Is there a way to counter assassins and spies?

[Fire and Glory]

Milan has a buttload of these guys,I can tell because they take 4 times longer to finish their turns then anyone else and I find my cities with a large amount of unrest,and I saw a assassin outside one of the cities,but is there no way to get rid of this menace? To at least make them visible on the map?

And no,conquering Milan is not a option,they are very well fortified by their allies and the pope.

[Meadows]

counter them with.. wait for it! Assasins and spies!

[HazardHawk]

Dropping a spy into a town limits the effect of foreign spies. However, keep in mind the more experience they have the better they perform so assassins need work to stay successful. You can work against slave stacks and towns to increase their experience.

[Fire and Glory]

Originally posted by hazardhawk:

Dropping a spy into a town limits the effect of foreign spies.

Good to know.

Originally posted by hazardhawk:

You can work against slave stacks

I have no idea what a slave stack is.

[CHE]

The "Slave" or "Rebel" faction in RTW is the "Rebel" faction in M2TW. (The game designers used much of the RTW computer code in M2TW.)

[HazardHawk]

There is a slave faction and when slaves rebel they pop into existence belonging to that faction no matter where they appear or what kind of slaves they are. This happens from negative happiness in a province. For the most part they are easy to defeat and you use them to season troops and agents with experience. Heretics and witches are part of the slave faction as well.

[Fire and Glory]

Originally posted by hazardhawk:

There is a slave faction and when slaves rebel they pop into existence belonging to that faction no matter where they appear or what kind of slaves they are. This happens from negative happiness in a province. For the most part they are easy to defeat and you use them to season troops and agents with experience. Heretics and witches are part of the slave faction as well.

Well I KNOW what the rebel faction is,but since you used the term Slave I had no idea what you were talking about because...

Originally posted by CHE:

The "Slave" or "Rebel" faction in RTW is the "Rebel" faction in M2TW. (The game designers used much of the RTW computer code in M2TW.)

I've never played RTW.

[HazardHawk]

My apologies... I learned to mod on Rome so most of my terminology is founded there. Rome and Medieval 2 are the same engine and mostly the same files even. Barbarian Invasion introduced Religion and then Med 2 introduced manipulative Religion and Markets. If you like Medieval 2 or Kingdoms, you would like Rome. Thank you for the reminder to be more specific with people who may not have played Rome.

[the smoking mค็็็็็n]

a master thieves guild or 2 in your realm plus a spy in your city around where all the action is (milan,venice,etc) will let you see all the assisins/spies near by and give you top notch spies real quick (7-10)
i usually keep 1 in most cities on the front line as they catch other spies which cuase unrest quite heavily when in your towns/castles
assasins mainly try to kill your generals,are hard to train without assasin guild,and give your king a bad rep,avoid them if you dont want that
though they can be effective at destroying churches/walls etc without the rep hit to your ruler

[Fire and Glory]

Originally posted by mike yugo:

a master thieves guild or 2 in your realm plus a spy in your city around where all the action is (milan,venice,etc) will let you see all the assisins/spies near by and give you top notch spies real quick (7-10)
i usually keep 1 in most cities on the front line as they catch other spies which cuase unrest quite heavily when in your towns/castles
assasins mainly try to kill your generals,are hard to train without assasin guild,and give your king a bad rep,avoid them if you dont want that
though they can be effective at destroying churches/walls etc without the rep hit to your ruler

That's very helpful,though right now these assassins don't do anything,they just sit there,probably cause they don't have a good perchentage chance to killing my generals,had this game for 2 years and I still learn the occassional new thing,(like spies showing other spies from a distance,and spies countering other spies)

Though I'm not worried about negative rep,it's easier to get,negative rep-->highly leveled traits that give negative rep--->gives authority---->authority=decent kings.

[the smoking mค็็็็็n]

yes,its all about the traits you want
using them against islam nations actually yields positive only traits and are always good traits for muslim leaders
you can cause much havoc with the muslims once they have assasin guilds,some even give special units too
hungary is the catholic nation to use for this,as they get battlefeild assasins and are by far the best cathoilic nation to attract assaasin guild,most others have a hard time getting it

[Fire and Glory]

Originally posted by mike yugo:

yes,its all about the traits you want
using them against islam nations actually yields positive only traits and are always good traits for muslim leaders
you can cause much havoc with the muslims once they have assasin guilds,some even give special units too
hungary is the catholic nation to use for this,as they get battlefeild assasins and are by far the best cathoilic nation to attract assaasin guild,most others have a hard time getting it

Hashashim make great muslim units,I do have a assassin's guild,but I haven't really any assassinations ever since I drove the Moors off iberia,since I no longer needed to get rid of their stupid priests.

[HazardHawk]

All the guilds are set on a randomizer by percentages of chances of having one in particular. You deny building a guild long enough and what you want will come around eveually.

[the smoking mค็็็็็n]

yeah thier stupid preists!
another way of combatting that is to use your own preists
suround thiers with yours,they turn heritic and denounce them
go to thier terratory with preists and they wont send as many to yours
ofc you need big churches,atleast cathedrals,and theoligian guilds,plus alot of work to get this strategy working,but in the long run it also gives good relations with the pope and will have you dictating who will be pope before long,basically letting you control catholic world politics(war at will)

[Fire and Glory]

Originally posted by mike yugo:

yeah thier stupid preists! :tgrin:
another way of combatting that is to use your own preists
suround thiers with yours,they turn heritic and denounce them
go to thier terratory with preists and they wont send as many to yours
ofc you need big churches,atleast cathedrals,and theoligian guilds,plus alot of work to get this strategy working,but in the long run it also gives good relations with the pope and will have you dictating who will be pope before long,basically letting you control catholic world politics(war at will)

Well,I'm never going to get to be pope,with my lack of cardinals and 3 crosses,though I generally don't make priests unless I'm in the east,where they can mass produce priests and I have to deal with a intitial 0 cathlothics as well.

Speaking about the east,at one point venice completed a crusade against Jerusalem only to (from what I could see) lose it to a bribe the next turn,though the pope didn't care about that.

[the smoking mค็็็็็n]

build a cathedral
these pruduce only bishops which are harder to turn and send them to low catholic areas
you will then be offered theo guild which ups bishop crosses even more (4-8 crosses)
they will become cadinals very quick like this,as others die and cardinals can not be turned
pair them with new bishops to convert terratory and to denounce without danger of being turned themselves
like this,before long you will be electing the pope yourself as you have most of the votes
this allows you to call crusades and make war almost at will and the other catholic nations think very hard before going to war with you (HRE the exception)