Are there any other preventative measures I can take?

[maitaisonnd]

So I'm playing my first real campaign of Rome2, and I'm having a major problem with enemy agents! I'm playing as Pontus, and have successfully set myself up a nice little empire of two complete provinces, and a happy alliance with the Selucids.

My problem is enemy agents. About 4 of them are wrecking me. Just last turn I had three settlements completely devastated by enemy champions! It's crazy. My spies and champions are on anti-agent duty, but the amount of damage I'm taking is completely ridiculous. I find myself needing to spend upwards of 2-3k on repair bills every turn. I manage to kill at least one enemy agent every turn, and ideally put another out of commission for a bit, but they just keep coming back in such numbers that I'm completely overwhelmed. My empire is being destroyed by just a handful of jerks!

Are there any other preventative measures I can take?

[Alwyn]

Welcome to TWC, maitaisonnd!

Yes, enemy agents can be a big problem. I can suggest a few things - I'm sorry if I'm telling you things you already know:-

- Do you keep your agents either attached to armies or standing still in a region with their abilities 'switched on' (using the button on the left of the agent's panel) so that they keep levelling up?

- When you level up spies, do you choose the skill which includes a penalty for the success chance of enemy agents?

- If the enemy have sent a swarm of agents, have you sent all (or most) of your agents to counter them? In a 'war of agents', the side with the highest-level agents and the largest number of agents tends to win. It might help to have more than one agent standing still in the region where your settlements or armies are being attacked by agents, with their abilities switched on (can anyone confirm this)? I believe that having different types of agents on defensive duty in a region helps (because they counter different types of attack); I am not sure whether, for example, having two spies on defensive duty would be better than one.

- If none of those work, then I can suggest two more things: (1) eliminate the faction sending the agents by capturing all of their regions or (2) use a mod which imposes a maximum number of agents or which limits their abilities, such as Agents Rebalanced by Hackmeister.

[FaceDancer]

When you said that you manage to kill one of them every turn, did you mean "kill" or "wound"? When you wound them they will be back in few turns. When you kill their best agents for good, they could only send to you low level ones which are much easier to counter.

[Alwyn]

Good point, FaceDancer!

There is another preventative measure that I forgot to mention. Some buildings provide a bonus against enemy agent actions, such as sanitation buildings. In the Roman building tree for example, after building an Aqueduct, the Water Tank / Fire Watch / Vigiles Urbani building tree gives a bonus to security against agent actions.