How to stop enemy spies?

**Artos** · March 21, 2014, 07:37 AM

Right now I'm totally stuck in my campaign. Playing as Rome, the enemy spies have destroyed nearly every building in my province (three cities). I simply can't afford to repair them. I have a spy and a diplomat in there doing counter intelligence, but it's no help.

Anyway to stop this?

And besides that, every barbarian tribe declares war on me and send their spies to destroy me. Every turn at least 4 sabotages + some subversions.

**UsulDaNeriak** · March 21, 2014, 08:04 AM

I start to train my spy or 2 spies, as soon as I can recruit a 2nd one, every turn if possible. They either attack something or use their general feature every turn. I prefer spies with some boni in poison and manipulation. Against other agents I prefer manipulation, because if you are succesful, you have one agent more, in order to counter.

I also have recruited the max number of veterans, but they usually are in my best armies for training the units and specialized on this task. But they help, to secure the general against hostile attacks and sometimes the veteran can help to kill or manipulate the enemies spies. I also use these toga-guys (forgot the name), but they are usually specialized in converting culture. However, if older and more experienced, these guys kill and manipulate also pretty good.

So I choose the agents with the right traits from the beginning, train them always, give them the right traits, if they advance, and prefer manipulation over assasination. Well, having not that many enemies simultaneously helps a lot, too.

**Ano2** · March 21, 2014, 08:07 AM

EDIT: Not my day for posting.

**gornoviceanu** · March 21, 2014, 08:10 AM

Certain building like the temple of Jupiter for Romans (I think) grant protection against agent actions province wide. The water tower from sanitation also helps in this matter. Also, if you deploy your spies in your province you get protection vs. cunning, deployed champs grant protection vs. zeal and dignitairies against authority.

**Friedrich's Moustache** · March 21, 2014, 10:11 AM

Like UsulDaNeriak says, I've found that agents themselves are the best defence. Training your own as soon as possible is very important, then any enemy agents I see I either kill or manipulate depending on their skill level. Easy way to end up with enough Champions to accompany all your armies.

**Mihail** · March 21, 2014, 11:47 AM

"deploy" a spy in the region you want protected, the ability will allow them to level up, so that when a enemy agent comes by you can then use him to assassinate, it's better than having them stand idle.

**danthemanbuddy** · March 21, 2014, 12:48 PM

Get the limited agents submod. Agents are stupid in this game in excess.

**Schiehaven** · March 21, 2014, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by Artos

Right now I'm totally stuck in my campaign. Playing as Rome, the enemy spies have destroyed nearly every building in my province (three cities). I simply can't afford to repair them. I have a spy and a diplomat in there doing counter intelligence, but it's no help.

Anyway to stop this?

And besides that, every barbarian tribe declares war on me and send their spies to destroy me. Every turn at least 4 sabotages + some subversions.

Yeah, what being said, try to build buildings that give protection or use trainers to enhance your security.

The best way, actually is in my opinion, to train your own spy. If you start early on, use waste money on getting his cunning level high enough. And if it is around 8, then you have a good chance of persuading enemy agents to your side. This is how I got 2 extra shieldmaids, and enemy spy. All of them are pretty high leveled, so I use agents to weaken the enemy a lot. It helps, but too bad in your case it is the other way around haha...

**LawL_LawL** · March 21, 2014, 01:21 PM

It seems there's always a time in a Rome 2 campaign when the AI goes nuts on you with agent spam... I think it has something to do with their money priorities and when they no longer have the need to divert large amounts to building and recruiting, or simply have enough excess, they spam agents on you as regularly as possible.

In my Roman campaign I have over 36 agents across the 3 types, having started with only 1 Champion and 1 Spy and gradually converted a steady stream of Athenian, Daorsi, and Ardiaei agents. Frightening amount of cultural conversion from the Authority agents.

**Dresden** · March 21, 2014, 03:41 PM

In 0.85 I plan on reducing agent success chances and also the effects of some of the actions (damage units/buildings).

I want to decrease coercion chance but I am having a hard time locating it specifically. I would remove it altogether but then LawL_LawL wouldn't be able to have his army of agents!

**UsulDaNeriak** · March 21, 2014, 04:00 PM

Originally Posted by Dresden

In 0.85 I plan on reducing agent success chances and also the effects of some of the actions (damage units/buildings).

The effects on buildings are nuts. If a building needs 4 rounds to build from scratch and after 3 agent attacks it costs 12 rounds to repair, it simply makes no sense. I first thought it is a bug. How can you do more damage to a building than 100%?

In this case I simply knock down the building and build it from scratch. Some people call that an exploit. I like to disagree. No roman with a brain repairs a building, if it costs 3 times more than rebuilding it from scratch. Well, politicians always did stupid things since the rise of civilization, but ...

**LawL_LawL** · March 21, 2014, 11:00 PM

Originally Posted by Dresden

In 0.85 I plan on reducing agent success chances and also the effects of some of the actions (damage units/buildings).

I want to decrease coercion chance but I am having a hard time locating it specifically. I would remove it altogether but then LawL_LawL wouldn't be able to have his army of agents!

Not my fault. (Well, not my fault the AI spams, but yes I do capitalize on the AI's spam pretty quickly....)

My games are all shaped by circumstances, and 100% of the time these AI just spam their agents like it's actually going to do something... Perhaps the agents could be relegated to a very niche PLAYER ONLY tool to utilize, preventing this kind of agent army from forming when the AI recruits more and more agents to replace losses that continue to occur.

If nothing can really be done in short order, I wouldn't mind just scrapping the whole agents thing entirely (I'd be down for a mass-disbandment in that case) until a proper plan of implementation can be found. At the moment either the AI beats your ass mercilessly with agents or you just push them into a corner with their own minions. Both show rather huge flaws of the agent system not working quite as intended.

**Ano2** · March 21, 2014, 03:53 PM

I like to have a spy just so I can uncover the map and meet new factions. The actual usage of agents I find frustrating. My favourite is when a champion just slaughters 100s of men on his own. Really adds to the sense of realism

**UsulDaNeriak** · March 22, 2014, 02:57 AM

If you compare vanilla 1.0 to the current state if the game, things became better in terms of agents. Actually it wasn't that bad during my latest campaigns.

I would not go that far and get rid of agents at all, or to diminish their role to pure explorers like in Rome 1.

The challenge is, to implement agents which are worthful not meaningless and sometimes dangerous, but not overhelmengly annoying.

Good Luck mods!