does anyone bother with spies ?

[Teefy]

they take up a valuable knight slot, their actions are too expensive for its successrate, there arent any really valuable actions to begin with ? (possibly provoke war)

id rather have a trader or marshall.

thoughts?

[Chip56]

You must bribe a merchant and then that mercant can rob the treasury. However i found that rather underwhelming: bribe cost 4k, rob cost 500 gold and then i got something like 1.5k back. And that for a great nation where i always got the update of my spy that they are hording tons of gold.

[SilentK]

I have yet to understand the annexation thingy with a spy, never knew about robbery.

There's only 1 thing I do with my spy, open the damn gates. Early on its not really worth to spend or can be able to spend much on siege equipment + upgrades, after a while these are faster than the spy but until then sometimes its critical that you get your spy working on opening the gates otherwise its a siege for 3 kings lifetime.
Sometime its worth having a marshal slot open, again, early on only, to bribe an entire army for your cause if you're lucky so thats another one you could do.

[Pandas]

Originally posted by iche_bins:

Originally posted by Chompers:

Spies are nuts. If you know how, you can subjugate an entire nation with 1 spy.

Care to enlighten the unknowing?

Thats the problem. The game doesnt tell you and you can only really do these things through a combo of skills which the game doesnt tell you. You have to do it through playing and testing it out. I guess this is the replay-ability part.

[Teefy]

if you take archery as your second skill you unlock the hunting accident option. that's all i got. heh.

[Dregora]

Good late game, not worth early game aside from possible intel.

[chompers]

Originally posted by iche_bins:

Originally posted by Chompers:

Spies are nuts. If you know how, you can subjugate an entire nation with 1 spy.

Care to enlighten the unknowing?

1) get a spy that's good at bribery and murder (either directly or by the hunting accident)
2) Use the spy to bribe court members of a kingdom and make them puppets as the quests to do it randomly come up.
3) Kill the king in the hopes that one of the puppet court members becomes king, giving you a king in your pocket.
4) In time a quest will come up to burn that puppet king and make the kingdom your vassal.

[stun]

spy actions are worthless
However, spies are marshals with economic bonuses (and bonus security). Manpower bonuses are worth nothing since each troop costs the same per manpower if you have actual standing armies, and your spies will be leading armies rather than milling around wasting money and getting arrested, so other than marshals having a better archery tradition and different secondary skills there's no huge bonus.
If you want to leech provinces from neighbors just use shamans and max your culture power bonus, loyalist rebellions from culture seem to ignore stability and eat e.g. your perfectly stable vassals.

Given how disproportionately expensive it is to deal with enemy spies I imagine they're mostly for bullying other players in mp with.

[Lateralus]

I use two spies all game. They are important for kingdom defence against enemy spies, intel, the abilities 'Burn Food Reserves' and 'Open the Gates'. In late game they are crazy good once you have the money for the more expensive options. They are also useful for putting down a rebellion on the other side of your empire when all your marshalls are busy fighting or just too far away to get there.

Make sure your spies are governing a province with a good castle and village combination to best use their bonuses.

[CassioMJR]

I've got more than 90k gold with two robery actions with one spie.

[Scullhead]

Only to protect me from other spies.

[Ultor]

i didnt use them my first 2 victories, then i started using them and they're amazing. Proxy wars, opening gates during sieges and necessary to counter espionage. Since ive been proxy war spammed by the ai alot on very hard difficulty.

[chompers]

I thought the limits of spies was the quest that makes a kingdom your vassal, but if you go further than that there is one to take all the territory from the kingdom completely. It's real hard to do, but it's possible.

[Teefy]

oh that's interesting ? where do you find this action ?

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by Teefy:

oh that's interesting ? where do you find this action ?

I’m not sure which one he means but I had a large number of provinces join me via a loyalist rebellion.

[DNLH]

You need to have the ruler of a country bribed, then an opportunity to pay them to just take the crown over may arise. You can't bribe the ruler directly, though, so it requires a fair bit of plotting and/or correct traditions to achieve. It is really satisfying to pull such a heist off.