How the heck do you get a 100% victory?

[Martok]

I usually have a team of about six to eight assassins only. This team get's moved around to "hot spots" to get rid of emissaries, princesses, rival religious agents most importantly the Inquisition. Basically anything that enters my territory gets killed.

Same here. The one addendum for me is that I also often have an assassin accompany my faction leader (if he's worth protecting, that is) as part of his "entourage". Better safe that sorry!

[bozewolf]

I make very little use of agents, especially since I tend to play like a gorging behemoth and go military expansion style like crazy. And I find managing scores of different agents to get immensely tedious with a big empire. I use emissaries, obviously, and sometimes a dozen spies to try and stir up an enemy province, but I find assassins to be very time consuming to "train up" and immensely vulnerable. Inquisitors are way overpowered, especially the Grand's, because all the time put in valouring them up is pretty much safe since Inqs don't suffer from death-by-botched-attempt. I will happily and without any moral pangs pump out a bunch of them to annihilate my most annoying enemy's cream. But spies and assassins, barely make use of them. Even emissaries tend to get left out later in the game since no one wants to be allied with me anymore anyway.

[caravel]

Well if you play the blitzing game then you might find spies and assassins less useful. Though playing in this way also leaves you very vulnerable to the bloat effect, later on and poor territorial stability in general.

As to tedious management, I disagree somewhat. Spies require very little management. As I've said before, you leave them in the province and let them do their job, it's only when you start having problems with a rival faction's rogue assassin that you need to move your best spy into the problem province. Assassins require more work and care. Because they follow targets they tend to get trapped by border forts a lot. So it's important to cancel the mission if the target moves and forget about sending them into border fort provinces unless they're about 5 star and the mission is really worth the risk.

Inquisitors and especially Grand Inquisitors are an horrendous exploit. I used to have a rule of 1 Grand Inquisitor and 3 Inquisitors only. Nowadays I don't train them at all.

Emissaries are my least used agent. I prefer to use Religious agents for diplomacy. I only keep an Emissary for bribing and stripping titles and that's it. Emissaries are also very big targets for rival assassins. The AI seems to be tuned up to go for those first in preference to any other agent or generals. If you want to train your spies up keep an emissary in the province as bait.

[Vantek]

I have NEVER in my life had AI accept my offer of alliance, or ceasefire (they accept war though ^^). Stopped trying after the 15th or so rejection. Have I been exceptionally unlucky, or do you guys have the patience of a turtle? And do alliances even mean anything whatsoever? I try to keep them if I can, but I never thought they're actually useful. Hmm, now that I think of it, I can't actually think of an occasion where an ally backstabbed me. Is there an actual effect? Even if there is, alliances get terminated SOOOO easily. The odd man's boat attacks yours with no gain whatsoever and suddenly you're all alone.

[caravel]

I have NEVER in my life had AI accept my offer of alliance, or ceasefire (they accept war though ^^). Stopped trying after the 15th or so rejection. Have I been exceptionally unlucky, or do you guys have the patience of a turtle?

I've had many an acceptance of alliance and ceasefire but it's usually early on in the campaign. During the later stages where the bloat effect kicks in, you're hated and the smaller factions will all turn against you.

And do alliances even mean anything whatsoever? I try to keep them if I can, but I never thought they're actually useful.

Alliances gain your faction leader influence but that's about it. In every other way they're not worth the virtual paper they're printed on.

Hmm, now that I think of it, I can't actually think of an occasion where an ally backstabbed me. Is there an actual effect? Even if there is, alliances get terminated SOOOO easily. The odd man's boat attacks yours with no gain whatsoever and suddenly you're all alone.

I can think of many occasions where allies have stabbed me in the back. Alliances don't seem to mean much to the AI. As to the shipping this is a known issue. Try to avoid having single ships and always have at least three ships in each sea region. This will prevent the AI picking off your lone ships and starting a war/breaking alliances.

[Knight of the Rose]

Don't forget that the loyalty of generals is linked to the King's influence, preventing civil wars, but much more importantly the quality of heirs! Low influence kings get 2-star heirs, high influence get 4-5-star heirs, and even higher if they are good generals themselves. Having a high influence king is paramount in securing the empire and laying the foundations of a 100 % victory.

Therefore getting alliances IS important, but not in the strategic warfare sense. If I have the opportunity to relieve the siege of an ally, I always jump on it. The bonus is significant.

Completing crusades add to influence as well. Don't know about jihads, though?

/KotR

[Ironside]

I have NEVER in my life had AI accept my offer of alliance, or ceasefire (they accept war though ^^). Stopped trying after the 15th or so rejection. Have I been exceptionally unlucky, or do you guys have the patience of a turtle?

The comp will never accept an alliance with you, if you're at war with one of thier allies. Killing thier allies are no problem though, was able to get 4 more alliances (only had 1 or 2 before that) after killing of two factions that were allied to about everyone. This was late midgame.

Ceasefire varies, they can be acceptive at some points, but after a while they will simply die rather than accept. In one campagin, the Byz accepted peace twice (after losing some provinces in the process), before ending up in that mode. That 20+ dual stack fleet harassing me was also a convincing argument for to fullfill that death wish.

And do alliances even mean anything whatsoever? I try to keep them if I can, but I never thought they're actually useful. Hmm, now that I think of it, I can't actually think of an occasion where an ally backstabbed me. Is there an actual effect? Even if there is, alliances get terminated SOOOO easily. The odd man's boat attacks yours with no gain whatsoever and suddenly you're all alone.

Backstabbing an ally costs 1 influence for the attacker. That means that occationally the backstabber will fall into a civil war after thier attack.

[drone]

Backstabbing an ally costs 1 influence for the attacker. That means that occationally the backstabber will fall into a civil war after thier attack.

So you should always make sure you take 2 of their provinces when you do it!

[Kamakazi]

i love assassins... trin them up by killing your own emessaries or spies and use them to kill tough gens or anything else that needs dead........... lol but u never use inquisitors... they are worthless

[caravel]

i love assassins... trin them up by killing your own emessaries or spies...

This is considered bad practice, is costly and when there are so many rival faction agents to practice on early in the game, pretty pointless.

lol but u never use inquisitors... they are worthless

Grand Inquisitors are in fact the most powerful strategic agent in the game. Almost comparable to the Geisha in STW.

[bozewolf]

Well if you play the blitzing game then you might find spies and assassins less useful. Though playing in this way also leaves you very vulnerable to the bloat effect, later on and poor territorial stability in general.

As to tedious management, I disagree somewhat. Spies require very little management. As I've said before, you leave them in the province and let them do their job, it's only when you start having problems with a rival faction's rogue assassin that you need to move your best spy into the problem province. Assassins require more work and care. Because they follow targets they tend to get trapped by border forts a lot. So it's important to cancel the mission if the target moves and forget about sending them into border fort provinces unless they're about 5 star and the mission is really worth the risk.

Inquisitors and especially Grand Inquisitors are an horrendous exploit. I used to have a rule of 1 Grand Inquisitor and 3 Inquisitors only. Nowadays I don't train them at all.

Emissaries are my least used agent. I prefer to use Religious agents for diplomacy. I only keep an Emissary for bribing and stripping titles and that's it. Emissaries are also very big targets for rival assassins. The AI seems to be tuned up to go for those first in preference to any other agent or generals. If you want to train your spies up keep an emissary in the province as bait.

The tedious work was mostly about assassins. Spies are indeed fairly easy to use. But since i'm already such a control freak regarding army composition, endlessly shovelling troops around to make sure theyre best suited to deal with the most immediate threats, with big empires I take so much time per turn that I really cant be bothered to puzzle out where my assasins are, what theyre doing, where they're going, etc, on top off all the regular stuff you have to take care of.

And inquisitors are the ultimate cheese, yes. But when the bloat is really bad and the game is trying to screw me sideways silly just to make my life difficult, I throw my principles overboard and stoop to their level.