Diplomats gain experience with negotiations. I suppose succesful negotiations (AI accepts your offer) would be better, but I've seen my diplomats gain experience even after failing negotiations, so I'm not sure.

And if the senate is asking you to make someone a protectorate, don't bother. It's very hard to do and you'd better just wipe them out instead. The mission will be canceled and you suffer no consequences.

Some people claim that keeping a diplomat in your army or city will prevent it from getting bribed. At the very least it will make it harder to bribe (diplomats can be quite expensive to bribe, especially experienced ones).

The best way to train up assassins is to assassinate enemy assassins. Enemy captains and unexperienced diplomats come second. After that it's family members. Family members with high command are much harder to assassinate. Spies are also difficult to assassinate.

If you keep an assassin (or spy) in a city with a market or upgrade of market and he doesn't move in that turn he has a chance to get a monkey. The monkey improves his subterfuge. Temples of fun (Bachus, Dionysus, Oziris, Anahit) can also give them good retinues (dancers and courtisans), but they make your governors drunkards and perverts so watch out.

Welcome to Rome Total War Heaven walkerbow.

I don't know if you have downloaded the most recent patch yet, but amoing other fixes, it makes bribing much more difficult. Without it, It is ridiculously inexpensive, which may be one of the reasons why your men are being bribed so easily.

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Keeping a Diplomat of your own with an army or city does make it far harder to bribe (100% resistance rate as compared to 0% otherwise in my exparience).

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First, enemy Assassins, then any Captain or low experience Diplomat. Then high experience Diplomat or Dpy. Family members are extremely hard to assassinatte even for an experienced assassin and faction leaders and heirs even more so. The ideal first mission is a zero influence Diplomat (64% chance of success with a 1 eye Assassin from memory).

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To gain experience, just keep negotiating with people. Bribing rebels is good too. I play with Bug Fixer, and find that a 10 wreath Diplomat with a +30% bribery bonus is a real asset to your cause. Bribing enemy Diplomats isn't too expensive either, at about 4k denarii early on.

If you want a settlement to surrender (I assume you are talking about making someone a protectorate), then if they have one settlement left, the answer will always be no. For an automatic yes, you can use the save/load bug (save the game and load it again). The AI breaks off sieges and becomes a protectorate really easily amony other things.

Quoted from LordDragatus:

It is hard to make an arbitrary protectorate, and negotiating a protectorate is not easy. This senate mission is only issued if the target faction has less than four settlements and less than five family members -- and the Senate is at war with them.

According to he who wrote the Senate:

Quoted from J Guy Davidson, CA Senate Programmer:

Unfortunately, protectorates are broken in Patch 1.3, and can actually drain your treasury instead of filling it with tribute. Also, in some situations that Davidson expected the enemy to become a Protectorate ("roll over and let you tickle their tummy..."), they don't.

In Patch 1.2, I have had the Senate offer and I fulfilled (easily did so) Protectorate assignments. However, I don't really like Protectorates, as I can get more money from them if I control them. I've had up to 16 or so provinces as protectorates. Protectorates count towards the 50 to win the long campaign... as long are they stay protected.

Quoted from yakcamkir:

That bug is fixed in Patch 1.3.

Quoted from walkerbow:

Another effective way, besides the ones mentioned so far, is to assassinate your own agents, though not your family members. When you assassinate your own agents, you can gain experience... but your assassinated agent is of course joined stovokor (the afterlife).

Exitus acta probat -- Ovid
( The outcome proves the deeds, or 'the end justifies the means' )

thanks for the help guys im greatful for the info
just one more question if i may

when im defending a breach in the wall or trying to make my center more stronger in a battle line can i overlap my phalanxes , put them together so i have two units in the same space ? does it make my phalanxe harder or make it harder for my troops to fight.

thanks again

It makes them more effective in melee, but more vulnerable to ranged weapons.

cool cheers dude.

On the overlapping phalanxe thing, I think that that actually reduces the effectiveness of the troops. That is what the advisor says anyhow, that disrupting the phalanxe formation reduces the effectiveness, because you are causing the formation to be spreadout, and the tightness of the formation is one of the major advantages. I would recommend keeping the phalanxes as close to each other as possible without overlapping them. You can always reform them to be deeper, I think by right click-hold and drag, but I don't use that really.

That's true, but the fact that there are twice as many men in range outweights that. I have tried it.

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How does overlapping them cause them to be spreadout?

mmm i tryed overlapping and keeping them to single formations and it hard to tell what is more effective. when i overlap they dont spread out they still keep it tight but there might be less room for them to fight. i was getting owned by the brit chariots . they world break my phalanxe up and the swordman world over run my lines . so i started to overlap my phalanxe with spearman this did seem to help a bit . Vs other foot troops tho i dont know if it is a good tactic or not.

i good strat i heard was to put a unit of swordmen or a unit of skermishers(preferably) just in front of the phalanx that way you have a line of good melle defence and also (with skermishers) a line which can throw stuff at oncoming enemys.

If you overlap the Phalanx... e.g., put one unit on the other with men alternating, and the front spears equal, then your unit is much much tougher in frontal combat. It is practically immobile, however. You must keep the proper overlap for maximum efectiveness. The carnage they can unleash against an enemy stupid enough to attack frontally is a sight to behold (be sure to zoom in and watch it ). Watch closely and you will see that most enemies die before even nearing the spear holders.

However... rock paper scissors... your line is not as long, and flanks are harder to defend. Other losses may increase. The formation is subject to missile fire. It takes time to kill the assaulters. And did I forget... its practically immobile.

I'm a newb 2 ive played MTW for about 2 weeks striaght and i could'nt get enough of it i bought RTW & BI at the same time and i still havent played them cause of Xmas.Why cant i find VI anywere i just might have to buy from ebay.

i need VI because i want to play NTW & ATW, they sound like the best mods ever

This forum is for R:TW only, go here to talk about M:TW and S:TW.

[q=]1: i keep losing my armies to enemy diplomats bribing them[/q]
Update: Try again, with Patch 1.5/1.6. Diplomacy has been tweaked.