How to stop early espionage?

alpha wolf 64

Byte me
Joined
Apr 18, 2002
Messages
696
Location
Madison of Cheeseland
OK, spying has just entered the game. For once, almost everyone is friendly and there have been no major wars. One civ seems determined to steal techs from me and it seems like every 4 or 5 turns, I am killing his spy. They even agreed to stop spying. I forgave the 1st time, but when I denounced him after the 4th or 5th time, it started a chain reaction of everyone denouncing me, and then denouncing the few that did not denounce me, which then turned into a world war. After that, the world broke into 3 different groups of countries each hating the other 2 groups. All of this because 1 country would not honor their agreement to stop spying on me. This is the kind of overreacting stupidity that makes me want to turn spying off completely.

How do you get countries' to honer their agreement to stop spying? Later on, they finally started getting successful and stole 3 techs from me. The whole world should not hate me for denouncing them in this case.
 
I mostly use my spies to spy on others, for intrigue or for stealing tech (if I am behind in tech) and since I do spy myself I can hardly blame the AI for spying on me. I do tell the AI to leave me alone and sometimes they honour it and the same goes the other way around, when an AI tell me to stop spying, sometimes I honour it sometimes I don't :)
Later in the game (when I have many spies) and/or if I have 'important' CS to protect I send my spies that way.
Although, I do protect myself, having a spy in my most targeted cities but mostly when I have nothing better to do or if I am a very hot target, then I can use me protecting cities to shot enemy spies and promote my spies fast.
Perhaps the various AIs will be better to honour 'don't spy on me' deals in BNW when you can have diplomats instead.
 
If all was friendly you prolly had a DoF with the country you denounced.

Denouncing or warring a country you have a DoF with gives you a global diplomacy hit.

You should just let them steal and use the "forgive" option to get a positive modifier. It's not like it harms you that some civ get a little stronger by stealing techs.

I always let them steal, because thats the only way to make backwater AI's stronger, since we can't trade techs to buff AI's thats fallen behind.
 
Don't pay much attention to them stealing your techs, it doesn't really hinder you in any way. Just use them to level up your new spies before sending them to do real work.
 
Unless you are the undisputed tech leader (and can't steal techs from others), it is generally not worth investing heavily to stop others from spying on you. Research simply isn't a 0 sum game. If I have a choice between nothing happening, and both me and a random civ getting a tech; the latter is almost always better for me. The only time this may not be the case is if the random civ is my main competitor.

On a side note, how would it affect the game if you could detect third party spies? That is Civ A and B send a spy to Civ C. Civ A learns (through a small random chance) that civ B also has a spy there. Civ A would get the option to either tell Civ C about this (for a diplomatic bonus), or collaborate with Civ B, in which case each of the spies A and B get a bonus to how quickly they can discover techs. Might make spying a bit less bland.
 
As the tech leader, the main benefit of defensive spies is to level them up before you put them in CSs. Leveled up spies do a much better job rigging elections, couping and defending coups.
 
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