Super Agents. Extremely broken.

[warrior6]

I cant understand why ever since shogun 2, CA has such a hard on for super agents that can assassinate enemy generals every turn, reduce the army strength of extremely valuable units at almost absolutely no risk. the only way to stop them is to have your own justice league / avengers group of your own super agents. my level 30 general after spending a few turns wounded from an assassination attempt, comes back and gets assassinated immediately again. I have a troop of enemy agents that are much more powerful than mine and cannot do to them. If CA's design to stop them is to have your own super agents, then they are extremely broken. The solution is to allow the player to invest money into security. let me make security buildings that can give me a fighting chance of killing them when they fail. Rome 1 had the agents right.

[MightyMak]

I installed a mod that removes enemy agent assassinate and assault skills. Yes it's "cheating" a bit but so is the original game. I just don't use my agents for assassinate or assaulting.

[IronBrig4]

Yeah, I made a thread about this too. I have the Greenskins down to three settlements and yet there are EIGHT agents running around damaging walls.

[ostendadler]

True orc agents seems to waaag agents spawns ... its insane !

[KAM 2150]

They seem to have some weird agent fetish for was few games, so far it was the most annoying in this instalment. Since myself I was always "Agent" guy, I was able to counter in in previous titles, but when 3 agents of Bretonnia were attacking me over entire map in Chaos wastes and be immortal, even though they were on levels 3-5, while my agents were at 6-9, I had to restart the campaign as I was unable to recover due to constant attacks and went out of money when I tried to kill them.

[A Barbarian]

It's also strange that AI controlled factions seem to get more agents when they are beaten back and are loosing armies/provinces. Maybe they just buy agents from the surplus money after loosing an army.

And maybe the number of agents should be linked to the number of territories then u could also fight the agent spam by conquering enemy territories.

[warrior6]

in rome 1, the spies could open gates and also perform recon on enemy armies. however, there was a decent and worrying chance that they would be caught and killed. the assasin unit could be relied on to kill other agents like spies and diplomats.but they could still fail and worse die. doing assassination mission on faction leaders was a good chance your ageng would die if he failed. in this game these newer total war games, the worse that could usually happen is they get wounded.

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

Yeah a higher mortality rate would fix it.

[A Barbarian]

but the faction leaders are also unkillable so killing the agent for failing to wound someone seems also unbalanced

Maybe CA should simply add 'agent difficulty' to their campaign setting

[warrior6]

but the faction leaders are also unkillable so killing the agent for failing to wound someone seems also unbalanced

Maybe CA should simply add 'agent difficulty' to their campaign setting

good point about faction leaders. maybe the wounded state can remain when doing missions against invincible characters. also if a recent assassination attempt fails maybe give the targetted character a temp buff to indicate that there is more security around them after the recent attempt

[the_mango55]

I also installed the mod that doesn't let enemy agents take hostile action. I only use my agents for hostile action when required by a quest.

Only problem is they still follow your characters around trying to do something to you even though they can't. Wish the mod would make the AI put them into armies more often.

[A Barbarian]

Only problem is they still follow your characters around trying to do something to you even though they can't.

Instead of making the agents unable to take action, it could also just limit their movement points to a minimum

Wish the mod would make the AI put them into armies more often.

Oh, I have actually seen armies with 4 or 5 heroes in it.

[geala]

They had it right in TW:Attila in my opinion, agents were dangerous and pesky, but you could kill them more easily and the impact overall was not so devastating as in TW:Warhammer. At some times in my current Warhammer campaign I was near at throwing the game off the harddrive because of the actions of the unkillable super-heroes, although, to my own surprise, I like most of the rest of the game. CA must have taken the name "hero" too literally. Some balancing is a must.

[Markas]

Agents have a 2 turn 'exhaustion' penalty after a successful assassination, but it's for other actions carried out during those turns. Personally I'd prefer a +30% chance for successful agent actions against the exhausted one. Then at least you could counter them with your own and Assassination becomes more an opportunist event than a standard tactic. Considering how disruptive it is upping the price wouldn't hurt either. Also factoring in how large an army is- small armies means better chances, full stacks less so. I don't care how good Robbo the Gobbo is at disguises, he's not marching through my camp of Empire troops without at least a cursory questioning.

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

I don't care how good Robbo the Gobbo is at disguises, he's not marching through my camp of Empire troops without at least a cursory questioning.

"thats some weird halfing we have here....."

[clench]

I don't really have too many issues with agents.

The player agents can be just as powerful, it just seems the AI is much more efficient at leveling their agents. As a player I tend to skip building agents when I can only get agents with bad traits and I just plain forget to use them once I create them. Sticking them in an army helps, but agents get a lot more powerful faster if you use their actions against settlements and other characters I believe.

Basically the AI is just better at using them compared to most players.

You also see certain factions, like VC, Chaos, and Orc using agents a lot more because the building chains to get them are more worthwhile and cheaper.

While getting dwarf agents is a lot more expensive and the building chains aren't required in every settlement.

The orc/goblin shaman building is likely going to get build in every province, possibly even every settlement.

[Stangler]

The agents are easily one of the worst parts of the game. Specifically their ability to assassinate. Demoralizing the troops or blocking them or other relatively minor acts are less of a deal. Assassination could work agent to agent but too much of this game is about building up your generals to have them assassinated all the time.

[A Barbarian]

Assassination could work agent to agent but too much of this game is about building up your generals to have them assassinated all the time.

I haven't had a problem on my 2 completed hard campaigns yet. The higher ranked your general is, the lower the chance the he is killed. Legendary characters can't be killed. And leveling up generals to sth like level 10 is relatively quick. For your 1 or 2 really high non-legendary generals, you could add a 'body guard' as well although I didn't find that necessary.

But I agree that there could be an option to tone the agents down a bit. If u simply don't care about the whole agent gameplay then it can get quite annoying for sure but then u also have mods.

Or add an option to automate your own agents (with the choice between offensive and defensive mode) so that they are as effective as the AI I wonder whether a mod could achive that, applying the AI routines to the players agents?

[M2TWRocks]

Not broken. And, the complaints seem highly exaggerated. I've completed a long campaign with the orcs and played around for about 30-50 turns on the others. I've only had a problem with an agent once, and it was only for about ten turns. A chaos agent kept attacking my buildings and succeeding, forcing me to take action. I eventually succeeded in making peace with them and the agent left. In my orc campaign, the VC's had a banshee that kept attacking the walls of another settlement. I just ignored her.

Agents are irritating, but they force your hand a bit. There are buildings, character equipment, and traits that reduce agent success rates. Use them, or level up your own uber agents. Just like everything else in this game, there's a way to counter the enemy.

[Flinn]

hello gents, few off topic posts removed

let me remind you that if you wish to discuss about CA policy or if you have to complain about CA, there's a specific thread for this, thanks.