Rakes - Usage and Training

[Vodos]

I've always enjoyed training up my assassins in the previous TWs, unfortunately Empire's rakes have been less enjoyable so far. Maybe I'm missing something or doing it wrong?

My experiences/questions so far:
- Rakes seem to spawn at 3 stars, I haven't seen a better rake spawn yet (unlike gentlemen where you sometimes get historical characters at 5+ stars).
- Does the building level (inn/pleasure palace town) matter at all? I expected the rakes spawning in areas with max level buildings to have higher skills.
- There's separate traits increasing their success rate for infiltration, assassination and infiltration (the highest I got those traits to so far was +2).
- Assassination traits come from killing people (duh). Quick-save/load gives different results if you perform an action with another character, like in previous TWs.
- Infiltration traits come from spying on captitals, towns and armies. You get much higher success rates from towns and other small buildings, but leveling also seems slower. Trying to infiltrate a capital with a new rake usually ends badly.
- Counter-espionage traits seem to be gained automatically by just sitting in a region you own. However I have no idea how the counter-espionage system works. Is the bonus applied to the whole region or does the rake have to sit in the capital/town/army you want to protect?
- I haven't seen any ancillaries for rakes yet, do they exist at all?
- One of my ministers gained a +5% success rate for assassinations while I was training a rake as assassin.

My "best" assassin is currently a 4 star rake with +2 assassination trait and even with the +5% assassination from my minister his odds against priests, scholars and gentlemen are 40-50%. Not exactly encouraging

[Homeros]

After a 'successful' infiltration mission into an enemy settlement you cannot move your rake out of the settlement. You have to wait till the next turn. Strangely my rake pretty much always gets caught the next turn and is executed. So even if he is successful (so it seems) he still dies, without you being able to do something about it.

[kemor]

It's easier to use rake at the beginning of the game. Once building levels start to come in for all nations, infiltrating and sabotage become increasingly dangerous and suicidal.

You can actually move a rake after his mission, on the same turn. You need to drag his image/icon directly just outside the city/unit. He of course needs to have at least one move left for the turn.

I found it easier to spy on units than on buildings. I often just put a spy into an enemy unit then let him in there. This allows me to follow troops around with great success.

With all that said, the diplomatic cost of failing sabotage/infiltration is too high in my opinion since it's applied world wide, across all nations. After the first 10 years, I mainly just park them in my own cities, where they gain defensive traits rather quickly, or outside of enemy cities.

[Toorima]

I didn't get the point about rakes so far neither. Their chance of success is really too low, while at the same time it doesn't seem as if their use is really necessary....:hmmm:

[Vodos]

I didn't get the point about rakes so far neither. Their chance of success is really too low, while at the same time it doesn't seem as if their use is really necessary....:hmmm:

If you build a school in India, you'll soon wish you had a good assassination rake because those damn scholars will keep going for the school trying to steal techs and you can't duel them with gentlemen.

For now I just don't build any more schools in India, but that's not really a good solution.

[coman]

After a 'successful' infiltration mission into an enemy settlement you cannot move your rake out of the settlement. You have to wait till the next turn. Strangely my rake pretty much always gets caught the next turn and is executed. So even if he is successful (so it seems) he still dies, without you being able to do something about it.

This is not quite right. With Gentlemen and Rakes you need to click off the town/army, then reselect it, click the agent tab, then you can move them if they have any turns left.

It seems the default click of any container object is "Army". So when I often want to move a gentlemen or a Rake from a city, I end up sending my Army.

[btg123]

I've actually had some success with Rakes (which I've never utilized before in MTW (spies)). I noticed they spawn with very little experience/capability, but if you infiltrate into small, foreign villages/towns, their traits/capabilities increase. I chose this "training" method because the chance of success is always 80% with the smaller villages. After doing this a few turns, my Rake's abilities, etc. increased and I found that I had a 80% chance of successfully infiltrating a foreign capital (Poland) which I did and received full info on their military. I then used the Rake to sabotage a few new towns Poland was contructing (Im playing as Prussia so im planning to war with Poland soon).
Point is, the "training" I did initially has dramatically increased the chance of successfully infiltrating/sabotaging much larger cities/capitals of foreign nations. My next objective is to assassinate a leading General in the city I plan to attack. Last time I checked, I hade a 70% chance of success (compared to about a 5% chance at the start of the game). Of course, my Rake may be killed, but I've already uncovered plenty of info so its a risk im willing to take (plus I have 3 more sitting around infiltrating smaller towns as part of their "training.")

[Zomg]

They're free and if you use them against an enemy nation who cares about diplomatic cost? I often keep 5 or so around any hot spot and assassinate the enemy 5 star general. Get enough of them and it works everytime.

[Vodos]

I've actually had some success with Rakes (which I've never utilized before in MTW (spies)). I noticed they spawn with very little experience/capability, but if you infiltrate into small, foreign villages/towns, their traits/capabilities increase. I chose this "training" method because the chance of success is always 80% with the smaller villages. After doing this a few turns, my Rake's abilities, etc. increased and I found that I had a 80% chance of successfully infiltrating a foreign capital (Poland) which I did and received full info on their military. I then used the Rake to sabotage a few new towns Poland was contructing (Im playing as Prussia so im planning to war with Poland soon).
Point is, the "training" I did initially has dramatically increased the chance of successfully infiltrating/sabotaging much larger cities/capitals of foreign nations. My next objective is to assassinate a leading General in the city I plan to attack. Last time I checked, I hade a 70% chance of success (compared to about a 5% chance at the start of the game). Of course, my Rake may be killed, but I've already uncovered plenty of info so its a risk im willing to take (plus I have 3 more sitting around infiltrating smaller towns as part of their "training.")

Hmm interesting, maybe I've been doing it wrong after all! So infiltrating increases the rake's basic "star rating", which increases the success rate of all rake activities and then the assassination traits add on top of that?
I've never really infiltrated much, just used them for killing and that levels them really slowly.

Also got my first rake ancillary last night, a Cunning Monkey, which adds +2 to all activities. Unfortunately it just randomly appeared on a spy idling in India that had no other bonuses at all.

[Deneidez]

Idling gives also more traits and followers for rakes. I usually just use them as a scouts to see warweariness of my enemy or just simply put them on enemy territory nearby my borders. Sometimes I try to sabotage some happiness buildings when trying to get revolt/rebellion, but it seems that revolt/rebellion is about impossible to do. You need 2 classical universities or better to have even some hope. Currently rakes suck in etw.

[Rooie]

I've actually had some success with Rakes (which I've never utilized before in MTW (spies)). I noticed they spawn with very little experience/capability, but if you infiltrate into small, foreign villages/towns, their traits/capabilities increase. I chose this "training" method because the chance of success is always 80% with the smaller villages. After doing this a few turns, my Rake's abilities, etc. increased and I found that I had a 80% chance of successfully infiltrating a foreign capital (Poland) which I did and received full info on their military. I then used the Rake to sabotage a few new towns Poland was contructing (Im playing as Prussia so im planning to war with Poland soon).
Point is, the "training" I did initially has dramatically increased the chance of successfully infiltrating/sabotaging much larger cities/capitals of foreign nations. My next objective is to assassinate a leading General in the city I plan to attack. Last time I checked, I hade a 70% chance of success (compared to about a 5% chance at the start of the game). Of course, my Rake may be killed, but I've already uncovered plenty of info so its a risk im willing to take (plus I have 3 more sitting around infiltrating smaller towns as part of their "training.")

Nice idea training them like this!!! Going to try this!!!

+rep for you

[eatme]

After a 'successful' infiltration mission into an enemy settlement you cannot move your rake out of the settlement. You have to wait till the next turn. Strangely my rake pretty much always gets caught the next turn and is executed. So even if he is successful (so it seems) he still dies, without you being able to do something about it.

Actually you can I believe. Just open Agents tab select the rake in question and point on the map to move, and so he will, if there is enough of movement points. But he won't do another action this turn, obviously.

[Gunodd]

Playing as Prussia with Bavaria as my protectorate, France declared war on them and I joined Bavaria. I sent 2 max stars missionaries to Paris, then 5 rakes to assassinate their own priests. Must've killed about 5, and lost 3-4 rakes in the process. Protestantism was gaining in Paris by 2.5% a turn. Their public order was low so I wanted to cause a revolution. I very nearly succeeded but then I captured Paris.

[Ippius]

After a 'successful' infiltration mission into an enemy settlement you cannot move your rake out of the settlement. You have to wait till the next turn. Strangely my rake pretty much always gets caught the next turn and is executed. So even if he is successful (so it seems) he still dies, without you being able to do something about it.

You can move them out. You go to the city menu, go under agents, hold left click on him and drag him out and presto, he walks out of the city and out of harm's way.
And to answer eatme's question, build/upgrade bawdy houses or whatver u call them, the buildings which increase entertainment etc.

[twistoff]

I'm having a real hard time with rakes too. My experience has been maybe 10% success rate, even with 4 star rakes.

[troglodyte]

I can add some data here-- I find myself missing the Spies of the Rome era, so I tried to train my Rakes as infiltrators. This, also, is ineffective. I've had 4 successful infiltration missions on a rake, with no attribute gains. Given that 4 successful missions is nigh-impossible with the abysmal success rate of basic Rakes, I would have expected some trait gains, even if it only improved the infiltration aspect of the unit (instead of infiltration and assassination). I expect assassination to be hard, but when your starting rake has a 40% chance to SPY on a small city, they aren't very useful.

In addition, do Rakes spawn absurdly slower than scholars? I have twice the rake-spawning buildings than gentlemen spawning buildings in one of my campaigns, and I get roughly twice the gentlemen...

[Bloodzen]

Rakes arnt that useless,i normaly send them into enemy territory to check what garrisons my enemys have which you dont need to check by inflitrating but by looking at the yellow bar and see if they have any armys about to attack me.This lets me plan my attacks and makes things a lot easier.Iv also been able to use them on freak occasions to assassinate enemy generals without fail.I wouldnt inflitrate with them or take on too many assassinations though since they can be captured realy easily

[Vodos]

One of my newly spawned rakes has "Lewd: -1 happiness (lower classes)". Yes, thanks. Exactly what I need...

[psykopatsak]

even at 30% ish suc. rate, i often kill my targets. though rareley rank increase

[Vodos]

Ok by now I'm really close to giving up on rakes, the trait gain is ridiculous. One of my rakes started out with "Secret Molly" which gives +1 to assassinations and is different from the standard "Assassin" that you get from killing (also +1). He's now killed 7 priests/gentlemen (through loads of quicksave/load, it's not like he's good at it) and still hasn't gotten Assassin or an improved version of Secret Molly...