Agents

[Quirinus]

Me, I hate the fact that the bodyguard size of the family member increases if you fail the assassination attempt. So other than very low-level generals that provides armies with annoyingly effective heavy cavalry, or Men of the Hour, I don't assassinate all that much. I just level up sufficiently, and then sabotage buildings all the time, giving the assassin a chance to practice if a stray diplomat happens to wander along. =)

With the Men of the Hour that the AI seems to get annoyingly often if you bleed them enough, I like to station an assassin beside the army. Every turn, without fail, a new, hapless captain will get promoted. Equally without fail, they will feel the scythe of Pluto immediately after their adoption. They never seem to take care of their security, these hapless amateurs.

I don't mind this exploit, because it seems pretty unfair to me that they are getting three- or four-star generals in such abundance.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

When I get to the almost infinite money stage, I, like many others, use diplomats in their tens to drag in any forces which are approaching my cities and I could do with having rid of (this is especially useful when I'm building up my forces, and I don't want a battle to force me to go through the irritant of re-training). Early on though, diplomats are there to make simply trade deals, ceasefires, alliances and the suchlike.

Assassins I hardly use at all in fact, considering them only worth the effort when a family has only a small number of family members left, and wiping out them all is fairly easy. When the faction still has a wide array of family left, I consider it a little pointless - for every one you kill, another load of family members of equal status are born to replace them.

Spies I train a few of, and use them in any cities which are showing high levels of unrest with no reason for it. They also can be useful in forcing the settlement of a neutral faction or an ally to rebel, henceforth allowing me to take their old city with no repercussions. This is only useful in cities already tipping towards dissent already though. Spies don't have an effect on unrest that is large enough to make a fairly happy settlement feel willing to turn away from its overlords.

[Quirinus]

When the faction still has a wide array of family left, I consider it a little pointless - for every one you kill, another load of family members of equal status are born to replace them.

Yes, but these family members act as very effective shock cavalry-- they die hard due to the extra hitpoint, and they can be replenished after every battle so long as the generals themselves don't die. And since a lot of them are extremely easy to kill with assassins (>80%)......

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

That's a very fair and unarguable point you make there Quirinus which I seem to have overlooked a little when considering the importance of assassinations. I'll probably consider it in the future.

[The Wandering Scholar]

Agents? Historically I do not know of assassins, yes there was Caesar's assassinators but I do not know of a civilisation sending out trained killers to eliminate warlord or such people. In that case I do not use them in RTW. Diplomats and spies play a valued part, yes very important.

[Quirinus]

Yeah...... well, I think that the roles of spy and assassin should have been combined. For example, I cannot for the life of me see why a spy cannot perform a building sabotage, or why an assassin cannot scout out the surroundings. And generals should have an inbuilt ability to negotiate alliances. Sure, that reduces the relevance of diplomats, but it doesn't make it redundant, as generals generally (ooh, alliteration xD) have more important things to do than running around the map.