View Full Version : Need new spy options
Lighthope
08-08-2006, 06:49
The Spy needs a few additional options. Most of the time, he is hired on as a Marshal. Dangerous since they don't live very long. It is very rare that they get hired on as anything else.
Mayhaps I would prefer him to be hired as a cleric or a builder?
While your spy is sitting in the Contestant Pool waiting to be hired, here are a couple of options that should be available:
Assassinate: King, Prince, Princess (Why? Drop in kingdom happiness), or Member of Royal Court. Knock off a Marshal or Landlord. That would open up a spot. Come on, create your own opportinity for employment!
Cause Unrest: Run around creating unhappiness, spawn a few rebels to irritate the King. What else are you going to do? You're just sitting there anyway.
Anything else an idle spy should be doing?
BTW, any successful spy activity should result in a drop in Kingdom Power.
Lighthope
Pearls of Wisdom - Priests would make great husbands. They already took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience!
--== TIGERS' QUEST - http://www.tigersquest.com
--== RATE YOUR BOSS - http://www.rateyourboss.us
I think the balancing of the spy is very good. I play this game a long time and i saw my spy in diffrent position. Also the AI spy play in diffrent position. AI Spy take over kingdoms, towns, make unrest and so on.
Lighthope
08-08-2006, 07:03
I have to disagree. It is extremely rare that my spy gets hired on as anything other than a Marshal. And I would certainly like him to be able to do something while he is sitting there waiting to be hired on.
Lighthope
Pearls of Wisdom - Due to budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel has been discontinued.
--== TIGERS' QUEST - http://www.tigersquest.com
--== RATE YOUR BOSS - http://www.rateyourboss.us
In the moment the position of the spy is random. Perhaps i think its better to give the player the decision to choose the position of the spy. Some players want that his spy becomes the position of the landlord or builder or......Perhaps BSS change this.
By the way, the AI dont use often landlords and builder. I look in my game and i find only two builders and one landlord in the AI kingdoms.
Thunder666
08-08-2006, 10:29
I agree with giving the spy more options like the things you said, but there's also a problem i've had when my spy is a marshal, sometimes i meet him on the battlefield and even tough you know it's your own spy, you can't control him or anything and if he doesn't run away you have no choice but to kill him (or surrender, but then your army gets a morale drop, and i don't like to surrender if there is no good reason )
oh, and i think that when your spy is a marshal, he should also be able to give his army to an idle marshal in your court (or he becomes a marshal himself maybe?) because if he can hand over towns and arrange annexation for a whole kingdom, he shouldn't really have a problem doing this :go:
The Spy needs a few additional options. Most of the time, he is hired on as a Marshal. Dangerous since they don't live very long. It is very rare that they get hired on as anything else.
That is because the AI uses its armies unwisely and loses marshals left and right. Just send several spies (three or four) to one country, the chance that at least one gets hired as something else but marshal is rather high, then. To keep the marshal-spies from getting killed, just keep a close watch on what the AI is doing with them and call them back if necessary.
Mayhaps I would prefer him to be hired as a cleric or a builder?
This would only lead to the spy never getting hired. The AI never hires builders and only few clerics.
While your spy is sitting in the Contestant Pool waiting to be hired, here are a couple of options that should be available...
Makes no sense. Before a spy is hired, he can't get close to the court, let alone the royal family. How the hell would he assassinate people or kick people from court positions without being in any position of power himself?
I agree with giving the spy more options like the things you said, but there's also a problem i've had when my spy is a marshal, sometimes i meet him on the battlefield and even tough you know it's your own spy, you can't control him or anything and if he doesn't run away you have no choice but to kill him (or surrender, but then your army gets a morale drop, and i don't like to surrender if there is no good reason)
You know you can order a marshal to return from his mission, right? It's better than killing him. :)
oh, and i think that when your spy is a marshal, he should also be able to give his army to an idle marshal in your court (or he becomes a marshal himself maybe?) because if he can hand over towns and arrange annexation for a whole kingdom, he shouldn't really have a problem doing this :go:
Yeah, that make sense. But this is like the only new spy option I would agree to. A spy, once in place, is immensely powerful and you can conquer all europe with spies, leading no single battle. Some patience is the price you just pay. If every one of your spies would instantly get hired into the spot you want, there would be nothing left to do in the game. :)
Lord_Nick
08-08-2006, 17:59
With Spies hired as Marshals, you have several options:
If the situation gets too dangerous, your Spy can Desert the enemy.
If they are hired by an ally and you have common enemies, send one of your real marshals to fight alongside your Spy. This will increase the likelihood of victory for your Spy, and them earning Experience levels. Higher experience levels = higher probability of being the next king, if the king dies without heirs.
If they are hired by an enemy, use them to get the enemy to sign a Peace Treaty. The more Spy-Marshals you have in their realm, the higher the probability of success. I find that if you have 3 Spy-Marshals in a kingdom, the Peace Treaty option is guaranteed.
If you have enough time for regeneration, try the Peace Treaty option, and if it fails, get them to Desert.
If fighting against your own Marshal in an open field, you can always retreat.
If your Spy is sieging one of your own towns, watch him very closely. Use another non-sieging Spy-Marshal to ask for a Peace Treaty ... if that fails, only give the order to desert at the last second. The AI sometimes has armies retreat from bad sieges.
It is a little frustrating how rare it is to get a Spy in a real position of power, but I think that's part of the enjoyment. KOH would get a lot of complaints about Spies being over-powered if they could assassinate or cause problems at will.
Angryminer
08-08-2006, 18:12
When I want to allow one of my spies to enter another court I give that kingdom some money as a "gift" to ensure that they are rich enough to buy a new knight. Usually they are hired as spies or clerics then.
This of course only works when the other court isn't full.
Angryminer
I agree with Tempest comments completely.
The only pain of Spies (or the biggest and most important) is that when you meet himn in a battle you can't controll him. It would be good generaly that you could give the spy-marshall your own orders, but on the other side it makes it clear that he is a spy.
The problem with spies being hired by far mostly as marshalls is caused, as already stated, by dumb AI "military policy" and by the fact that 98% of AI knights hired are marshalls.
When I managed to change the AI's behaviour to hire other professions more often, the chance to get diferent spy profession has increased too.
The problem is not in spy options but AI
Lighthope
08-08-2006, 19:28
The problem is not in spy options but AI
With regards to hiring a Spy in other professions it is not down to "dumb AI" but rather that the professional of Builder and Landlord are pretty much useless. Hence the reason why the AI was programmed not to hire them. Even the developers didn't put much priority on them.
The problem for us players that, as a Spy, bulder and landlord offer some nice options that we rarely get to play with for the very reason that the AI wisely won't hire them. Which is why we need some additional options to make more things available for us.
While your spy is sitting in the Contestant Pool waiting to be hired, here are a couple of options that should be available...
Makes no sense. Before a spy is hired, he can't get close to the court, let alone the royal family. How the hell would he assassinate people or kick people from court positions without being in any position of power himself?
Who says he can't get close to the Court? If you're trying to be real about this, then realistically, a King doesn't hire anyone he doesn't know. And a spy's job is to get himself in good with people so he can do spy things. So a spy waiting to be assigned a specific job would still have opportunity to do things. It may be a bit harder, yes, but he's not an outcast until he gets hired.
Besides, the whole point is to give the spy something to do while he's waiting for a specific job, hopefully something more than the ever-repetative Marshal job.
Lighthope
Pearls of Wisdom - "I don't mind being regarded as perverted and unnatural, but I would die if people thought I was a Democrat." - Florence King
--== TIGERS' QUEST - http://www.tigersquest.com
--== RATE YOUR BOSS - http://www.rateyourboss.us
Who says he can't get close to the Court? If you're trying to be real about this, then realistically, a King doesn't hire anyone he doesn't know. And a spy's job is to get himself in good with people so he can do spy things. So a spy waiting to be assigned a specific job would still have opportunity to do things. It may be a bit harder, yes, but he's not an outcast until he gets hired.
Before he is hired, he's just a man in the streets. And right, a king wouldn't hire someone he doesn't know. So you can interpret the waiting time as the time a spy needs to get the king's confidence.
But even if you want to leave the RL interpretation aside, a non-hired spy that can assassinate a king, as you'd like to have it, would utterly destroy the game balance.
WOW! I finally had a spy as Marshall finally pay off in ways other than starting a revolt! I was just checking out my provinces to see if I needed to get any construction started, when all of a sudden I got the message that my spy had been appointed Ruler, which I promptly had him hand the kingdom over to me! I had begun to wonder if that did ever happen! I am playing as The Golden Horde, having a hard time spending enough cash to keep inflation down enough to make an income. I have 1st place in trade and am 2nd place in wealthiest kingdom, 3rd place in happiest people, 1st in overall power, 1st in largest kingdom and 1st in strongest military.
congratz, Dobber.
little offtopic:
Just a question. When you are in problems to spend money to keep the inflation low, why do you keep trading? isn't it better to send all the traders off and have other professions instead?
just want to advice as you spoke about too-high-income problem
Traveller
09-08-2006, 23:36
Too-high-income problem? What's that? And why should inflation be kept down? Is there some side effect, except decreasing the total income?
congratz, Dobber.
little offtopic:
Just a question. When you are in problems to spend money to keep the inflation low, why do you keep trading? isn't it better to send all the traders off and have other professions instead?
just want to advice as you spoke about too-high-income problem
I had never thought about decreasing the income to decrease the inflation.
I was thinking to get rid of the inflation your income needed to be higher. I do know spending money decreases the inflation thus boosting the income. I think I will just start giving monetary gifts to some of the smaller kingdoms. At the moment I have just taken 12 provinces away from Syria and am wanting to remain at peace until the Nostalgia goes away before continuing with war.
I understand. It is right that the higher your income is, the lower is your inflation.
But I don't know how are the numbers. I'm so used to my mod that when the income is too high (over 300/tick) when I send all my traders off (especially whe I am the best country in trading), the income decreases to half of former income. If your income is in thousands, it may not influence it with such step, that's true...
PS:traveller, you never got into later stage of the game in vanilla when your income is over 1000/tick and your biggest problem is to spend your money fast enough to keep the income in green numbers?
Traveller
10-08-2006, 09:55
Elvain, I've been playing in such situations most of the time! :wink: But I don't see why I should necesarily decrease the inflation! If I have nothing to spend my money on, I just leave it be and then it reaches one optimum level, where it basically stops. Or actually "one turn" it's red and takes a few gc away, the next turn it's green and fixes it back. So, when it reaches this "limit", and if I don't really want to spend money on anything, why should I decrease the inflation? It isn't taking all my money away. Does it have some side effect?
There is no side effect. The inflation only marks a maximum amount of gold for game balancing sake. However, having a high inflation is a waste of money as all the money you would earn in the meantime is lost. You can use it better to improve relations, arrange for good marriages, speed up your constructions, etc.
Btw, wasn't the topic about spy options? :P
Btw, wasn't the topic about spy options? :P
Yes it was, I am afraid I am probably the reason it went off-topic when I also mentioned inflation earlier when talking about my spy that became king of another kingdom.
Sorry!
or maybe rather my fault, I should have opened another thread when replying to that...
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