Easiest way to fix Espionage.

Currently the number of spies given each player is far too low and the power of each spy far too high. If each spy had LESS value, then it wouldn't be as wasteful to, for example, station one in a city state for a long-term goal of flipping them; or station one in a city not because you're likely to get a tech from it, but because you simply want vision of the area.

To this end, I propose that the number of spies given to each player be multiplied by three or four, and the tech steal rate be reduced to 1/4th current speed.

Another way to make espionage more important is to increase the difference between an unskilled spy and a skilled spy doing a task. This could be accomplished by adding significantly more "ranks" to the spy system without significantly changing the power level of the top and bottom ranks. Additionally, this would make it possible for lesser tasks than tech theft to reward the spy with XP ranks; election rigging granting a level wouldn't be too powerful if there are 10 levels to go through. Tech theft would need to be worth more levels than these minor tasks, of course.

I honestly don't even think more tasks need to be added to the system; all that needs to be added is additional incentives to use the existing tasks besides tech theft.

From Sun Tzu's Art of War:
"Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies."

A whole chapter on just _spies_, in what would have been considered the Classical Era at the latest.

I'd really like to see Espionage started well before the Renaissance.

CaptainPatch said:

From Sun Tzu's Art of War:
"Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies."

A whole chapter on just _spies_, in what would have been considered the Classical Era at the latest.

I'd really like to see Espionage started well before the Renaissance.

Click to expand...

Yeah thats a valid point. The mongol hordes had no knowledge of how to construct working siege equipment until their spies brought them blueprints from the chinese. Hilarious because they then built them and kicked some chinese ass