A question or two for those of you more experienced in post-vanilla features... (That would be about all of you, no?). The first is not much related to this game I don't think, but the second is.
I was playing with various starts and trying out various things... I have the 3.19 patch installed, and BUFFY seems to be working just fine (apart from that annoying message on how I can change the options which pops up every turn).
I was playing a military game (the AI seems to behave quite differently to vanilla!) and had a couple of vassals. Boudica was a "friendly" at me yet "didn't like me enough" to form a defensive pact. I assume this is something to do with vassals? She had a negative at me for something along the lines of "my rivals are your vassals" or something like that but she was still friendly.
So the first question, not much related to this game. I don't understand how vassals effect things like that. Am I right in assuming it was vassals she didn't like? Does she have to like all my vassals well enough for a defensive pact as well as me before she signs one? Vassals generally seem to just declare war and peace and pacts when they are told to but this case seems to be an exception - in this case they seemed to seriously effect the way I was viewed by another AI.
Now to something more related to this game. I notice generally that the AI is genius compared to vanilla (which is not saying much, but it is remarkable). But I'm also still thinking through espionage. I've read some articles, but when it comes to little details I'm still struggling. It seems that the information gained is very useful indeed, and the power of buildings that produce espionage points is very great. Early in an ancient start you seem only to be able to get lots of points by using the slider, which I am unwilling to do because of the effect on research (I haven't tested the espionage economy yet!) but later on (Code of Laws and later) when you can build buildings that accumulate points, then particularly in the industrial era and onwards when you can build things which multiply espionage points, you can accumulate quite a lot. I found this very useful indeed when attacking an AI later in the game when their "stack of doom" rolls down on you when you attack them. I was able to see it coming from a long way off because I could see the AI cities because of the accumulated espionage points, and prepare to meet it, and pick it apart on arrival. (I just LOVE the way mounted units rip siege units to shreds!!
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I'm getting to the question related to this game the long way around, but here it is. How important is espionage for us in this game? Will it pay to invest the necessary hammers in court houses, security bureaus, intelligence agencies, jails, etc.? When it gets down to little details, are the hammers invested going to give a good return?