Agents Question - How to make them extremely useful ?

[Darth the Great]

Before I ask any thoughts & ideas, I will describe how I order my agents to move. Feel free to correct/improve my ways.


-Champions: They are my killing machines & my armies training specialists(no matter if they got xp bonus to army training or not).
I also use them to enforce public order in any province when a riot knocks at my door. I prefer traits for training armies and extra campaign movement.

-Dignitaries: I feel I dont know much of their possibilities atm. I use em in my armies to lower upkeep costs, though I feel I could put them to better use.
I also boost my high tax income provinces with them, after a few turns ability becomes gray and I dont know whats going on. If I move them to next province and repeat procedure, will my previous tax bonus get lost or not? Kinda confused about it...


-Spies: They are my scouters. I use them mostly to convert agents in general. Champions, dignitaries or other spies.
Sometimes I boost their cunning and make them great assassins. In a few cases I place em in enemy territory to establish a local spy network but I am not sure whats the use of it apart from revealing enemy territory to me. I am also not sure If I move them back to my provinces if I will lose created spy network or not...





Some players use dignitaries for enemy towns unrest and spies to poison and weaken enemy armies before their armies march in and conquer. What is your way ??? Lets exchange our strategies about agents.

[Ejergard]

Dignitaries are great for speeding up cultural conversion in a newly conquered province (or even before taking it at all). They also gain xp from doing this passively.

[Darth the Great]

Thank you Ejergard. I will push my dignitaries towards this direction.

Any more ideas anyone ??

[AusHaching]

Champions for training armies. If you let them keep doing that, they will acquire corresponding traits.

Dignitaries for increasing public order and taxes in old provinces, and (mostly) for converting new provinces to your culture. They need to be deployed to work, and you cannot have more than one active per province. Maybe you tried several in one province? In that case, the "old" one gets undeployed.

Scouts for scouting, or greater movement for armies.

If you want to use active abilites, you should focus on one attribute (authority, zeal, cunning). All of the options will be based on one attribute, it does not pay to develop more than one. Pick skills that correspondend to the attribute.

In genera though, I use them passively (training and converting) mostly. They die of old age too soon, just like the generals.

[Phyon]

I think Dignitaries could use some more work in what they can do vs armies. I kind of think using them to lower the stat by one on a general is kind of pointless to do. I kind of think that for a few abilities spear out among the different champions can be a bit pointless. I don't know if its somethin I dont understand but it also seems worthless to use dignitaries on towns even if the town rebels there does not seem to be much that they can do. The converting a province to your culture is pretty good before moving into a town though. But I think a lot of the abilities suffer in that sense of not being very worth while to do.

[Ejergard]

Dignitaries also increase the authority of your general or admiral while embedded, which can activate abilities and increase the command bubble of the command unit. Good for balancing all the countless negative abilities like unhinged, choleric and the likes which seems quite abundant.
The dignitary doesn't need to be deployed to to affect cultural conversion, it does this automatically and it stacks with generals, not sure if it does with other dignitaries. The deployed mode only works one at a time though

[Roach]

Dignitaries - cultural conversion and assassin - upgrades focus on assassination abilities so I can counter enemy scouts and knock off generals who are causing trouble.. my dignitaries stay near the front line, converting the populace and keeping my armies safe from enemy spies

Scouts - poisoners - sure, I scout with them sometimes too, but mostly I work on upgrading their poison abilities so I can weaken enemy armies and assassinate people.. A fully upgraded scout can kill up to a third of a stack with one use of Poison Provisions

Champions - trainers - these guys stay in my armies training and letting them move faster.. that's it

[SinerAthin]

Scouts: All cunning.

I often run double Scouts when facing tough opponents, and I can sometimes destroy 1/3 or 1/2 of their forces before the battle even begins. It really helps me when I am outnumbered, or the enemy has a lot of high quality troops.

[Khadroth]

Champions I use to mostly babysit my armies for training ranks, only if the situation is dire will I pull them out for an assassination/sabotage attempt. They're actually pretty great for sabotaging town centers before an invasion though and their military disruption (assault patrol) is a single unit version of the spy's poison wells which works well since both correspond with zeal. Not very good at inciting because of the reliance on the presence of slaves. Focus on zeal for army movement range boosts and additional training experience.

Dignitaries keep these guys out ahead of your armies. The earlier they start converting the province the sooner your army can move on to it's next target. They work great in tandem with spies, let them handle the assassination role, since their military disruption is rather lack luster. Their province ability increases corruption in enemy holdings and decreases it in yours, if they're stuck babysitting a culture conversion. They're also excellent for inciting rebellions when facing foreign cultures, but lack luster without them (in other words: bad at inciting early on, great in later game). Focus on Authority and try to prioritize culture conversion bonuses.

Spies should also be kept out ahead of your armies. These guys are your saboteurs, use poison wells to cancel reinforcement/delay/halt armies while attritioning them (and garrisons too!), allowing you to soften targets in advance of armies. Just like the Champion they're great for sabotaging town centers as well, but this has low chance without additional zeal. The only useful incite ability that works in all situations, but it corresponds to authority. Honestly I use my spies mostly for poisoning, either through military disruption or assassination, so I focus on cunning with them to increase the odds/numbers killed.

[Darth the Great]

Great tips, thank you all.

Like i said, I ve used my spies a lot to convert and now I have around 10 agents of each class (instead of 4 with radious mod on).
Time for them to work harder as it seems.