Best uses for spies?

[JecJackal]

I tried bribery and found the success rate is really low with low reward. I sink a ton of levels and traditions to steal 1000 gold. Seems meh so far.

Any other ideas? I'm still very new so i am sure i am overlooking something.

[Lateralus]

First and foremost they help keep your kingdom safe from enemy spies. Secondly, I find them most useful for ‘Open the Gates’ and ‘Burn Food Reserves’ because laying siege to an enemy town can be a lengthy process.

It’s best to bribe an enemy knight as your first action once you’ve infiltrated a kingdom. It increases your chances in future actions.
There are lots of other interesting actions but they might be too expensive in the early game.

[redhongkong]

worsen his relation with surrounding lords.

[redhongkong]

i think only brother/uncle with maxed skill will increase % to a good level if u use spy for anything else.

[redhongkong]

a good king that let prince learn skill at level 3 make 2nd prince a spy and let him learn skill before old king dies. other spy just not worth leveling 1 by 1

[Chompers]

If you go down the rabbit hole far enough, you can use a spy to vassalize a kingdom or steal the crown and take some-all of the territory completely. Spies are OP.

My cookie-cutter skill build for vassalizing/crown theft is Bribery + Concealment + assasinate + Strategy + Archery.

Bribery is most of the action chain, you bribe knights until you get a few as puppets, as many as possible the more the better. Then once that is accomplished you need to kill potential heirs then kill the king with assasinate or the archery hunting accident. Once you accomplish this chain, in all likelihood you will end up with a puppet king in your spies pocket. Once this happens you just wait for the vassal and crown quests to pop up.

Concealment and Strategy are huge here because if you get caught at any step along the way in this many step chain you have to start all over, and not only that but with a new spy because they will recognize the old one.

["The Lunatic" Wolf-fighter]

you do it wrong then. ofc you cant steal much from a poor ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. you can only steal whats there. so the ammount you get from stealing gold is what the kingdom you take it from owns at the given time. do it from some rich place and you can easily get 20-50k gold even. i did stole 21k gold once from a 1 province nation . they had no wars going as it seemed their province seemed to produce alot of gold and apparently they simply keep hording their gold and do nothing since they were at no war and the cityx was fully build already . if you want to steal much gold then look at the list of wealthy kingdoms choose from the top ranked ones . or find out yourself who seem to own alot of gold . a kingdom beeing big doesnt necessarily mean they got much gold, in fact they often are more likely to have wars and need to spend on top of having more provinces to build out. spies might be expensive but they are extremly helkpfull. infiltrating is already a big help for the informations where troops of the enemy are what they have stationed in their provinces and stuff like that. you cann kill their knights or bribe and do more. level your spy up dude i advice you you take the skill bribery if you want to bribe people mainly or alot forging ranks / plotting whatever its called in english (i have the game in german so i duno what they called ränke schmieden exactly in english guess its plotting tho) is a good skill as well. and ive gotta tell you the very best thing the spy can do is infiltrate some kingdom who took a prisoner and free them then. and that happens ALOT. because people keep declaring war even if they had the best relastion to you and a none agression pact with trade pact. randomly simply join someone who declared war on you >.> yeah thanks. and then they mostly take the guys you send there for trading prisoner. so yeah merchants or diplomats you had there for trade or whatever are taken prisoner as soon as they then declare war randomly . and honestly for that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ i would never pay the dudes they broke the pacts and simply declared war and then unrightfull even take your merchants hostage. yeah nno i dont pay them gold free them for free because thats the least or i simply get them with my spy out xD lol . well other than that someone already said you need a spy for protection against spies yourself . otherwise you wont find them . conspiracy as tradition gives you 20 extra defense and highers chances of succes to find spies highly recomend to always take that as one tradition tbh

[willgamer47]

@Wolf-fighter,

I like your ideas, but your wall of text is tough on old eyes.

Could I appeal to you to use paragraphs. Perhaps you could also consider using proper capitalization?

Thanks for your thoughts...

[Chompers]

Originally posted by willgamer47:

@Wolf-fighter,

I like your ideas, but your wall of text is tough on old eyes.

Could I appeal to you to use paragraphs. Perhaps you could also consider using proper capitalization?

Thanks for your thoughts...:cozykcdknight:

rofl

[DavesBarbaricCookie]

In my opinion: either use them for spy hunting, burn food and open gates, or if you got the money to spare but don't wanna wage actual wars, caputure some knights and rebel leaders, use your spy to start a loyalist rebellion in the land you want to make your underling and reinforce the rebellion immediately with the guys in your prison. I split super powers in half that way and had half their lands follow me as my loyal vassal lapdogs afterwards

[JecJackal]

Thanks for the ideas. I will try these out later. The vassal idea is intriguing

[Iskar]

Originally posted by willgamer47:

@Wolf-fighter,

I like your ideas, but your wall of text is tough on old eyes.

Could I appeal to you to use paragraphs. Perhaps you could also consider using proper capitalization?

Thanks for your thoughts...:cozykcdknight:

+1