Seeing Enemy Family Trees

[Meshakhad]

Is there a way to view the family trees of other factions? I haven't found an actual in-game function, but is there a cheat code to do this?

[issler]

no but you can write down their family trees if you want to
if you're contemplating using assasins don't
each will cost you 500 florins to recruit plus an extra 200 florins to maintain, which could be very well used to recruit mailed knights and bolster your ranks (cavalry pretty much dominates the early period, it's true..)

[Bringer Of Storms]

no but you can write down their family trees if you want to
if you're contemplating using assasins don't
each will cost you 500 florins to recruit plus an extra 200 florins to maintain, which could be very well used to recruit mailed knights and bolster your ranks (cavalry pretty much dominates the early period, it's true..)

That is seven different shades of wrong. Assassins are great, if an enemy army has a faction leader as its general, and you manage to assassinate him, many things happen. The army loses an entire generals bodyguard, the army has a chance of desertion, and if you manage to kill off all the family members, the faction will die off. It doesn't have to be the faction leader, it can be any general or family member. Also if you kill a general governing a city, it could drastically drop the public order. Assassins are a one time payment, I'm pretty sure they don't cost upkeep. Cavalry do. Not to mention, one unit of cavalry can't kill a Generals Bodyguard, they just cant. One assassin can. If after all of this, you still get a cavalry unit. Their generals body guard, as well as yours, regenerates. Normal troops don't.

[issler]

By the time I can actually hire assassins my front is already too far off from my capitals for them to have any effect whatsoever. I usually keep my military spending as high as possible while keeping my taxes as low as possible and investing on ports and markets mainly, because these are the things which will make your economy boom later on. I just find agents to be a waste of money and time, with the possible exception of spies, which open up the gates for you, and for that they are useful. Assassins are just too much work, if you know what I mean



EDIT: they have a 200 florins upkeep.
EDIT2: you know the persians used to send assassins all the time before Alexander conquered them. Alexander never had to send a single assassin though.

[Bringer Of Storms]

If that's your argument, Ghandi didn't even need an army, he used peaceful protest to win Indian Independence. Just Martin Luther King did to win African American rights. I don't want to get in a historical battle. Just because what one man did in history, doesn't mean that everything should be done in the way he did it. That would be the equivalent of me saying, "hmm... I want to conquer Europe. I think it would be smart of me to genocide everyone because that's what historical figures did." The reason we learn history is to adapt and change from the mistakes people made back then. Without espionage today, America would not be as prosperous as it it. (Although that could easily be debated over.) Point being, is that one man in history is not right in everything he did because he conquered a country. Who knows, maybe if he used assassins, he may have saved many of his own mens' lives on the battlefield.

Regardless, this is pointless arguing. I'm done.

[issler]

What you said isn't wrong, but this discussions is far from pointless though. Assassins and espionage are good in peace time, when countries need something like "a safety net" in the event of being attacked, so they can stall the enemy while they redirect part of their production to war. Ultra has pretty much won the war for the allies, because they managed to crack nazi criptography, so they're even more important if you're in the offensive.
In this game they're just pointless though.