Agents

[Denzil]

Taking this into account, they do seem quite useful. I mean it would stop me using toggle_fow for a start making it slightly more realistic. I like the idea of biological warfare

Denny

[I of the Storm]

Indeed. The best target to train your assassins are other assassins. For some odd reason they always have a 90something success rating. You need a spy to spot these guys though.
If you are playing an initially rich faction in vanilla, (like the seleucids for example) diplomats can also save you alot of trouble, because the (captain-led) armies of your enemies will usually be dirt cheap. So for the first couple of years during your buildup play Rome:Total Bribery...

[Denzil]

I suppose that would be handy with a greek faction. Why do I always have trouble bribing Romans as Romans?

Denny

[I of the Storm]

That's a game history thing. In Rome 1.0, once the civil war broke out, you as a roman faction could always buy roman fullstacks for like 5000 denarii. At that stage of the game, this is peanuts. In other words, no army buildup was required as preparation for civil war. You simply bought other roman armies and used them against their former employers.
This changed with the patches and now bribing romans is almost not feasible anymore.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

That's a game history thing. In Rome 1.0, once the civil war broke out, you as a roman faction could always buy roman fullstacks for like 5000 denarii. At that stage of the game, this is peanuts. In other words, no army buildup was required as preparation for civil war. You simply bought other roman armies and used them against their former employers.
This changed with the patches and now bribing romans is almost not feasible anymore.

Yup .. unfortunatly this is true .. I remember that first time I got civil war I had read some guide about romans and there was written that you could easely buy other roman armys .. you can imagen my surprise when I couldn't

But about agents .. I try to use them with my main armys .. diplomat for bribing enemy armys .. spy for opening enemy gates and for line of sight .. asassins for sabotage and enemy FM killing

[Quirinus]

A tip about training up assassins when playing as a Roman faction (or a faction near Italy) : send your new assassin to Italy. There are usually a huge bunch of diplomats and captains around as easy targets. I've gained four "eyes" immediately after assassinating a zero-influence diplomat for a first mission before, through traits and ancillaries. Also, there will usually be plenty of SPQR and Scipii family members standing around doing nothing. Help them improve their genealogy by pruning their family tree of zero-everything family members. ;)

But I still find that the most useful feature of assassins is the ability to sabotage enemy buildings, especially in tandem with spies. For example, if I see (through a spy) that a city has borderline public order (90-100%), I will send an assassin to take out the temple, or, preferably, the Arena so that they can't stage games. It's exceedingly gratifying to see a city in the throes of a riot that you yourself ocherstrated.

By the way, is it just me, or are Carthegenian cities more difficult to sabotage? Even with an experienced assassin against a city with no family member, the probability is much lower than of, say, a Spanish or Greek city. Do the Secret Police Network line of buildings improve public security?

I've read guides that advocate sending a few spies ahead of each army to check for ambushes and such, but I've never used them that extensively-- I usually have one or two spies in a region/theatre of operations, like one for Spain, a couple for Germania, one for Africa, etcetera to open gates.

I only use diplomat extensively in the early game, to obtain trade rights and map information. I almost never trade or sell my own map information, as I think that gives the enemy a military advantage, especially if I'm a desert faction like Parthia, Carthage or Egypt.

That's a game history thing. In Rome 1.0, once the civil war broke out, you as a roman faction could always buy roman fullstacks for like 5000 denarii. At that stage of the game, this is peanuts. In other words, no army buildup was required as preparation for civil war. You simply bought other roman armies and used them against their former employers.
This changed with the patches and now bribing romans is almost not feasible anymore.

So that's why...... I suppose I can see the logic in it. I was very annoyed by this though. There was once where, as the Julii, I tried to bribe a two-unit Brutii army of unknown units, thinking that they would waste movement points to track down, or combine with a larger army to bolster its ranks. The price was ridiculously high for two units-- over 15000d. I thought that I had hit the jackpot, that I had stumbled upon some elite units like onagers, or triarii. Imagine my annoyance when I saw that I had bribed only a regular unit of principes and an understrength hastati unit. I felt cheated, suckered out of my precious gold.

By the way, does anyone know why you can't bribe the armies of your fellow Roman allies before the civil war? It's not a matter of them refusing your bribe, but that of the bribe option not even being avaliable.

[Barbarian]

Another way for using spies is the biological warfare: If plague starts in one of my cities, I quickly train spies in it. Then send the inffected spies to the rival settlements. I think I once destroyed Scipii before the civil war in this way, all their family members died of plague...