Espionage- a thought or two.

Roxlimn said:

Spies are granted per era, but they are granted per era of the most advanced Civ. This means that breaking into a new era grants a new spy for every Civ on the map, not just the Civ that made the advance.

Click to expand...

Cicerosaurus said:

Are you certain of that? I have found I receive a spy when anyone gets into the Renaissance Era but then they only arrive after that when i broach a new era.

Click to expand...

hobbsyoyo said:

I wish that the number of spies given scaled with map size.

Playing on a large map means I never have enough spies to defend my tech AND do anything else. It's not like your spies can do a whole lot but defend tech anyways, but when that's all you can do because you have 20 cities and 3-4-5 spies....well it sucks the fun out of the system.

Click to expand...

PhilBowles said:

Scaling with map size is a good idea, but I think this is just an example of how espionage fits with broader gameplay strategy - if you're tech leader by a sufficiently narrow margin that having techs stolen occasionally is a big problem, you probably don't want to maintain such a large and unmanageable empire. I think it's fully realistic that the larger your empire, the more likely it is to be vulnerable to infiltration. Or you want to invest heavily in counterespionage buildings (constabularies do basically nothing except unlock police stations, but the police station can be effective). Of course, if you are tech leader then your spies have less need to steal tech from others, so you can afford to maintain them on counterintelligence and perhaps station one or two in really key city states, or to keep an eye on your most important rival's plans.

I do think the National Intelligence Agency is badly-designed - the only way you can get an extra spy, which is most useful in larger empires, relies not only on you having a security building in every city, but on having a second-tier security building (police station rather than constabulary) in every city, which like all National Wonders makes it better for small empires.

Click to expand...

hobbsyoyo said:

I agree with everything you just said. And though I would scale by map size, I'm not talking about giving 15 spies on a large map. I think you're right a big empire should be hard to defend espionagically (???). But at the same time, it's not fun to not be able to do ANYTHING but defend tech. I think someone even suggested giving more spies but nerfing them a bit by making them less effective.

For example: I mean, Russia covers a like half of asia but they still managed to spy on us. (Of course all their cities are like, what, size 5). And the US has like 10 size 15 cities, but we still spied on Russia.

Click to expand...