Spies, assassins, thieves, saboteurs, counter insurgents, terrorists, cults and secret police; all are grouped under the heading of operative. They are your shadowy people that perform nefarious acts that you decide are needed. Chosen automatically have the skills of a grade 4 operative.
Spies are very hard to use for the simple fact that they need to be told what to find and then to find it. If the enemy hasn't written battle plans then your spies cannot find those plans. To use spies, send them to a country and then ask them questions, you can ask these questions through MSN with myself or in your team forum. If you can get spies onto the command staff of an enemy army then they can sometimes deliver crucial information to you about the enemy battle plans, during or just before the battle the battle. This can quite easily change the course of the battle if you can react to it.
Sabotage is very useful for removing your opponent's buildings, ships and supplies. The effects of a sabotage are very circumstantial, it depends a lot on the defenses that your opponent uses and what the targets are.
Assassination is a very popular tactic, mostly because a dead enemy is
probably unable to kill you. As with comedy, timing is everything with assassination. Killing your enemy the night before a battle is much more effective than a month before. To perform an assassination you must provide orders for how to get to the target, how to kill the target and if you want your operative(s) to survive, how to get out.
Operatives cost materials, training and supplying 1000 men may cost 8 materials, you get far less in the way of operatives for 8 materials. All operatives have a grade, the higher it is the better they will be at their task. Grades range from 1 to 4, a grade 1 operative is useful for little more than basic spying while a grade 4 can be used for an assassination of an enemy leader.
- Grade 1 - 1 Material
- Grade 2 - 2 Materials
- Grade 3 - 4 Materials
- Grade 4 - 8 Materials