Does anyone else think that agents are a problem?
I've been playing TW since Rome 1 and I enjoyed most games but Shogun 2 was the first one I couldn't really get into. I wasn't interested in the time period and the lack of unit variety but forced myself to play it in the weeks before the release of Rome 2. What I noticed immediately was that agents and raiding parties were annoying as hell because the AI would just spam you with them instead of using them strategically. You couldn't counter them once they're onto you though because your new agents would be taken out the same turn you recruited them.
So here comes Rome 2 and I'm enjoying myself playing my first campaign as Pontus and I notice that agents aren't as aggressive as they used to be, you have to decide if you specialize your agent as support (tax/happiness/unit xp) or as an offensive character. The AI only using their agents occassionally when it really mattered (ie disabling an army for a turn before they reach their city or inciting unrest in a newly captured settlement).
Now I started a new campaign with patch 5 and it's Shogun 2 all over again. I'm sitting in my first settlement and can't expand because the AI keeps shutting down everything by sending agents every turn (poisoning my city/garrison,burning down buildings so I can't tech). I trained my agents in return to take out their agents but it's a losing battle since the AI seems to have unlimited resources and has always the drop on me(as in: I wound them, a few turns later they come back from their settlement and get to attack me again), so even if I outrank their agents I can't prevent all attacks and mostly wound enemy agents (so the problem will return). Add a plague every few years and I'm sitting in my settlement forcing myself to play the game I used to enjoy a few patches ago.
There's no strategic use of agents, just spamming down my ass so I can't do anything but recover from the attacks. I really preferred R1/M2TW/ETW's approach where agents had their own realm or "metagame" so to say, where they mostly interacted with eachother and only had little influence on armies and settlements(and you needed a really high ranking agent to do important stuff)but since Shogun 2 they have a huge influence on your cities and armies, maybe even too much. It feels like a chore having to deal with agents and their actions.
Posted Oct 25, 2013, 10:51 AM UTC
It is completely absurd that a single agent can stop an entire army in its tracks for years on end and kill hundreds of soldiers per turn, and now every agent type can halt armies, which also has the even worse effect of preventing reinforcements, making night battles/ambushes much less important, since just a handful of agents can nearly guarantee that you only have to fight armies one at a time.
And now that you can only increase your general's resistance to one agent type per level and only put one agent in your army, every army is guaranteed to be completely vulnerable to at least one agent (in friendly territory, you can deploy agents to increase security, but there is no way to improve security in enemy provinces.)
Agents honestly need an enormous nerf; their primary purpose ought to be scouting for information, killing other agents, and occasionally opening gates and only rarely killing generals, NOT attacking armies and killing generals whenever they please.
The Rome 2 Agents are more ninja than the Shogun 2... ninja.
Well said, they need some balancing for sure.
All the agents are offensively based & the spy powerfully so.
Move dignitaries to be friendly on offense & cash/happiness buff on defense. There's no real way to move AI from neutral or negative to at least slightly friendly without chucking gold at them. Would be nice if the dignitary could do that.
Make champs the premier agent defense, plus their current army bonuses, & territory bonuses. Tone down or remove their non agent offense.
Tone down spies, namely poisoning is too powerful when fully buffed. It's not so bad at the start, but it's brutal once stacked.
I'm so aggressive with agents early on I usually have them all solidly ranked up early on, but seeing as two of the agents (maybe even digs I forget) can lock down an army turn after turn can be frustrating for the player.
I tend to prep with spies to uncover & remove agents & leave my digs & champs embedded, which tends to counter the issue a bit, but it can still be frustrating.
yes... they are kinda badass. Proof!
When you start getting a spy leveled up with mass poisoning, and the passive traits they gain from poisoning provisions, you start to be able to kill HALF an army. Half, 50%, 1/2. With a click of a button and about 600 gold, you put a 20 stack army effectively down to 10 stacks. AND they can't move.
Honestly, I can't see why you'd train a spy in anything else. That is an unbelievably powerful ability. And since you don't really need champions to harass in light of mass poisoning, I don't see why you would use them for anything other than military training.
Agents should be relegated to just supporting armies (providing the authority/cunning/zeal boost to the general), scouting and light harassment/assassinations.
As a side point, I think replenishment rates have a bit to do with this. Poisoning doesn't have much impact on an army when they get all their troops back the next turn for free. Replenishment should only be high when garrisoned, low when in the field.
Champions are amazing for public order.
Not only that they start to lose the units if you keep poisoning turn after turn. After 4-5 turns of fully buffed poisoning you can take an army from 20 stacks to 10 or less.
And if the faction started out neutral or friendly they'll never declare war on you or retaliate against your agents. The agent diplomacy debuff doesn't build turn after turn. So you can keep your armies right outside their borders, wipe out theirs & then declare war while they have no armies.
This sums it up pretty nicely.
I was thinking maybe they could reinvent the agent metagame where agents have to stay hidden to operate and could be apprehended/sent back to their "master" if they're uncovered and engaged by a general. Right now uncovering agents just lowers their chance of resisting actions against them.
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All you need is two spies leveled up in cunning + poisoning and you can effectively destroy 60% of an enemy army before attacking. Its downright ridiculous
They do need nerfed. And they need to be less 'homogenized'. It's great, they gave them all these unique actions, but they all basically accomplish the same thing, with spies being the best at doing it, heroes being the second best, and diplomats being tax-whores who are OP at stopping armies and assassinating.
The most annoying part, though, is that the AI imperium rank doesn't seem to decrease, so a whole bunch of single-province factions spam 2 or 3 agents of each type at you, and it feels stupid.
Especially since your rank 8 agent with 12 cunning and 14 zeal, but 1 authority, agent can be assassinated by a rank 1 diplomat with like a 50% chance of success. And yes, I'm bitter about that. I converted that diplomat and had him administer taxes in some backwater region that I had doing food production.