Part 9

Learn to recruit and utilize Priests, Spies, and Assassins effectively in Total War: Three Kingdoms. Understand their roles and how to improve their skills.

Priests/Imams:

Priests and Imams are crucial for religious matters. More pious agents are more likely to denounce heretics and convert regions faster. Like all agents (non-player characters controlled by the game), they also reveal a small ring of the fog of war (an area of the map you cannot see) around them.

Recruitment: Any settlement with a religious structure, such as Small Churches, Small Chapels, or Masjids, can recruit a Priest or Imam.

Increasing Piety: The primary ways to increase piety are by denouncing heretics/witches (using the 'Burn Her!' action) and converting people to your religion. Be cautious: less pious or unorthodox priests/imams may fall to heresy if exposed to pious heretics. Witches can convert your populace and negatively impact your generals, leading to severe consequences. Recruiting many religious agents from one location can trigger the Theologian's Guild, enhancing their piety and resistance to heresy.

Bishops: Cities with Cathedrals or Huge Cathedrals can recruit Bishops, who have a +1 piety bonus over regular priests. A city with a Huge Cathedral and a Theologian's Guild HQ can give you significant influence over the Papacy and College of Cardinals if you are Catholic, ensuring you have the most pious priests and bishops.

Traits: Sending priests or imams to convert other religions can earn them missionary and anti-heretic traits, increasing piety by up to +6. Removing heretics and witches is vital and should be done as soon as possible, as they cause significant problems.

Spies:

Spies are essential for intelligence and destabilization. Higher subterfuge (a spy's skill in deception and infiltration) increases their success rate and ability to cause discontent. Their line of sight also increases with subterfuge. Generals can have traits that boost anti-spy capabilities, and larger troop concentrations reduce a spy's success chances. Spies provide a large ring of sight, detailed information on enemy units, and can infiltrate settlements to cause discontent or open gates.

Warning: If a spy fails a mission, they die.

Recruitment: Any town with a Brothel or Shisha Bar can recruit spies.

Increasing Subterfuge: Spies gain subterfuge by being recruited in cities with Thieve's Guilds. They also gain it through successful missions; their first mission, often difficult, can grant +2 subterfuge. It is recommended to start with an easy mission, like spying on brigands or a small force, as odds below 65% usually result in death.

Abilities: An infiltrated spy can reveal extensive information about a city or army, including character traits like Command, Charm, and Influence. The longer a spy stays in an enemy city, the more discontent they cause, destabilizing economies and empires. Combined with assassins, spies can incite revolts, potentially opening cities for conquest without declaring war. Spies can also spread plagues, though this is less common and less critical than in Rome: Total War.

Army Integration: Most armies should carry spies for vital intelligence and to open gates, speeding up conquest. Using spies to incite settlements to revolt is effective, as rebels are generally less threatening than other factions.

Assassins:

Assassins are specialized in eliminating targets and sabotaging buildings. They can target any character except admirals or your own characters. Sabotage missions can remove a settlement's building benefits.

Warning: An assassin mission has three outcomes: success (target eliminated, no attribution), failure (no target elimination, no attribution), and death (mission fails, assassin lost, faction identified as responsible).

Recruitment: Any town with an Inn or Shisha Den can recruit assassins.

Increasing Subterfuge: Assassins gain subterfuge through successful kills, recruitment in cities with Assassin's or Hashashim's guilds, and sometimes through random retinue expansion (like the 'Prototype Hangun'). Assassins are more challenging to develop than other agents, as sabotage or assassination missions are not always straightforward. Sabotage missions only grant traits and retinue that boost sabotage odds, and assassins cannot identify settlement buildings, unlike spies.