Spy's are too limited.

Spies are kida meh, but they are not burdensome to manage either and they don't hurt the experience, either.

you can assign more spies per era if you want....

simonthesinner said:

... they don't hurt the experience, either.

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Well I agree in BnW, Spies are overall a positive feature, for their interaction with the World Congress. In G&K I didn't agree, I used to always play with Espionage turned off, because I felt that apart from the intrigue feature which is cool, they only added bad to the game.

Is there a reason why when your spy dies, they just respawn? Is it really that imbalanced to be down a spy?

I like the idea of a spy promotion tree. It would give some flavor to the system. I think it would have to be limited to a certain number of promotions so as to not have an army of completely invincible spies, though I guess spies getting killed in operations would act as a sort of balance to that.

If not a promotion tree though, I think they should at least gain a level when performing a coup. If you're in the tech lead, you're never going to be stealing tech, and even if not, it generally just takes way to long to steal techs, and it has such a high diplomatic cost that I almost never do it. Killing enemy spies is also far too infrequent to level up more than one or two spies tops. It also seems to me that the Constabulary/Police Station, should make it more likely to kill enemy spies rather than just slowing down steal rate.

Of course more options are needed. IN BtS you could poison the water, start unrest, spread culture etc.

Let me be clear: I DON'T want ANY spy ability that is 1) instant and 2) is based on percentage of success. Civ4 espionage was horrible. Blowing up whole tiles? That was a bit over the top.

With that said, current spies and diplomats are just about right.

The only other thing to add is maybe a "kidnapping" or "defection" ability which lowers another civ's great person acquisition and raises yours for a certain number of turns. I was also thinking of a better "sabotage" system which raises production costs in a city without destroying entire buildings like in Civ4, but since production is a pooled resource, this would be more unrealistic than it would be implementable. Perhaps if spies could whip up labor strikes that disallows some citizens from working tiles or buildings (similar to the angry citizens in Civ4), that's the only possibility I could think of.

I like how a spy will tell you that so and so is building this wonder. You view their city and notice the wonder will finish in 7 turns. You are also building this wonder but your remaining turns is 11...

Come on spy, delay that wonder progress somehow! But alas... only thing to do is sigh and stop wasting hammers on the wonder.

If the National Intelligence wonder were avialable around Modern era, I would be in favor of them adding the feature that spies can be trained (450 ) in the city where the wonder is built.

Theruss said:

I like how a spy will tell you that so and so is building this wonder. You view their city and notice the wonder will finish in 7 turns. You are also building this wonder but your remaining turns is 11...

Come on spy, delay that wonder progress somehow! But alas... only thing to do is sigh and stop wasting hammers on the wonder.

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I have actually used this feature to speed the production in my city enough to beat the other Civ a few times. Chopping down every forest in sight...emptying treasury on whatever production buildings...customizing tile maintenance even letting the city starve for a few turns...if it's worth it it's possible.

kaspergm said:

Yes, spies are too limited, but it's a very loud NO to all the things you suggest spies should be able to do from my side.

I made a discussion about Espionage on the 2k Forum not too long ago, the whole thing can be found here, but some suggestions for new Spy missions:



A pet peeve of mine is the current Tech Steel method, which is just horrible. Instead, we should have a steady science flow from foreign civ when you research a tech which they have discovered, similar to how it works for Caravans (but obviously higher returns).

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Some of those would be great and maybe add bit more of "realism". Let's say that you found Chinese spy in French city. You kill Chinese spy and tell that to Napoleon. You get positive diplo with France, while China gets negative diplo hits with France. After all, why is China spying on France, especially if they are allies?

and no, I too think that spies are limited in CiV, but I wouldn't like most of the things original poster named, mainly because it would either be abused by human player or AI, who already has a chance to steal high tech with 15% chance (and usually not even get identified)

kaspergm said:

It changes the game - and in a bad way - because even if you have a spy for counterintelligence, it still comes down to a dice roll whether you will succeed in catching the spy, and odds are not even that great for you. To make things worse, if you fail on the first die roll, a downward spiral will start to make things get worse, because an initial fail will mean enemy spy will level up, which means LOWER chance for you to succeed on the second roll, and if you fail that one also, he will level up again ...

That is in itself not a very good game design, but this could be forgiven if you could at least do something to increase your odds, but you can't. Building Espionage buildings will slow down the spy, but will not increase your success rate. Having Espionage buildings will also not allow you to recruit Spies starting on higher levels, contrary what would make sense seeing how things work for other units. What this boils down to is that there is nothing you can actively do to improve your odds, which is *really* bad game design.

I completely agree with DanielAdler, we don't need the spies to be more powerful than they are now (quite on the contrary, I think they need to be less powerful - i.e. rework the Tech Steal mechanism, and remove the Coup feature), but they need to be more versatile and more customizable to make the system more engaging and less about random rolls.

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If spies were made more powerful, then of course the game designers can and should create more counter-espionage options as well. No one is saying that spies should be made more powerful while everything else stayed the same. I don't see what's wrong with dice rolls as long as there are things you can do to improve your odds of successfully catching an enemy spy.

You also seem to forget that the system works both ways - if it is tough for the human to counter the AI's spies, then it will also be tough for the AI to counter the human's spies. So it should balance out.

As a sidenote, I like to use my first spy to steal a technology and gain a promotion before assigning him to my capital for counter-espionage duties. I find that I catch spies far more often that way instead of assigning a fresh recruit immediately. Of course, I get a couple of tech stolen while my spy is occupied in the enemy capital, but it more than pays for itself in the long run.

Rohili said:

If spies were made more powerful, then of course the game designers can and should create more counter-espionage options as well. No one is saying that spies should be made more powerful while everything else stayed the same. I don't see what's wrong with dice rolls as long as there are things you can do to improve your odds of successfully catching an enemy spy.

You also seem to forget that the system works both ways - if it is tough for the human to counter the AI's spies, then it will also be tough for the AI to counter the human's spies. So it should balance out.

As a sidenote, I like to use my first spy to steal a technology and gain a promotion before assigning him to my capital for counter-espionage duties. I find that I catch spies far more often that way instead of assigning a fresh recruit immediately. Of course, I get a couple of tech stolen while my spy is occupied in the enemy capital, but it more than pays for itself in the long run.

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Well there's always a subjective question about how much randomness you allow in a strategy game. I'm not at all in the "no randomness at all" group, but I do think when it comes to major game events, randomness is bad. Tech stealing and City State coups are pretty major game events imo., both can significantly harm the target and help the other part.

It is true that the system goes both ways (opponent -> player, player -> opponent), but since most games will feature one player vs. many opponents, there is a big risk of negative events resulting in more frustration than fun. If the negative consequences of espionage are so bad that you need to use all your spies for counterespionage in order to prevent this, the system does not improve the game imo. This was the case when you were tech leader in G&K and that for me was a very big flaw with the system (I know that diety players found it helped them to "level the field", but basically to me that still shows that all the system did was move stuff from the advanced player to the less advanced player, thus effectively punishing one for playing well).


What I'm advocating is a system that's based less on random rolls and more on customization by the player. First off, give the player options to level up the spy by building spy buildings and letting him chose different promotions. Instead of the spy magically appearing, how about we get a spy cap like with caravans, but player still has to actively do something to "build" the spy? That would also make the impact of losing a spy more significant, something that is currently a bit "so what".

I think that the random rolls for whether the spy is caught is fine, but the roll should not be a single roll, but rather be a "by turn" evaluation, so each turn that your spy is working on a mission there will be a chance that he is caught. This is both more realistic and makes for a less "all or nothing" feeling of the system. As mentioned above, having a Constabulary and a Police Station in the city should also give a chance to discover the spy. I wouldn't mind there being an option for the spy "laying low" where he would not have a chance to be caught, or at least that being very low, but then he will also not steal techs.

A "per turn" mechanism would also work well with the tech stealing, I think that needs to be changed into a beaker-flow when researching a technology that the other civ knows. This way, if you spy is caught at some point - or even more stupidly, if you research the last technology that they have - you haven't just wasted 50 turns on nothing.

IMO the espionage system was indeed implemented with the main aim of allowing weaker players to catch up and placing a roadblock in the strongest player's game. I don't see why that is a bad thing; the game gets boring if you are leading in the game, so it is good to have new threats that could set you back. Likewise, if you are lagging behind, it is good that there are ways for you to catch up. It keeps the game dynamic and interesting, rather than becoming a snooze-fest once you read the halfway mark.

I agree with what you said regarding the "per turn" suggestion, as long as it doesn't make turns last longer (which I fear it would).

Rohili said:

IMO the espionage system was indeed implemented with the main aim of allowing weaker players to catch up and placing a roadblock in the strongest player's game. I don't see why that is a bad thing; the game gets boring if you are leading in the game, so it is good to have new threats that could set you back. Likewise, if you are lagging behind, it is good that there are ways for you to catch up. It keeps the game dynamic and interesting, rather than becoming a snooze-fest once you read the halfway mark.

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I think the changes in BnW works millions of times better in this regard. I have no doubts that you are correct that that was indeed their intentions, but adding a "challenge" by randomly taking things from the better (or at least more progressed) player and handing them over to the less advanced player is just lame imo. That kills the entire purpose of a strategy game.

I know that the big challenge of the civ series has always been the break-even point and runaway tendencies, going to higher difficulties have mostly been a question of giving the AI a larger headstart so that break-even happens later. In that regard, it is a testimony to the quality of BnW that it has actually managed to, to a large extent, make up with this and make the game turn over by midgame in a way that doesn't feel like resetting the game completely yet still manages to keep the field open much longer. The way espionage was implemented was not the correct solution to that problem imo.

Rohili said:

I agree with what you said regarding the "per turn" suggestion, as long as it doesn't make turns last longer (which I fear it would).

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Longer? Longer, as in the PC taking longer to proces the game? Or longer, as in more things you have to do?

kaspergm said:

I think the changes in BnW works millions of times better in this regard. I have no doubts that you are correct that that was indeed their intentions, but adding a "challenge" by randomly taking things from the better (or at least more progressed) player and handing them over to the less advanced player is just lame imo. That kills the entire purpose of a strategy game.

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It's not random when there are things the player can do to minimize the changes of his tech getting stolen, such as by installing a counter-spy and building constabularies and police stations.

And let's not forget that you can actually ask civs not to spy on you. In my experience, if that civ has a good relationship with you, it will agree. This gives you an additional reason to maintain good terms with other civs.

kaspergm said:

Longer? Longer, as in the PC taking longer to proces the game? Or longer, as in more things you have to do?

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The former, since every turn the PC will have to calculate the odds for every spy as to whether they will be caught that turn.

Rohili said:

The former, since every turn the PC will have to calculate the odds for every spy as to whether they will be caught that turn.

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Perhaps. I doubt it will take that much computer power to do such a trivial check, but what do I know ... it's hard to say without trying it in action.