Killer Spies

Is there a way to get spies to be able to assassinate enemy great persons and corporation execs using XML? I don't want spies to able to fight anything else. I would make GP's and co execs invisible to all except spies, of course (which I know how to do).

Would just giving it an attack work? Or would they then attack all enemy units as subs do? You might get it to work where they can attack any unit, but you get a popup like when moving onto a square with a neutral enemy (to go to war or not).
Then also give it say %80 withdrawal and they can perform sabotage on enemy units and stuff
But then if the GP is on the same square, it kind of ruins that theory..

Once again, I must swoop down as Dom Pedro II, destroyer of dreams and killer of hopes... no, it's not possible to do in the XML... AND I can't think of how you could do this in the SDK either for that matter.... probably is a way, but I can't devote the brainpower to it right now.

Dom Pedro II said:

Once again, I must swoop down as Dom Pedro II, destroyer of dreams and killer of hopes... no, it's not possible to do in the XML... AND I can't think of how you could do this in the SDK either for that matter.... probably is a way, but I can't devote the brainpower to it right now.

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That was a demonstration on how to catch flies... just leave a little bit of honey (my first post) and voila! Somebody who really knows his stuff zooms right in and lands.

Oooookay, mister grand poobah sir. Would you kindly add this option as a possible development in your current project?

His majesty says he'll consider it...

Dom Pedro II said:

His majesty says he'll consider it...

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"Votre Seigneurie est trop bonne..."

As Dom Pedro said there isn't any viable way to do this through XML without causing a lot of issues, but there is actually a "Destroy Unit" espionage mission built into the SDK which can be enabled through XML. This has many limitations though, including the fact that it will not allow you to destroy GPs.

Only units with an actual hammer cost can be destroyed ( the ep cost is based on the hammer cost), and only units in their home territory can be destroyed (you can't destroy enemies in your own territory). If that tickles your fancy you can actually enable it through XML by modifying the mission info XML file (don't remember what it's called off the top of my head).

I explored making this mission performable in friendly/other empire territory, basically allowing you to target any unit that was by itself (Partly for balance, partly so I could easily determine cost and what not). Unfortunately all I managed to do was utterly destroy all the work I put into other aspects of that version of my mod

I'm currently working on turning assassination and bribery into separate unit missions entirely (as opposed to espionage missions), I'm hoping to have more luck going down that road...

Hmm... do you have any code or notes on how to enable assassination and bribe missions in the game? Even with the limitations that fireaxis worked in it still sounds quite reasonable and cool.

Trojan Sheep -- thanks for the info. Good luck with the coding on this stuff. Your mod seems very interesting too!

lugaru, I believe all you'd have to do is create two mission entries in the Civ4EspionageMissionInfo.XML one for each of the below variables:


I'm not sure what a reasonable amount is for each, but given what I saw in the SDK they both should work if enabled this way.

I would suggest copying the destroyimprovement mission as an example if you haven't modded this file before. The other mission parameters for that one should be similar.

Oh wow, that worked out just fine for me. I didint see the Buy option when I did a quick test run but maybe I need to be at war, since it's too dang obvious who is buying your unit if you try to do it stealthily. I used a value of like 200 and killing an archer cost me like 45 espionage points, I might increase the values a little for balance.

Besides that I was trying to download your super spies mod and the link is currently broken, do you have an alternate link?

I reuploaded it and it seems to be working now, I've noticed a lot of downloads are broken on Civfanatics as of late, not sure what happened.

TS, a hacker deleted a bunch of the stuff in the database as far back as July 2007.

Dom Pedro II said:

TS, a hacker deleted a bunch of the stuff in the database as far back as July 2007.

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Yeah but at recent as a week or two ago a LOT of the newer downloads and images became disabled. I just thought that the database got corrupted but if it's not the case somebody (or something like a worm) is still hacking the site.

Either way thanks for getting the link back up there!

Dom Pedro II said:

TS, a hacker deleted a bunch of the stuff in the database as far back as July 2007.

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Wow... that's like robbing a YMCA, he gets nothing out of it and if he ever tried to brag about it he'd be laughed at by his peers and scorned by everyone with half a wit of sensibility. Honestly, hacking a fan site, how low have people gotten?

That's a brilliant analogy!

Is it possible to cause any object to have a hammer cost---e.g. a great person or a Super Specialist?

Trojan Sheep said:

Only units with an actual hammer cost can be destroyed ( the ep cost is based on the hammer cost), and only units in their home territory can be destroyed (you can't destroy enemies in your own territory). If that tickles your fancy you can actually enable it through XML by modifying the mission info XML file (don't remember what it's called off the top of my head).

Click to expand...

The issue with doing that, is that the hammer cost itself determines whether or not a unit can be built. So by giving GP a hammer cost, you'd be allowing people to build them. You could probably finagle it by putting other restrictions on the units in question (tech prereqs that can never be met, or something similar), but it's not an ideal solution.

FYI, Super Spies 1.2 is out now, and includes its own form of unit assassination. The main differences between it and the base game functionality is that any unit can be targeted, even in friendly or neutral territroy, but it must be alone. There is no hammer cost restriction so GP are targettable, but both costs and chances of success are directly modified by unit level.