On the Civ 2 game diplomats and spies would buy cities, steal technologies and do the things that a good agency would do.

Now with Civ 3, I have to wait til the Industrial Ages to think about spying, then I have to wait til an Intel Agency is built to find out what units are where. But I can't do the things I wanted to do in the old Civ2 game namely corrupt politicians and steal technologies. The manual offers me no insights on how to do it.

WTF

You should be able to steal technologies and use propaganda to try to flip another civ's cities. Once you have IA and you plant a spy use the 'E' (I think it is) button that is on the right side of the little box where the year, current active unit, etc. are shown. I'll warn you though, it is not like in civ2.

Once the spy is planted, click on the logo near A.I capital city to activate him.

But the best use is with the military advisor screen, it will tell you how much and what kind of units a.i. got. click on units into military advisor screen, choose the apprpriate a.i. and look at their units. If you steal plan, then you will see on the map where they are ( only 1 turn).

Originally posted by Elvis
On the Civ 2 game diplomats and spies would buy cities, steal technologies and do the things that a good agency would do.

Now with Civ 3, I have to wait til the Industrial Ages to think about spying, then I have to wait til an Intel Agency is built to find out what units are where. But I can't do the things I wanted to do in the old Civ2 game namely corrupt politicians and steal technologies. The manual offers me no insights on how to do it.

WTF

You should be asking this question in the newbie q ( http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=34839&goto=newpost ) or FAQ thread.

Spies suck in civ3. Trying to steal techs is way too expansive and fails anyway. Then the spy is caught and you can't see what units they have or when they're building spaceship compenents. Trying to replant the spy can lead to war if they're unhappy.