In 1.6.4, I added Face Dancer as a Tleilaxu UU of the spy, and Saboteur as an Ordos UU of spy. I also converted the Reverend Mother URU into a spy type unit, although it is higher in the tech tree. Mostly, I did this so that we would have a complete set of units to go into the Unit Art Plan.

I am in the process of adding a promotion requirement to the espionage missions, so that only units with a certain promotion can perform certain missions. For example, I could add an Assassin promotion which enables the Assassination mission. Then a UU could start with Assassin as a free promotion, unavailable to any of the other units.

Let's also assume that I will change spies to have the suspensor promotion by default, so they can always travel on desert. I will be adding at least a "+1 diplomacy modifier to me" mission for the Reverend Mother and, assuming I can get it to work, a "-1 diplomacy modifier for civ #1 against civ #2". We have discussed more about that on the Reverend Mother mechanics thread.

How can we make the Saboteur and Face Dancer different?

* We could disable certain missions except by these units.

* We could make certain promotions only available to them; there are a lot of spy promotions. The Ordos spy gets 1 XP per turn so they will have access to a lot of promotions.

* A number of people have suggested that the Face Dancer should steal promotions from other units on a combat win. The only problem is that the DW promotions are not very interesting for this, and some of them are more equipment related than ability related. So I don't think this would be very interesting.

* Other ideas?

1 Face Dancer might have just incredible bonuses to Revolt/Culture spread actions and perhaps some its own ones. (You know, impersonating, changing face - thats a powerfull weapon)
2 Perhaphs killing settled GPs? is it posible? or just mission that reset GP counter in city. (Scytale story from DM)
3 plant small Stoneburner (like in DM) which will damage stuff 1 tile around.

In the HOTK mod there's a promotion for a general to spawn barb units if he wins a battle in enemy ground. Maybe that could be converted to a spy mission (to incite smugglers to pop up).
BTW, have you thought about adapting the hero system from HOTK?

In the HOTK mod there's a promotion for a general to spawn barb units if he wins a battle in enemy ground. Maybe that could be converted to a spy mission (to incite smugglers to pop up).
BTW, have you thought about adapting the hero system from HOTK?

i dont see this fit into DW

I think this model with recolored (tinted) texture (to black/magenta)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=291259
can be used by BTl Facedancer.

or as option Saboteur, but it surely can be adopted as one of UU spy models

More:
Espionage become very important in DW, much more than it is in BTS.
The problem that AI done know how to transport Spies yet, only militayry units. It is possible to make that AI will use transports/thopters to send spies to other landmass? otherwise AI's civs UU advantage is lost.
Also i think weights for Spy UU civs for espionage should be increased.

One thing that would be very thematic is having a mission which temporarily disables a city's Force Shield. So you can send a spy in the reduce the defences of a city before you attack. You could have another mission for nullifying the effect of the Guard Station perhaps. These missions would be more effective if we reduce the amount of cultural defence as Ahriman has proposed before.

Also, any other missions that bring out the theme of treachery and traitors from the books. Bribery, blackmail, sort of thing.

One thing that would be very thematic is having a mission which temporarily disables a city's Force Shield. So you can send a spy in the reduce the defences of a city before you attack. You could have another mission for nullifying the effect of the Guard Station perhaps. These missions would be more effective if we reduce the amount of cultural defence as Ahriman has proposed before.



There is a revolt mission for such puprose (which drop all defences for 1 turn), and they will be conflicting - one or other will rendered by other to be useless. (EP cost/effect)

The problem that AI done know how to transport Spies yet, only militayry units. It is possible to make that AI will use transports/thopters to send spies to other landmass?

We discussed this briefly on the RM mechanics thread. There is a promotion, suspensor travel, which allows any unit to have all terrain movement and move at double speed on desert. Today, it is possible for a second level spy to get this; that is, they must get Logistics I first. I have not tested whether a high level AI spy would actually use this to travel across desert; that would be an important test. If somebody could set that up, for example as Ordos by using WB to add 5-6 spies with the promotion and watch the AI move them, that would be great.

One possibility is to give all spies this promotion by default, or something similar to worker movement that unlocks the desert terrains with tech. Another possibility would be to add a privateer type unit. This would be a small thopter which can carry spies, great people or other small size units and can travel into enemy borders. If we clone the privateer, then I assume the AI would use it just like it does in a vanilla archipelago game.

One thing that would be very thematic is having a mission which temporarily disables a city's Force Shield

I suggested this as some kind of Harkonnen factional advantage; Harkonnen could arguably be better at subverting traitors, and Betrayal is a very big Harkonnen theme. This would also help in emphasizing that Harkonnens are *classy* villains with plots and schemes, not just brute strength monsters.

Alternatively, plunging the city into revolt for one turn would have a similar effect in removing cultural defenses.

The challenge would be in the AI; getting them to actually use the ability just before attacking. Espionage may not be the best way to implement it.Perhaps this would work better in another way: create a unit buildable with hammers (national limit 2?), call it a "Traitor" unit, and give it siege unit AI. Have the Traitor have a city bombardment ability that knocks down 100% city walls, but using the ability kills it. I can see the AI using this; bring it up to the city with an invading stack, bombard the walls killing the traitor, then invade.

Today, it is possible for a second level spy to get this; that is, they must get Logistics I first

Actually a 3rd level spy. You start with nothing, select logistics at level 2, select suspensors at level 3.


Another possibility would be to add a privateer type unit. This would be a small thopter which can carry spies, great people or other small size units and can travel into enemy borders

I think you mean Caravel (and later, submarine). Privateers are hidden nationality pirates.
Does the AI transport spys in caravels in vanilla? Missionaries, maybe, but not really spies.

* * *
I think the best way to make spies different is to give them access to different espionage missions.

Ordos saboteurs should focus on destryoing buildings and sabotaging units to inflict damage.
(Another possibility: have a saboteur unit that is actually an invisible bomber aircraft with bomber AI, with a long-range sabotage ability that cannot be intercepted and causes stack collateral like frmo a bomber, but at the cost of espionage points each time you use it.)

Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers should focus on affecting diplomacy, affecting tile influence, and adding/removing culture.
(I think we talked a while ago about a spy mission that creates a building that gives a -25% culture output, and the building is removed only if the city is conquered).

Tleilaxu facedancers could either be a combat assassin unit, or could have biological plague type missions.

An interesting idea would be to merge the Tleilaxu plague abilities in with espionage missions.

But the biggest challenges here are AI.

I think - if we are to preserve book lore - actualy Tleilaxu should be related to destroying - remeber Sandburner in Dune Messiah.

I know that Ordos in dune II made it, perhaps we can make different "blow up " missions.
And yeah Riverend Mothers should be very potent at spreading culture missions. (there is one)
perhaps some promotions aviable only to her with bonuses to culture based missions.

I think - if we are to preserve book lore - actualy Tleilaxu should be related to destroying - remeber Sandburner in Dune Messiah.

If we are to preserve flavor, Tleilaxu should be about bio-weapons, not bombs.

Anyone can set off nukes, that could be an ability on the generic infiltrator.

I like the idea of spy missions whose effect is boosted by promotions on the spy; Saboteurs could have improved explosives 1, 2, 3 promotions, which boost the damage/success chance of spy actions.

There is simple Book lore and Novel where BTl involved in planting Sandburner in Dune Messiah. I dont remember any place in book where they used bio-weapons.

I thought the Stoneburner is set up by dissident Fremen who've obtained it from Offworld. OK, they are provoked by Scytale, but it's not a specifically Tleilaxu technology or strategy.

Ok ok :) Yep BTl involved. You right, just involved, but still .... and i like Provocation. :)
Is it possible to add such action?
i have idea of Creating such action when BTl spy give certain promotion (invisible) to some rival's unit on shared tile, and only next turn this unit turn barbarian for 1 turn (promotion wears off) (or just BTL HN)
It's easy to balance adjusting EP cost.
Its also easy to program making check which units have such promotion, and then removing it after certain turn ends (100% chance to wear off from FFH)

I don't think this would work well.

Either:
a) The AI wouldn't understand how to use it.
b) The AI *would* understand how to use it, and they'd use it against the human player, which would be incredibly frustrating (having your own units turn barbarian)

And any unit turned barbarian would then suicide itself against the player, so its really the same as destroying a unit outright.

Besides, turning a faction's own units barbarian doesn't really capture the idea of an agent provocateur very well anyway. This would be much better captured by creating new barbarian units, creating unhappiness or instigating a revolt or rioting.

Perhaps we should go to old good balanced ways of making uu just by ading more promotions to their 0 version (sample smaurai with drill II as version of maceman), at real, best new ways are old transformed and adapted ones.

Then FD starts with +2 promotions towards unhapiness and unhealthy, bonus to revolt mission performance, and some special mission related to it - 1 new action (perhaps revolt that lasts 3 turns and not 1?), small rate of XP gain.

Saboteur bonus to sabotage (destroy building, production, improvement) and some special thing that blow up stuff - 1 new action , damaging units , great rat of xp gain.

RM great bonuses to culture spread and diplo stuff mentioned in RM thread, medium rate of xp gain.

+ number of promotions which increase output/effectivness of different missions.

I like the idea of spy missions whose effect is boosted by promotions on the spy; Saboteurs could have improved explosives 1, 2, 3 promotions, which boost the damage/success chance of spy actions.

These are already part of the super spies modcomp in the game. This thread gives the main documentation:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=300992

You can also see the details in the hover help for the existing spy promotions.In the pedia, select the spy unit; this shows which of the many promotions are relevant to spies.

I'm not sure where all the vanilla espionage missions are documented, but I found two good strategy articles:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=289036
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=274135

So, the saboteur could be the only one with access to alchemist; the face dancer could be the only one with access to deception or escape artist; etc. But my key question was, is this enough to differentiate them?

is this enough to differentiate them?

No; like I said, I think they need access to different missions. Some missions, ONLY a reverend mother can perform, some missions, ONLY a saboteur can perform, etc.

Different missions + different promotions that boost missions = interesting differentiation.

But its a lot of work, both coding and AI.

From memory, Planetfall tinkered with the idea of tactical spy missions, but I don't think it got anywhere (I haven't tried the latest versions of Planetfall for months). There was a thread on it:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325046

No; like I said, I think they need access to different missions. Some missions, ONLY a reverend mother can perform, some missions, ONLY a saboteur can perform, etc.

Different missions + different promotions that boost missions = interesting differentiation.

But its a lot of work, both coding and AI.

What I wrote in post #1 is that I am adding the internal ability to limit the existing missions by promotions. So it is *zero* work. Well, a couple of seconds to add the promotion, I guess.

Please suggest which combination of the existing missions and promotions would be interesting, and I can implement it in very little time. I will have a diplomacy mission with +1 and -1 for the reverend mother.

Although the AI may not make perfect decisions about the different espionage missions, it does make *some* decisions, and you can see all the different missions being carried out by the AI.

Oh i think i posted it before in previous post, based on Ahrimans and my thoughts (i following your ideas, you see i am easy to convince :P :))


1. Ordos Saboteur.
High speed XP rate gain.
Speciality: Sabotage (special promotions)
Destroy Improvement (passive bonus for EP cost)
Destroy Building (Lowered EP cost, + Success Rate)
Destroy Production (Lowered EP cost, + Success rate)

Special mission: Plant Bomb //i dunno name (Small Collaterial damage to enemy stack on tile, improvable with promotions , only on rival culture)



2. BTl Face Dancer
Low speed XP rate gain, subject to Axotl Tanks
Speciality: Provocation/Harm (special promotions)
Plant Unhapinnes (passive bonus ,Lowered EP cost)
Plant Unhealthy (Lowered EP cost, passive bonus)


Special mission: Revolt (special) (3 promotions : +1 turn lenght of revolt > +1 turn > city loses culture borders, as real revolt )


3. RM
Medium speed XP gain. hight cost and tech requirement.
Can train units.
Prescient.
Specialities: Diplomacy , Culture and Spy Defence (special promotions )
Plant culture (great bonuses to effect)
Anti-Spionage( special promotion - Truthsayer, prq - defence II, thwarts automatically all spies in units visibility range)

Special mission: Influence Diplomacy (as described in RM thread +/- 1

So it is *zero* work. Well, a couple of seconds to add the promotion, I guess.

Sorry, I was unclear, what I meant was that it would be a lot of work to code up and get the AI to understand a bunch of new spy missions.
Understood that then having different missions for different units (based on promotion) would be zero work.

Although the AI may not make perfect decisions about the different espionage missions, it does make *some* decisions

It makes some decisions, but only based on a narrow range of effects that it understands. It will be hard to make it use many other abilities.

To compare espionage missions across types:

Infiltrator (default)
Add unhappiness.
Steal tech.
Steal gold.
Plant atomic device. (Requires Atomics tech and House Atomics project).
Counter-espionage.

Saboteur (Ordos)
Slowl automatic XP gain.
Promotions sabotage 1, 2, 3, starts with sabotage 1.
Abilities:
1. Destroy building. Normal building destroy, but higher prob success/cheaper from promotions.
2. Sabotage improvement. Lower EP cost than for normal spy, and EP cost decreases further with higher promotion levels.
3. Sabotage units. Does collateral damage to all units in the tile. Hard to code AI for; consider making this an airstrike.
4. Foster Resistance movement. Sacrifice the saboteur, add a permanent building in a city that gives -10% hammers.

Reverend Mother (BG)
No automatic XP gain, gains XP only through missions.
Promotions Truthsayer 1, 2, 3, starts with Truthsayer 1 promotion.
Abilities:
1. Truthsayer advisors. Sacrifices the RM in enemy city to gain permanent diplomacy modifiers.
2. Intrigue. Adds BG culture on a particular tile. Does not send RM back to the city.
3. Influence. Adds BG culture to an enemy city.
4. Foster dissidents. Adds permanent building in the city that gives -20% culture.
5. Cause revolt. Very expensive in EP. Sends the city into revolt. Requires promotion level 3.

Facedancer (Tleilaxu)
No automatic xp gain; gains xp only from missions.
Facedancer 1, 2, 3 promotions. Facedancer starts with level 1 promotion. Level 2 promotion requires ?? tech, level 3 promotion requires genetic manipulation tech.
Abilities:
1. Assassinate settled great person. Success change depends on promotions.
2. Introduce biotoxin. A variant on "poison water supply"; adds a large amount of unhealth to the city, for many turns, with the amount of unhealth and duration affected by the promotions.
3. Poison water supply. Sacrifices FD. Adds a permanent building in the city that adds -5% water production.
4. Release engineered plague. Very expensive in EPs. Triggers a plague "event" in the city, like the Black Death plague from the Charlemagne mod; it kills 1 pop per turn, has a chance each turn of ending (depending on city health and FD promotion level) and a small chance each turn of spreading (depending on FD promotion level and city health of other cities).
Requires promotion level 3.

And then remove the normal tleilaxu plague (from being at war) from cities; have it only spread through units in direct contact with each other, so it can't start spreading through your empire.

One possibility is to give all spies this promotion by default, or something similar to worker movement that unlocks the desert terrains with tech.

I think this is just fine for start. I saw ocassional spys sent by ordos once to my landmass. I think it will work, otherwise it will be not worse than it is now, so its worth testing/trying.

Another semi-solution is replace logistics and ST - making ST 1st in queue

I saw ocassional spys sent by ordos once to my landmass

Separated by desert? That's good to know! Thanks for noticing. This suggests desert mobility unlocked by tech or starting promotion will work, without further AI adjustment.

Separated by desert? That's good to know! Thanks for noticing. This suggests desert mobility unlocked by tech or starting promotion will work.

Yes, it is, once Ordos had XP increase and i played on close landmass and they sent to kill my culture buildings because i was pressing them with culture - i was amazed, i didnt knew that there is Susp promo and though that they transporting spies to other tiles :D
but yes, they did ,they killed my culture buildings in city which was culture heavy and was on complete separate landmass, but few tiles from their "desert edge" city.

Tell me if you need new promo series for those, so everybody with this plan Ahriman composed?
Lets build it with exact numbers and throw in.
Also i think there hsould be another chapter in Dune Wars Concepts explaining that Espionage is much more potent and important than in BTS (same as in Books Series) .

so everybody with this plan Ahriman composed?

This is just a brainstorm proposal; I'm happy to discuss/change it.

Saboteur (Ordos)
3. Sabotage units. Does collateral damage to all units in the tile. Hard to code AI for; consider making this an airstrike.
4. Foster Resistance movement. Sacrifice the saboteur, add a permanent building in a city that gives -10% hammers.
Would it be OK if the sabotage units ability only works when the unit is in a city? I haven't looked into the existing spy *movement* AI, but I am sure it focuses on moving to enemy cities. Adding the ability to follow enemy stacks would be hard. Without adding that to the AI, the human player would be able to use this much more effectively than the AI.

How can a player get rid of these buildings? I don't think they should be permanent, unremoveable buildings. I am not sure the AI uses it well, but we could add a new effect to the existing counter-espionage: if you succeed with a standard counter-espionage, then it also removes all these such buildings.

Reverend Mother (BG)
1. Truthsayer advisors. Sacrifices the RM in enemy city to gain permanent diplomacy modifiers.
There is some previous discussion about this in the RM thread. I am currently thinking of a mission which gives a +1 permanent diplomacy modifier from the target to me. This seems weak enough that it wouldn't require sacrificing the unit. If we did sacrifice the unit, would the enemy player see the unit, perhaps as a new building?

Should there any way for the enemy to remove the effect? I was thinking no, same as the Faux Pas random event. If there is a building or unit visible afterwards, I can see the player might want to destroy it to remove the effect.

2. Intrigue. Adds BG culture on a particular tile. Does not send RM back to the city.

I really don't see too much value in this. Is the goal to give temporary access to an enemy improvement on the border? Seems like a lot more effort to implement, than the benefit it would ever have in play. This would also be the only mission that didn't send the spy back; is there a specific reason for this?

3. Influence. Adds BG culture to an enemy city.

I came across this interesting thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=286229) on how this existing ability is supposed to be used. Has anybody ever heard of this before? You have to send the spy in before you conquer, and the city comes out of revolt with a bunch of culture already.

5. Cause revolt. Very expensive in EP. Sends the city into revolt. Requires promotion level 3.

This is a standard spy mission. Making it only available to BG is fine; but requiring level 3 seems too restrictive. I suggest it should be available to any RM, but the cost would come down *significantly* with levels of the promotion.

Also, one of the missions I want to add is the one where you pick a third civ, and the target civ gets a permanent -1 diplo modifier against that civ. What do you think?

Facedancer (Tleilaxu)
2. Introduce biotoxin. A variant on "poison water supply"; adds a large amount of unhealth to the city, for many turns, with the amount of unhealth and duration affected by the promotions.
Is this the existing poison water supply mission, and the existing Fish Speaker promotion line? Or something different?

And then remove the normal tleilaxu plague (from being at war) from cities; have it only spread through units in direct contact with each other, so it can't start spreading through your empire.

If we add the spy mission then I agree we could remove the existing plague spread; but FYI, it does only spread through units in direct contact with each other. The plague building only appears in a city once a unit with the plague has gone there.

Would it be OK if the sabotage units ability only works when the unit is in a city?

Ideally, no... but obviously this would be much harder to design AI code for. The thematic idea would be having the unit sabotaging vehicles, destroying supply dumps and ambushing supply convoys, so that it can be used against units in the field.

What if we added a range ~4 naval bombard ability to the unit, and made it so that the unit could bombard *and* move (like naval units)? So it could bombard and then still move?
And higher levels of the saboteur promotion could increase the collateral damage done by the bombardment.

How can a player get rid of these buildings? I don't think they should be permanent, unremoveable buildings.
Well, the idea was that they would be permanent, hence why their effects were very low - and you can only have one copy of a building in a city, so they don't stack. I worry that if they aren't permanent, then the effects would be too weak.
Is it really so bad to have a permanent -5% water income or -10% hammers?
Part of what I dislike about the current espionage is that its effects are trivial. I would rather have espionage effects that actually mattered.

IIRC counter espionage is something that you normally do in enemy cities, not your own cities, so it would need to be a separate ability, if you really thought this was necessary.
If it could be removed by espionage, maybe the power could be larger?

I am currently thinking of a mission which gives a +1 permanent diplomacy modifier from the target to me. This seems weak enough that it wouldn't require sacrificing the unit. If we did sacrifice the unit, would the enemy player see the unit, perhaps as a new building?

Well, the idea behind the sacrifice was that this represented Truthsayer Advisors who stayed with the other faction and assisted them - but still made sure to tweak influence towards the BGs.
So the unit is sacrificed because it isn't availalbe to you anymore.
Potentially I guess it could just require EPs rather than sacrifice, the sacrifice was to to try to prevent exploitation.
Other possibilities: tweak it up to a +2 bonus and require sacrifice, cap the total bonus you can have from this type of effect at +4 (or +6??) with a particular faction.

I really don't see too much value in this. Is the goal to give temporary access to an enemy improvement on the border? Seems like a lot more effort to implement, than the benefit it would ever have in play. This would also be the only mission that didn't send the spy back; is there a specific reason for this?

The goal is to function like a pillage from influence-given war, shifting tile onwnership away from the owner and towards the BG - maybe its easier just to destroy enemy culture on the tile than to increase your own. So you are spending EPs to increase your territory coverage. The purpose is to basically have an extra mechanism for advancing your culture into enemy territory, without war. Basically, BGs should be insidious, expanding their influence/culture against you, forcing you to go to war in order to hold them off.
The reason for the no-return is that otherwise it would take to long to actually make any advance, since you might have to use the ability a couple of times to gain a single tile.
The AI should use the ability only on tiles with enemy culture and BG culture.
Again, very hard to code though I'm guessing.

This is a standard spy mission.
Doesn't the standard spy mission just cause unhappiness? I am talknig about literally throwing the city into revolt for a turn, where its production shuts down and its cultural borders are removed. This is incredibly powerful, because it instantly removes all cultural *and* fortification city defenses.
So if you use it when your army is in an adjacent stack....

Also, one of the missions I want to add is the one where you pick a third civ, and the target civ gets a permanent -1 diplo modifier against that civ. What do you think?
I'm not wild about it. How would you pick the other civ? A popup dialogue?
But it seems reasonably harmless to me.

Is this the existing poison water supply mission
Basically yes, except potentially larger amount/longer duration from promtoions.

and the existing Fish Speaker promotion line?
I don't know what this is.

If we add the spy mission then I agree we could remove the existing plague spread; but FYI, it does only spread through units in direct contact with each other. The plague building only appears in a city once a unit with the plague has gone there.

It doesnt' spread through cities by trade-routes? It certainly seems to spread incredibly widely.

Any thoughts on the Harkonnen traitor idea?
create a unit buildable with hammers (national limit 2?), call it a "Traitor" unit, and give it siege unit AI. Have the Traitor have a city bombardment ability that knocks down 100% city walls, but using the ability kills it. I can see the AI using this; bring it up to the city with an invading stack, bombard the walls killing the traitor, then invade.

I dont like Fish Speaker name for unhealthy promotion sems to be unconnected

Also i like very much Harkonnen Traitor idea exactly as it described.

Also i like very much Harkonnen Traitor idea exactly as it described.

I like this too. Ahriman's point about doing more to make the Harkonnen seem like classy and scheming villains rather than just brainless thugs was a very good one.

Would it be OK if the sabotage units ability only works when the unit is in a city?
What if we added a range ~4 naval bombard ability to the unit, and made it so that the unit could bombard *and* move (like naval units)? So it could bombard and then still move?
That is even harder to write AI for. I will put the idea of sabotage in a city onto the list, and after that, ""we"" can try to write custom movement AI.

Well, the idea was that they would be permanent, hence why their effects were very low
If I had proposed a permanent building in your city which you could not get rid of, I bet you would complain.
IIRC counter espionage is something that you normally do in enemy cities, not your own cities, so it would need to be a separate ability, if you really thought this was necessary.
Please do read the threads I quoted with documentation on vanilla espionage. This ability is used in your own city to make it more difficult for enemy spies to succeed in this city.
If it could be removed by espionage, maybe the power could be larger?
I would be OK with that.

This seems weak enough that it wouldn't require sacrificing the unit. If we did sacrifice the unit, would the enemy player see the unit, perhaps as a new building?
Well, the idea behind the sacrifice was that this represented Truthsayer Advisors who stayed with the other faction and assisted them - but still made sure to tweak influence towards the BGs. So the unit is sacrificed because it isn't availalbe to you anymore.
Let's try to figure out the mechanic. If it is sacrificed and removed from the game, then it doesn't count against your national cap anymore, and there is no limit to the total benefit. If there is a visible building, the player will want to destroy it to remove the effect. The Faux Pas random event is permanent and cannot be undone; that is what I was aiming for. Another possibility is to make some different graphic, somewhere in the city screen, to show this. That would be a lot of work and I am not sure what it should look like.

The goal is to function like a pillage from influence-given war, shifting tile onwnership away from the owner and towards the BG ... The reason for the no-return is that otherwise it would take to long to actually make any advance, since you might have to use the ability a couple of times to gain a single tile.
Does it seem like fun to click multiple times on one RM in order to gain a single tile? Perhaps we can meet this design goal with some different mechanic.

Doesn't the standard spy mission just cause unhappiness? I am talknig about literally throwing the city into revolt for a turn
See above on vanilla espionage.

one of the missions I want to add is the one where you pick a third civ, and the target civ gets a permanent -1 diplo modifier against that civ.
How would you pick the other civ? A popup dialogue?
Yes. I thought you had suggested this in the long-ago thread related to this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8235913&postcount=47). Anyway, I like it and you think it is harmless, so I will add it to the list.
and the existing Fish Speaker promotion line?
I don't know what this is.
Please see the in-game description of the promotion. It gives bonus unhealth to the poison water action.
Any thoughts on the Harkonnen traitor idea?
Sounds interesting. It is unrelated to super spies. It requires only an xml change, using the bSuicide flag, so anybody could try it out. I will put it on the list.

That is even harder to write AI for. I will put the idea of sabotage in a city onto the list, and after that, ""we"" can try to write custom movement AI.

Sounds ok.
The problem is: damaging units in a city is useless unless you are about to invade that city, because otherwise the unts just immediately heal at no cost.
An alternative: how about the ability has a low chance of success, but if it does succeed, it destroys a vehicle, thopter, suspensor or hornet entirely?

If I had proposed a permanent building in your city which you could not get rid of, I bet you would complain.
Maybe. We'll never know :-)
I have no strong objection to making them removeable with another mission if they are sufficiently powerful, AND if the AI does a decent job of removing them.

It seems to me that the gap between human/AI use would be be smaller if the ability make a small permanent penalty than a large temporary one that the human knows how to undo.

Please do read the threads I quoted with documentation on vanilla espionage
Ok, my memories are foggy since I never really use espionage. I will educate myself.

If it is sacrificed and removed from the game, then it doesn't count against your national cap anymore, and there is no limit to the total benefit

Can't you hardcode a cap on the benefit separately from the national limit on units?
Have the bonus only function if #truthsayers_ij<3, and have the providetruthsayer ability only be useable in j's city if #truthsayers_ij<3, where i is the BG player and j is the particular enemy faction.

It gives bonus unhealth to the poison water action.
Why should Fish Speakers (Quizarate-Fedaykin, basically) give a bonus to poison water??

Sounds interesting. It is unrelated to super spies
Yes, this was my point; some espionage-ish abilities are better handled outside the espionage system.

Why should Fish Speakers (Quizarate-Fedaykin, basically) give a bonus to poison water??.

Agree, that not sit well in my mind too

An alternative: how about the ability has a low chance of success, but if it does succeed, it destroys a vehicle, thopter, suspensor or hornet entirely?
That seems like a good idea. I take it you feel this should never apply to melee or guardsman unitcombats, because they are less about equipment and more about units?

Can't you hardcode a cap on the benefit separately from the national limit on units?

I suppose it is possible. But this is special purpose code unrelated to anything else, so I would prefer to avoid it.

Why should Fish Speakers (Quizarate-Fedaykin, basically) give a bonus to poison water??

I did not say it was the best name, I was only helping you to understand what it does. What is a better name for this promotion?

That seems like a good idea. I take it you feel this should never apply to melee or guardsman unitcombats, because they are less about equipment and more about units?

That's the idea. The stack damage idea seemed like it should effect anything, but its probably more flavorful for a saboteur to just blow up machines.

What is a better name for this promotion?
Well, my design takes the poison water away from the normal infiltrator, and gives it only to the Facedancer, so they'd just depend on the Facedancer promotions.
These could be Biotoxin 1,2,3 for example.

I did not say it was the best name, I was only helping you to understand what it does. What is a better name for this promotion?

poison mastery?

poison mastery?

Maybe keep it simple and just call it Poisoner I, II, III.

Chokemist Alchemy? :D

I have studied the existing vanilla "insert culture" spy mission and I finally understand it. The information is given by the thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=286229) I mentioned earlier, but even so it took some experimentation.

Basically, you use this mission just before you conquer a city to make it recover faster. I can't see anyplace where the cumulative result of the missions are visible. The place you would think to look for it shows something else; you can see your *tile* culture but not *your city culture when somebody else owns the city*.

Try this experiment with any any midgame save.

1. Find somebody else's city where you have some tile cultural influence, for example, you have a strong city and the enemy has a weak city near your border. This is the target city.

2. Using WB, build a stack just outside the target city. The stack should have enough devastators that you can take the city in one turn. Add one spymaster and five infiltrators.

3. Move the spymaster into the city, and spybomb. (Use the action button on the spymaster which gives you +3000 EP and destroys the spy.)

4. Save the game. We will reload from this point later.

5. Attack the city with the devastators. Note, you did not use the spies. Go to the next turn and look in the city window at your culture, the scale bar at the lower left. It is zero, and the increase rate is also zero.

6. Advance the turns until the city comes out of revolt and look again at the city window at your culture. It shows zero, fledgeling, and presumably you are getting +0 culture per turn. Maybe there was some culture building or something but probably you have zero culture and you are getting zero culture. As you know, you can build a monument, or pop a great artist, or use specialists, or whatever in order to get the culture up and start the cultural borders expanding.

7. Now reload the save game from step 4.

8. Move all the spies into the city, go to the next turn so they can be used, and select the spy mission "spread culture".

9. Look at the hover help for the mission in the popup; this is the key point. Depending on the details of your game, the hover help for the mision will show you some amount of culture which will be added. In my example, each mission was adding 9-10 culture. It is 5% of the city's culture rate; my target city was increasing culture at 200 per turn, so the mission will add 10 culture.

10. Pop all the spies and keep track in your head of how much culture you added. I popped five spies at 9-10 culture each, totalling 49 culture added.

11. Now bring in the devastators, conquer the city, and look in the city screen at the culture rate as in step 5. See? You have 49 culture already there. It doesn't do you any good because the city is still in revolt.

12. Advance a few turns till you come out of revolt. Now, depending on the other cities around, your cultural borders may be large.

To summarize, you pop several spies in an enemy border city before you capture it, and the city comes out of revolt in better shape. You may be able to immediately work the entire BFC, instead of being stuck on just the city plot. This means your city population won't starve and it will not shrink.

This is not a super-strong effect. We could magnify it with the Reverend Mother promotions. One benefit of using this mission is that it is already implemented; no additional work is needed in the spy movement AI or mission selection AI. The cost per culture point and the percentage of the city's culture to be added, are both xml parameters.

I still haven't actually *done* anything with the RM +1 diplomacy bonus, but at least now I feel I understand the existing vanilla culture mission.

Good work David.

It is 5% of the city's culture rate;

So, lets just increase this parameter? To say, 100% of the city's per turn culture rate? Or 300% of the city's culture rate?

I agree that at 5%, the ability is pathetic. If the city gets 20 culture per turn (which is a cultural powerhouse), you get 1 culture per mission? Laughable.

Also; I know sometimes that if you recapture a city of yours, it does not go into revolt. Is this based on culture, or on who founded the city? In other words, can you add enough of your own culture to a city such that it won't revolt when you capture it.

Ah, i remebered hunter-seeker..... perhaps it can be good addition to Harkonnen spy mechanics? (since traitor not actually spy unit)

I agree that at 5%, the ability is pathetic. If the city gets 20 culture per turn (which is a cultural powerhouse), you get 1 culture per mission?

I don't think +20/turn is a powerhouse. Consider it is possible in vanilla to win a cultural victory with 50,000 culture in a city after 500 turns. I have done this (in HOTK, not vanilla) and +300/turn is possible, with specialists, build culture, and cultural rate buildings. We need to make sure it does not unbalance at the high end.

I was thinking of a minimum value. For example, maybe with Diplomat I, you are guaranteed 5 culture per mission, with Diplomat II at least 20 culture per mission. The main goal is whether your city starts out after revolt with just its own plot, or a 3x3 grid, or a full BFC, or larger. The full BFC size requires 15 culture at epic speed, 10 at normal. The next ring requires 150 at epic or 100 at normal. But it also depends on the other nearby cities, and I don't quite understand that effect yet.

Also; I know sometimes that if you recapture a city of yours, it does not go into revolt. Is this based on culture, or on who founded the city? In other words, can you add enough of your own culture to a city such that it won't revolt when you capture it.

Some of this may be controlled by *tile* culture, which is stored and calculated independently of *city* culture. Unfortunately I have not found any good descriptions of this, and as far as I can tell there is no way to view *city* culture for any civ other than the owner. You cannot even see this in WB. There are python functions to get and set it, maybe I will try to do something with that first.

I don't think +20/turn is a powerhouse

Well, it depends on how many cultural buildings and wonders you have in the mod. I agree that +20 isn't a powerhouse in vanilla, but it is in many other mods, and its quite a lot in Dunewars.

Some of this may be controlled by *tile* culture, which is stored and calculated independently of *city* culture.

Interesting. Is tile culture what is changed by Influence drive war? Can we make the culture espionage mission effect tile culture as well?

I have had some success with the +1 diplomatic bonus mission. The Reverend Mother can now execute this mission, and the AI will pick it. I called it "Force Friend". It kind of sounds like Jedi "Force" abilities, but I could not work "Voice" into the title.

I also made an interesting archeological find. There are two very powerful mission flags hidden inside the XML, which are implemented in the game but not used by any existing missions. One directly converts an enemy city to your civ, and the other throws an entire civ into anarchy for a given number of turns. The cost and difficulty can be set through the XML; presumably you would like to make them very expensive and also unlikely to succeed.

The "convert city" mission cost is not sensitive to any other factors, such as the city population size or whether you have much of your own culture there; I may try to add these.

I have added both of these missions as RM specific missions. We can play with the costs and success rates, but this will definitely make the RM powerful.

Next I will try to add a "Force Enemy" mission which gives a -1 diplo from the target civ to some third civ.

We had discussed before about two more possible diplomatic spy missions: Force Peace, and Force War. These would be identical to the existing diplomacy options, but with a variable success rate, and costing espionage points. It would be a good representation of the sneaky, manipulative Bene Gesserit if you could get civ A to declare war on civ B to keep A off your back. If I can figure out how the second picklist works for "Force Enemy", then Force Peace and War should be easy.

I am still not convinced that playing with *tile* culture is any fun. Although I see messages from IDW coming all the time, I have not seen any instance where IDW has any actual effect. It seems like a nice concept; but what actual difference does it make in any DW game?

I've seen IDW/ tile cuture working and i think its great. It changes alot when big battles take place. Imo it should stay - it is nice feature and fit to setting. :)
also i think that you should add such mission to RM - increasing tile culture - (with pre-adjusting costs_ - some windtraps can be very important , or resources :)
In our sucession game i've seen couple of situations where such mission would be ver yusefull (assuming we vwere playing BG) - example - our very important city Wind Pass lost windtrap to IX culture - and harm is great, because it even is not replaceable.
Adjusting such nuisances with espionage - seems to be allright for BG faction.

Although I see messages from IDW coming all the time, I have not seen any instance where IDW has any actual effect. It seems like a nice concept; but what actual difference does it make in any DW game?

It has an affect only in areas where you are competing for tile influence (ie multiple civs have influence on the same tile). Then battles or pillage can often flip tiles in your favor, even when you're unable to actually take an enemy city.

I'm not that attached to IDW-type espionage missions though if we can get other more interesting missions working instead.

Then battles or pillage can often flip tiles in your favor, even when you're unable to actually take an enemy city.

I don't understand what difference that makes. If the tile is in a BFC of your city and you don't own it, I suppose it allows you to work a tile. Otherwise who cares who owns a tile in the middle of nowhere? If you can take the city, you get all the tiles, and if you can't take the city, you can still pillage the enemy BFC down to nothing while your SOD is nearby.

I also made an interesting archeological find. There are two very powerful mission flags hidden inside the XML, which are implemented in the game but not used by any existing missions. One directly converts an enemy city to your civ, and the other throws an entire civ into anarchy for a given number of turns. The cost and difficulty can be set through the XML; presumably you would like to make them very expensive and also unlikely to succeed.


Uh, interesting to hear.
Did you also investigate, if the tag iBuyUnitCostFactor does anything?

But you have to look, if the throwing into anarchy works perfect. Because it has been reportet, that tsentom1's wonder (erm...forgot the name), which throws all civs into anarchy, leads to crashes in multiplayer.

Did you also investigate, if the tag iBuyUnitCostFactor does anything?

This is used by the superspies "bribe worker" mission. I did not test it, but I assume it works.

But you have to look, if the throwing into anarchy works perfect. Because it has been reportet, that tsentom1's wonder (erm...forgot the name), which throws all civs into anarchy, leads to crashes in multiplayer.

Interesting. Is that wonder done with python, or custom sdk? As far as I can tell, the vanilla sdk handles this flag in the espionage missions. As above, I assume it works, but thanks for the warning.

This is used by the superspies "bribe worker" mission. I did not test it, but I assume it works.


Ah, thanks :).
Know i have to check superspies out, which i didn't do, because of the SDK changes.


Interesting. Is that wonder done with python, or custom sdk? As far as I can tell, the vanilla sdk handles this flag in the espionage missions. As above, I assume it works, but thanks for the warning.

Tsentom1's wonders are done in python, not in the SDK.
Might be, that the "unnormal" cause of anarchy leads to some errors, which will not appear, if it's caused by a "known" SDK function, but in fact, i have no idea :dunno:.
But could also be, that this is the reason, why it's not used in normal BtS.

If the tile is in a BFC of your city and you don't own it, I suppose it allows you to work a tile

This is the point. It lets you work tiles, and get extra resources, and takes them away from the enemy. Its never designed to have any effect out in the middle of nowhere. Like I said, it only matters in areas where culture is overlapping.

In Dune this doesn't matter so much, because cities are (optimally) well-spaced. In many other mods and scenarios, it can matter a great deal.

I kinda disagree - it matter - example is our Wind Pass in sucession game
I had also few cases when such thing was important.
Such option would be cool to raise certain tile culture to amount of owning it - disconecting by that resource from enemy - Workers felt into RM control

I can see such situation if enemy have border strategic resource (lets say like nitrates or crystals ) and particular units annoy you , you can raise its tile culture to disocnnect resource.

Atm such use is not so powerfull, but there are lot of changes ahead, and may be we'll raise importance of resources - so such mission will be handy.

I'll also mention; the cultural changes I made in the culture infos will significantly expand the cultural boundaries, and so you would potentially be able to use IDW-type espionage missions to advance your culture a long way into enemy territory, which would hurt them pretty badly.

Only thing we need to check if AI understand this and new culture system, and uses IDW stuff.

Only thing we need to check if AI understand this and new culture system

?
The cultural changes I made were just changing the boundaries of how much culture was required to be accumulated to extend city borders. There is no AI component.

and uses IDW stuff
Standard IDW is already in the mod. There is no AI component; it automatically triggers when you win a battle or pillage a tile.

The trick would be to make the AI use an espionage mission that had an IDW-style effect.

Standard improvement sabotage won't quite work, because that prioritizes bonus resource tiles, not regular tiles with shared cultural influence.

Such option would be cool to raise certain tile culture to amount of owning it - disconecting by that resource from enemy - Workers felt into RM control

I would just station one junior unit there, to get the same effect.

@ Ahriman
i am unsure if AI will use new system of culture combat
some stuff sure need some tweaks (i think minor) for AI - to do same as you described
If culture will be so powerfull and AI wont use this mechanic at full scale (espionage missions) that would be less good for AI and easier to player.

@David
Sure with thopter pillaging it would do, but if you not in war? lets say pre-war?
Also on big maps its not always will be posible to maintain junior unit on tile and AI tent to improve vital resources very quick back if there is no threat around, that is for sure.

@ Ahriman
i am unsure if AI will use new system of culture combat
some stuff sure need some tweaks (i think minor) for AI - to do same as you described

Influence driven war is *already in the mod*. The effect is entirely passive; it happens when you pillage or win a fight. How could the AI *not* use it?

Let's please distinguish the possibility of a particular espionage mission on a Bene Gesserit UU from how culture works in the mod in general. There are no AI issues with culture outside the particular espionage mission.

How could the AI *not* use it?

I think Slvynn's point is that the AI may not use it on purpose, for example to deny resources to the enemy. This is probably true, but I am not sure how to prove it. One benefit of this type of passive effect is that the AI will use it by accident.

Is there any way to make the Force Friendship display a diplomacy modifier of "We have Revered Mother agents working to our advantage" or something similar, or do all events have to have the "past events have proved your good nature" message?

Convert City is far too cheap, too likely to succeed and/or shouldn't be available at all. For ~400 EPs I was able to bribe a size 19 city with 79% probability.

Another example: 225 (or 291 depending on which entry you believe) to bribe the Ixian *capital*.

http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/ac149/Ahriman_pics/convertcity.jpg

I agree - EP costs need serious nerf and fix - great cost increase and failure chance.
i think something like x5 ep cost and each 1 pop increase failure chance by 10%, with cities of pop 10 and more are impossible to convert. (as david suggested)
Capitals should not be able to convert as well.

Honestly, I lean towards "should not be in the game at all".

Its too powerful an effect to happen with nothing you can do about it. Even reducing the probability down isn't good, because then it just becomes hit or miss random, which isn't much fun either.

So if it stays in, it needs to cost like 10x as much.

The civ-wide anarchy is also too cheap. I can easily imagine chaining that to keep a civ helpless; for 300 EPs, you can causes thousands of lost commerce and hammer production worth of damage.

Also, when you buy the city, you keep all its culture producers intact, and don't lose any buildings.

Yeah x7-10 even cost and very hight failure rate
and +10 % failure rate per 1 pop, stacking with initial failure.
for civ vwide anarchy it should cost x7-10 at least!!!
also i will be ok if it will be removed - culture spread with current culture mechanic is powerfull tool too

Please try making the cost 10x, and see if you think it is OK. You can also decrease the success rate with the iDifficultyFactor in the xml. The capability for both of these missions was in vanilla, but there are no vanilla missions for them. Perhaps they could not find a good cost for them. I can take them back out; I think it was worth an experiment. Is there any way we can make them useful?

I dont know to make those changes - it will be cool if you'll make small patch to test.
I dont like Anarchy stuff.
I am ok with city conversion, but with that pop depending mechanics (-10% sucess rate per each pop city have , stacking with initial chance) and greatly increased costs.

Also if you do can you please change Margot LH Flavor for culture and fix KH line (again i dont know how to do that)?
Or perhaps lets wait abit and release another incremental patch, may be i'll manage to do some fixes to art/ new art in those days

BG are even too powerfull without those missions. Last game i've converted couple of cities which were 3-4 tiles from my own city with ease.

I dont know to make those changes - it will be cool if you'll make small patch to test.
Sorry, I thought I had given the details. Find file gameinfo/civ4espionagemissioninfo.xml. Search in it to find "Convert City", search below that for iCost. The value is 300 now; change it to 3000 to make it more expensive, or -1 to disable it altogether.
Also if you do can you please change Margot LH Flavor for culture and fix KH line (again i dont know how to do that)?
I'm not sure what you want to do with Margo exactly, but you can look in the modiki XML reference for civilizations/civ4leaderheadinfos.xml, and find some information there. For KH, do you want to reduce the combat benefit from 25% to 15%? Please see units/civ4promotioninfos.xml, search for "Inspired I", and below that find iCombatPercent. Change the 25 to 15.

Sorry but i cant do that because i am also playing sucession game :P I'f i'll do those changes i will be not compatible - so atm i am restricted to what we have for now :) but it will be glad if you'll do that changes and test it.
(I may do them perhaps with changing back backup files for SG, we'll see)

Is there any way to make the Force Friendship display a diplomacy modifier of "We have Revered Mother agents working to our advantage" or something similar, or do all events have to have the "past events have proved your good nature" message?

It's hard to trace out what uses that field of the diplomacy summary. I can change it but it might be triggered by something else as well. I will have to figure out how to add more fields. I will put that on the to-do list.

Sorry but i cant do that because i am also playing sucession game

I guess if I made a patch, you wouldn't use it. I will put that on the list of things to do.

It's hard to trace out what uses that field of the diplomacy summary. I can change it but it might be triggered by something else as well. I will have to figure out how to add more fields. I will put that on the to-do list.

Ok, its low priority.

I guess my point with the city capture is that either:
a) The AI won't use it effectively, in which case it advantages the human player, OR
b) The AI will use it effectively, in which case the human player instantly has entire developed cities taken away from them - including Wonders all kinds of defenses, etc, and there is nothing they can really do to defend against it. This isn't fun.

The anarchy isn't too powerful if it costs enough.
Maybe make it base cost *5, for now?

the human player instantly has entire developed cities taken away from them - including Wonders all kinds of defenses, etc, and there is nothing they can really do to defend against it. This isn't fun.
Losing stuff is never fun. But, espionage has counters too. Post spies in your own cities. Keep spies in the BG cities so that you can run counterespionage missions. Since you don't lose the defending stack when a city flips and the BG doesn't have industry to build defenders fast, use your new *attacking* stack to take it back.

Post spies in your own cities
Are we sure that has an actual effect? I'm not certain.

Keep spies in the BG cities so that you can run counterespionage missions.

How will you know when to run counterespionage?

use your new *attacking* stack to take it back.
Which means you have to:
a) Declare war
b) Lose all the culture buildings and several of the other buildings when you capture the city.

Are we sure that has an actual effect? I'm not certain. ... How will you know when to run counterespionage?

Neither of us is experts at using espionage. But, the pedia entry for spy says "Helps Thwart Rival Spies". Also, if your enemies are using espionage, you will also use some espionage; then the espionage screen allows you to track their espionage spending relative to yours. If you see BG has a significant lead in EP, then you had better run some counterespionage.

Which means you have to: a) Declare war

I recall this was a comment about the Loki unit in FFH at one point. He also has a city flip ability. It does seem that BG city flip should have some diplomatic fallout. Perhaps a -4 diplo penalty, "You converted one of our cities!" and/or a high likelihood that the loser will declare war.

I haven't experimented much with this yet. But, it seems there are three city locations that would have different effects: (a) your city which borders a BG territory, (b) your city which is deep in your own territory, (c) your city which has weak culture but doesn't border BG territory. Which ones of these will culture flip back on their own? (a) probably shouldn't. (b) probably should. (c) seems like a poor target for the BG in the first place, except to make you mad, but I guess with "yearning for the motherland" it would probably flip back eventually also. So you might not need to declare war.

Is there some other way we can use this effect, which is flavorful and not too painful? That is the point of adding this type of experimental feature, to get suggestions on how to make it work better.

Neither of us is experts at using espionage

Very true!

But, the pedia entry for spy says "Helps Thwart Rival Spies".

I interpreted this as just meaning that they have a counterespionage mission.

If you see BG has a significant lead in EP, then you had better run some counterespionage.

The problem with counterespionage (the mission) is that if the enemy *isn't* running any missions against you for the next 10 turns, you are actually now in a weaker position for any future missions than you were before, because you have spent EPs against that player on the useless counterespionage mission, so enemy spy actions against you are now cheaper.

Counterespionage is very poorly designed.

I recall this was a comment about the Loki unit in FFH at one point. He also has a city flip ability.

Keep in mind that Loki can flip only cities with 0 culture, not mutliple thousands of culture powerhouses.


It does seem that BG city flip should have some diplomatic fallout. Perhaps a -4 diplo penalty, "You converted one of our cities!"

I'd support this, if we kept city-flips.

But, it seems there are three city locations that would have different effects:

Despite Sylvnn's reports, I'm not seeing cultural city-flips, cities are just too spaced out.

Also, converted cities are converted with their economy and infrastructure completely intact, so its pretty easy to have them build culture (or temporarily flip your culture slider) and have the city expand a couple of levels in only a few turns, which stops any flips.

Is there some other way we can use this effect, which is flavorful and not too painful?

I think plunging a city into civil disorder for many turns, or plunging a civ into anarchy/uprising are probably more flavorful and easier to balance. I can't really see the Bene Gesserit managing to convince a city to abandon its House.
I guess the actual way of interpreting this would be as a political move; they manage to convince the Emperor/Landsraad to reassign the fief ownership of a particular city to that of the BG's proxy house (ie to the BG player).
Kinda like the 19th century Great Powers assigning colonial rights to various territories between each other. That kind of thing is definitely in the book (how the Atreides are assigned Arrakis instead of Caladaan).

Maybe it would be ok if it:
a) It were very expensive in EPs
b) We could give some kind of flavor indication of what was happening. Maybe rather than "convert city" it would be "reassign fief" or something.
c) Capitals were immune
d) There was some way to prevent it. Eg: the mission cost scales more with relative EP investments, so you could maintain a block by having enough EPs against the BG player. Or it couldn't happen to any city with a spy unit in it. Or the cost of doing it was heavily increasing in the culture level of the city.

nonono
there is offence towards AI i seeing - AI never will be good enough to supress players culture in any costs - i flipped 4 citis last game, 2 of them very earlt by 4rth !! ring of my city, veeery early

I played large map too but with bit increased landmass.
BG are really powerfull at this, and even if it not flipped - old new culture rings were unbalanced and by this way slightest effort of culture and you just cut rivals city from necessary water sources. AI will never use it effectively, so that change inclined towards balancing efects and making it less "influencing". It is still easy to take far spice and such.
Please understand that there should be some balance and i also thing that increments we did in last edition are perfect.
I just feel it right now - there is some progression which is working quite well - there are limitation of civ engine, and bfc figure - and thas how things working in this engine - making those "above vanilla legendary" rings poping too soon means disasterous things if culture spreads by land. People play different maps, smalls, standards, hight land mass, low landmass. Game should be balanced in all cases. Thats a big loss for a mod if it can be played only on scattered island like arrakis setting. there are other settings, and when cities share landmass - efects of new culture rings hold too much power.

nonono
there is offence towards AI i seeing - AI never will be good enough to supress players culture in any costs

I don't understand this.

2 of them very earlt by 4rth !! ring of my city, veeery early
The 4th ring in the current patch is 1500 culture on epic speed.
I'd hardly call that very early. It is going to take a long time for you to have a *border* city with the AI get 1500 culture, unless you really really overpacked the number of AI players and had them start on top of each other.


AI will never use it effectively

The AI builds culture-producing buildings just fine. How will it never use culture?


Please understand that there should be some balance

While you may intend for comments like this to not have any actual meaning, they make it sound like you think that people reading your comments do not believe that there should be any balance. Thus, readers are likely to get annoyed or dismiss anything you have to say.

Its very easy to flip enemy tiles. AI will never will emphasize JUST culture. (in focused aim to flip enemy tiles as much as possible)
I mean only culture.
If done well over-focusing on culture with certain civs will make huge harm to your rivals which are next to you. With new rings there can be unbelievable flips (for vanilla). You can harm AI easilly cutting its production tiles with 4rth ring, and yes, its easy to do 1500 culture is nothing monument +2, library +2 theater hall +2 creative +2 temple +1 . Also, if you know there are multipliers - earlier built monument increases its culture output. So same monument if build early will be +4 culture. then there are specialists. Multiplied outputs will produce 1500 in no time, and there will be a flip, or heavy damage to enemy tiles.

If you take your 2nd - 3rd city there by turn 160 will be 4rth ring with any problem. Turn 160 is early game .

While you may intend for comments like this to not have any actual meaning, they make it sound like you think that people reading your comments do not believe that there should be any balance. Thus, readers are likely to get annoyed or dismiss anything you have to say

No, that is your interpretation, and thats your own issue. There is also another one - second - you dismissing things of reasons created by 1st issue. Then there is a third - when one say things like that probably he insisting that current mechanics are unbalanced, and perhaps too tired after job to chew every detail, also because that things are quite plain for him - there are still alot of cases of sharing landmass, and there are still exist problem with unability of AI to be cowardly focused on culture emphasis. It will build buildings, but in its own, flavor adjusted queues. That means most of AIs are easy to beat (when they too near) just by using exploit of OVER-empasizing culture in border cities. AI is still have understanding of tile mechanics from BTS - its how Firaxis and Sid created it - BFC cross , culture levels. Too big deviation means that AI wont be ready for such change and will not perform proper. Culture became much more powerfull thing - but AI dont know that. It does not know that it should over-emphasizing culture in certain cases - and if it will do it will take free cities, or, at least, harm rivals's cities with slight effort. This brings another solution - some uncertain SDK changes - but i think its easier just to adjust numbers than to change SDK.

But, the pedia entry for spy says "Helps Thwart Rival Spies".
I interpreted this as just meaning that they have a counterespionage mission.


As I understand it (which may not be all that well)...

In regular BtS a spy sitting in a city has the same effect as the building that provides epionage protection (Security Bureau).

For the Security Bureau it is controlled by the "<iEspionageDefense>50</iEspionageDefense>" setting. In DW the Assassin Bureau has the same effect

For the spy it is not clear - it is either set directly by the bSpy tag or by the bCounterSpy tag. However it is done, apparently in regular BtS the spy provides the same 50% defense that the SB does. I've seen this mentioned in various places in the forums, and it does appear to be correct that it provides some defense (how much is not so clear): If you are being plagued by spies, putting spies in your cities without security bureaus and on your vital resources can help some.

From what I've read, the spy and the Security Bureau do not add together. Only the higher value defender is used - but they are the same so it doesn't matter which it is.

In DW the spy can have promotions that increase its counterespionage (thanks to the Super Spies mod comp). This seems to be controlled by the iInterceptChange tag when applied to a spy (the same tag as used to change the chance to intercept air attacks for other units). This is used by the Security line of spy promotions. Because of this, in DW stationing a spy in a city that has a building with iEspionageDefense set to 50 - which would be the Assassin Bureau - should still be useful if the spy has at least Security I. The Mentat Espionage, and Mentat Espionage Sapho, buildings have this set to higher values (100 and 150) which should make stationing a spy in that city useless.

I have no idea what happens if you have two building with iEspionageDefense values. Do they add or is only the higher value used? I don't know. Two spies is supposedly not better than one spy. If so, then spies don't add to each other. I would also guess that buildings don't add.

Most of this is based on regular BtS - the SuperSpy mod could have changed the behavior.

G-E, very interesting, thanks for this.

Do we know if spies or buildings project an "aura" of defensiveness? Eg I often have spies caught out in open terrain in an enemy territory. Is this just a random change (affected by relative EP spending?) or is it affected by the presence of spies locally?

I have made some progress on the Reverend Mother missions with sdk changes in my local post-1.7 version.

1. Added new "memory" field for AI. When you look in the diplomatic screen and hover over an AI civ, you see a list of memories, each with a reaction value: "-2: You razed a holy city!" is the holy city memory. I added one to store "BG manipulation". Whenever one of the RM abilities is used, a -1 is added to this memory: "You manipulated me!" I can now add more memories if we agree on the text.

2. Significantly nerfed "convert city": doubled EP cost (now 3000), can no longer convert capital city, city now goes into revolt just like a military conquest, and adds -1 to "BG manipulation" memory. Most importantly, there is a chance the AI will immediately declare war when they lose a city; the chance is 10% times your "BG manipulation" memory. For example, if you have taken 2 cities from them, the chance of them declaring war is 30% when you take the third city.

3. Since "Force Friend" also adds -1 to the manipulation memory, I made it give a +2 reaction. So the net is +1 reaction, same as before. I can now customize the text instead of "past events have been good to us"; but I could not find a good phrase. In fact the point of using Voice is that the victim can't really remember why they did it, so a vague declaration like this one may be the right answer anyway.

4. Added new mission, "Force Enemy". This gives -2 to the existing memory "past events have proved your bad nature to us". When you have a RM in a city of civ A, and you choose this mission, you get a picklist of all the civs you have both met. You pick some civ B from the list, and if the mission succeeds, then A gets a -2 to B, and A gets a -1 to you (due to manipulation).

Next, I will try to modify the assassinate mission. In vanilla, there is a mission to assassinate any unit, but it is switched off in the xml. In super spies, they hijacked this code to allow killing of great people. So I will add a unitcombat field to the mission, and allow assassination of vehicle, mech, hornet and thopter unitcombats. This will be the special "sabotage" mission for Ordos.

Did we ever agree on a special effect for the Face Dancer? Spreading plague is possible, and it fits the "biological" theme for BT. But maybe there is something more interesting.

In the lore, face dancers can mimick anyone perfectly.

They could have a special "Infiltrate" mission that allows them to kill a unit and take it's place.

Another idea is maybe an "Open the gate" mission where they can lower your cities defense to zero for a few turns.

Just some ideas that would be cool that go with their MO.

In fact the point of using Voice is that the victim can't really remember why they did it, so a vague declaration like this one may be the right answer anyway.

"Force friend" (I still hate that name) was not supposed to be replicating Voice. You can't use voice to control anything more than brief instant muscle, it isn't mind control and it doesn't affect diplomacy.

This ability was supposed to be represent how Bene Gesserits offer sisters to serve the Emperor and various houses as Truthsayers, wives or concubines (eg Moiham, Margot, Jessica). So these Sisters are helping advise the faction, while also working for Bene Gesserit to advance their cause.

I would really like to get back to trying to model that.

So I would remove the manipulation penalty from that effect (they don't get mad at you for lending them advisors) and take it back down to +1 relations permanently.
And I'd rename the ability "Sisterhood Advisors" or something. Or "political marriage".
I like the "maniupulated memory" effect for city stealing, anarchy-causing or city uprisings.

There are four abilities for the RM: flip city, *civilization* anarchy, force friend and force enemy. We had discussed a few different mechanics but I see we haven't agreed on any of them.

We had discussed some way of settling the RM in a city to get the +1 diplomacy, or having the unit destroyed. This would represent giving an advisor, and this would have no manipulation penalty.

I am thinking of something different, and maybe I am intentionally overlapping it a little bit with Jedi Force. My view is that for any of these abilities, the RM gets into a position where they can create a legal document of some kind, gets to the person in charge, and says "SIGN!" or "AGREE!" or similar. The person signs, creating a binding agreement of whatever it was, but shortly after they regret it. So the effect happens, but the person is angry about it.

We can certainly explore additional missions or other mechanics. If you would like a RM unit destroyed to create the +1 effect, representing permanent loss of the RM to the other civ, that is not hard. If you would like some kind of settlement effect, I guess we could model it that a particular RM gives +1 to a particular civ, as long as it stays in the cultural borders of that civ. Then if it leaves, the bonus stops. Or even converts to a -1, "You took back your advisor!". But that does not really match the way other spy actions work. The other player cannot even see the RM unit, ever, so it would be hard to understand what is happening. What do you think would work better for a spy unit?

Do you feel that the other three unique missions are useful and flavorful, or do you object to them also? What do you suggest instead?

In the lore, face dancers can mimick anyone perfectly. They could have a special "Infiltrate" mission that allows them to kill a unit and take it's place.

At least five people have suggested that. One person has suggested it is a bad idea. The "ayes" have it. I will try to think of some way to make this work. If playtest feedback is that players do hate it when used against them, we can rethink. But it does seem highly flavorful.

Another idea is maybe an "Open the gate" mission where they can lower your cities defense to zero for a few turns.

This is in the game today. A spy can destroy city walls and cause a revolt; try it out with the strongest spy civilization, Ordos. Others have suggested a specific Harkonnen "traitor" unit, but I don't see the need for specific units or missions. In BBAI 0.82, jdog says the AI will now try hard to do this. There was a "bug" in BBAI preventing DW spies from being effective, but this is fixed in the incremental 1.7.0.4 patch. I think people should start seeing the AI do this to them.

My view is that for any of these abilities, the RM gets into a position where they can create a legal document of some kind, gets to the person in charge, and says "SIGN!" or "AGREE!" or similar.

This does not makes sense to me. Yes, you could make a person sign a particular piece of paper using Voice. But how would you ever manage to get an important treaty with terms that a senior person did not want to agree to in front of them waiting for signature? And how would you stop them from tearing the paper up 3 seconds later?
Voice is about muscle response. Its not a diplomacy effect. And its not mind control. And Reverend Mothers are not Jedi (which is how this name makes them feel).
Reverend Mothers "exist only to serve". They don't go around ordering Dukes and Emperors to sign particular pieces of paper. They might blackmail them in the in private (eg blackmailing Shaddam to let Leto I win the Trial of Annulment thing vs the Tleilaxu in the prequel) but they don't really use the Voice in public to issue orders.

We had discussed some way of settling the RM in a city to get the +1 diplomacy, or having the unit destroyed. This would represent giving an advisor, and this would have no manipulation penalty.
I feel strongly that the Force Frienship should be replaced with this ability.

I am indifferent whether or not the unit is destroyed (though if it is the effect needs to be more powerful). I could imagine the specific RM settling with the other house, or I could imagine her negotiating a deal where someone else then went (eg Moiham negotiating with Leto I to send Jessica to him).

And we only need 1 beneficial diplomacy effect.

I lean against the Force Enemy ability, but I don't care enough to oppose it if others like it.

At least five people have suggested that. One person has suggested it is a bad idea. The "ayes" have it

<grumbles quietly>

but I don't see the need for specific units or missions

We had at least 3 votes for a Harkonnen Traitor unit, and one against. The ayes have it :-)
The idea of having a Traitor who turns off the shield is just too awesome to leave out.

I feel strongly that the Force Friendship should be replaced with this ability.

Negotiating to send some other advisor seems reasonable. The only change is in the name (what do you suggest?), and removing the -1 manipulation penalty.

I lean against the Force Enemy ability, but I don't care enough to oppose it if others like it.

This is specifically aimed at copying the "Faux Pas" event, only under player control. Think of the Ixian ambassador at a Harkonnen event, and the RM seated behind him says "Sneeze!" at a critical moment. If nobody uses it or many people object, I can take it out. Is there a different name besides "Force Enemy" which suits better? "Cause Incident"? That sounds sneaky enough.

We had at least 3 votes for a Harkonnen Traitor unit, and one against. The ayes have it :-)

And I will certainly merge in the sdk/python changes which anybody makes to add it. There are several contributed ideas in the mod which I initially disagreed with.

The idea of having a Traitor who turns off the shield is just too awesome to leave out.

Try a "me against the spies" game, where you play say Harkonnen (not Atreides which gets extra defense) vs Ordos, Tleilaxu and Margot. I can guarantee this existing capability will be used against you. Then let's see how awesome you think it is.

Negotiating to send some other advisor seems reasonable. The only change is in the name (what do you suggest?), and removing the -1 manipulation penalty.

Name suggestions include some mix of:
"Sisterhood Adviser", "Political marriage", "Sisterhood Embassy", "Provide Truthsayer". Anything along those lines.

If nobody uses it or many people object, I can take it out.
I don't object strongly, though again I would interpret it as general Machiavellian manipulation rather than using Voice. Again, Voice is muscle control, the Bene Gesserit are masters of regular political negotiation, which is what we are aiming for here. I don't think we need to put semi-magical additions on to something that is just being good at regular human politics.
I would suggest "Cause Incident" or "Political meddling" or something like that.

My objections are that I think it will be too weak, and that the AI won't use it intelligently, and that the effects of it are too subtle for the player to clearly observe.

I will make another call though for a Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva building (I don't think you've ever commented on this) at Faith tech that provides some extra espionage points, and maybe gives +1 happy for non-state religions.
All the espionage abilities in the world aren't very useful if you don't have any EPs to spend on them.

And I will certainly merge in the sdk/python changes which anybody makes to add it.
It seems unlikely that others could code this.

Try a "me against the spies" game, where you play say Harkonnen (not Atreides which gets extra defense) vs Ordos, Tleilaxu and Margot. I can guarantee this existing capability will be used against you. Then let's see how awesome you think it is.

I haven't tried much with your latest spy AI changes. However, I will say that I have *never* had the AI use espionage against me intelligently. Ever.
If the AI were to destroy all my walls the turn before I was attacked, I'd be very happy. But I don't expect to see this happening regularly.
I suspect with your AI changes, the AI might come in regularly with spies and destroy my buildings, even defensive ones, but I doubt it will correctly do so just before invading.

This is half the point of the "traitor" unit that uses bombardment instead of building destruction; it doesn't rely on the AI being good at timing of espionage. All it relies on is AI stack of doom behavior.
The other half is that it is very flavorful.

I had one more idea for spies that I thought might be very useful; an "infiltration" mission in an enemy city that did nothing except give a few EPs (+10?).
So, if you have a bunch of spy units, there is always something useful for them to be doing, even if you lack the EPs for any other missions.

Playing a little, the AI is using espionage missions, but seems to constantly use the cheapest ones (eg stealing treasury) rather than waiting for the more expensive ones.

I suggest we cull the list of available missions.

Limit poison water to Facedancer only, and make it more powerful.
Limit sabotage production to Saboteur only, and make it cheaper.
Remove steal treasury.
Remove foment unhappiness.
Remove destroy improvement

Since BG likes to be advisors to the other factions, is it possible to foment friendship/enmity between other factions (e.g. you play BG and foment permanent friendship between, horror of horrors, Atreides and Harkonnen)?

Forcing enemies is exactly the mechanic talked about above.

Why would you ever want to force friendships between other factions??
Divide and rule.

Again, I like to warp roles...if there were UHVs for the BG, it shouldn't be to rule everybody, but to maintain the status quo so that they can finish their breeding projects. E.g. friendship between Atreides and Harkonnen.

I do not think that we should be making game abilities that have no value outside of some unusual hypothetical victory condition.

I think that would be unnecessary clutter.

Again, if you want to play a game where your goal is not actually civ victory, but to keep every civ alive or something like that, go for it. Whatever you find fun. But I don't think that should be a formal part of the mod.

Name suggestions include some mix of:
"Sisterhood Adviser", "Political marriage", "Sisterhood Embassy", "Provide Truthsayer".

Among the various choices, "Political Marriage" sounds best. I will make the change. Also I will rename "Force Enemy" to "Cause Incident".

I haven't tried much with your latest spy AI changes. However, I will say that I have *never* had the AI use espionage against me intelligently. Ever.

I can tell you that I came across the code while looking for the all-terrain problem, and jdog feels it works well enough to mention it in the BBAI 0.82 release notes. If it actually never happens we can revisit it. I assume you can do this on your own, with your own spy unit, so you agree the capability is there.

I had one more idea for spies that I thought might be very useful; an "infiltration" mission in an enemy city that did nothing except give a few EPs (+10?).


That is an interesting suggestion. By executing a mission, you lose the +5% per turn benefit to your success chance, and it takes some number of turns for the spy to return from your capital to the target city to do anything else. I am not sure that a small EP bonus is worth these costs; what do you think?

Since BG likes to be advisors to the other factions, is it possible to foment friendship/enmity between other factions

This is not hard to do now that I have mastered adding missions. I will put it onto the list of possible projects; it is just the opposite of the existing Force Enemy mission. It fits into the RM "manipulation" theme.

I am not sure that a small EP bonus is worth these costs; what do you think?

If you have 6-10 spies, you cannot possibly generate enough EPs from buildings in order to actually be able to spend them on missions. It can take 20 turns or more to generate enough EPs to perform a decent mission, particularly if your EP spending is diverted against multiple opponents. EPs are the binding constraint usually, not spy time.
Hence, most of the time your spies will just be sitting around unable to do anything.

And so the opportunity cost of having your spy returned to your HQ is virtually zero, because the spy wouldn't have been able to afford to do anything during that time anyway.

The bonus from spy turns spent in place caps out after 5 turns.

You still might not have enough EPs to perform a useful mission after that. Spies end up spending most of their life in downtime, waiting for enough EPs to perform missions. EPs are the binding constraint to spy activity. If that downtown can instead be used to generate more EPs, then spies become more useful. If 10 Eps is too low, maybe 15.

An alternative implementation would be to let any spy stationed in an enemy city passively generate say +2 EPs per turn against that faction. That'd be useful too.

I can say that as a human player, I would absolutely use a mission that cost nothing and gave me a few EPs. It might even make me have an army of 10 spies or more, constantly using the missions in order to drum up more EPs.

The main point of the mission is so that there is always something valuable that spies can be doing, rather than just sitting around waiting for EPs to accumulate.


I will put it onto the list of possible projects; it is just the opposite of the existing Force Enemy mission. It fits into the RM "manipulation" theme.

If you do this, please make sure that the AI will never use it (it has no value to the AI), and that it is clear to the human player what the effect is (and that this effect provides no obvious benefit to the human player).
I would not want players new to the mod to think that the ability was useful to them (why else would we have included it?), and select that ability by accident.

Obviously my preference would be not to include it. I think we will have a much better product if we cut the spy missions down to the bare minimum, but make sure that those missions are powerful and cost appropriately and that the AI can use them.
An efficient design is a superior design.

If you have 6-10 spies, you cannot possibly generate enough EPs from buildings in order to actually be able to spend them on missions.

Another interpretation is that you should not have that many spies. Moving them from your capital to a target, burning one mission, and moving them back again seems like un-necessary micromanagement. They should do important things, not just run around on a conveyor belt. Once I have implemented the next couple of missions, such as "Sabotage" for the saboteur, and "Something you probably won't like" for the Face Dancer, we can revisit the tradeoff the AI makes between picking cheap missions and waiting for more effective ones. It may be that removing the cheap missions is the right answer, but I think it requires a little study.

It is unlikely everybody will agree, but it may be worthwhile to think of some effect for a Face Dancer which is flavorful, powerful, and not objectionable. I was thinking of "stunning" a unit for a few turns while its leadership is in disarray due to an impersonator, or possibly granting control over the unit for *one turn* instead of permanently. Can you think of any ability, besides just poisoning, which would be fun?

Another interpretation is that you should not have that many spies

Why not? The AI does. Remember that Tleilaxu game I watched where they built 13 facedancers.

If we don't want many spies, we should put a national limit on them. But is 5 spies really too many? I would prefer instead to make spies actually valuable, and then increase their hammer cost as appropriate.

or possibly granting control over the unit for *one turn* instead of permanently

Gaining control for one turn just results in it suiciding against an adjacent stack. Or it should do anyway (otherwise its just AI weakness). Could a facedancer really get a regiment of soldiers to turn around and attack their own house? It feels a bit too much like mind control.

I don't particularly mind if there are abilities like this that kill a single unit; units are more disposable in this mod than they are in say FFH.
But I'd be surprised if you could get the AI to intelligently use espionage abilities that target a single unit.

Can you think of any ability, besides just poisoning, which would be fun?
I had suggested a great person assassination ability should be Facedancer only.

My suggestions were a cheap city-disease that just affects one city and causes unhealth (like improved version of poison water supply), and then a very expensive Plague disease that kills population and spreads between cities (and costs a lot of EPs).

Why not? The AI does. Remember that Tleilaxu game I watched where they built 13 facedancers.

This seems like an odd chain of reasoning. "The AI builds a lot of these units, so let's give the player some micromanagement to do in order to keep them from sitting around doing nothing". We agree that the EP costs of missions needs to be studied; let me get the other missions implemented then we can do it.

But I'd be surprised if you could get the AI to intelligently use espionage abilities that target a single unit.

I agree. However, there is such a mission in vanilla, and AI to use it. Let us first see if it is fun for the player; second if the AI uses it effectively; and third if the AI doesn't use it effectively, we can revisit the AI for that. I am gaining a *little* more confidence in modifying the internals of the AI after my success on all-terrain spies.

I had suggested a great person assassination ability should be Facedancer only.

Yes, and since it is part of the existing super spies mod, it has been in the game since the beginning. I have made it Face Dancer only. Please try it and see what you think.

My suggestions were a cheap city-disease that just affects one city and causes unhealth (like improved version of poison water supply), and then a very expensive Plague disease that kills population and spreads between cities (and costs a lot of EPs).

Most Dune readers will expect something to do with the Face Dancer which relates to impersonation, which happened in the books, rather than bioplagues, which did not happen in the books. Is there any impersonation related effect you could tolerate?

This seems like an odd chain of reasoning. "The AI builds a lot of these units, so let's give the player some micromanagement to do in order to keep them from sitting around doing nothing". We agree that the EP costs of missions needs to be studied; let me get the other missions implemented then we can do it.

I don't see it as requiring micromanagement. One of my suggestions was to have a passive EP gain. I don't care whether its a mission or not, I just want to be able to actually have spies *do* something other than just sitting around.

Spies are 60 hammer units IIRC; its odd to just assume that a player shouldn't build more than ~3 of them. If that's what you want, then hardcap them with a national limit, so that the AI can't build too many either.

However, there is such a mission in vanilla, and AI to use it
Do you mean the bribe unit mission?

Yes, and since it is part of the existing super spies mod, it has been in the game since the beginning. I have made it Face Dancer only. Please try it and see what you think.

I've never really seen the AI use it, and as the human player I'd probably rather invade the city and take advantage of the settled great person rather than try to capture it. And I wouldn't know that the great person was there to target. Ironically, Tlielaxu are the only faction that an assassination mission will be incredibly effective against anyway, since they rely on settled great priests.

Is there any impersonation related effect you could tolerate?
I can't really think of any that make sense, at the level of scale that we're talking about.
Perhaps Facedancers could have a "impersonator" promotion when created that increases mission success chance or spy escape chance or made it so that the nationality of the spy was never revealed, or some mix of these. Those all feel like obvious natural affects from being able to change your appearance.

I'd love to have something that feels like impersonation, as I agree that comes closer to their original canon purpose. But none of the suggestions I've seen really feel that way. Taking control of an enemy unit feels like mind control, not impersonation. Opening gates doesn't feel like impersonation either. Its hard to get impersonation effects because the mod operates at a strategic level not an individual person one.
If you can find one that feels right I'll support it.

What about a chance for the facedancer, if he or she's discovered, to have a high chance of being detected as a rival faction's spy and cause negative diplo between your target and that faction?

What about a chance for the facedancer, if he or she's discovered, to have a high chance of being detected as a rival faction's spy and cause negative diplo between your target and that faction?

This was also requested a few times on the Super Spies thread. Causing negative diplo that way is the point of the new "force enemy" ("cause incident") mission, so you can now do that on purpose. It gives a picklist so you can choose which third party will receive the negative diplo.

If we make it an effect which could happen on failure, should the spy's owner get a popup to choose which third party to receive the negative diplo? That is hard, since there is no good way to insert a new popup into that part of the turn processing. Maybe the game could automatically assume you want your worst enemy to be blamed. That is why I like "force enemy" because you can choose.

I would say:
1. I don't really think we want to encourage you to "want" to fail a spy mission.
2. I would really really really rather keep diplomacy modifiers just to the Bene Gesserit. We want to be keeping the Saboteur, Facedancer and Reverend Mother units all conceptually very different. Hence my proposal for Saboteur = building and unit and production destruction missions, Facedancer = biological missions, Reverend mother = political missions. That way you use them in different ways.
3. If a Facedancer fails a spy mission, it is probably killed in the attempt, and IIRC a dead facedancer is easily identified as such. Facedancer could make it harder for them to get caught, but I don't really think it could make you frame an enemy for a failed mission.
4. Changing diplomatic relations between two AI factions is still incredibly opaque to the human.
Any game effects need to have obvious feedback to the human player; this doesn't.
This is why I would prefer Facedancers started with a "Shapeshifter" promotion that gave particular benefits (improved evasion chance, etc.), as at least there would be some visual UI with the effect.

4. Changing diplomatic relations between two AI factions is still incredibly opaque to the human ... Any game effects need to have obvious feedback to the human player; this doesn't.

This seems a little too general; just about any interaction between two AI factions, such as trade effects, are equally opaque to the human player.

This is why I would prefer Facedancers started with a "Shapeshifter" promotion that gave particular benefits (improved evasion chance, etc.), as at least there would be some visual UI with the effect.

Face Dancers start with the Poisoner promotion, so that is already there. I agree that there should be no secret effects; any Face Dancer effect should be listed in Poisoner or in the unit help itself. So far we are OK since the FD does not actually have any unique abilities.

This seems a little too general; just about any interaction between two AI factions, such as trade effects, are equally opaque to the human player.

Yes... which is why we generally keep away from human abilities that only affect trade between two AI factions.
The only thing in the game like this (trade sanctions) *does* have an obvious in-game effect, because it ends open borders agreements. So, not very opaque.

Surely you agree with the general principle that the effects of decisions made by the human player should be readily apparent to the human player?

I would oppose an espionage mission that say just changed the yield to trade missions between AI players, because you couldn't see the effects.

This is another problem with the poison water supply mission and such, the effects are small enough that you never really notice any impact.

Face Dancers start with the Poisoner promotion, so that is already there.
A "shapeshifter" promotion might help enhance the impersonation flavor. The name of the promotion can matter.
Perhaps they should start with shapeshifter (which increases mission success chance), and then be able to gain poisoner 1 and 2.

This could be a cool way to differentiate the Saboteur/RM/FD.
Have them start with "Explosives expert", "Negotiator" and "Shapeshifter" promotions, respectively. Or something similar.

So far we are OK since the FD does not actually have any unique abilities.
Well, I am arguing for taking poison water supply away from the core infiltrator, and making it FD-only, while making it more powerful (and affected by Poisoner promotions).

Surely you agree with the general principle that the effects of decisions made by the human player should be readily apparent to the human player?

Yes, I do. And surely you are aware that the effects of the Cause Incident mission *are* readily apparent to the human player in the diplomacy screen? The "glance" tab tells you all the details of reaction values between the AIs.

Have them start with "Explosives expert", "Negotiator" and "Shapeshifter" promotions, respectively.

This is already the case. Saboteur starts with "Sabotage". RM starts with "Diplomat". FD starts with "Poisoner I". Once we have a better handle on FD effects, we can decide if some other name "shapeshifter" or "impersonate" may be better than "Poisoner".

And surely you are aware that the effects of the Cause Incident mission *are* readily apparent to the human player in the diplomacy screen? The "glance" tab tells you all the details of reaction values between the AIs.

Yes, you can find the data if you bury deep into the UI. Its hardly apparent though, and more importantly the net effect on the human player is pretty small.
Being able to observe a parameter change isn't really enough; the differences should actually have an impact on gameplay.

Also note, I am relatively indifferent about having an active mission where you lower relations between two enemies. Here at least, the player knows what the effect is, and actively did something to cause it.

My list 1-4 above was in response to the suggestion that there should be a (passive) change in AI diplomacy relations between two AIs when you failed a spy mission against one of them (with a facedancer). This is what I was opposing. This is incredibly opaque.

I am similarly opposed to a mission that increases diplomatic relations between two AIs, on the gruonds that it has no real value.

Once we have a better handle on FD effects, we can decide if some other name "shapeshifter" or "impersonate" may be better than "Poisoner".

The most logical effect of being a shapeshifter is that it makes it easier for you to penetrate security and carry out spy missions. Hence, I think that finding a way to tie this into the FD unit does not need to wait until after a list of missions is agreed on.

My argument is for "shapeshifter" as a base promotion, and then "Poisoner 1, 2" or "Biotoxins 1, 2" or something similar that can be selected when the FD levels up.

The most logical effect of being a shapeshifter is that it makes it easier for you to penetrate security and carry out spy missions.

There are existing spy promotions for this. If you feel FD should start with some of those, it is an easy change.

There are existing spy promotions for this. If you feel FD should start with some of those, it is an easy change.

Yes, there are... but don't you think it would be more interesting and flavorful for Facedancers to have a "Shapeshifter" promotion than a "Security 1" promotion? giving them an existing promotion (like security 1 or whatever) would not have the same flavor.

We want to capture their shape-changing somehow; this seems like an easy way to do that.

It would also help to distinguish them more; truthsayers should have high counter-espionage (they could easily sniff out spies, especially through truthsayer abilities and just keen observation), facedancers should have higher success chance/escape chance, saboteurs get something else (I suspect we should remove the free Xp gain).

But even if it were a completely identical and redundant promotion, I would still argue for it for flavor value alone.

Once I get the last two missions implemented, I will write up the existing design and then we can decide how to completely rearrange it. These are "destroy vehicle unit" for Ordos Saboteur and "impersonate leader" to take over a unit for one turn for FD.

Does that mean the impersonated unit can act willy-nilly (like declare war on some other AI)? That would be cool--fomenting wars among the AI for more advantage when you attack.

Does that mean the impersonated unit can act willy-nilly (like declare war on some other AI)? That would be cool--fomenting wars among the AI for more advantage when you attack.

Hm, good point. I have not implemented it yet, but what I was planning is that the target unit is destroyed; a unit is built owned by you, which has the same promotions as the destroyed unit; after one turn, your unit is destroyed; and a new unit with the same promotions is created for the target player. So you can give the unit any order, but it is owned by you. So if you use it to attack some third party, that is *you* declaring war on the third party, not the target player.

What you suggest is more interesting, but I am not sure how to give you control over a unit which is owned by the target player.

That doesn't sound very useful. If you delete the unit, does that mean the AI gets a new one? (Why not just sabotage unit)
What if you're at war with that civ and you get the unit with the proposed power? Since you're at war, how would that unit be located? Back to your borders (useless)? Just outside the city (to be able to attack) or still sitting in the city? And if that unit is killed, does the AI get a free one?

That doesn't sound very useful.

Thanks for the feedback. I have not implemented it yet, but it may be implemented today or tomorrow.

If you kill off the unit, for example by attacking another one of that player's stronger units, the original owning player does not get it back.

If you are already at war with the original owner, or have Open Borders, then your new unit appears in any passable adjacent tile. When the unit get re-owned by the original player, it stays in that location, or if you are at war and you have a stack there, it appears in any adjacent location.

If you are not at war and do not have open borders, then the unit appears at the nearest legal location, just as if you had DOW with a unit inside their borders.

Any suggestions about a better implementation or different power are welcome.

OK, that makes sense. I would make the unit belong to you longer, with a rapidly increasing probability of flipping back to the original owner depending on chance. (e.g. you control the unit for 1 move at least, 50% chance 2 moves, 25% 3 moves, 12.5% 4 moves and 6.5% 5 moves, and 0% for 6 moves) Otherwise it's just not worth it as a mission for a spy (who presumably took a long time getting there and sat for 5 moves).

I would make the unit belong to you longer, with a rapidly increasing probability of flipping back to the original owner depending on chance.

That is possible. I would imagine 99% of the time you would use the controlled unit to attack some other enemy unit the first turn you controlled it, even if it was a suicide attack. I can imagine a situation where the unit was alone, in some choke point, and you use the one turn to move it out of the way. What would you do with the controlled unit in turns 2-N that you would not do in turn 1?

I would still evaluate the logic of this; do we really think that a couple of Facedancers could go into a city, kill and impersonate the commanding officers of 2 regiments, and convince those regiments to leave the city and then launch a suicidal attack against their compatriots still in the city, weakening the defenders so that the Tleilaxu just over the horizon can take the city?

Again, that feels like mind control, not impersonation. It does not make sense, and it is not in character or theme.

Then again, do we really think a Reverend Mother could convert a whole city to join them rather stay under the benevolent Atreides?
I would move the converted unit where they can be best used, taking a chance that they might flip back.

It does not make sense, and it is not in character or theme.

I will be happy to consider *any* suggestion regarding a unique mechanism for impersonation which you make.

Then again, do we really think a Reverend Mother could convert a whole city to join them rather stay under the benevolent Atreides?

Yes. They're not converting the population, they're getting the fiefdom reassigned through political manuevering - like how the Harkonnens lose the Arrakis fief through Imperial fiat. This is a feudal society, the populace doesn't get to choose who their rulers are.

Perhaps we should rename this ability to make it more clear what is going on?
"Reassign fief", "Acquire city", "Annexation"?

I will be happy to consider *any* suggestion regarding a unique mechanism for impersonation which you make.
My suggestion is to leave it at a Shapeshifter promotion on the facedancer that makes them more effective spies.

If you really wanted a "leader-impersonation" ability that affected units, you could have an ability that caused an entire stack to be unable to move for a turn (like FFH entangle), because of chain of command confusion as they received conflicting orders from their local general (replaced by face dancer) and high command.
Its much more plausible to me that you could cause confusion and inaction, through replacing a key leader, than that you could cause an army to start attacknig their own forces.

But again, I am suspicious you could get the AI to use that intelligently.

Perhaps we should rename this ability to make it more clear what is going on? "Reassign fief", "Acquire city", "Annexation"?

"Annex" is somewhat better than "Convert", I will change it.

If you really wanted a "leader-impersonation" ability that affected units, you could have an ability that caused an entire stack to be unable to move for a turn ... but again, I am suspicious you could get the AI to use that intelligently.

I am almost done with the impersonate action. I have had trouble testing it on units which are outside cities, because they keep moving around, and the spy may not move and perform an espionage action in the same turn. So it will be easier to use on stationary targets, inside cities. If they are inside cities, preventing them from moving is not much of an effect. When I release it, let's try it and see if it is fun for the human. If it is, and the only problem is the AI does not use it effectively, I will try to fix that.

have had trouble testing it on units which are outside cities, because they keep moving around, and the spy may not move and perform an espionage action in the same turn

That is a very good point, I hadn't thought of that.
This will be true for any ability trying to target moving units, including sabotage type abilities or whatever.
I agree that this makes an entangle-type effect unviable.

Hm, good point. I have not implemented it yet, but what I was planning is that the target unit is destroyed; a unit is built owned by you, which has the same promotions as the destroyed unit; after one turn, your unit is destroyed; and a new unit with the same promotions is created for the target player. So you can give the unit any order, but it is owned by you. So if you use it to attack some third party, that is *you* declaring war on the third party, not the target player.

What you suggest is more interesting, but I am not sure how to give you control over a unit which is owned by the target player.

For facedancers impersonation, I was thinking more along the lines of:

The facedancer replaces a unit in a city. For all intent and purposes that unit remains under the control of the civ that the FD replaced. Until...

The civ with the implanted facedancer tries to use it against you in a battle. then they get a message like "Your <Unit Name> was revealed to be a Facedancer and has turned on you!" then the unit gets deleted from their stack and added to yours. Of course this will probably add the normal diplo penalty "You spy was caught causing trouble".

Xaos I thought about that too but how do you (as Tleilaxu) keep all those facedancers staight if you impersonated many of them? When it's under the other civ's control, how do you see where they've moved? And there should be a possibility for the other civ to detect that facedancer and revert the change which might be hard to code.

Can I please get an answer to why you think an impersonator commanding officer can somehow get his soldiers to attack their own House?

This feels like Mind Control, not impersonation.

Can I please get an answer to why you think an impersonator commanding officer can somehow get his soldiers to attack their own House?

This happens all the time in military novels. "Men, the other unit is controlled by a traitor and they are about to assassinate the Duke! We have to strike now!"

Or in spy/futuristic TV series like Alias and Spooks.

An entire regiment, launching a suicidal attack against a city? I dunno, it still feels wrong to me.

But whatever you guys prefer.

Xaos I thought about that too but how do you (as Tleilaxu) keep all those facedancers staight if you impersonated many of them? When it's under the other civ's control, how do you see where they've moved? And there should be a possibility for the other civ to detect that facedancer and revert the change which might be hard to code.

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of you have zero control over your infiltrated FD until the infiltrated civ tries to attack you. You can't track them or anything else. It makes more sense that in order to better blend in, that the FD does not act like a normal spy. i.e. he doesn't 'check in' so to speak. He has a long term mission and thats it. Of course the one who sends the FD on his infiltration will get a message like 'Your facedancer has successfully infiltrated the <Civ Name> base of <Civ City> and replaced a <Unit Name>'. The success rate for this should be low early game and get higher late game. Not sure how the mechanics of this kind of stuff works, be we probably dont want quick and easy victories this way. The ability should come from maybe some late game tech. or maybe a unit promotion?