Playing with Assassins and Spies

[Lost In Transition]

As I’ve played RTW, RTR and now RS, I’ve never really developed the habit of using assassins. I use spies, of course, although I tend to use them more as scouts than spies. And I use diplomats to get map information and to bribe the occasional city or general. But I’ve never used assassins.

In my last campaign, as I was taking Gaul, I noticed the campaign map was crawling with assassins: Gaul, Macedonia, Syracuse, etc., everyone seemed to be using assassins. Moreover, I lost four or five generals to the dirty buggers.

Towards the end, I finally started recruiting some but I didn’t have a lot of success with them. However, after several assassination attempts, I notice my faction leader now had a new nickname: Mangus the Killer or something like that. Didn’t sound very positive, but maybe I’m missing something.

Another strange thing that happened: a Gallic spy kept coming to one of my cities. He must have had eight or nine "stars" (well, actually they’re eyes) and he would slip into the city and immediately the satisfaction of the people would go from green to red. Other than killing him with an assassin, how do I fight this?

Does anyone use assassins a lot and for what purpose. In the old MTW, I used to recruit assassins and place one in each city. That kept the satisfaction at a higher level. Does the same trick work in RTR?

Thanks for any information you can give.

[dvk901]

I am only 'theorizing' here but based upon what I know about the Hardcoded 'threat assement' capabilities of the AI (dim as it may be) I think the AI builds all of these to meet what it senses as an 'observed threat'. In otherworlds, you have a situation where there are many more 'named characters' than normal because you can recruit Generals. I surmise that the AI sees this as a threat, and wants to either bribe, spy on or assassinate all of them.

Also, you have in this mod the capability to recruit Governors...so many cities have a 'general' named character that they otherwise wouldn't have had. This means that any atempt to bribe a town\city meets with the lower success rate of trying to bribe a 'General', rather than a 'Captain'. Therefore, you have diplomats and assassins in greater numbers who either fail or must try repeatedly to accomplish an AI mission. The AI must get 'tired' of waiting and builds more to go on to the next target.

Still another 'complication', you might say, is that you have a 'Free people' faction that is so disjointed that it must act like dozens of small factions to get anything done. If all it's regions were in one place, it could focus on areas it can 'see' around it. But instead, it is faced with areas all over the map that it can see...so it produces far more diplomats, assassins and spies simply because it has to.

Personally, I have had good success killing assassins with assassins...but I once had a situation in a Macedonian city where a Free People assassin kept killing the Governor. As soon as I recruited him....he was dead!!! Pissed me off bigtime, because he was IN the city and I couldn't get at him. Finally, I let him kill the next one, built one in a neighboring region, and brought him down outside the city. Sure enough, he came out to kill THAT one..the SOB!
Killed him with great joy with a waiting high powered assassin of my own!

I don't like the fact there are so many, and I wanted to raise the prices a LOT...but others objected. I do think it kinda adds a little 'challenge' to things overall. I just wish it could be controlled a little better.

[Taelok]

In regards to the happiness of your cities, I believe that having spies in the cities to counter-spy does work, often by kicking out the enemy spies. This should increase the happiness again and gives you the option of knifing the filthy spy once he is exposed!

[Ephialtes The Dog]

Also for every spy you have infiltrate a settlement that settlements happyness goes down 5%

[pseudocaesar]

its 5% per eye per spy. the more spies in a settlement the better, as they all have a lower risk of being found. Assassins are really useful, as you can send spies in advance and then bring up three or four assassins and destroy their barracks and stables. bingo...no enemy recruitment.
Having a spy in your own settlement allows him to catch out any enemy spies that enter that settlement, try keeping a spy and assassin in every settlement, they dont have upkeep so its not expensive, this helps because if an enemy spy gets found but escapes you can assassinate him right there.

[cherryfunk]

I've only started paying attention to assassins myself recently -- after losing my faction leader to a murderer! I now try to have at least one assassin 'bodyguard' for every family member, and keep extra in border cities as a line of defense.

[dvk901]

When I was playing a Campaign after the release, I HAD to use assassins to throttle the Gauls for a while by damaging their barracks.

[Lost In Transition]

. . . Assassins are really useful, as you can send spies in advance and then bring up three or four assassins and destroy their barracks and stables. bingo...no enemy recruitment.

When I was playing a Campaign after the release, I HAD to use assassins to throttle the Gauls for a while by damaging their barracks.

Good idea, but if I destroy all the barracks, stables, etc., does that mean that AI will simply recruits those horrid stacks of golden generals and governors?

[Exekutor]

Good idea, but if I destroy all the barracks, stables, etc., does that mean that AI will simply recruits those horrid stacks of golden generals and governors?

They will just repair their barracks every turn when they have the money. They only get "golden" when they spawn (when the city rebels), when the AI does recruit governors (not often in my experience) they are standard ones.

It's almost impossible to kill enemy family members even with 10 subterfuge assassin, you have like 3 to 9% chance I keep a spy with my general, but I rarely recruit assassins.

[pseudocaesar]

I thought that was a Roman only thing.

[ciprianrusu]

I tend to use assassins and spies very often. Spies are good when you want to conquer an enemy settlement (you want to know what you are facing), and if the garrison of that settlement is very small, you can very often march through the opened gates without a siege(the spy opens them-well he can open the gates even if the garrison is big, but it's difficult to enter into a settlement through these gates if the garrison is big). I only use assassins as countermeasures to enemy assassins, spies and diplomats. In RS i never managed to kill an enemy general. I also tend to put one assassin in every one of my field generals stack because the AI seemes to have more succes at assasinating them then i have against the AI's generals.

[Aristedes]

quote pseudocaesar: "try keeping a spy and assassin in every settlement,"

I only keep them in my border cities, and if i take a region next to mine, i move my assassin and spy up to it. It works very well with me.

I never bribe cities or enemy armies...it's a good waste of money IMHO. Since you can win almost every battle if you have 5 archer units + 7 spear units + 7 heavy infantery units + 1 general. Atleast, i works with me.

[ComesSiculorum]

During my campaigns I often use assasins I really like those guys - especially after neighbouring factions - doesn't matter friend or foe - start to send assasins near my cities. My advice is: with fresh recruited assasins you start to kill the other factions assasins, the chance is 64-95% and after your guy manage to kill 4-5-6 from this dirty bastards you can try to kill an enemy/or why not a friend/ diplomat. During this process the chances of assasinates will be increasing, and when your guy have at least 5-6 eyes you can start to kill other factions family members, the youngest and unexperienced boys at first. Of course, exceptions will be exist, for example once a master assasin from my team/10eyes, experimented old guy/ was slaughtered by a new-recruited young foe assasin's bodyguards, another time i destroyed a faction, greek or macedon, I dont remember now - was a vanilla RTW campaign - killing their last family member, a veteran 8-9 starred general, but just once because faction leaders and heirs assasination chances usually are very,very low 1-2-3% and even the most experienced master assasins often fallen down in those cases. And another thing: experienced spies >5 eyes are hard to kill.