I would like to use espionage more in my games (in the way you are showing it how).
But I haven't understood quoted. Because according to the 2nd quote I've thought one can generate
via slider and SYs only in good cottage cities =
. So, how to generate a lot of
via slider and SYs from a poor
land? I don't understand? Trade routes? Cottages even there?
A poor map just calls for an espionage game. Crappy snaky archipelago without rivers, or something... (+GL to build). I would like poor land is a real motive (among others) to go espionage, not because it's fancy thing to do.
Yes, Cottages, even in a bad burocratic capital. Traderoutes too and hire a Spy-Specialist from the Courthouse, and build a Jail too if your game goes until Constitution. Maybe even a Castle.
Also, poor land doesn't necessarily mean that the capital is poor too, it's sometimes the case, that the capital has good food so is a good city but that all the surrounding is bad.
Additional questions:
Where would you settle the 2nd SYs? Again in the capital or in another cottage city?
When would you switch 'on' espionage slider? After Alphabet? How much? For how long? How to pick right moments for switching on and off? Any specific clues?
This I don't understand, too?
WastinTime once wrote about espionage-assisted Cultural Victories that "you only Alpha, you can shut down research after that basically" , and it really is like that.
When to switch Espionage on and off, is mostly a question of how much money one has, and if one knows which AI to steal from next, so which AI has got a valuable tech, that it doesn't trade to others. When you play for an espionage-assisted Cultural Victory, you run 100% Espionage on the same target the whole time, but as you're speaking from using Espionage in other types of games, in those you simply spy with the base-EPs on one target to see what it's researching, and when you discover that someone different researched something that meets the criteria, you switch, turn on 100% once you got the money, bring the Spies into position in between, steal, and trade that tech around for everything else.
Towards the last quote:
City-revolts are a Spy-missioin that's available if you got enough
on someone, and got a Spy stationed in the city, then you can make the city revolt for 1T (quite expensive, but also very powerful) , which brings it down to 0% defenses. This is great when conducting war with mounted units, because then one doesn't have siege usually, because siege is too slow. The necessary
for this can also come for a Great Spy, of which you'll get quite a few, if you run a full EE and hire a Specialist everywhere where it's possible. Then you sometimes can steal a tech, invade the target with city-revolts and even steal its
once its down to 1 or 2 cities.
Secondary Scotland Yards I wouldn't build too many, better use the Infiltration mission if you already got one in your capital. Golden Age is also a good possibility.
Hth.