Agents, Agents dear lord Its the agents apocalypse!!!

[babyfossil]

To CA

I'm on Egypt Legendary mode (haha) I barely expand west and finally killed off that accursed ugly coloured Cyrene. Selucid and me are constantly contesting Tylos with me having to pull back multiple times to deal with their distant relatives/friends. The south was not much threats despite them sending constant wave of robed spearmen at me. I was happy, with 3k income per turn, 2 full army stacks and almost complete my beloved Great Library.

Right now I'm at a point where every one is at war with me. Even Rome whom I've never met, God bless their souls, probably hear whisper of "egypt" from some random market dude named Jimmy and decide: Hey! let screw dem over.So they send their armies, left their own land empty for their enemies, to head toward far away unknown land, Me!!!! However, I'm ok with this since hey!!! what the hell!!! more battles = more fun no?

What gets me however is all those nations send their entire agents full roster of 2 spies, 2 dignitaries, 2 champs EACH! to my land and start sabotaging and assassinating everybody. EVERYBODY! EV....RY....BO.....DY..!!! Like my kids and scheissse. Despite my agents valiant efforts, they're completely out matched and i've been sending newer and younger blood onto the field.

At the moment, My empire lies in ruined, my wells are poisoned, rats running rampage, all buildings are leveled, people switching religions left and right, and slaves bending their masters over. I'm reduced to 300 gold per turn, and to top it off having to replace my generals over and over.

I know i'm on Legendary mode, but .....This....This is MADNESS!!!!

Sincerely
The guy who crying in a corner.

[Lothar135]

I know exactly what you are talking about. Happended to me playing Parthia. Every faction declared war. Every faction send their agents. Flooded with agents...

[Heinz Guderian]

Surrender now babyfossil. There will be no glory in your sacrifice. They will erase even the memory of Egypt from the histories. Every piece of Egyptian parchment shall be burned. Every Egyptian historian, and every scribe shall have their eyes pulled out, and their tongues cut from their mouths. Why, uttering the very name of Egypt, or babyfossil, will be punishable by death. The world will never know you existed at all.

[Korburss]

My only advice, use your agents as often as possible and level them quickly. A high level agent can accidentally kill a low level agent in defense more often than not. As for trying to salvage that mess, try asking for peace and rebuild I guess?

[Heinz Guderian]

When you send a skilled decked out agent to a region with lots of enemy agents, those hoodrats scurry away like they know daddy is home. My advice (apart from surrendering) is skill out your spies and warriors and send each one to a settlement you want to protect. Watch the enemy run like American home schoolers from The Origins of Man. Is Skillz that Killz nah mean?

[babyfossil]

I tried my friend, but for every agent I made (1k gold btw), i'm dealing with 5 and they been there for a while so they actually getting pretty damned good at it, killing that is. My new agent on the other hand can at best scratch them a bit and every time they recover from that scratch I feel like they bringing more friends over. They're mocking me I swear, all laughing with their buddies and set picnics around my cities.

As for killing people, I now have about 3-4 armies setting fort, thats right, 4x 20 stack from 3 different nations setting 4 different forts around Jerusalem and Petra. I was hoping they would be brave enough and visit my city's school of sarissas, but alas no, they just standing there, staring. My God, don't tell me the AI learnt their lessons

@ Heinz, I wish they would mate, put me out of my misery, me and my 300 gold per turn hope

[Kenios]

As for killing people, I now have about 3-4 armies setting fort, thats right, 4x 20 stack from 3 different nations setting 4 different forts around Jerusalem and Petra. I was hoping they would be brave enough and visit my city's school of sarissas, but alas no, they just standing there, staring. My God, don't tell me the AI learnt their lessons

It's the same as Shogun 2. The AI may foolishly charge in at first. But after you kick their butt, they will learn their lesson and become much more cautious. In Shogun 2, after I caught the AI in multiple ambushes, it didn't dare to run towards the empty settlement anymore.

[krisslanza]

It's a scary thing when the AI actually uses its agents, isn't it?

[Heinz Guderian]

They are mocking you babyfossil. Ride out my friend. Ride out and meet them. For death and glory. For Egypt, for Alexander. The Horn of Anubis will sound in the deep one last time. Look at your men. Their courage hangs by a thread. If this is to be your end, then you would have them make such an end, as to be worthy of remembrance.

[Wolar]

They are mocking you babyfossil. Ride out my friend. Ride out and meet them. For death and glory. For Egypt, for Alexander. The Horn of Anubis will sound in the deep one last time. Look at your men. Their courage hangs by a thread. If this is to be your end, then you would have them make such an end, as to be worthy of remembrance.

Someone has been drinking from the keg of glory.. Could we have a wee sip too please?

[Daeworn]

I don’t know if it helps, but if you set your agents to bonus your province (I mean the first skill), then they should add their main attribute to the attributes of your cities ... so maybe one group of agents passively boosting your province, may increase the chance of enemy agents failing or even get wounded by themselves and the second three can slowly kill the weak. Maybe that can work. Plus I am not sure, but many factions (I know Romans, Carthage, “Iceny” and “Suebi”) have temple or other building, which gives bonus against some agents, that can work for time too, if Egypt has some of those. Just suggesting.

[Kenios]

I don’t know if it helps, but if you set your agents to bonus your province (I mean the first skill), then they should add their main attribute to the attributes of your cities ... so maybe one group of agents passively boosting your province, may increase the chance of enemy agents failing or even get wounded by themselves and the second three can slowly kill the weak. Maybe that can work. Plus I am not sure, but many factions (I know Romans, Carthage, “Iceny” and “Suebi”) have temple or other building, which gives bonus against some agents, that can work for time too, if Egypt has some of those. Just suggesting.

It is true that agent defensive bonus is rather incredible. When I set my high level spy to do counter-espionage, the settlement's resistance to cunning attacks went up to a whooping 31. Any spy that tried to touch my city immediately got wounded.

[Slaists]

I suspect, you're experiencing "everyone declares war" bug. Some folks see that happen, most do not. Might want to restart a campaign. My Macedon VH campaign: no one has declared war on my and it's turn 150...

[DanMLee88]

Sounds like the AI is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. I would have given that some thought if I were you before all those wars started.

This is good news, and gives some meaning to those temple buildings that guard against agent aggressions. Don't change this.

Don't cry about getting pwned by a good AI, OP or begging CA to nerf them. This is GOOD news and exactly the kind of challenge we want.


Off topic, I lol'd

[DeVrie]

Yea, the AI has slowly been becoming self aware since release. First it will take over your game. Then your computer. Finally, your life.

[dfeal]

You have my sympathies. I am finding this part of the game boring and I spend most of my time fighting off agents not armies. Luckily for me, and unlike your unfortunate situation, I have very high level agents that can kill the enemy agents every time. But the very next turn I am faced with yet another 4-8 agents to deal with.

I have started a thread asking how to remove or drastically reduce (practically to 0) agent hinder actoions. I don't mind their passive or province actions but these character, army and settlement hinder actions are just annoying and boring, not to mention highly unrealistic. I think James Bond would be proud of their success rate!

If I finally manage to solve this or I am pointed in the right direction I will update you on how to remove this part of the game. i have found the hinder tables but I can't make sense of some of the values. The unit and settlement ones are not too bad to work out but the character ones are just set to 0 and 1, I think. Anyone care to take this further with me in the mod threads, please?

[Regnator]

Agent's are boring, unrealisitc, and overpowered. I have been trying to find out how to remove them from the game completely but have been unsuccesful so far. IMHO they just add annoyance to the game. Right now it feels more like Agents: Total War.

[craziii]

champions are the worst a simple raid will dmg all your lvl 4 builds which will cost 10k to 20k to fix then it will simply raid again it should work like spies, only get to choose 1 building. OPOPOPOPOPOPOP so over power.

[Daeworn]

champions are the worst a simple raid will dmg all your lvl 4 builds which will cost 10k to 20k to fix then it will simply raid again it should work like spies, only get to choose 1 building. OPOPOPOPOPOPOP so over power.

I think that you actually don’t have to repair them at all. They will repair slowly by themselves (same like units recover). But if you need them work (for recruitment, unrest ...). Then you have to repair them.

+ the main effect of raids is actually lowering your slave population and so lowering your income from them.

[Langer Kerl]

Been there, got that. There were times when I had to click through more than a dozen agent warnings each turn for god knows how many turns. The good thing was I was already a powerful empire back then and could take the beating, despite the fact that the enemy agents still outnumbered me when I could field 4 agents of each type (sometimes even 5 of a type thanks to enemy defection). This only ever stops when you push that faction back on the campaign map.If you are serverly outnumbered by agents killing one of them with each of your agents per turn wont do the trick, you are probably better off using your agents passive ability like counter-spionage and military zeal + the assorted temples/water tanks (I think they also increase agent resitence) and hope the majority of the opposing agents gets screwed over attacking your city. You will likely be able to stop/wound more of them that way instead of trying to assasinate them one by one. If you still want to deal with them piecemeal check if you have a good chance of influencing them to join your faction so you may bolster your agent ranks beyond your empire level limit.