I am knee deep coding the Addition of several new missions for spies so far I have...

Theft - Steals some Gold
Espionage - Steals some Tech you dont possess
Assasination - kills a random GreatSpecialist in a City
Insurection - Starts a Rebelion

Any other ideas people come up with that I like or which get the most votes will be included. The whole package will go in the CCCP and then see action in Ket's XL Composite mod.

P.S. If you can do nice button Art that would be great too :D

Off the top of my head, suitcase nuke, destroy a building, poison water supply... most of those aren't extremely useful...

Maybe sabotage a big project.. like somehow the spy sneaks a bomb up the space elevator and blows a big chunk of the space ship to kingdom come :)

I have a few that I think would be cool.

1) Poison Water Supply - This was in one of the previous Civ incarnations. In Civ4 I'm thinking it should reduce the city population by 1 if successful and shouldn't work on cities with only 1 pop.

2) Sabotage Production - This would not allow anything to be built in the effected city that turn. Other then that, you could lose the hammers gotten that turn or they could be carried over to the next turn. Or if you want to be a little more realistic they could lose some of the hammers already put into the thing being built.

3) Steal Plans - Again, this is from a previous Civ. It shows you the location of all the target civ's units. Alternitively, it could only show the units within a certain range of the targeted city.

4) Turn Unit - The spy can target another unit owned by another civ and cause it to change allegience and become owned by the spy's player. There could be a gold cost and maybe some diplo change with the civ that loses the unit.

Looking forward to see what you come up with, spys have needed some tweaking. :)

Sabotage Production is already there though... you blow up the current work and they have to start all over again.

Btw, turning units... so retro ;) Civ2 baby!

Ok just as a reminder Spies ALREADY HAVE the following Abilities :rolleyes:

Sabotage - Destroys an Improvment
Destroy - Destroys Progress of a Cities current build, this can be Projects, Wonders, Units or Buildings (I find this to be the most usefull ability as it can block a player from achiving SpaceRace victory)
Steal Plans - Reveals all military units owned by the victim

I guess I should take this as a sign of how un-used spies are


On the subject of turning Units, I like this idea but what about stacks? I'm thinking that the turned unit should be moved to an adjacent tile, but how to desided which one. Perhaps it should be moved to the closest tile under your cultural control. This has the added effect of preventing you from being in violoation of borders agreements. Its a bit like the unit Defects to your side rather then being bribed.

Yea, Civ2 was such a sweet game. :D

As for the sabatoge, I was thinking it would be nice to have a less devestating version of the vanilla mission. It would be cheaper and more likely to succeed then the total destruction version. :)

As for the sabatoge, I was thinking it would be nice to have a less devestating version of the vanilla mission. It would be cheaper and more likely to succeed then the total destruction version. :)

I dunno... by the late game, everything's getting built so fast anyway. It's usually not much of a loss.

That is true, but that is only a problem in vanilla because there is only the one late era spy unit. But I tend to spread a mission here and there to earlyer units and somtimes even make an early spy unit or two. But my main point with the mission isn't to destroy the production, quite the opposite. Most, if not all, the production should still be there, the city should just be delayed 1 turn in its building. The main idea being a mission you could use against cities building wonders, just to give you that extra turn or two to complete it first. Perhaps a better name for the mission would be "Delay Production". :)

Steal tech would be good, but I'd argue a strong case for the spy not being able to steal full techs each time it's successful, as this would be overpowered. Instead, like the tech conquest mod, maybe only small amounts of tech would be stolen each turn the spy is successful? Kind of like the spy filtering information back.

Likewise, in the same fashion, you could have a spy steal gold, culture, science or GP points from a city it's stationed in. Other spies should be able to see spies and have a chance to remove them causing a diplomatic penalty of course.

Other than just the sabotaging of a resource, what about a spy having a chance to steal it each turn it's stationed on top of a resource? Like above this should be counterable.

The defecting of units is an interesting idea, but any unit defecting in such a manner should be removed to within your cultural borders.

Obviously for all final implementations, the AI should be able to effectively use spies in the manner(s) intended. If the AI can't use it, it shouldn't go in.

I agree... Steal Tech is a fine idea.

The Assassination idea is good too, with taking out Specialists in a city.

Destroying buildings in a city is also a good idea.

Incite a Revolt is a good idea. Perhaps even go so far as have the city switch Civ's if the city is bad shape to begin with.

']
On the subject of turning Units, I like this idea but what about stacks? I'm thinking that the turned unit should be moved to an adjacent tile, but how to desided which one. Perhaps it should be moved to the closest tile under your cultural control. This has the added effect of preventing you from being in violoation of borders agreements. Its a bit like the unit Defects to your side rather then being bribed.

Do like Civ2... you can't turn a stack, only a single unit. Stacks provide ideological reinforcement and peer pressure not to rebel :D

I'm not thinking of turning a whole stack, I'm refering to the problem of selecting which unit to target (which was the underlying reason every prior Civ game prevented Stacks from being bribed). By their very nature the units in a Stack will reduce the Spies chance of success vs a Lone Unit, My thoughts were a popup similar to the GreatGeneral unit "Choose Unit to lead" selection list would be generated and you can choose a target from it. Cost would be assesed per hammer of unit cost + a per point of experience cost. Both would be easily modified GlobalDefines. If successfull the unit is imediatly ejected from the victims territory like when you declare war or cancel open borders.

']I'm not thinking of turning a whole stack, I'm refering to the problem of selecting which unit to target (which was the underlying reason every prior Civ game prevented Stacks from being bribed). By their very nature the units in a Stack will reduce the Spies chance of success vs a Lone Unit, My thoughts were a popup similar to the GreatGeneral unit "Choose Unit to lead" selection list would be generated and you can choose a target from it. Cost would be assesed per hammer of unit cost + a per point of experience cost. Both would be easily modified GlobalDefines. If successfull the unit is imediatly ejected from the victims territory like when you declare war or cancel open borders.

That sounds like a resonable course of action, selection popups are good way to go, it makes the player feel like they are in control. Will the AI know which Civ turned its unit? And if yes, will that cause a negative diplo mark with them? I think the best would be if there was some GlobalDefine variable that lets you control the chance the civ knows who turned their unit. This chance would also aply to the human, so you may not know which civ turned your units. :)

How about this: Being able to turn your spy into a negative specialist. This does two things, first it gives you vison of the city and surrounding area, second it adds a specialist that detracts two hammers and two gold from your enemies city. The specialist can be removed by another spy.

It's purpose is not to acctually destroy the enemy production, but to distract enemy spies from a larger project, say that your enemy has a spy in it's space race cities, you use this one to distract them long enough to attack the project.

implicate other civ: lower diplomatic relations between that civ and (random?) another civ.

Giving my own thoughts, some of them already mentioned but with different effects or names:

Culture War: Knocks off small amount of Culture based off difference between total culture of both civs as well as total culture in the city.

Industrial Sabotage: Temporarily decreases health and lowers production.

Industrial Espionage: Siphons a small number of tech points for a random tech unresearched by the spying civ but known to the target civ each turn the spy remains in the city.

Sabotage Monument: Destroys one culture-producing building and an amount of small amount of culture (varying directly by what the building produced). Target civ "recoups" a small amount of cost in gold.

Legislative Sabotage: Stops all progress on current project for a small number of turns (project can still be changed or bought).

Sabotage Project (currently just Sabotage): Destroy 1/2 of progress on current project.

Bribe Officials: Diplomatic bonus with civ; target civ gets a small "cut" of the bribe.

Propaganda: Diplomatic malus between target civ and random third civ that spying civ has a poor relationship with.

Criminal Contacts: Siphons a small amount of gold each turn to the spying civ.

Black Market: Spying civ receives access to a random resource of target civ, temporarily, with a preference for strategic resources (think Uranium).

Smuggle Narcotics: Decreases health in target city, Spying civ receives small "cut" of profits in return (with the potential to make a net profit, say a 5% chance).

Plant Mole: Target unit gains "Suspicious" promotion, and provides line of sight for the spying civ so long as the original spy lives.

Terrorism-- not sure if these require a seperate unit or not, but would all definitely need some sort of diplomatic penalty (and/or War Weariness) if the originating civ is made known. It is also questionable whether or not some of the above Sabotage missions need a big penalty or not, or whether some of the below shouldn't get as big a penalty.

Chemical Bomb (Terrorism): May destroy a building, may remove 1 population, small temporary health penalty.

Biological Attack (Terrorism): Large temporary health penalty, may remove 1 population.

Arm Insurgents (Terrorism, must have at least 1 :mad: in excess of :) ): City acts as if it has undergone a riot on behalf of the spying civ, damaging units and temporarily halting production.

Assassination (Terrorism): Temporary happiness penalty, removes one permanent specialist.

Smuggle Nuclear Device (Terrorism): City acts as if it has experienced a Meltdown.

As for 'buying' units: I don't care for the idea, and I don't really think there's a good way to implement it. At best, I think it should be possible to cause a unit to disband if it isn't in a stack, but not defect to your side, and it should cost a great deal (exponentially higher for more experienced units) to try to pull it off.

I have a few requests, that could be stubbed off to my next two projects..

1) Chemiclal Attack (Causes high collat/damage on units, and unhealthy/unrest in a city)

2) Nuke... Obvious

3) Kill Special_Unit_XXXXX this is for a regicide I allready have coded.

Hmmm, interesting ideas here ;). My thought would be-above anything else-to have spies appear earlier in the game (still national units, though), and have them gain XP for successful missions-so that you can specialise your spies. This way, Scotland yard and other buildings can give bonus XP to newly created spies.

Being able to sabotage and/or bribe a unit would be fantastic. So would assassinations to 'kill off' specialists (other player could always generate a new specialist, but at the cost of another worked square).
I would like a 'Terrorist' mission which grants a +1 :mad: and a +1 Sickness to the targetted city.
I also really like the 'negative specialist' idea. Perhaps the controlling player can decide what type of 'negative Specialist' they want that spy to be-and this determines what they syphon off. For instance:

Saboteur (opposite of Engineer).
Smuggler (opposite of Merchant).
Radical/Iconoclast (opposite of Artist).
Sectarian (Opposite of Priest).
Criminal (Opposite of Citizen).

Additionally, for a higher risk, the player can try and make the spy into some type of 'anti-super specialist'-in much the same way as above (I confess that this idea borrows heavily on RogerBacons excellent BadPeople Mod!).

The ability to force a revolution would be pretty cool-though its chance of success should be low-but with success causing a change of a single civic-with a resultant period of anarchy (even if spiritual!).

Obviously, an ability to detect and remove spies is essential-particularly if they are made more powerful, and certain units should be able to 'see spies' if in LOS.

When I have finally gotten around to phase 4 of my civics mod (where ideologies serve a similar function to religions), I would be very happy to see a 'missionary-style' ability added to the spy which will allow them to spread an ideology and/or remove an existing ideology from a city.

Anyway, this is great brainstorming guys, and I look forward to the final product Impaler :).

Aussie_Lurker.

The ability to force a revolution would be pretty cool-though its chance of success should be low-but with success causing a change of a single civic-with a resultant period of anarchy (even if spiritual!).

Interesting point... I hadn't heard anybody pushing for this kind of revolution... I think ultimately this will all make for an interesting merger with jdog's Revolution mod.

Because you could avoid a city-flipping spy that kind of leaves a bad taste to me and instead have a spy that merely incites and arms rebels to start popping up around a city...

When I have finally gotten around to phase 4 of my civics mod (where ideologies serve a similar function to religions), I would be very happy to see a 'missionary-style' ability added to the spy which will allow them to spread an ideology and/or remove an existing ideology from a city.

This goes back again to the idea of revolution... there are, of course, lots of different kinds of revolutions led by different people for different reasons. It would be interesting if introducing new ideologies would cause the people to demand certain civics of their leaders...[/QUOTE]

All new missions are going to be given by XML booleans just as current missions are so it will be possible to create an array of Spy type units throughout the game with various combinations of missions that can be performed. In addition their are seperate flags for <bCounterSpy> which is what allows a spy to foil the mission of another spy, this could easily be given to other units (like thouse RiotPolice by White Rabbit) to help defend against spies (note that this is seperate from revealing spies so its a "blind" defence).

I too would realy like to see spies uses through the whole game. The earliest "spy" could be avalible a Writing and have only the <bInvestigate> flag which allows you see the City Screen. These guys would be called "Embasadors", their neither invisible nor able to go into enemy territory. Through the course of the game you get access to 4-5 additional types of Spies along a linear upgrade chain that ultimatly culminates at "Secret Agent" at or near the end of the tech tree. Each sucessive spy has more abilities then the last and retains all the abilities of its prepesesors (so upgrades are a no brainer). All that said its going to be done in XML and I'm working purely on the SDK Mission effects at this point so try to remain focused on the idividual mission effects, what the mission dose, what the nessary pre-requisites are ect ect. Cost and chance of being caught are going to be done with Global Defines so these questions/debates are also superflous at this point unless their good reason to change the mechanics.

Here are some details on the mechanics of the current effects

Theft - Currently this costs a flat fee and steals a percent of their total gold varrying from zero to twice the value of another defined percent. The victim must have more gold then the cost of the mission. Theirs lots of potential for this to be altered, say perhaps the mission fee is based on the victims reserves or their are extra modifiers based on the City being robed.

Espionage - When successfull a randomTechnology is chossen which meets the following criteria, The victim has it and you dont OR they have a greater % of Research completed on it then you (remember raw costs for the AI are lower then yours on high difficulty). You then reseve a quantity of points based on a % of the total cost of the Tech (and this is capped by the total % researched by the oponent so you can not exceed their research). The Percent stolen is determined by adding together a base Define value, a perunit of City Population Define and the Cities ResearchCommerceModifier (So Acadamies are good targets for Espionage). This is similar to the calculation performed in the TechConquest mod by Lopez from which I lifted much of the Algorithm, though ofcorse its in C++ rather then Python.

Assasination - Simply selects one random greatPerson settled into a city (not regular specialists or specialists being awarded as part of a wonder) and kills it.

Insurection - This can only be performed in a City not already in revolt ware the Owner is not culturaly dominant (but theirs no requirment that YOUR culture be in the city) . Thus their is some chance of a revolt in the City. When successfull the revolt occurs just as if it had happened by chance with all of the resulting effects of damaged defenders and a chance of flipping. This can be very usefull if cordinated with a military strike or to just plain hasten the flipping of a city.

Some of the ideas I've liked so far

Unit Flipping - obviously
Induce a turn of Anarchy - nice idea, simple to implement
Add temporary :mad: to the city - also should be simple to do
Destroy an Existing building - this could be random or use a selection list
Mess with Culture - perhaps remove it/change it
Frame another Civ - generates the "your spy was caught" effect but with a 3rd civ getting the hit, I think you should be able to pick who you frame
Poisoning - probably just kills 1 pop as a temporary health penalty is more complex to code
Black Market - nice idea, probably you get the resorce for a limited time and it can only be an avalible extra resorce (so you cant for example deprive them of their only Iron). This will be complex to do as deals involve a lot of code.

As for ideas on settling the Spy as a bad specialist, first theirs no reason this cant already be done along the same lines as the Ronalds badSpecialist Mod and its a wholey XML based mod. That said I'm concerned at a National Unit like a spy could be constantly built and settled ad infinitum and if their only giving some Commerce or Yield bonuses thats rather boring. The only legitimate use would in my opinion be as a "Mole" with the effect of making other spy missions more sucessfull on the City. I've already layed down a new City datamember for Spy Defence which will be affected by Buildings and probably also Civics (can you say REAL Police State). For one ScotlandYard will change to being +100% Spy Defence effectivly making 1 city in your Empire almost impregnable to spies. It is alfter all a local Police district which has nothing to do with forign inteligence operations (and its a stretch to give it a Counter-Inteligence function as thats realy the perogotive of MI-5).

I like the idea of Spies earning experience, they would obviosly do so for each successfull mission probably based on how risky the mission was. A new line of Promotions would be needed ofcourse. Besides generic stuff like Combat promotions to help them in Spy-vs-Spy fights and Sentry promotions the main thrust would be towards incressing their spy Success Modifier which incresses the chance of mission success on all types of missions. So for example if Spy would normaly have an 80% change of success but they have a +10% modifier the chance is instead 88%. Note that I'll be caping success at 95-99% so theirs always some small chance of being caught.

Sorry about that, Impaler, I confess that I didn't really explain my idea clearly enough-my bad :mischief:. Obviously an ability to place these units 'ad-infinitum' would be poor for game balance-so there would need to be some kind of limitations in place-both in terms of low success rate and/or good chance of removal of said 'anti-specialists' from a city.
However, I think you are underestimating the potential benefits of such anti-specialists. They can be a good way for players to undermine their opponents in a way which does not necessarily require constant supervision. The Saboteur and Criminal slowly drains a city of its hammers-thus slowing down that civs pursuit of a goal like The Manhatten Project, UN or Spaceship. The Racketeer/Smuggler slowly drains the city of cash which would otherwise go towards research, troop/city maintainance or rushing buildings/units/wonders. Think of it like the slow loss of air from a tyre. Sure it doesn't do much at first-but eventually it will bring the whole car to a halt!

Aussie_Lurker.

Hmmm, I always liked the way in SMAC that once you 'infiltrated' another city you got full access to its city screen for the rest of the game. Maybe some sort of 'establish spy network' action which consumed the spy could be used to give you a permanent presence in a particular city.

I think some way of disrupting relations between 2 civs would be a fantastic addition, and open up another level of strategy. Should probably only be performed in a civs capital and have fairly short term effects to avoid abuse.

Obviously some way of adding unhappy citizens to a city, and disrupting research progress, would enhance the usefulness of spies. I also think, but this might be wildly ambitious, that it would be fantastic to have some sort of indication of an AI's future plans. Some sort of calculations must go on to determine who an AI is planning to attack, and to build up their forces. I wonder if there's any way to 'tap into' these calculations as a read out for the player e.g. 'Our spy reports Montezuma is planning an offensive against Greece. He plans to strike against Athens.'

Yeah, I definitly would love to see these ideas go into a mod. Spys play big roles in all conflicts. I believe the spys in Civ4 weren't as good as they could be.

G'luck :)

Yeah, and they should definitely be present much earlier as has been said... of course though, their true potential should take much longer to be revealed.. their functionality should increase over time and more and more missions (and promotions?) should become available through technological developments.

But the first spies should come around even back in the Classical Era although they'd have not much more ability than maybe assassination and spying itself. The acts of sabotage and destruction of buildings should come later.

I could see 3 spy "eras", the first with Monarchy giving access to a simple invisible unit, perhaps with 1 or 2 non-aggressive missions, the second with Nationalism, allowing more unit actions but still maintaining an "espionage and subterfuge" mission theme, with a third at Communism, where things start to heat up with acts of sabotage and assassination. Later techs would unlock the additional unit actions (like planting nuclear devices).

I think for any action where a "permanent" effect is created from a spy (anti-specialists, moles, city moles, etc) should either have a maintenance cost, or a very high initial cost in gold (and very cheap or free for a counter-spy to remove once discovered).

Well, assassination is a very old tactic, but much more common within a court or society as a byproduct of internal power struggles... Obviously when it goes international, it becomes much more difficult to pull off since you have to find an assassin who can blend in seamlessly with the people who surround the target as well as gain access to them (it's a lot easier obviously if you're planning your own palace coup since you're already inside).

And specialists, while important as a whole, are not THAT important individually... and a dead specialist can at least be replaced... so I'm a bit torn here both in terms of game balance and history whether or not assassination should be possible relatively early on.

Perhaps Assassinations should apply only to Great People-either as Units or as Great Specialists. Then you could get a situation where you recieve a message like "Thespis has been murdered by agents of Empires Unknown"
As for fitting others up to take the blame for your espionage activities-perhaps this can act as a 'false flag' promotion. So, if you either catch a spy in the act OR bring in a unit which can see/thwart spy actions, then you will see the flag of another nation (but only one you are actually in contact with).

Aussie_Lurker.

As I stated earlier Assasinations as I'm coding them now will just kill super-specialists (which i'm going to define at the code level as any specialist which has a values of 0 for the <iGreatPeopleRateChange> tag in XML). Theirs no point in "killing" regular specialists like priests and engineers as thats just equivilent to the "poison well" mission that reduces the cities population by 1.

Colin: good idea on Disrupt Research, I'll add that to the candidate list, I'll also look into the military planning thing, I think the AI dose make "How" type plans but dose not plan for specific cities (thouse desisions are made by the units at the time they move, part of the reason their so incompetent). I think this knowlage should be revealed by the StealPlans mission probably as a little message displayed on the screen when your sucessfull.

Here is another consideration, Impaler. Do you think that the amount of info freely available about your opponents should be curtailed? At the moment I feel like too much information is readily available-at the click of a button. For instance: city sizes, resource availability, diplomatic relations and military strength. Up-to-date info regarding a city should be solely the province of having a trade route with the city and/or having the Holy City of a religion inside that city-even then such info should be greatly limited. Foreign Diplomatic Relations, Resource and Tech access and Military Strength should-at best-require an embassy in the capital, and even then you should not get specific details (i.e. you know the Spanish have contact with France, but do not know how cozy a relationship it is). This automatically makes spies more valuable, as they can have missions like 'Reveal Trade Network', 'Reveal Tech Base', 'Reveal Military Strength' and 'Reveal Trade Relations'. All such missions would be restricted to the Capital city, and would also serve as necessary precursors to sabotaging any-or all-of the above.
What do you think, Impaler? Do any of those ideas interest you?
Oh, O/T, just wanted to say a big THANKYOU for your help regarding the StateReligionYieldRateModifier code-it is now working like a charm. You are a LEGEND :)!

Aussie_Lurker.

Yes, it absolutely should be just limited to Great Specialists... killing regular specialists would just be pointless.

I have a few that I think would be cool.

2) Sabotage Production - This would not allow anything to be built in the effected city that turn. Other then that, you could lose the hammers gotten that turn or they could be carried over to the next turn. Or if you want to be a little more realistic they could lose some of the hammers already put into the thing being built.

3) Steal Plans - Again, this is from a previous Civ. It shows you the location of all the target civ's units. Alternitively, it could only show the units within a certain range of the targeted city.

Looking forward to see what you come up with, spys have needed some tweaking. :)

DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN PLAY THIS GAME

DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN PLAY THIS GAME

Yea, I've played a game or two. :rolleyes:

I think the fact that many of us aren't aware of a Spies current full range of abilities owes less to how often we have played the game, and more to how pathetic the espionage side of the game actually is at present (which, in turn, is tied to the Modern Age Malaise which has been previously identified).

Aussie_Lurker.

I actually only use Spies to fail missions and goad the AI into declaring war on me so I don't take that hit to my diplomatic stats with their friends... Of course, even with -12 diplomatic standing, the AI has trouble declaring war on a civ that's twice its size, with three times as large a military that's several generations ahead of them technologically.

I was just thinking, actually, that it might be good to have both a 'passive' and 'active' form of 'Spark Incident'. The passive form would be the changed flag mission I mentioned above-which would largely only work if you got 'caught in the act'. The active form, though, might work as an adjunct to an existing mission, wherby you deliberately leave 'trace evidence' of an attack, which will implicate another nation in your crime-even if you get off scot-free. What do you think?

Aussie_Lurker.

That reminds me a bit of Master of Orion, when you rolled a perfect 100 or something on your spy missions you would get a "framing oportunity" which would give you a list of who to frame. Is this along the lines of what you were thinking?

Personaly I find this random bonus to be clunky, its also a bit silly. In RL you set out to frame someone from the begining and it takes a LOT of planning, infact the whole mission would be to do JUST the framing and nothing else, its not just some kind of oportunity that suddenly presents itself. Also I think that if its an explicit framing mission it gives the player more strategic choices. And once you have the explicity framing mission then random bonuses become unessary and a waste of time, the player cant PLAN for them and probly wont even want it when it happens.

Aussie: You have some good points but I think you underestimate the ability of anchient people to estimate these things to the point that the abstractions used in Civilization are meaningfull. Armies are big hard to hide things and information on such basic things as the size of a city and the avalibility of strategic resorces was readily avalible by word of mouth for thousands of years. Admitedly reducing this free information might make spies more interesting but I dont feel that the current level of free information is excessive or unrealistic. A more interesting option would in my opinion would be the ability to plant FALSE information ala Churchills bodyguard of lies. Unfortunatly this is beyond the scope of my current plans and would probably screw the AI very badly.

Dom: You can also make lots of unreasonable demands, I ALWAY demand all their money before declaring war, most of the time they actualy give it to me too. Its makes it a lot easier to crush their un-upgraded units.

']I ALWAY demand all their money before declaring war, most of the time they actualy give it to me too.

You mean you can declare war without demanding all their gold and maybe a tech!?! :P

But seriously, I like the Unit Turning idea and the Frame Civ mission the best. The turn unit bribe cost should take the number of promotions the bribey has, more promotions = it wants more money. Just something that popped to mind that would be simple get and use as a modifier, thought I would mention it. :)

Ahhh how I miss Moo2..... Moo3 was a joke...
Moo2 now that was a game!

Dont forget counter spy experience...
and im all for early spy's...

Impaler, yes, I do that as well... but I also get to use the Spies then :p

Wasn't there a way in Civ2 (I think it was Civ2) that allowed you to implicate another civ when doing a spy operation? Or maybe I just made that up...

Yeah I for one don't want any kind of 'Random Factor' for implicating another nation-that would be too corny for words IMHO. No, what I was thinking was to have 2 possiblilities. One was passive, and simply involved your spy having a 'false flag' just in case it gets caught (of course, the false flag shouldn't work automatically). The second was an active thing where you perhaps select the 'Spark Incident' mission first, then follow up with a second-normal-mission. The Spark Incident mission would reduce the success chance of the normal mission and-if it fails-will cause a drop in relations with BOTH nations. If it works, though, then the nation on the recieving end will be informed that a spy of "implicated nation" has commited an act against them. Of course, this would only work if players were occasionally able to TELL who commited acts against them. Hope that makes sense.

Aussie_Lurker.

I was thinking about it... having the same religion and the percentage of your civilization's culture in the target city ought to improve the chances of success and cost... basically it would be the citizens of the town providing assistance to your spy.

Could be useful if a city is captured or if one of theirs is heavily influenced by your culture and is teetering on the brink of joining you.

I like that idea, state religion presense and Culture should make it easier for a spy to find sympathetic partisans with whom he can get inteligence and safe havens. Fortunatly I have already centralized all spy succes probability calculations to one function so It wil be easy to add these in. I'm thinking 2 additional GlobalDefine values a "STATE_RELIGION_SPY_SUCCESS_BONUS" which just adds a flat X % to the success equation and "CULTURE_SPY_SUCCESS_BONUS" which is multiplied by your culture (or maybe all culture not belonging to the owner) and added to your success probability.

I'm currently finishing up the AI that will hopefully get the AI to use the new spy abilities.

Why are good ideas only located in the cccp?

I would like to have the choice to download only the affected files for implementing them into my/our mod's sdk.

Not against you, but in my case I just don't want to add the whole cccp stuff to my/our mod's dll.

Maybe in future I'll change my opinion. But at the moment I'd like to get only the affected code.

Will this be possible?

Further to my post above regarding implicating other civs for your crimes. This is what I had in mind regarding Success/Failure of Spy missions in general.

At one of the scale, you have a 'catastrophic failure'-not only does your spy fail in his/her mission, but they get caught in the act too (this is where the 'false flag' would potentially come into effect).

Next you have a straight failure, where for some reason the spy does not achieve the assigned mission, but gets away scot free.

Third you would have what I might describe as a 'marginal success'. Your Spy succeeds, but either the spy is captured OR the victim is simply aware of which nation perpetrated the act.

Finally, you have the missions which simply succeed without the victim ever knowing who commited the act.

Now, the potential victim having lots of spies inside targetted cities would significantly increase the change of a spy being caught and/or determining which nation actually committed the deed. However, a well promoted spy should have the chance of successfully leaving behind 'evidence' of a 3rd nation being involved, as I noted above.
Anyway, I acknowledge that this may be beyond the scope of the games code, but I offer the idea up for consideration anyway.

Aussie_Lurker.

Caesium: Their are two main reasons why I release all my code as a single unified code dump. First, its my ultimate goal/highest priority to produce such a Dll for hopefully universal usage. Second, I'm just too lazy to do the Lopez style release of altered files only. But I do have a strong system of taging all alterations related to a mod so they can be easily searched for. For example the spy mod material can be found searching for "Additional Spy Missions" their are new functions spread across several files but its all kept in blocks at the bottom of each file so when using a Diff program the number of diffs is kept to a minimum. I hope your able to extract the code your interested in.

Aussie: I like the system your proposing in which the achivment of the Mission goal is esentialy independent of the Spys being caught or not, I might try to alter it to be like that someday. But for the time being the Firaxis code links these things in an if/else kind of way. If a spy rolls high enough the Mission effect is executed, if not then the Surrender Mission is performed. I've just added another layer of branching inwhich a spy who is otherwise caught can make a "Suicide" roll to bite the cynide capsule, if successfull then they die WITHOUT revealing their identity to the Victim nation and you suffer no diplomatic penalty. I'll incorporate this as a Unit stat and probably a promotion as well.

Incase your wondering the first version is avalible, use CCCP 2.00.06 and the spy Mission add on to play with the new spy missions. Version .07 will feature more refinments like Promotions and hopfully some balance on the current mission values of cost/risk but no new missions just yet.

If you're still taking submissions, then I would add "Frame another nation". You do this before your next spy action, in a city, and then if you nuke it or something and the spy isn't caught, then the nation you framed is blamed by the target, instead of you. On the other hand, if you attempt to frame another nation and fail, that nation, and the nation you were doing the framing in will both be angry with you. Edit: You should also be able to do this to your own nation to shorten your next revolution, like with the Reichstag fire.

Well, as it happens, I have been refining my thoughts on this issue-in a way which might 'get around' the if/else problem. Here is my thought:

When a spy performs a mission, they either succeed or fail-without revealing their presence either way.

However, a potential victims own spies could have a mission such as 'Counter-Intelligence' and 'Capture Enemy Spy' missions. If they succeed, then they either reveal the perpetrator of a spy-mission (whether it succeeded or failed) or even capture a spy (again, succeed or fail). However, if it is possible, the chance of these missions succeeding could depend on whether the original mission succeeded or failed. This might encourage players to build their own spies simply to counter the espionage activities of other nations!

Hope that makes sense.

Aussie_Lurker.

Spies already have the ability to act in a defensive mannor, each Spy in on adjacent to a spy trying to perform a mission decresses its chance of success, normal units also decresses the success chance but not as much.

By giving a SpyDefense value to buildings the player will have an alternative means of protecting themselves. ScotlandYard will be modified to be something of a HunterKiller Algorithm (from SMAC) but just affecting one city. That city will be virtualy spy proof and a good place to build stuff you dont want to losse to a spy.

I confess I did not know that Impaler. Still, I guess what I am suggesting is to make it more 'systematic'. So a successful spy has a better chance of escape than a failed spy, and that spies can reveal the perpetrator of a terrorist act even if they don't capture the spy.

Aussie_Lurker.

Well, what I'm not terribly clear on is why Scotland Yard even provides Spies anyway.... did I miss something here? I just thought they were London police... if anything it should produce Bobbies.

I think that it should have a spydefense bonus for the city its in, but I think that Spies should be produced by a CIA/SIS type national wonder.. and that one could give a small spy defense bonus to each city.

Aussie: Lets see the out come can be expressed as the answer to 3 boolean questions...

1- Spy successfully performs mission or not
2- Victim Civ is aware of who did it or not
3- Spy lives or dies

So their are 2^3 = 8 possible outcomes all of which should have a chance of occurring.

If I'm getting it right the psudo code would go something like

if (spy wins mission success roll)
...Mission performed()

if (spy fails detection roll)
...InformVictimofSpiesNationalityandApplyDiplopena lty()


if (spy fails escape roll)
{
...if (spy fails Suicide roll)
...{
......InformVictimofSpiesNationalityandApplyDiplop enalty() // if not already done
...}
...SpyDies()
}


Contrast that with Firaxis original code

if (spy fails Mission roll)
{
...InformVictimofSpiesNationalityandApplyDiplopena lty()
...SpyDies()
}
else
{
Mission performed()
}


I like the fact that their are more possible outcomes under the former psudocode but its got a lot more random rolls and thus more data that the player needs to de presented with which is my main concern. The original codes single Mission Roll is nice and simple for both the player and the AI. I feel comfortable adding a second Suicide roll in their as its a relitivly simple and easy to grasp concept. A thirds roll is strarting to realy stretch things. I like the ideas fundamentaly and will keep brainstorming on it, as for now I'll be working on new missions and such with an eye towards possible changes in the future.

I understand your concerns, but I definitely think that adding an extra layer of 'uncertainty' to espionage will make for a better game overall. Part of what makes espionage so boring-at present-is the rather boolean way in which it is implemented. I want the thrill of 'oh boy, the mission failed but at least my spy got away undetected (or did it??)', not simply a 'oh it worked' or 'oh it failed'. It also then opens up the opportunity to 'feed false information' in the way I described above.

Aussie_Lurker.

Aussie: I LIKE the fram another civ idea, I WILL be implmenting it, BUT itI've already desided that Framing WILL NOT BE A TACKED ON DESISION TO A STANDARD SPY MISSION. It will be a Mission soley in and of itself because this is much simpler to code, better game play in my opinion, more realistic and easier for the player to understand and use (imagine the UI mess from having to select which country if any your going to try framing for a mission before every single mission). Frame missions when successfull will simply produce a "You cuaght and interogated a [nationality] spy" for the Victim civ and give a diplo penalty between the two you choose the nationality (which must be know to you and the victim) that is blamed. Forget about the "Spark Insident" double layered mission concept its DOA for me, sorry. I'm still interested in expanding the boolean nature of mission success as you call it but Framing wont enter into the equation of why or how that happens.

So, let me see if I understand it. If you attempt the 'Implicate Nation' mission, then the spy is automatically caught and interrogated by the victim, and it makes it look like said spy was 'caught in the act' of another mission, in the name of the 3rd party. Is that correct? That on its own would be great, and a huge improvement on the existing system-but it would still be nice to have the spy able to get away after he implicated the other nation, and have a victim be able to determine the source of a spy mission-even if the spy got away. Does that make sense? Otherwise people might avoid the mission altogether-especially if we allow spies to have lots of promotions and stuff. I do understand why you don't want it tacked onto another mission type, and it seems as though you are definitely considering the guts of my suggestion-as it were.
Anyway, please don't see this as a criticism of your work-you have excellent ideas and you are an excellent modder. I am certain that whatever you produce will be of the highest calibre-I just wanted to throw my ideas into the ring for consideration ;).

Aussie_Lurker.

Not quite like that. The spy Isn't caught, some "scap goat" is fabricated by your spy given incriminating paper linking him with a 3rd party civ and is then shoot in the back of the head by your spy and found by the victim civ causing a loss of diplomatic relations between the victim and the 3rd civ. Your spy gets away scott free as in all successfull missions.

As per the current system your Spy can not both succed in the Mission AND be revealed, in the context of a framing mission if the victim civ realizes that you were framing someone else then you have failed at the mission so that paradox is avoided.

Please do try out the initial version and give me your feed back on the various Global Defines for the 4 initial missions, thats my #1 feed back need right now.

Here is my current next list of Mission ideas and effects for the next batch of missions, I want to get a wide range of effects that give the player ample means by which to compromise/damage an oponent. Many missions that people mentioned were not included because of their controversial nature or because they sounded more complex/difficult then they were worth. Condition lists the pre-requisites for the spy to be able to perform the mission.

Propaganda:
Condition: ??
Effect: Incresses the victims War Weariness factor with your civ

Poison Well:
Condition: City Size?
Effect: Kills 1 pop

Frame:
Condition: select a 3rd Civ know to both you and the victim
Effect: produces a false "spy caught" and worsense relations

Coup d'état:
Condition: victim is not in Anarchy, spy is in a Goverment center
Effect: victim civ gets 1 turn of Anarchy

Insurgency:
Condition: spy is in an unocupied enemy plot whom your at war with which contains any amount of forign culture
Effect: generates a free insurgent unit under your control, success depends on forign culture level

Demolition:
Condition: city has a building in it
Effect: Randomly destroys a City Building

Demoralize:
Condition: In a square with an enemy unit, outside of its own territory
Effect: The unit is disbanded

Assasinate:
Condition: perment specialist in city
Effect: removes a random perment specialist

Agitate:
Condition: ??
Effect: Temporary unhappiness

I'm curious, Impaler, which ones did you consider too controversial? When you think about it, you could see 'Agitate' as a form of 'Terrorist Attack'-at least it pretty much has the same effect as I would have expected. Other than that, this is a very extensive list. I take it that research theft, sabotage, destroy production and steal plans are still gonna be on the list (actually, how hard would it be to have a 'destroy food supply' mission?)
The next question then has to be-when should spies (or their progenitors) be available, and what techs should enable the various mission types mentioned. I mean, some seem obvious-like destroying an existing building should require at least chemistry (think grenadiers), wheras destroying production should only require Construction. Stealing plans, maps or research should require a minimum of either alphabet or writing, and assassination should require bronze or iron working. Insurgency should require Nationalism and Coup d'etat should require something like Monarchy or Divine Right (or Communism if you feel like putting it back a bit). Propaganda should require Printing Press and Poison Well should require something like medicine or the like (though this is probably too far back for my liking).
Oh, one last thing, would it be possible to make 'Poison Water Supply' only cost temporary health (maybe 1 or 2)? Just curious.
Anyway, this looks like a great list Impaler, I look forward to trying out the finished product :).

Aussie_Lurker.

Troops stationed in a city where the well is poisoned should lose health.
Propaganda in your own cities should let you reduce war weariness.
Framing another nation in a plot against your civ should make your friends angry with that civ (-1 modifier). Likewise, in any framing, or failed spy mission, the friends of the targeted civ should be angry with the civ who was doing the spying (or got framed doing it), with possible exceptions for recon-only missions. Setting off a suitcase nuke should be -2 (assuming you have that).

Here's a couple of new spy missions to consider:

Kidnap/rescue: takes great people out of a country. This would either take great specialists, great people, or both, depending on if there's difficulty coding that or not. This would be like what happened when Niels Bohr escaped Germany (just you'd be rescuing him, instead of him escaping by himself), or like when Kim Jong Il kidnapped that South Korean actress. It would delete that unit and create a new great person for you of the same type (and preferably same name) in your capital.

Plant informer: Gives you LOS on a city, like if it had your state religion.

Investigate: Gives you a chance to spot informers and spies. Can be used to investigate an area where a spy did something, since the spy will still be there. If you lose a mine or something, you can send a spy to investigate the area and hopefully spot the spy that did it. If you succeed, the spy dies. It will also remove informers if it identifies them. You'll be notified of the nationality of any spies or informers that you spot.

The original 3 missions (Sabotage, Destroy, Steal Plans) and the first 4 new missions (Espionage, Theft, Disrupt Research, Insurection) are still included. This is a list of additional missions which will bring the total to 16 missions.

Currently mission access in controled by an XML boolean onthe UnitInfo, their are no technology prerequisites for missions. Its up to the mod maker to deside when missions become avalible by desiding when the units with the mission ability can be built.

Wiping out all the food in the food acumulator bar sounds like a nice idea, call it "ruin grain" or something to that effect. I'll consider it.

']The original 3 missions (Sabotage, Destroy, Steal Plans) and the first 4 new missions (Espionage, Theft, Disrupt Research, Insurection) are still included. This is a list of additional missions which will bring the total to 16 missions.

I didn't notice the "disrupt research" mission until you mentioned it in another thread... great idea. Definitely will make spies more useful.. I'd definitely use it during war time to keep the enemy from getting a weapon that would put them on par with me... Won't stop them from trading for it of course.

Hey, can't say too much hear, but there is a rumour going around that Spy units might be out of the game by July next year.....

Aussie_Lurker

Out of the game?? How are they going to be out of the game when they're already in the game?

Any status updates on this?

Hey DPII. Look, I don't know anything more than I have already said-and I am guessing that my 'source' couldn't tell me anything more than they already did. Needless to say, though, that I do trust my 'source'-as he has been right on the money in the past.
That said, things might well change between now and next year but-if they don't-I suspect that the boring spies we got 'out of the box' may well be getting replaced with (I hope ;) ) something a lot more interesting and fun.

Aussie_Lurker.

Are we talking about an expansion pack? Or Civ5? Or is Firaxis going to raid everyone's house one night and remove the Spy from each of their computers?

Well duh :mischief:!!! It is clearly the final option, DPII :p. Firaxis will send its spy units into our homes to perform Impalers new 'Steal Technology' mission on our computers ;).
Seriously, though, I cannot really say anything more because I simply don't know much more than I have already said. Yet it is pretty safe to assume that there would be an expansion coming out in around 9-10 months time, given past experiences, wouldn't it? That is all I can say-sorry.

Aussie_Lurker.

It would be a very good idea for Firaxis to release a mod that adressed the Spy system, its been recognized sinse day one as the games "weakest link" in contrast to previous Civ games. Its also a flavor contrast to the first expantion which was focused on war, a second one focused on Espionage and Stealth would have be different enough to be readily destinguished by casual buyers that could be played up for better sales.

But given their previous patterns and my current plans and pace I'll have twice their content before their expantion goes gold, just like we moded in our own Great Generals before Firaxis made them (and I would argue the moded ones were more interesting in their abilites as they projected an "aura" that improved all units around them). We have something near the equivilent of a whole free expantion pack or two worth of content modification here with an exponentialy incressing rate of moding.

Hey Impaler, I totally agree with where you are coming from. I mean, if we had known about the introduction of Great Generals in Warlords months before the game's release, I still would have urged modders to bring out Great Generals for Vanilla civ (not that they would have needed such urgings :p )-if for no other reason that some people have still not purchased Warlords, and can thus make use of this modded in feature. Once again, kudos to you for taking on such a major project ;) :)!

Aussie_Lurker.

Any status updates on this?

After taking a brief hiatus for Civ4 modding I've desided I should atleast polish off a few of these half finished mods and see if I cant get Trip to incorporate them in the next Expantion pack which would just be awsome.

Cool... so what missions do you have planned for the Spys then?

I'm concentrating on the Modular Loading right now but do plan to come back to Spies in the future. The ideas I detailed several posts ago are still the ones planned.

another mission, bring back the bribe from CIV I.
(was a bit overpowered though--easy to get a massive army through gold)

BRIBE GENERAL----bribes enemy general of unit so that unit refuses orders for 5 turns (or if garrisoning a city, it moves away 1 tile). probably the same cost as a unit upgrade ~ 200 GP.

also MUTINY (basically sabotage a ship so it loses strength or flips randomally to some other civ, especially if it's a ship that transports units).

also borrowing Aussie_Lurker's idea
Saboteur (opposite of Engineer).
Smuggler (opposite of Merchant).
Radical/Iconoclast (opposite of Artist).
Sectarian (Opposite of Priest).
Criminal (Opposite of Citizen).

maybe apply something like this as a promotion system for Spies (although Sectarian wouldn't make much sense---perhaps it'd be Instigator) that affects what missions they get. The more risky missions they survive they get experience, and then promotions towards new mission abilities. And maybe a spies mission could be made less risky (suicidal) by giving them some money from treasury?

That'd also help balance spies so they aren't overpowering just by spamming them.

Here's another mission for ya...

If a city has a nuclear plant, allow a successful mission to cause a meltdown.