Okay, I mentioned this in the thread about the new BTS interview, but I felt the new espionage features in Beyond the Sword deserves its own thread. SO I wanted to start it and so I could see what everyone else's speculation is! :goodjob:

Okay, here is what Alex said in the interview:
Espionage has actually added a whole new dimension to the game. Its importance to your empire is now comparable to scientific research, culture, or income from taxes. This is because through the espionage slider you have the ability to divert part of your income towards espionage activities against other civilizations. Once you have reached certain thresholds of espionage investment, you start gaining some automatic intelligence benefits over rival civilizations.

You may also take a more aggressive approach to espionage, sending your spy units into foreign territory to gather further intelligence and to perform various missions of destruction and propaganda. Great Spies are born in your cities like Great Scientists or Great Prophets, and can perform the typical great person actions like settling in your city, starting a Golden Age, or building a unique building. In addition, Great Spies can infiltrate into enemy cities, giving you a significant advantage in espionage against that civilization.

Now I have several questions about this and am interested to see other people's thoughts on it.

1. How do you produce great spies? Through the espionage slider? Or do you generate them from successful spy operations similar to great generals?
2. Can spies gain experience points? That'd be awesome! :eek:
3. What type of buildings will great spies produce? What do great spies who settle in your city do?
4. "Great spies can infiltrate into enemy cities, giving you a significant advantage in espionage against that civilization." Haven't spies always been able to do this? How is it any different than what a normal spy can do? Or by "infiltrating into enemy cities," can they affect the infrastructure of the city, or affect the troops morale, or the cities' happiness/health?
5. What is the purpose of spreading propaganda with your spies? Do you affect the cities' happiness/health? Or are you inciting revolution? Influencing diplomacy? Forcing someone to change civics? I am really curious what spies will do with propaganda.
6. I am just curious about the espionage slider in general. What do you gain from it? Does it cause your opponents to leak research to you? How random is it?

So let's hear it! :cool:

I'm guessing the Espionage slider will work kinda like it does in GalCiv 2, although there you get a slider per enemy civ, so maybe not.

Well, maybe once the slider reaches a threshold, it creates a spy unit! It says that it gives automatic bonuses of other civs, so it probably wont do that, but hay.

Okay:

I would say that the Great Spy would be able to do the big 'unbalanced' things in the game that have been whittled down over the series like putting a city into revolt, nuking it, maybe gaining permanent access to the city (so the Great Spy would permanantly settle there and allow you to see what's going on inside the city), maybe make the city unhealthy too and possibly allow you to steal research (as opposed to tech). The Great Spy can also do the normal things (light bulb, etc), so I wont comment about that, other than asking what type of techs would it light bulb? I'll also say that I remember the Great General was stated early that it could also lightbulb and what not, but that was removed. Maybe the same thing will happen to the Great Spy. I also don't think the Great Spy will be able to build any special building either.

What the super specialist does has got me. I cannot think of anything that it could do except maybe producing more "espionage commerce" that adds to the sliders espionage income or something.

I think that maybe the spy units are as they are now and wont be changed (limited to 4 and only in late game and with their currently limited abilities). I think the slider is what will be relied on for espionage for most of the game. I think the Great Spy can only be achieved by completing spy missions with the spy unit and is thus only available in the late game.

As for the slider itself, I think it's just the same as GalCiv2, except the diverted income is used to generically increase your intellegence ability. Maybe it's diverted into another type of treasury which has another "espionage advisor" screen that allows you to allocate where the money goes and for whom it's to gain intellegence on. So it might have all the known leaders and you'd then just increase the amount of funding for a specific leader in order to increase the intellegence of that civ. Maybe you could even deficit spy aswell! It would be consistant with the way the game has been built, so I don't see why not. Would make it interesting too.

Also, counter spy systems would need to be more advanced too. I wonder how that will work?

It was said in one of the earliest messages about BtS that the spies will be available much earlier than they are now.

I'm guessing that something to do with settled great spies will be a reduction war-weariness, like spreading propaganda that settles your citizens down a bit.

I'd also like to see more abilities for normal spies, instead of just steal plans/destroy production. Maybe spreading propaganda to induce riots or poisoning a water supply to create unhealthiness (this was in Civ II, wasn't it? It's been so long I can barely remember.

I reckon that it will be exactly like the science slider.

When you rack the espionage slider up, you generate Gspy points, which will be added to the normal GP pool.

The idea of settling them in an emey's capital sounds great :drool:

I am really curious what spies will do with propaganda.

I'm guessing this will be similar to how it was in Civ 3 (or was it 2). Propaganda was used to help throw a city into revolt and getting it to flip.

I'm guessing that something to do with settled great spies will be a reduction war-weariness, like spreading propaganda that settles your citizens down a bit.


I would have thought that a settled great spy in a city would make that city less prone to espionage from other civilizations.

I have some questions to add as well...

1. Will a spy unit be a new specialist? That way you can accumulate great people points to the Great Spy. This is very doubtful though...

2. What type of resources will a great spy give when you settle him/her in a city? Probably some balance of research and commerce.

3. What type of additional missions will a Great Spy have over an ordinary one? Will a Great Spy have additional missions or just better odds at the existing missions?

The way I see it, there are three ways the slider can work:

1) It works like the science slider. The amount of commerce generated by the slider gets turned into 'espionage points' which you can then spend in order to do missions.

2) It works like the culture slider and happiness. You get extra happiness just for having the slider at 10%, no matter how much money is generated. This would do things like expands the LoS of your cities/borders/units. It might also make your spies more likely to succeed and more likely to catch enemy spies.

3) A combination of the above.

Personaly, I would prefer 2) as it would make SE more usefull.

I was just thinking that it would be cool if you could settle a spy in a foreign city and syphon off either commerce or research.

Basically you would ideally want to find an enemies science city and settle there - depending on where your slider was you could syphon off a certain percentage of beakers or gold.

Oh god no. That would be awefull. There was something similar in call to Power called lawyers who reduced their target cities production. It was one of the worse elements of the game. Might sound like fun to do it to someone else, but how much would it annoy you if you lost the space race because someone stole your production?

I think that Great Spy points are based on how much gold you divert to espionage as in GC2.
About Great Spies probably they can make some of the most powerful missions, which are not available to normal spy units.
About Infiltration in cities probably you will have a lot less info about civs without spying (political advisor,military advisor,commerce advisor).
About propaganda and inciting revolts it has been said that you can cause unrest.It could be fun if unrest can have different chance of success and different effects, if there are different religions, or different civ cultures in the city.You could gain the best results if you are making an action in a city where its citizens are from your civ.

One of the thing i would also like to see is a tech leaking everytime your Great spy is in one of the enemy civs, and some things to help a builder, so not things necessarily tied to war.

Very lazy of me, but posted in the other thread applies here so :- http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5453197&postcount=136

PLus: I now think that a great spies main function will be to steal a tech, it makes sense.. even if they have other uses, that will be what most people use them for.

My predictions on the workings of the expanded espionage features (some of which is amalgamated from pieces of posts by others):

1) Commerce can now be divided into four through the research, culture, and espionage sliders.
2) The espionage slider builds up points which can be spent on missions.
3) The cost of a mission depends on the general difficulty of the mission and the variable risk - how much extra points will you spend to improve the odds of success?
4) Successful espionage missions grant great spy points (similar to how successful battles grant great general points).
5) Settled great spies will have an effect on happiness (or war weariness). Similar to great generals, they will only provide food, beakers, gold, or culture through civics or wonders.
6) The great spies unique function will be to found a branch of the espionage service in another civ - reducing the cost of missions in that civ and possibly granting continuous low level information.

Highly speculative: the great spy will lightbulb the technology with the greatest cumulative researched beakers over all civs.

I wonder if Great Spies will be able to do spy missions with an 100% success rate (using up the unit in the process)? Might be quite useful especially if they add a greater range of spy actions in BtS, which they seem to be doing.

One of the new features of the game is the random events generator. Maybe Great Spies are a new unit that has an ability to deal with those events. Like if your people suddenly start rioting in a city, if you have GSpy available he can somehow deal with that. Just a thought.

Nobody has talked about experience points yet. Does anyone think Spies have a chance of gaining experience points and earning promotions? It'd probably have to be done differently than the military experience points, but it could still have the same idea. It could be "espionage" points or something instead. That'd be really sweet, and would make settling the great spy make more sense, as they maybe allow certain promotions for the spies.

Another thought: perhaps settling the great spy will give all units produced in that city the +1 visibility? I don't think that'd be that'd good because you only really need one or two units with the +1 visibility...

I suspect the old spy unit is gone; replaced with a screen similar to the CivIII espionage screen. Or, in short, no promotions.

Nobody has talked about experience points yet. Does anyone think Spies have a chance of gaining experience points and earning promotions? It'd probably have to be done differently than the military experience points, but it could still have the same idea. It could be "espionage" points or something instead. That'd be really sweet, and would make settling the great spy make more sense, as they maybe allow certain promotions for the spies.

Another thought: perhaps settling the great spy will give all units produced in that city the +1 visibility? I don't think that'd be that'd good because you only really need one or two units with the +1 visibility...

I don't think, spies are supposed to make heavy damage with a single action, on the contrary of a unit which can only kill units.
In any case it really depends on how espionage is implementated, if espionage missions are really powerful, an experienced spy could be really unbalanced.If missions are not so powerful perhaps promotions could be fun to have.

I suspect the old spy unit is gone; replaced with a screen similar to the CivIII espionage screen. Or, in short, no promotions.



I don't believe that will be the case. If it were true it would no longer be possible to send a spy to try and sabotage specific tiles in another civ's land. That's actually a pretty useful function in the game as it stands. It would be a real step backwards.

free commando promotion when settled? Possibly too unbalancing...

I don't believe that will be the case. If it were true it would no longer be possible to send a spy to try and sabotage specific tiles in another civ's land. That's actually a pretty useful function in the game as it stands. It would be a real step backwards.

No, it wouldn't be impossible. Sabotaging a tile improvement would just require a different set of [not at all complex] commands.

My predictions on the workings of the expanded espionage features (some of which is amalgamated from pieces of posts by others):

1) Commerce can now be divided into four through the research, culture, and espionage sliders.
2) The espionage slider builds up points which can be spent on missions.
3) The cost of a mission depends on the general difficulty of the mission and the variable risk - how much extra points will you spend to improve the odds of success?
4) Successful espionage missions grant great spy points (similar to how successful battles grant great general points).
5) Settled great spies will have an effect on happiness (or war weariness). Similar to great generals, they will only provide food, beakers, gold, or culture through civics or wonders.
6) The great spies unique function will be to found a branch of the espionage service in another civ - reducing the cost of missions in that civ and possibly granting continuous low level information.

Highly speculative: the great spy will lightbulb the technology with the greatest cumulative researched beakers over all civs.I like those predictions :) I don't like the "epionage points" description though. If it is like this, I hope they find a name for the "points", like "espionage funding" or something more appropriate. Then maybe gold would just accumulate and then you would use the gold to pay for the job to be done.

I suspect the old spy unit is gone; replaced with a screen similar to the CivIII espionage screen. Or, in short, no promotions.The article states that there is two methods: the slider to gain intellegence benefits and a more aggressive approach with using spy units.

link to IGN article (http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/788/788749p1.html)
"IGNPC: Espionage has been given a significant upgrade this time around. Can you tell us a bit about the new espionage slider, spy units, and great spies?

Alex Mantzaris: Espionage has actually added a whole new dimension to the game. Its importance to your empire is now comparable to scientific research, culture, or income from taxes. This is because through the espionage slider you have the ability to divert part of your income towards espionage activities against other civilizations. Once you have reached certain thresholds of espionage investment, you start gaining some automatic intelligence benefits over rival civilizations.

You may also take a more aggressive approach to espionage, sending your spy units into foreign territory to gather further intelligence and to perform various missions of destruction and propaganda. Great Spies are born in your cities like Great Scientists or Great Prophets, and can perform the typical great person actions like settling in your city, starting a Golden Age, or building a unique building. In addition, Great Spies can infiltrate into enemy cities, giving you a significant advantage in espionage against that civilization."I will admit though - reading it again - that it says (in the first bolded text) that the diverted income is for espionage activities against other civilizations! This seems to be inconjunction to gaining some automatic benefits. So:

1) diverted income could be used for espionage activities.
2) reaching espionage investment thresholds give automatic bonuses
3) there's a more aggressive approach by using spy units

I will also say though, that I remember articles saying that the Great General was going to do the normal Great Person things like light bulbing and be able to create Golden Ages, but that was taken out. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if this was done with the Great Spy.

Hmmm. It also says what the Great Spy does really: It can infiltrate enemy cities, giving you a "significant advantage in espionage against that civilization". It also implies that it gives a free building, but that could also be a passing comment when describing the other Great People types. Maybe it can build a secret op's center in another civ or a diplomatic embassy?

Does this mean if I set research and culture to zero I can create havoc for the other civs by sabotaging everything in sight? I do hope this new feature doesn't unbalance the game...

Does this mean if I set research and culture to zero I can create havoc for the other civs by sabotaging everything in sight? I do hope this new feature doesn't unbalance the game...

Thats exactly why I don't think it will be a generic slider..a quick example, you're playing marathon pop a GM, do the run to a far away city in late middle ages, and come away with 6500 gold. Now if it is a generic slider, then you can spend an awful long time at 100% "espionage".

And (repeating what I said in an earlier post) if it's this generic slider, then it can't be designed to be run at higher than 20-30% max, for any extent of time. Therefore you're merchant's cash influx converted to 100% espionage, would have to give you quite extreme spying benefits, because if it didn't, then at 20/30 % it wouldn't be worth bothering with. Surely this would be unbalancing? I can see the complaint posts already.."This needs patching!!"..."This is unfair!"..."This is so exploitable" (and from the type of person who loves to find and use exploits), "This is my new way of cheating to prove how good I am" :mischief:

And back to the real world................

Lets hope it's been properly tested, however it's done, and I'm not complaining, I think the new implemetations are a great idea in theory.

Only 6 weeks or so to go...some people might need to do a "Cartman" and freeze themselves for those 6 weeks, as they can't wait for release, but we all know where that leads ;) ....(South Park fans will understand)

I'm not expecting it to be perfect on release but I will hope that it works fine upon first patch.

Thats exactly why I don't think it will be a generic slider..a quick example, you're playing marathon pop a GM, do the run to a far away city in late middle ages, and come away with 6500 gold. Now if it is a generic slider, then you can spend an awful long time at 100% "espionage".

I'm assuming - be it directly through gold or indirectly through commerce - that paying for espionage missions will cut into your ability to generate gold. Getting 6500 from a great merchant trade mission will give equal levels of espionage in both cases.

I'm not expecting it to be perfect on release but I will hope that it works fine upon first patch.



I'm assuming - be it directly through gold or indirectly through commerce - that paying for espionage missions will cut into your ability to generate gold. Getting 6500 from a great merchant trade mission will give equal levels of espionage in both cases.

Not necessarily. If you pay for missions with gold, the why have an espionage slider ? Unless you can pay in gold and "spy points"...all this conjecture is getting confusing..

Not necessarily. If you pay for missions with gold, the why have an espionage slider ? Unless you can pay in gold and "spy points"...all this conjecture is getting confusing..

But if it is on a slider, then the specialist economy becomes a whole lot more powerful. If the bulk of your research is done with specialists, it gives you the freedom to run your science slider very low and your espionage slider higher without falling dreadfully behind in the tech race. In a cottage economy with very high science sliders you would have nearly no espionage.

Counterspy specialists would be cool. I think the great spy points will come from a national wonder, or maybe from the number of successful spy missions completed. Great spies from cash spent on the slider is possible, but seems a bit cheezy to me.

Settling Great Spies sounds cheezy, unless its to make a unique Barracks for spies. I think they'd be more likely to 'lightbulb' techs that other civs have that you don't.

I have some questions to add as well...

1. Will a spy unit be a new specialist? That way you can accumulate great people points to the Great Spy. This is very doubtful though...

2. What type of resources will a great spy give when you settle him/her in a city? Probably some balance of research and commerce.

3. What type of additional missions will a Great Spy have over an ordinary one? Will a Great Spy have additional missions or just better odds at the existing missions?

The obvious model is GalCiv2. Basically think of all the free info you get now in CIV from advisors. Now you'll have to allocate slider money to get that general info, and there'll be levels of how much you spend to get the next level of general info about the other civs.

The spy missions will target specific cities likely.

Not necessarily. If you pay for missions with gold, the why have an espionage slider ? Unless you can pay in gold and "spy points"...all this conjecture is getting confusing..

It appears that it is set up to work by having (probably) a global slider that puts points into espionage activities: The more points, the more you're able to do bigger missions.

Eurogamer Interview (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=76804&page=2).

The obvious model is GalCiv2. Basically think of all the free info you get now in CIV from advisors. Now you'll have to allocate slider money to get that general info, and there'll be levels of how much you spend to get the next level of general info about the other civs.

The spy missions will target specific cities likely.



The thing I'm looking forward to most is demographics and other information on each individual civ. I had always wanted that feature, rather than just having info on the largest, smallest and 'average' opponent.

Once you've met them you can. Just look at the different graphs.

New information on espionage.

It seems that 'espionage points' will run parallel to commerce and beakers. The following is a mix of confirmed information and speculation derived from it.

1)There will be buildings that improve espionage output equivalent to libraries and banks.

2) There will be a spy specialist similar to merchant and scientist specialists.

3) Great spy points will be generated in a similar manner to civilian great people so philosophical gets the relevant bonus.

4) Presumably some wonders will provide great spy points; my monies on the Statue of Zeus.

It is also said that you can get spy points through events.

Maybe defections occur in events...

"A defector from Russia has joined our illustrious empire, bringing along several top-secret files. +10 intelligence."

True. I'm assuming that you can get gold and beakers through events as well.

I read it as they will have that old style espionage screen from civ three and then you spend gold or allocate production to "espionage" and the screen gives you more options, then at some point (gets murky here ) you get a spy unit which can do the tactical missions and then may turn into a great Spy that can -at least -do a mission that collects alot of info on a civ.

Don't see how this could be over-powered. If you turned your civ into a hyper espionage civ with a token force of a military you would get to see that you were going to die. But it would make for fun game play. Byzantine would be a good civ for that.