New Spy Mission: Steal Great Work.

Another day, another :deadhorse: topic.

Anything you can do with a spy can be revisited upon you many times over.

The espionage system kinda stinks, and it isn't because spies can't do enough. it's because everything they do comes without risk or cost.
 
Just to re-iterate, this is a horrible idea. And has no equivalence in modern day espionage or if there is one you have to contort yourself into a weird pretzel to make that connection.

This is thug level theft, not worthy of a civilization to engage in. And as I noted, you can 'steal' works of art by invading and capturing cultural centres. The resulting looting of works of art that get sent back to your capital city is a very close representation of the kind of 'looting' and 'theft' in art that went on when one civilization conquers another. Or when one country takes over another.
 
The espionage system kinda stinks, and it isn't because spies can't do enough. it's because everything they do comes without risk or cost.

That's not true, losing a spy means losing valuable tech steal time (or having an opponent steal a tech from you!).

However, a far more painful cost is also possible: failing a coup. That costs a lot of influence as well as the spy...
 
The espionage system kinda stinks, and it isn't because spies can't do enough. it's because everything they do comes without risk or cost.

How are big diplomatic hits, the loss of spies (so they lose their ranking and you lose tech stealing time) and the loss of CS influence after a failed coup not a risk?
 
"Spy Mission: COPY Great Work". Next problem? ;)

I'll give you copying works, but what precedence is there for copied works to be just as valuable or even half as valuable as the original?

My 2 cents, using spies to steal/copy great works feel like a suggestion in search of a problem :p
 
Given how loudly some protest about AI tech stealing ("how can the AI steal 3 techs in 5 turns?"), can you imagine the squeals of outrage when 3 or 4 AI spies loot the Louvre on the same turn?
 
I'll give you copying works, but what precedence is there for copied works to be just as valuable or even half as valuable as the original?

My 2 cents, using spies to steal/copy great works feel like a suggestion in search of a problem :p
game mechanic (a lot of people do this on the forums so I'm glad to have my turn as well :D)

Really though it gives spies an extra thing to do and is not too immersion-breaking (imo). Who's to say who's got the real Mona Lisa? Just because civ X had theirs before civ Y doesn't mean it's the original... For some reason non-partisan experts suffer curious disappearances when crossing said civs' borders... :mischief:
 
I'm not a cultural victory expert, but it seems to me that the way Great Works are currently implemented is quite finely balanced. Delicately one might almost suggest. Letting spies copy great works would just throw everything off completely.
 
game mechanic (a lot of people do this on the forums so I'm glad to have my turn as well :D)

Really though it gives spies an extra thing to do and is not too immersion-breaking (imo). Who's to say who's got the real Mona Lisa? Just because civ X had theirs before civ Y doesn't mean it's the original... For some reason non-partisan experts suffer curious disappearances when crossing said civs' borders... :mischief:
If one bothered to code it, one could even make "copy" works that only added half the original bonus (+1 Culture, +1 Tourism). I'm not saying this would be worth the trouble, not to mention the bother of managing them, but it could work that way. The idea of copying Great Works is not that bad, but one has to consider that unlike the Tech Tree, which you are progressing through, there's no such thing as a progression through the great works, so basically what this would do is give the spies the ability to give an additional influx of great works. This raises two questions, the first being if one thinks that's a good idea, and the second being whether this actually will be good for game balance. It's not exactly like Cultural Victory is the hardest to achieve at the moment.
 
100% no on this idea.

You don't lose tech when someone else steals it, so the comparison is not there.
This. As currently implemented, a spy can do nothing that permanently damages a civ. It can permanently benefit the spying civ, of course, as with stealing a Tech, or it can temporarily damage a civ, as with instigating C-S coups, but there's nothing that can immediately and permanently take something away. That's as it should be, imo.
 
If one bothered to code it, one could even make "copy" works that only added half the original bonus (+1 Culture, +1 Tourism). I'm not saying this would be worth the trouble, not to mention the bother of managing them, but it could work that way. The idea of copying Great Works is not that bad, but one has to consider that unlike the Tech Tree, which you are progressing through, there's no such thing as a progression through the great works, so basically what this would do is give the spies the ability to give an additional influx of great works. This raises two questions, the first being if one thinks that's a good idea, and the second being whether this actually will be good for game balance. It's not exactly like Cultural Victory is the hardest to achieve at the moment.
This could be manageable from a game perspective, as a way for a non-culture civ to try to keep up with others by obtaining lesser-value Great Works. And it would indeed give spies something else to do. But this could really wind up backfiring. Recall that you cannot destroy a Great Work once you have one, and who would possibly want to trade a real GW with full bonuses for a copy with half bonuses? The spying civ would be permanently stuck with the half-value GW, with no options for Theming. Perhaps this could be of value to a civ that has no intention of competing in the cultural game, but as we all know, the culture game isn't really optional anymore, especially in the mid/late game when spies become active.

Regardless of the gameplay element, this would be really hard to justify from a real-world standpoint. Sure, forgeries are made all the time...but how many of them are prominently displayed for viewing by the rest of the world, brazenly competing with the original? The game's Tourism rating is a civ's influence on the rest of the world, and although perhaps a civ's own local citizens would be made happier by a forgery, this would not translate into Tourism. This could be reflected by having the copy produce only Culture instead of Tourism, I suppose, but it's still hard to imagine.

Dexters put it best, I think: this is a solution in search of a problem.
 
Regardless of the gameplay element, this would be really hard to justify from a real-world standpoint. Sure, forgeries are made all the time...but how many of them are prominently displayed for viewing by the rest of the world, brazenly competing with the original?
Actually, many statues are displayed as copies in museums around the world. I'm not really advocating for this idea, but it does in fact happen, although admittedly, it does seem to be limited to statues more than paintings. I don't even know how that would work for writings or music works ...
 
No, since as soon as one civilizacion get into CV all other will send their spies to destroy the collection.

If you like to do something else with spies:
Organize Freedom Cells: If city is puppeted or annexed it gives unhappiness based on pop, and when timer is done barbarians (freedom fighters) spawns.
Assasinate: You can move your spy from city to land, and then assasinate any special unit, like GP or missionaries or archeologist.
Sabotage: City takes hit to production/gold/science.
 
Actually, many statues are displayed as copies in museums around the world. I'm not really advocating for this idea, but it does in fact happen, although admittedly, it does seem to be limited to statues more than paintings. I don't even know how that would work for writings or music works ...
Right, but they are not then presented or viewed or passed off to the rest of the world as the real deal, as the highlight of a culture's artistic prowess, which is what is represented by Great Works. "Regular" art, including (I would argue) copies of great works, is already reflected in the culture produced by the game's regular culture buildings.
 
Right, but they are not then presented or viewed or passed off to the rest of the world as the real deal, as the highlight of a culture's artistic prowess, which is what is represented by Great Works. "Regular" art, including (I would argue) copies of great works, is already reflected in the culture produced by the game's regular culture buildings.

Yep. The copy 'great work' idea is flawed because it's entirely gamey and has no basis in reality. If we're talking about copies of great work in real-life, they often have no cultural value outside of representations of the original and those can indeed be represented by the base culture in things like museums. We would assume a Museum would have some copies of great works in each of the different countries as an education tool, but those works have no intrinsic cultural value outside of that.

Civ can disregard reality for gameplay, but oftentimes systems and mechanics are informed by reality. The looting mechanic is really awesome. Capturing enemy cities then moving their artwork into my cultural centres for theming bonuses and 'looting' those work has a basis in reality and is, shall I say, a little fun.

There has be an extraordinary reason for a purely gamey mechanic to be put in.

In this case, this is the end result of people complaining about too many coups in Gnk, the resulting nerf as AI now moves their spies into diplomats and people feeling like there's 'not enough to do' with spies.

For starters, when spies had a lot to do, what they had to do were often annoying and non-game breaking (see Civ4) so its largely humany only featurefest that I loathe; so I'm fine leaving things as is. Perhaps reweight AI priorities on CS couping and give everyone an extra spy at Renaissance. Maybe even a 2nd one at another pre-determined inflection point. @ UN perhaps.
 
Er. Bringing in reality in this sort of gameplay mechanic is kind of pointless, imo.

One can say the copy was done near so perfectly it attracts tourists to see just how great someone can copy an original art really is, if the chances are also not 100%, it would actually be "Great" in a different sense. Seriously, a bunch of stuff also happens in reality that lacks any logical coherence. People do stupid things and get attracted to stupid things.

I still don't mind this idea. Creating a copy giving a lower bonus is OK. Especially when in late game where every city of yours has a museum, and you don't have enough artifacts/great artists to fill them all in.

Also, spies in BNW doesn't seem to coup/steal techs nearly as often. Besides, giving this option creates dilemnas. For example, in late game, the spy in culture games are usually used for diplomats to influence AI civs with different ideologies. So I still don't really get why this is being criticized that much.
 
That's not true, losing a spy means losing valuable tech steal time (or having an opponent steal a tech from you!).

However, a far more painful cost is also possible: failing a coup. That costs a lot of influence as well as the spy...

How are big diplomatic hits, the loss of spies (so they lose their ranking and you lose tech stealing time) and the loss of CS influence after a failed coup not a risk?
Imagine being handed a stack of complimentary poker chips at a casino. You may make out well with them or poorly, but at the end of the day you got the chips for free. Similarly, spies are doled out freely and derive their outputs freely without being integrated into Civ through customary inputs. The net effect is that since espionage is all but isolated from inputs such as gold, production, culture (via social policies), or research (via techs), there is no way to devote more or less attention to espionage, no way to become more specialized, meaning everyone is as good as everyone else. Therefore, it is just a tedious seesaw at best. I steal a tech from you, you steal a tech from me. I coup an ally of yours, you coup an ally of mine. What we have now is actually worse than that: the AI is as good at espionage as the player, but declines to use them effectively (otherwise we'd see the constant coups that were once familiar). The diplo victory is kind of a cakewalk now due in large part to that.

Ideologies at least tied espionage into the rest of the game a bit more. Still, it's easily Civ V's most obtuse subsystem.

The diplo hit, incidently, is not large.
 
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