Finding out whos is using spies against you

Is there a way to find out who is sending the caught spies?
Most of the time it just says thay are caught but not who sent them..

Also... What is with corps? they just drive your economy into the ground.. or am i missing something?

Run anti-espionage missions against the other civs especially those who hate you and are on the same continent. If you're alone on a continent just watch your coastline for caravels and later on subs sneaking up to your shores. While the anti-spy period is in effect you'll get more info on captured spies along with catching them much more often.

You will also get infos about the nationality of maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of all spies you capture while on mission.
Just put spies into your cities to increase the chance that enemy spies are caught before they can do any harm

Proteus said:

Just put spies into your cities to increase the chance that enemy spies are caught before they can do any harm

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This hasn't been confirmed, so stationing a spy in your own cities is a waste.

Tatran said:

This hasn't been confirmed, so stationing a spy in your own cities is a waste.

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It has been confirmed but there is some dispute as to whether multiple spies increase your chances of finding enemy spies.

Tatran said:

This hasn't been confirmed, so stationing a spy in your own cities is a waste.

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I haven´t found any experiments into the counter espionage capabilities of spies stationed in your cities till now (where probabilities to catch spies .
There are only people who say out of their anecdotical evidence that stationed spies catch enemy spies as well as people who out of anecdotical evidence say they don´t.

Especially the message (which I get often)
"An enemy spy was caught by counterespionage agents"
lets me suspect that this is one of the occasions where an enemy spy was caught by some of my stationed spies.

I also have in my current game (where I station spies in all of my cities as soon as possible) almost never an espionage/sabotage mission by other civs succeed.
The only location where such missions have been successful were in newly conquered cities (where I didn´t have a spy yet) and in one outlying city in another continent, where sometimes my production is sabotages, something that succeeded more frequently before I stationed a spy there.

So IMHO they´re no waste of resources.

There are certain instances where you just can't tell. My impression, however, is that the higher the ratio of your spy points to theirs, the greater your chances of a) catching them and b) discovering their identity.

That said, keep an eye on the ratios. If a spy mission against you is successful, and it doesn't say who carried it out, just check to see whose points against you have dropped.

axident said:

It has been confirmed but there is some dispute as to whether multiple spies increase your chances of finding enemy spies.

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What's the number? 2, 5, 10, 50 ?
It's a wrong way to counter enemy spies.
Why not a promotion system for spies too?

Why not a promotion system for spies too?

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I like it...I like it a lot!

Tatran said:

What's the number? 2, 5, 10, 50 ?
It's a wrong way to counter enemy spies.
Why not a promotion system for spies too?

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Someone looked inside the XML and apparently a security bureau and your own spies on a tile, help find enemy spies if they end their turn on that tile.

In an earlier thread I posted this little experiment:

The setup was: 1 enemy spy on a 1-tile island within friendly territory together with varying numbers of friendly spies on the same tile. Counted the numbers of turns it took to capture the villain. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Here's the result:


So in conclusion I would say that the spy thwarting effect does stack, maybe not linearly though.

If I did the same in neutral territory, the enemy spy was never caught (I stopped after 50 turns).

Rince


The original thread contains some hard numbers found in the SDK.

eric_ said:

I like it...I like it a lot!

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Sigh.

More micromanagement...

At least implement a switch allowing us who doesn't need to build and move spies to play our game with the BtS spying additions turned off.

As I understand, accomplishing this would actually be quite easy to do:

The first and most important step would be forcing the Espionage slider to 0% permanently for all Civs: "if you don't spy on me, I won't spy on you".

Essentially, if all Civs spend 50 gold/turn on espionage, all that gold is wasted and the expenditure could as well be zero. It's spending more than your neighbour that makes the difference, and by setting this game option, you'd get rid of this needless and intrusive arms race if you don't want it. This gives at least 10% to use on useful stuff instead, just like before BtS!

The second step would be tripling the cost of a Spy unit (easily done in the xml) - obviously making sure the AI doesn't ruin itself still building them. This should take care of the worst of the spy spamming that's plaguing my games. BtS more or less forces me to build a spy in each city, and I resent that useless micromanagement: why not instead say each Settler comes auto-loaded with a Spy (for no extra cost) and thus consider each city to have a Spy built in?

To make myself clear, while I dislike the loss of at least 10% on my sliders as well as the Spy unit micromanagement forced upon me by BtS, I am not suggesting anything to destroy your fun if you happen to like espionage. That's why this should be an OPTION, so there's no need working yourself into a rage now.

To really turn off espionage, you need to take out the EP from all the buildings and then strip out each leader's tendency for espionage. Then there's the spy specialist and Great Spy problem.

Otherwise, you still have a disparity between civs who meet many civs early and those who meet late.

IMO if a spy is discovered and the nationality identified, a -1 relations hit should occur for around 20 turns on normal speed.
Placing 3-4 spies in each city seems to prevent most activity, so no need to spend on spying, it goes on research instead.

Originally Posted by eric_ View Post
I like it...I like it a lot!
Sigh.

More micromanagement...

At least implement a switch allowing us who doesn't need to build and move spies to play our game with the BtS spying additions turned off.

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Wait, what? How does your post address my point that I like promotable spies?

That said, I can fully understand your disliking the BtS take on the espionage feature in general. I love it myself, but, still, your reasoning makes sense.

Answer: everyone is. Even friendly spies are, thats ridiculous:

IMO if a spy is discovered and the nationality identified, a -1 relations hit should occur for around 20 turns on normal speed.

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There is a spying relations hit when they're discovered and their nationality is identified already. I forget the exact wording, but it's something like "-1 Your spies were causing trouble in our lands!". I don't know how long it lasts, because Charlemagne didn't live too much longer after he caught my spy.