N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

Hi everyone. Sometimes AOE ideas just pop into my head for no real reason. Today, I was thinking about how much I have trouble with TWC civs. One big reason for that is their war chief gives them so much extra early game power, whether it's through converting OP guardians (then killing your explorer), acting as a 600 HP rush meatshield, boosting HP, granting double XP for a shipment spam or transforming raiders into uncatchable terrorists. As a lowly Euro-only player, I churned my mind for answers to this menace. Then I thought: Maybe a well-placed spy can help me out here! Don't they do about a 40X modifier against war chiefs?

Everyone loves it when you get a native scout treasure on any map. You put him in stealth by the enemy FB and you have insta-intelligence. You send him around the map and pretty soon you know everything about resources, dead hunts, etc. Spies can do all that and more. They have a longer LOS than native scouts (I think) and you can station them around the map like floating intelligence beacons. That can be really handy to prevent sneaky raids or to spot huge troop movements before it is too late. On the other hand, you can do some of this same work for a measly 5 wood-wall-segment. But I've noticed that those segments don't have the best LOS.

Have people just forgotten about spies? Or is it just too complex to factor them into standard gameplay? They cost 125 coin apiece and you need to shell out 100 wood for a church. In most games, my church goes up somewhere in mid-late colonial, if at all. I'm not sure how beneficial it would be to use them frequently. What do you all think? Are spies underused--- or just useless? I would certainly not waste a card sending them. I'm just wondering when it might be handy to build a couple.

funny you brought this up, i was pondering my french decks yesterday trying to see what all i was missing and i was stuck looking at the assassins card for awhile, i wouldn't say spies are useless, but some civs get either assassins or agents upgrade cards, so for what your saying of using spies for intelligence then agents would be your route to go (agents card gives spies +15 l.o.s.) , but what of assassins? I've never seen a spie vs a hatamoto ronin (would like to know how that would turn out) being spies are relatively weak vs any other units but mercs and chiefs, but would a spie kill a hatamoto? but to answer your question kaiser, spies could be used to assassinate Aztec and Iroquois war chiefs if could could separate one of them from thier army as to let the spie do his job, but vs Souix, if the player sees him coming he could just run his chief away to safety, but it could work if u sent the spie in when you were distracting the Souix player

The problem with spies is that they're overpriced and that they can be easily picked off by skirms, yet, I know that when I feared mamelukes the first thing I'd do was a church to get 5 spies out :p Spies are underused because mercs are underused too. Making spies to specifically take down warchiefs is worth it for the xp, to weaken iros' army and to protect your cannons from the evil sioux chief. Otherwise it is hard to catch the sioux chief since he'll run away and the aztec chief isn't that OP

Spies are useful in FFAs. What I did once was Fast-Fortress and sent the "Assassins" card. Then I spammed about 30 of them and went on a raiding rampage.

It's amazing some of the results you see.

[quote=""deadhanddan""]funny you brought this up, i was pondering my french decks yesterday trying to see what all i was missing and i was stuck looking at the assassins card for awhile, i wouldn't say spies are useless, but some civs get either assassins or agents upgrade cards, so for what your saying of using spies for intelligence then agents would be your route to go (agents card gives spies +15 l.o.s.) , but what of assassins? I've never seen a spie vs a hatamoto ronin (would like to know how that would turn out) being spies are relatively weak vs any other units but mercs and chiefs, but would a spie kill a hatamoto? but to answer your question kaiser, spies could be used to assassinate Aztec and Iroquois war chiefs if could could separate one of them from thier army as to let the spie do his job, but vs Souix, if the player sees him coming he could just run his chief away to safety, but it could work if u sent the spie in when you were distracting the Souix player [/quote]

forget the uprgades, just a few spies if you know the enemy has many mercs or just one spy early game to get iro warchief or just to spy the enemy.
another things is that age3 mercs get pretty useless in age4, so you won't see them that often(less often than you already do)

actually, sporting took away my thoughts i wanted to write the exact same thing

spy-rush was one of my fav strats as dutch previous patch where they had 2x more damage, now they hardly deal any damage
over-priced and useless in most games imho, maybe otto can get out 1 or 2 early when they build a mosque at start, even vs mams they don't pay off :/

I've been putting more spies in my Euro decks versus Native and Asian civs. Helps a lot to take out their monks.

When I used to play ottoman, I would ship 5 spies quite often. I would use them to creep on cannons, get warchiefs/mercs, but what I was using them most for -- was actually spying! Their huge LOS and stealth factor made them pretty nice units.

[quote=""36drew""]When I used to play ottoman, I would ship 5 spies quite often. I would use them to creep on cannons, get warchiefs/mercs, but what I was using them most for -- was actually spying! Their huge LOS and stealth factor made them pretty nice units.[/quote]
Thanks for the tip! Maybe it will make me better in late game. And I like that prospect .