Questions - Victory Conditions & assasins

[Saber Cherry]

IIRC indy level 3 is the default, and the higher the number, the more powerful independant provinces are (roughly log 2 according to Illwinter). At 3, there might be 15 militia in a province; at 5, that province should have more like 60 defeners, and possibly a mage; at 9, the indies can have large armies that sometimes include non-declared Gods, like Titans and Earth Mothers. I like to play at 8 - at that setting, there are occasional indy provinces that remain until the late game because they are too strong. Triton provinces can get pretty crazy, though.

[OG_Gleep]

2. Scouts are just stealthy commanders that can't command troops. There are many stealth commanders in the game that can act as scouts. Spys are basically scouts that have a special order "instill Uprising". Assasins are stealth commanders with the special order "Assasinate Enemy Commander", which will initiate a 1on1 attack vs an enemy commander located in that province. As far as control and placement and such, they are classified as commanders as far as mechanics are concerned.

3. I don't know what treshold "pretender" indies start to appear at, but one of my MP games is set to 6, and I have seen 2 such provinces so far.

[Nerfix]

Those crazyinsane level 9 indy provinces with Golems, Earth Mothers and whatnot are sweet.

[Cainehill]

And just to point out : one other attribute of spies, as opposed to scouts / assassins, is that a spy can sometimes tell you if a magic site is in a province, and gives more accurate information on the number & type of enemies in a province they're in.

[mac5732]

I thank you all for your help, appreciate it, just starting to get into the game after all this time

[Edi]

To add to what Endoperez said, the Illuminated One unit of Black Forest Ulm is a spy. The Machakan bane spiders are assassins. Some summoned units can also work as assassins or equivalent (Succubus and some unique summons).

Edi