late, as has been mentioned (elsewhere) but in high as well, depending on your faction. The problem streams from two points:

- the fact that Russia gets many GA goals, as opposed to factions like Poland, Byzantium, Hungary or Sicily, which get none. This is not the main factor, but it´s worth mentioning it

- The humongous conçuest GA bonus points Russia gets, combined by the multiple regions it can (and will) conçuer, opposed to the low score that most factions achieve that way. I think that in Vanilla it´s on the order of 1.5 points per province. Compare this to the paltry 0.33 points per province that Sicily, or Italy get, and bear in mind that those two have far less territories in which to expand, and Sicily doesn´t even have personal GA goals. Same goes for Aragon.

(For the record, I use Caravel/Cambryses´ Pocket Mod. With a small additional tweak of my own to force Castile and Aragon to tech the Horse Farmer to 3 instead of 2 to get Jinetes. This is in order to prevent the infamous Jinetes Swarms that invariably come out of castile after a few turns )

So what I am doing (I´ve not tested it yet in a long campaign) is tweaking the conçuest bonus. This can be done editing the files in campmap/startpos. You scroll down until you find this:

//========================================
// Glory goal conquest reward multiplier.
//
// This value represents the multiplier applied
// to points gained for conquering enemy regions.
//
//========================================

then you have a list of the factions and the multiplier. What I have done is this (a mere suggestion):

-Downgrade Russian Bonus from 1.5 to 0,5

-Upgrade Almohads, Eggies, England, France, Italy, and the HRE from 0,33 to 0,5

-Upgrade Sicily, Byzantium, and Aragon to 1.0 points (They haven´t additional Glory Goals, and expansion is severely handicapped)

-Poland and Hungary remain as is (they have 2 and 1.5 points, respectively, but they have a very hard time expanding, and no glory goals)

-Turkey and Denmark remain in their 1.0 and 1.5 points, respectively (they do have some glory goals, but they´re surrounded by strong factions, and start off with few lands. You seldom see them steamrolling in GA through conçuest).

-Spain/(Castile in the Pocket mod) remains at it´s 1.0 score, but mainly because after my tweak it has a simmilar situation to Turkey and Denmark. Otherwise I´d kick it to 0,5

Footnotes:

-This is for HIGH setting. Hence tweaking Byzatium, which in Vanilla starts with four poor provinces, and in the Pocket Mod starts with just Nicaea. In this context, the tweaking makes sense, imho. It doesn´t apply to Early because they start off with a huge empire outright.

-I am uncertain of some of the tweaks. For instance, I eçualled the Almohads and Egyptians with the European factions, on the basis that they´re are on the same situation (low conçuest score, but get Glory Goals), but I do know that both factions tend to accumulate unbalanced ammounts of Victory Points çuite often, so I´m going to wait and see. As for the upgraded European factions with Glory Goals, the only times I´ve seen them become VP machines is when they crush their neighbours (and hence the others are in turn, either demoted to the lowest crust of the VP scale, or killed outright). Since this often means that they´ll collapse by bloat, either by themselves or by engineering a destabilization, I left them as is.

[History Geek]

Thanks again for the input, and the notes on creating your own GA levels. This way one can turn any campaign into über-expert levels, which would make even the eggies a challenge...

Just to brief you all on my campaign - I took the advice and steamrolled the Rus, they crubled and broke into civil war, and no longer pose a threat. Its now 1430 and I still have time to turn the Spanish into dust. But just to satisfy my own curiosity I sent 11 spies, 3 imams and 2 alims (ALL of which had 0 valor) into Valencia (I confused it with cordoba in previous post).

There was no BF, the gov'nr wasn't present, and a megre garrison of 160 men. There was 100 % cristianity (and a church) and 143% loyalty when the mission started. In 10 years they converted 10% of the population to Islam, and the loyalty went to ...


146% (!)


No troop movements, and none of the spies were killed. Lesson: Valor up your spies before you send them on 'rebellion' missions.

/HG

[CountMRVHS]

Oh, HistoryGeek, if you're playing VI you should know that it doesn't matter how many spies you send into a particular province... the computer only makes calculations based on the highest-valor spy. In pre-VI versions of MTW, you could keep throwing spy after spy into a province, but that's not the case if you're playing VI. So save yourself a bit of micromanagement!

[History Geek]

OH I didn't know that... I've just sent 10 agents on paid holiday for 10 years in spain! Hmm. I wish I was my boss...

/HG

[caravel]

OH I didn't know that... I've just sent 10 agents on paid holiday for 10 years in spain! Hmm. I wish I was my boss...

/HG

Try to get high valour spy into that province, but do leave those others there as well. Due to a bug (feature?) all of those spies will increase in valour if the highest valour spy is successful in causing a revolt. If the province has a border fort you're probably wasting your time though and will see most if not all of your agents caught within two turns.

[The Unknown Guy]

Low level spies, when mass produced, make EXCELLENT cannon fodder for border forts, when using assasins, as the border forts target the spies first. If you need to assasinate someone in "safe ground" toss some spies (I think the lowest limit is 4) along with your assasins. The spies will get fried, but the assasins will slip through.

(I destroyed the Castilian royal line like that playing as the almohads)

Another "assasination" you can carry out is slipping in many ranged, fast units in the battlefield, and going for the enemy king, then withdrawing against the overwhelming odds.

(This worked just fine playing as Byzantium to supress a Turk reemergence during an Egyptian civil war)

[caravel]

Low level spies, when mass produced, make EXCELLENT cannon fodder for border forts, when using assasins, as the border forts target the spies first. If you need to assasinate someone in "safe ground" toss some spies (I think the lowest limit is 4) along with your assasins. The spies will get fried, but the assasins will slip through.

(I destroyed the Castilian royal line like that playing as the almohads)

Another "assasination" you can carry out is slipping in many ranged, fast units in the battlefield, and going for the enemy king, then withdrawing against the overwhelming odds.

(This worked just fine playing as Byzantium to supress a Turk reemergence during an Egyptian civil war)

I'm not sure about that method. The border fort will catch and kill the majority of any number of 0 valour spies/assassins you can throw at it. If you send 20 and get one in there alive, you'll be lucky and the BF will get him next year anyway unless you pull him out. Of course storming a lot of agents at a target increases your chances considerably but sending spies that cannot actually perform the mission, assassination, seems to be largely pointless. There is no limit as to how many agents the border fort can catch in one turn and it doesn't become less effective as it catches them.

[The Unknown Guy]

I thought there was a limit. In that scenario I was stuck with lots of spies (I didn´t know that only ONE of them triggered the rebellion, I just flooded them like I did in Shogun when an enemy became too strong to be beaten militarily)
so I decided to use the low valor ones as fodder.
Given these two insights, I guess it´s better to launch several high valor assasins (which ain´t exactly easy to get)

PD: Now that I consider, I´ve noticed very few loyalist revolts in MTW:VI. Loyal to me, that is. Maybe it´s almost mandatory to keep spies in your provinces to have them?