Espionage - General discussion/unstructured info

Thorburne said:
I'm assuming that, once "unlocked" (most likely, as you said, with 'establishing surveillance'), you will be able to view the details of the city. That could be very useful. I wonder if you will be able to see the details on the game map. For example, if you have surveillance in Athens, will the city banner for Athens display like your own city banner with construction, population growth, etc?
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I'd presume it'd be a lot like in Civ 4 and Civ 3, when ou established the Embassy.
 
dexters said:
Civ3's espionage had one overpowering aspect however.

You plant 1 spy in the capital and you have detailed readouts of their troop strength. That's data that hasn't been replicated since.
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Actually, opening an embassy was enough to get access to the information in the capital. Stealing Enemy Plans gave you their entire army strength, but it was actually a very risky attempt.

That being said, over the years, I've grown to appreciate these informational bonuses of espionage far more than the missions (the CIA analyst is often more valuable than the one that thinks he's James Bond). In Civ4, the passive bonuses were often far more worthwhile than poisoning someone's water supply. So, in that sense, I wouldn't find it too overpowered, especially if you have to plant a spy in a city and they can discover and kill that spy.
 
Louis XXIV said:
Actually, opening an embassy was enough to get access to the information in the capital. Stealing Enemy Plans gave you their entire army strength, but it was actually a very risky attempt.

That being said, over the years, I've grown to appreciate these informational bonuses of espionage far more than the missions (the CIA analyst is often more valuable than the one that thinks he's James Bond). In Civ4, the passive bonuses were often far more worthwhile than poisoning someone's water supply. So, in that sense, I wouldn't find it too overpowered, especially if you have to plant a spy in a city and they can discover and kill that spy.
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Civ3 had a funny diplo system./ open embassies give you a peek at their capital. This 'exploit' was used by human players to look at wonder progress and general geography, UUs and force strength around capitals, but that's a one shot deal.

I am pretty sure you need to plant spies to perform more advance espionage missions, but simply having a planted spy can allow you to passively view their military strength via the military advisor screen. Down to the unit.

The planted spies can also be exposed and killed and cause international incidences. In a way the Civ5 espionage system is expanding on what was done in Civ3, but with multiple spies instead of 1, and with more active targeted missions that I assume will not cost gold.

Not having a separate currency for espionage missions in civ3 is what really made it underpowered as the prices of the missions combined with alternative uses for gold, made it far more appealing to invest in a larger army rather than spending 2-3k gold a pop for a single mission.
 
Talking about how espionage worked in past Sid Meier games. In my opinion in Alpha Centauri espionage/cover operations were most of fun. The fact that you could interrogate enemy spies (probe teams) and send them away or eliminate them. If I remember correctly, you could learn something from the enemy when interrogating. This could be fun element in CiV as well. You could learn something about your enemy or gain espionage points, morale to your own spies etc.

Just for fun I wanted to quote SMAC here, but the bolded sentence is something I would like to underline. Taking that science has been a bit of "Achilles heel" in CiV with research agreements and way too cheap tech. Stealing technologies via espionage might be too powerful. Hopefully they will make it very hard and risky with severe political effects. Also making possible only to gain science beakers would be a good option. Chance to eliminate rival Civs key researchers and thus slowing their research would be strong option too.

I think it might be fun if you could somehow interrupt or even cancel resource trade and research agreements between to rival Civs :)


Probe Teams can infiltrate and subvert enemy bases and units. They can also steal enemy research information, sabotage base facilities, assassinate key enemy personnel, and conduct genetic warfare. Move a Probe Team up to an enemy base or unit to engage its powers.

Probe Teams may:

Infiltrate Datalinks
The Probe Team hacks into the faction's Datalinks. This greatly inceases your intellegence data about that faction, including access to their report readouts, and even individual base readouts.

Steal Technology
Just what it says. You grab the other faction's research technology. You may try for a specific technology, or grab one at random. Attempts to steal Specific technology are much more difficult and could result in capture and loss of the Team, or worse a Vendetta against your faction.

Sabatage Base
You can either destroy an existing facility, wreck Planet Buster silos, or wipe out all minerals accrued towards that base's current build orders. You may target a specific facility, or destroy something at random. Attempts to sabotage a specific facility are much more difficult. You cannot sabotage a faction's HQ or Secret Projects. Peremeter Defenses and Tachyon Fields are extremely difficult to target.

Mind Control
Mind control is an attempt to subvert a base or unit of a rival faction and bring it under your control.

The attractive aspect to unit mind control is that it's one of the few probe activities that don't need to be carried out from inside an enemy base - your Probe Team can lurk in the wilderness or near your territorial borders and swoop down to grab any unit that gets too close. Only single units may be targeted by Probe Teams. Multiple units in a square are invulnerable to mind control.

The Total Thought Control option is a variant of mind control that takes control of a base or unit , without causing any damage to your reputation with the other factions. It costs the same as normal mind control, but has a lower chance of success.
The cost of a mind control operation against a base depends on a number of factors, including the base's size, the enemy's energy reserves, facilities and special operations in a base, and whether or not drone riots are occurring.

A Probe Team cannot take control of a base containing a faction's headquaters.

Increase Drone Activity

This operation changes one Worker or Talent in the enemy base into a Drone. This is a useful preliminary operation to a mind control attempt, since a base embrioled in Drone riots is significantly easier and less expensive to mind control.

Drain Energy Reserves
This ambitious operation attempts to divert a portion of the faction's energy reserves into your accounts. The more reserves the faction has, the more you stand to gain.

Genetic Warfare
This is considered a severe atrocity. A successful genetic warfare operation decreases the population of the base by a full 50%, instantaneously. Units inside the base also lose strength to the virus.

Probe Teams can also defend your bases against their enemy counterparts. If a Probe Team is present in a square when an enemy Probe Team tries to enter, a combat is resolved between them. The Probe Team with the highest morale level usually wins.

Probe Teams often receive morale increases when they complete missions successfully. The higher a Probe Team's morale level, the more likely it is to survive increasingly more complex missions.
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MARDUK80 said:
Talking about how espionage worked in past Sid Meier games. In my opinion in Alpha Centauri espionage/cover operations were most of fun. The fact that you could interrogate enemy spies (probe teams) and send them away or eliminate them. If I remember correctly, you could learn something from the enemy when interrogating. This could be fun element in CiV as well. You could learn something about your enemy or gain espionage points, morale to your own spies etc.
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I love SMAC probe teams, but I'm pretty sure they were unquestionably broken. One of my favorite strategies would just send wave after wave to drain energy reserves. Once I did that, I would then use the excess money to finance other actions against the faction. The gain compared to the cost was very unfair.
 
Firaxis is taking espionage in an interesting direction. If I understand the statement that "spies are awarded" every x number of turns, the player is probably not going to have to divert resources to espionage to get a spy. That way, espionage doesn't have to be balanced against other areas - the only cost of using (or losing)a spy is that you can't use it do another espionage mission, not that you have spent gold or production or science points on it. The trick will be balancing the risk/reward ratio of the various missions against each other.
 
That's a good point, although I wouldn't be surprised if you benefit from building certain buildings to help with espionage or fight enemy espionage.

Even with all this, you have to decide if it's worth running a mission or just keeping them on defense.
 
Gre_Magus said:
If I understand the statement that "spies are awarded" every x number of turns, the player is probably not going to have to divert resources to espionage to get a spy.
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What Louis said.

Even more, I could imagine that it is a possibility to decrease x in one way or the other. Maybe by buildings, maybe by (national) wonders, maybe by adopting SoPos.

*If* you decide to play the "spy game", you schould have at least some controle to the appearance rate of spies.
 
From what we know so far, what we have seems to be a fair compromise between two competing models of espionage.

Most of the concepts do appear borrowed from the menu driven system in Civ3, and from Civ4, it now supports multiple spies, promotions and a currency decoupled from gold (AFAIK)

It could work really well.
 
Another aspect to consider is that Diplomacy is probably a lot deeper with spies (and with religion as well) added in...and Diplo is one of the top complaints that people on here have about CiV.
 
Sommerswerd said:
A great person style approach where you van choose to focus on getting more spies seems the most appealing.
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I read somewhere that once your spy dies you get a replacement. So I don't think it will work like great great persons where you can just accumulate them.

You will probably have a fixed number of slots for your spies. Buildings, social poilices etc. will probably be able influence that number.

Once you have a spy they gain experience by doing ops, so you need to build them up starting with the easy stuff, so starting out trying to steal a tech would be suicide.



A hope I have for the game when adding espionage is that what you know of your opponents is limited almost nothing (no demographic) and by using spies to gather intelligence you gain more info than you have now, like no fog of war. This would be like Civ4 where strong espionage gives intelligence.

An addition could be that units inside forts/cities was hidden unless you used spies or they made an agressive action.
 
Kinda weird you can see their plans for betrayal in advance. Btw Kotaku, an AI planning a betrayal 15 turns in advance is not very sophisticated at all.

I could see this working better if planning betrayal in advance was an option for human players as well, and doing so would help in the war in some way (e.g. 1% combat bonus for each turn of planning), so humans would actually use it.
 
headcase said:
Kinda weird you can see their plans for betrayal in advance. Btw Kotaku, an AI planning a betrayal 15 turns in advance is not very sophisticated at all.

I could see this working better if planning betrayal in advance was an option for human players as well, and doing so would help in the war in some way (e.g. 1% combat bonus for each turn of planning), so humans would actually use it.
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True, that and the fact that i'd be actually useful in Multiplayer games as well.
 
headcase said:
Kinda weird you can see their plans for betrayal in advance. Btw Kotaku, an AI planning a betrayal 15 turns in advance is not very sophisticated at all.

I could see this working better if planning betrayal in advance was an option for human players as well, and doing so would help in the war in some way (e.g. 1% combat bonus for each turn of planning), so humans would actually use it.
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This should not just be for betrayals, but for any attack. I've often wondered whether the lead up should give a bonus or be required - i.e. you literally cannot declare war right away without having prepared for it for x number of turns.
 
I dislike the idea of hard bonuses for things like this.

The interesting thing is not to press a button to say "I am preparing" and wait to get a bonus. It is far more fun, interesting and makes a better game for you to actually do something to prepare. This could be switching production, building more roads or moving units. The idea that everything should be abstracted a way to an arbitrary +/- % in some stat is rather poor. I want to be able to use my intelligence to plan something on the map. That is why I play, not to collect modifiers.
 
Ok, having to prepare before DOWing might actually be better than % strength bonuses. Instead of choosing war, you choose "prepare for war". After 5/10/15/20 turns (depending on game length), the option to go to war becomes available. You can DOW at any time while prepared, and can choose to stop preparing, which diminishes the preparation counter. But if a spy catches your preparing from another civ or third party, that's the downside to simply preparing for everyone all the time.

If you are DOWed upon, then you simply go to war. Might not make sense that the DOWees don't need to prepare, but it could work best this way.
 
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