Spies not Revealing Spies?

According to the game, Spies are invisible to all units except SPies and Great Spies. Likewise, Great SPies are invisible to all units.

Yet in the games I have played, my Spy units never reveal the locations of enemy spies. I have made it a habit of garrisoning a Spy in all of my cities to help prevent espionage from enemy spies. Despite this, I have never had one of my spies reveal the location of an enemy spy, but I frequently get the message that an enemy spy has been caught near <insert city name here>.

I have even gone so far as to load up worldbuilder and do some experimenting.

Experiment #1)
I placed two cities (one for me and one for the AI). I then placed an appropriate Spy in each city and placed an enemy spy outside each city. Neither spy "revealed" the other. I then moved my spy int the enemy city and ended his turn. Next Turn I get the message that my spy was caught operating near the enemy city.

Conclusion #1)
If a spy ends its turn on the same tile as an enemy spy in enemy terriroty it is caught.

Experiment #2
Using the results from experiment #1, I then placed an enemy spy in my territory, and surrounded him with my own spies, so that no matter where he moved he ended his turn on a tile with one of my spies.

Conclusion #2)
Verified the results from Experiment #1.

Experiement #3)
Finally I placed some of my own Great Spies on the map, and tried to reveal the enemy spy with them. No luck.

Conclusion #3)
Great Spies function just like Spies in this regard.

Conclusion #4)
Neither Spies nor Great Spies "reveal" the location of enemy Spies.

Has anyone else noticed this? I see lots of views, but no one wanted to comment?

I've noticed this but never went so far as to test any theories.

After experiencing this, I just wrote it off that Firaxis' definition of "reveal" was conditional upon the spies ending their turns in the same tile.

Before learning this, I thought "reveal" was going to be similar to how a Destroyer reveals any Submarines in the area around the Destroyer.

That is what I thought as well, that we'd be able to see enemy spies. I think this needs to be addressed AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!!

I'm confused...

If an enemy spy is revealed when it ends its turn on a plot with your spy... how can a city be poisoned if you have a spy stationed there? Spys cannot complete missions the same turn they move.... so the enemy spy would HAVE to end a turn in your city (with your spy) before completing the mission.

So the real question is - does a spy ALWAYS get revealed when it ends a turn on a plot with your spy - or is there just a chance? And is that chance increased by stationing multiple spies in a city?

If there is only a chance - then it would be worthwhile to station spies around your territory, thus increasing the frequency of a enemy spy ending a turn on a plot with your own spy. If a spy is ALWAYS caught, then any city with a spy is immune to espionage (and we know this is not the case).

Landstander said:

So the real question is - does a spy ALWAYS get revealed when it ends a turn on a plot with your spy - or is there just a chance? And is that chance increased by stationing multiple spies in a city?

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Spies do NOT always get revealed when they end turn on a plot with your spy, (has been confirmed by many) there's clearly a chance factor. Whether that chance is increased by stationing multiple spies in a city is still a mystery.

I went so far in my first game, as to place a spy in every city. Something I would do In SMAC with Probe teams anyway, so wasnt a big departure for me in gameplay style.

And it made no difference at all. I couldnt see anymore spys, and I didnt seem to catch anymore spys, yet was still being attacked subvertly. Maybe my EP point ratio wasnt high enough, but it didnt seem to make a difference.

Also, does it make any differece at all if you have Military on squares and you are at war with, (or not open boarders with) a spys nation? In real life, if I met some French Bloke down the Pub, I would think nothing of it. But if we were at war with France, I would be damd sure the military knew about him.

By reveal I think they mean capture.

The spy doesn't have to end on the same tile as your spy just be in visual range. Most of my "enemy spy's sent packing" icons point to non city tiles (all my spies are in cities currently) but most icons are in the BFC, some outside...

I have seen an enemy spy walking into my city right before it was sent packing. Only saw it the one time and it was in a AI movement lag spike. It did the old "she spy tiptoe" thing.

I think your ratio of esp vs the opponent determines the catch % that is modified by spy LoS. Sometimes it states which Civ the spy was from others just "a spy"

If that is all true you have better luck with spy's entering rival territory with full movement, stay away from cities till you end your movement in the city you want... Would also mean a spy wall would catch more enemy spies. Think fogbusting, but within your boundaries. Having cities far enough from rival territory that they have to stop in visual range first. Tough with RR...

If spy visual range matters sleeping them on hills or at least cleared land would net you a better chance...

People, forget about the manual. Half of the stuff about spies in there is simply wrong (or did you see a "kill enemy spy" mission? Or a passive mission about preventing enemy spies from entering your borders?). So evidently the part about revealing enemy spies (especially in conjunction with the great spy) is simply another outdated bit of information. Spies are never revealed (as in "you can see it on the map"). Period.

Yeah, the manual was clearly written before some espionage changes like the 5th passive mission (enemy spys cannot enter your borders). I don't think anyone can see anyone elses spy at all. Likewise with the Great Spy. (Question: Can the Great Spy get captured?)

I think what happens (based on my interpretation of the source code) is that there's a chance a spy that's in your territory can be caught. That chance is increased based on the ratio of your accumulated EP's to theirs (not sure whether this is total accumulated EP's or the EP rate). On top of that, EP bonuses increase the chances of capture (I'm going to assume the Security Bureau), then whether a spy is on that tile and finally whether that tile has recently had a spy mission performed on it recently.

I've also seen it say something along the lines of "a spy was captured by counter intelligence spys" or something along those lines too. This was in a city with a spy present, so you're definitely not meant to actually 'see' spys per se. You only increase the chances of getting them caught.

Do spies catch other spies even when they are in the "sleep" mode? This is counterintuitive, because "sleep" mode means you are not doing anything. But then I think is the only mode you can use to station a spy at a place, no?

Yeah, I think it is. The spy just has to be in the tile (afaik). I don't think it matters whether it's sleeping or not, but if the algorithm just looks for what's in the tile, then I don't think it would care about whether it's sleeping or not.

Watiggi are you saying the 5th passive mission isn't actually in the game?

Darn, that sucks. I wanted to get that one.

=$=

I have had alot more success with espionage missions against an AI with a strong spy network IF i send more than one or two spies into the city at the same time..ie SoD of Spies. They may "catch" one or two of them...but not all of them.

Yes - this is an issue with the manual being incorrect. Spies are invisible, unless they have been exposed (in which case, they're actually still invisible, but removed).

Big J Money said:

Watiggi are you saying the 5th passive mission isn't actually in the game?

Darn, that sucks. I wanted to get that one.

=$=

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The code for the 'spies can not enter our borders' passive mission does seem to be in the XML and gamecore files, but is disabled by default because the number of EPs required is set to -1. Setting the EP value to any positive number makes the mission available in-game (since the passive missions box on the espionage screen is sized for four lines, not five, a scroll-bar will appear there), and it works as described. The kill-spy mission is not present in the XML at all and would probably need a DLL change to add it in.

LedHead said:

By reveal I think they mean capture.

The spy doesn't have to end on the same tile as your spy just be in visual range. Most of my "enemy spy's sent packing" icons point to non city tiles (all my spies are in cities currently) but most icons are in the BFC, some outside...

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Have you tried to reproduce this? I have tried it several times in Worldbuilder and I keep getting the results I outlined above in my original post.

I have just finished spending a few days playing "the Road to War" scennrio, until I was stopped by the "Waiting for other Civilizations..." bug, and the only tactic that work for me was the counter espinoage mission. The drawback is you have to go to each country that is spying on you to make it work. This mitigated by the fact that you can see who has committed points against you on both the spy screen and the victory points display on the interface itself. By going to those civs that have the most points against you and doing a counter espinoage mission you will increase your chances of finding a spy.

As for deploying spies at home to "catch" enemy spies, I found this generally did not work at all. There are no missions for spies to perform at home and I found they did not deter enemy spies at all.

I never got a Great Spy so I don't what they can do or how they interact with regular spies.