How do you use your agents?
Let's share our favorite uses of agents here! I'll start.
Order of preference: spy > champion > dignitary
- Dignitary: When I have to convert a lot of culture, I just build them along that route and leave them in conquered provinces to convert it for me. Besides that, I use them a bit like 2nd class spies/assassins to disable armies and assassinate key figures. More details about that under the spy section. I used to have them as support for spies trying to incite unrest, but the laughable performance of rebels against the AI has lead me to reconsider.
- Champions: They boost armies, simple as that. Boring, but effective.
- Spies: Man, I love these guys/gals. I recently tried out the "mass poisoning" tactic when disrupting armies and let me tell you... it's beastly. After sinking a point into mass poisoning, it easily wipes out 20% or more of each enemy unit in an opposing army. If the spy has an inherent trait that boosts mass poisoning, this can be even more. On top of that you get the usual benefits of the targeted army not being able to reinforce and stuff. I'm someone who likes having smaller, elite armies, so I don't have to micro 10 armies running around the map early in the game. I've occasionally gone up against armies of 60 quite high tiered units (beta patch 2.0 + 1 turn construction/research + legendary difficulty + Playing parthia + pissing off the selucids and all of their satrapies as early as turn 10-15 is pretty entertaining!). A favourite tactic here is to pick 2 of the 3 enemy stacks, poison them, then attack the third stack. This makes it a 20 v 20 battle, and my troops are more elite on a purely unit-for-unit basis. After I win, I can go on and attack one of the other armies, with the 20+% losses they've taken easily compensating for my losses in the previous battle. After that I can either attack the third stack, or retreat a bit. Having only 50% movement, that third stack can't really catch me if I pick "retreat", and if they pick that they'll get a double dose of poison from my 2 scouts next turn, which will drop them to maybe 20% of their full power, allowing me to scoop them up and rush right past with my revitalized army.
Any army wants to siege your town? Poison. Rebels pop up? Poison. The garrisons can do the rest. It works offensively in enemy territories too, though their replenishment will take some of the bite out of it there.
So, what tactics do you guys prefer to use?
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Originally Posted by Blackmill
