Spies and XPs

I'm not sure if this is a bug or whether it was intentional for balance purposes, but there is a problem with spies receiving XPs from specialists; they receive XPs for having the Intelligence Agency, and again for having Scotland Yard, but not for having settled Military Instructors. I lean towards thinking it's a bug because if you hover the cursor over the spy icon in the build queue it will register however many XPs the unit will get from specialists, but these XPs don't materialize.

I'd be really grateful if someone could explain what I need to do to rectify this problem; I've successfully tweaked a number of things in the XML files to customize the game to my own particular liking, so I'm not a complete no-hoper, but I don't know where to look in this instance.

Yeah, to fix this you'd need to do so in the dll (ie it's a C++/source code change). It's certainly doable, and not even that hard to fix, in fact either line of code you'd want to change (to grant experience, or make it so BUG sees that the spies don't get XP) will be commented, but you'd have to have rudimentary experience with working with Civ source to do so. If I ever get around to releasing 1.0 I'll be sure to fix this.

phungus420 said:

Yeah, to fix this you'd need to do so in the dll (ie it's a C++/source code change). It's certainly doable, and not even that hard to fix, in fact either line of code you'd want to change (to grant experience, or make it so BUG sees that the spies don't get XP) will be commented, but you'd have to have rudimentary experience with working with Civ source to do so. If I ever get around to releasing 1.0 I'll be sure to fix this.

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Thanks, Phungus.

This is a sublime mod, and will remain so whether you release an update or not; however, it would be wonderful to see it with a final polish.

But is it intended?

Spies are one of the best tools in LoR. After Deception III your spy is almost invunerable. Iroquois (as of 1.9.9b, the last version I have) are one of the best gameplays ever for early spies and the option of stealing gold and technologies running 100% espionage for most of the game (no need to make gold or tech, just because you can steal them, and the AI is stupid when trying to counter-espionage).

But imagine that specialists give XP, because they do to all other units, and Barracks too, as it's intended to give to all land units. Vassalage and Theocracy too? That would mean a 1-GG city with barracks and Scotland Yard under theocracy and vassalage would give you full 12 XP spy, already giving him Deception III. Don't even think Deception isn't worth. For the last 5 games I could reach the industrial and modern eras, I had at least 3 uber spies that were my first 3 spies (100XP or more). After getting Deception III I've only seen a single spy being caught in all my LoR late games.

Even being intended to be like this, I really like the way it is now. Only Scotland Yard and Intelligence Agency give XP up to 5 in a city that has both, so only Deception I for your early Great Spy that built the Scotland Yard and Deception II after Intelligence Agency, when espionage is harder.