The Espionage Economy (EE) guide

Bibor

Doomsday Machine
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The aim of this guide is to elaborate, with examples, on how to successfully use Espionage, an often neglected part of civ4 gameplay.


The Espionage Economy Guide

*** work in progress ***


First, let's bust some myths about running an Espionage-oriented economy:
1. It doesn't require The Great Wall (although it certainly helps). Depending on the start, it might be more beneficial to focus production efforts elsewhere.
2. It doesn't require Great Spies at all (although they come in handy).
3. It's not a Specialist Economy. Not by a long shot.
4. It doesn't prevent teching.
5. It's not exclusive to "one landmass" games.

What is the Espionage Economy?

It can be assumed that everyone will have their own interpretation, but there are three important factors that define an EE:
1. Willingness to invest into Espionage buildings.
2. Replacing :science: with :espionage: slider spending for a solid number of turns.
3. Proactively utilizing the accumulated :espionage: points.


Why Use Espionage Economy?

If the EE is based on slider spending and favors CE, why even bother with espionage? After all, science focus offers major advantages over the AI that only, truly science can provide. It's a fair question.






What leaders work well with EE?

1. Financial. Because most of your :espionage: and :science:, yes, science, will come from your slider.
2. Spiritual Diplomatic versatility and some nifty tricks you can pull off (will explain).
3. Industrious Generally a strong trait, also makes GW and Oracle reachable.

Gilgamesh requires a special mention, as his UB and traits make him a formidable EE leader, even if he's Creative and Defensive.


Opening moves

There are several interesting opening moves when aiming for an EE, depending on your terrain, leader, preferences etc.:

1. Masonry -> The Great Wall -> Priesthood -> Writing -> Oracle to Code of Laws
2. Priesthood -> Writing -> Oracle to Code of Laws
3. Masonry -> The Great Wall -> tech to Code of laws

Gilgamesh, again, deserves a special mention, as his Courthouses open with Priesthood, making Masonry -> The Great Wall -> Priesthood (-> Oracle) extremely efficient.


Overview of the whole game

Ideally, you won't be only stealing techs. You should be researching as well. The trick is to determine when to research and when to steal.

The Chart would look something like this:
1. Research in the Classical Era until you unlock all the classical combat techs.
2. Steal your way through Medieval non-combat and combat techs (Civil Service, Machinery, Engineering, Guilds).
3. Research or Steal your way through the Lib race. Its worth only if you can lib something better than Printing Press and Nationhood.
4. Research your way to Military Tradition and/or Rifling.
5. Steal your way through the utility techs like Democracy, Constitution, Communism etc.
6. Once you have all Espionage buildings up and running, your espionage generation even without the slider should be sufficient to double your research pace by teching and stealing (or preventing others from winning) at the same time.


What to do with Great Spies?

It really depends on the situation.

1. If you have a commerce poor start, I suggest infiltrating the best close techer. The 4000 points should kickstart you well enough to blitz you through the middle ages.
2. If you have a good commerce start, but want an additional "oomph" around the Lib Race time, settle the Great Spy.
3. If you have a great bureaucracy commerce capital, put down a Scotland Yard.
4. Great Spies after the second one should be probably used for Infiltration missions if you're lagging behind pre-Communism or used for Golden Ages. Post-communism, your empire should be generating around 1000+ :espionage: per turn anyway.


When to build, What to build.

First let me emphasize this, because its really important: Specialists (even spy specialists) are not mandatory at all. If you're in the "teching phase", feel free to run scientists and plant Academies or bulb something critical.

Espionage Modifiers:
Courthouse (Code of Laws): running your first spy specialist; especially handy if you didn't build the great wall. Build it when you need the maintenance drop. It's not critical for espionage, except in the city with The Great Wall (usually your capital).

Castle (Engineering): +25% :espionage: and +1 trade routes. If you don't want to incorporate Mining Inc. etc., avoid teching Economics and Corporation. It's a dead end like Divine Right anyway.

Jail (Constitution): +25% :espionage:

Security Bureau (Democracy): +8 :espionage: Expensive building, build it last.

Intelligence Agency (Communism): +8 :espionage: +50% :espionage: Woah!

Nationhood civic (Nationhood): +25% :espionage:

Scotland Yard (Great Spy building): +100% :espionage:

For a total of 125% espionage modifiers in all cities. :thumbsup:

Library (Writing): you should still build them whenever you can squeeze it in.

University (Education) and Observatory (Astronomy): build them when you can if you plan on teching in the industrial+ eras.
 
Do you plan to add more to this guide? It says at the top it's a work in progress.
 
I like the guide. Anyhow, it's needed that you give much more examples to why EE is so great, even in early game and without multipliers. If you want you can take the examples from my Replay #8 and 9 (signature) , if you write where you got them. I already crunched a lot of numbers in those games, i. e. on if stealing from a Civ far away makes sense.

Keep up the good work :) . The war academy will peobably be revolutionized in near future. your guide would be a valuable addition, if complete.

All the best :) .
 
Hi Bibor, are you still around? Something just happened in my game that has never happened before, and I didn't think possible.



He successfully stole the tech, then got caught when auto-transferring back to the capital. I looked, and he isn't there, nor anywhere else. I had four spies in the city where I stole the tech, and the three others are still there. Didn't know this could happen when he actually stole the tech successfully. Seen this before?
 
Hi Bibor, are you still around? Something just happened in my game that has never happened before, and I didn't think possible.



He successfully stole the tech, then got caught when auto-transferring back to the capital. I looked, and he isn't there, nor anywhere else. I had four spies in the city where I stole the tech, and the three others are still there. Didn't know this could happen when he actually stole the tech successfully. Seen this before?

Yes, I've seen it before, Your spy didn't get caught while "teleporting to capital". What happened is that it got caught while performing a mission. Apparently mission success and getting caught while doing it are two separate rolls. Happens more often in non-EE games when you use espionage only for city revolts and such. You manage to put the city into revolt but lose the spy.

There are three things that can happen during spy detection rolls:
a) it doesn't get caught. Nothing happens. In case of mission success, it returns to capital.
b) it gets caught while moving or standing still but doesn't get identified (in that case the message "A spy has been stumbled upon..."). No diplo penalties because the target AI or player can't determine who did it.
c) it gets caught *and* identified (in this case, the message "A <civ name> spy has been stumbled upon...". This often leads to diplo penalties.

One of the advantages of running a pure EE is that your espionage spending is so high that even when getting caught it's unlikely your spy will be identified, thus diplo penalties are actually rare.


Yeah I'm still around. Not writing this guide because in the meantime I realized how little I know about how much there has been written about it already. Takes time to dig up all the information from civfanatics and reshape it.
 
Thanks for the explanation :thumbsup:

So with many espionage points there is a lower chance for your spies to get identified when they get caught? In this game I stole 6 techs after a GSpy infiltration. Got -1 diplo hit from an identified spy early on. Think 4-5 others were caught, including the one in the screenshot, but these were not identified.

Also, do you know why the odds of successfully stealing the technology sometimes changes? I noticed that most were around 75%, but one time it was as high as 97-98%. IIRC it was for Feudalism, which a fair few civs had at that point, so does the odds increase if many others know the technology already?

Would be nice if you finished the guide, but it's a good overview anyhow, so thanks for the effort. It can be difficult to dig up important information on this site, as a lot of it seems to be in SGOTM team threads and the like, and the search function here is, let's say, less than stellar.
 
Thanks for the explanation :thumbsup:

So with many espionage points there is a lower chance for your spies to get identified when they get caught? In this game I stole 6 techs after a GSpy infiltration. Got -1 diplo hit from an identified spy early on. Think 4-5 others were caught, including the one in the screenshot, but these were not identified.

Also, do you know why the odds of successfully stealing the technology sometimes changes? I noticed that most were around 75%, but one time it was as high as 97-98%. IIRC it was for Feudalism, which a fair few civs had at that point, so does the odds increase if many others know the technology already?

Would be nice if you finished the guide, but it's a good overview anyhow, so thanks for the effort. It can be difficult to dig up important information on this site, as a lot of it seems to be in SGOTM team threads and the like, and the search function here is, let's say, less than stellar.


The chance to be detected or chance to be caught while stealing tech is the same formula, but gets rolled separately.

Your cumulative espionage spending throughout the whole game, compared to that of other civs is what determines the base chance of detection/failure. For example, if at turn 200 you accumulated 2000 EP's and the other opponents accumulated 400, 250, 600 and 300, your espionage "spending history" is overwhelming their efforts to stop your spies. I guess you could call it "espionage culture", because its similar in effect. To put your spying chances "back to normal", the'd have to reach 2000 EPs each.

This value, or ratio, gets modified by following factors:
- whether you have open borders or not (closed borders increases the chance)
- they have a counter-espionage mission active
- their spy or Security Bureau on target tile

Compare these three factors to your tech stealing success% chance. If open borders didn't change, they could've had a spy in that city but moved it, or had a counter-espionage mission active that ran out at some point.

With a high enough espionage spending ratio in your favor, you can pretty darn easily overwhelm/ignore security bureaus and other spying prevention mechanisms.
 
@bibor I like your guide,and am looking forward to another EE game.The you tube video with toku you made about how to work cottages would of made an interesting start.

I got into the whole espionage mechanics from a madscientist post,I think it was called the power of settled spys.IIRC he argued that you should settle your 1st spy rather than build scotland yard,then the 2nd spy builds the yard for the multipliers.Whats your thought on that?

The infiltration mission on low commerce starts,this imo should be stressed as a last resort manouver.Ive only done this in 2 games I can recall when the spy was my 1st GP,just settling him for the 4 beakers is usually enough to see you through.
 
Infiltration can be strong as well. In the current G-Major (137 for posterity), I got a GSpy as the first Great Person. With no particularly good use for him besides 9000 :espionage: (on Marathon), I figured that was the best use. Obviously a GScientist would have been better, but thanks to that load of early-ish EP I was able to steal (iirc), Feudalism, Music, Machinery, Engineering, Drama. Drama was sold to Mansa for 1100 :gold: because he had a big pile sitting around. For some strange reason he still had 6000 :gold: much later in the game, so I used spies to steal most of it.

Pretty good use of the EP in that game I'd say.

Not a "proper" Espionage Economy by any means as it was just dumb luck I got the GSpy (captured Great Wall), but it opened my eyes to how powerful it can be. With the right modifiers, it's a lot cheaper to get techs in :espionage: than in :science:. If I remember correctly, I got 27,300 :science: in exchange for the 9000 :espionage: the Marathon GSpy got me; in other words a 3:1 ratio.
 
Im not saying infiltration isnt strong,just questioning whether its the best play,if your going for conquest super fast-then it is.Diplomacy/space race a settled spy and scotland yard will make the difference.

Anyway @pangaea your preaching to the converted-I love my spys.I think I started a thred some years ago with the aim to crush an AI economy using just spys.You are right though,with a little micro on the spy screen and some clever tech trades that spy mission can catapult you further than research alone.
 
Before I'd settle a Great Spy, I'd build a 2nd Scotland Yard. Infiltration mission is probably the best use though, except you play for an espionage-assisted cultural-victroy, then Scotland Yard in the Buro capital is a must.
 
I would say, that ORG trait is very good for EE, not only for cheap Courts, but due to the higher aomunt of cities. And EE has very good correspondence with the amount of cities, specially in later game, when you passively generate tons of esp. points via buildings. It's significantle could be seen, if you take expensive civics, like Org. Religion. And you have to take, because EE is mostly about transforming hummers into esp. points.


Also, Charlemagne is good for EE, due to the fact of great amount of cities (cheap settlers and very low upkeep), and cheap castles, although this like a pleasant bonus, not main advantage.


I would also suggest you to write a chapter about placing a capital. Because capital place is very important for EE.


And to be fair, Corporation is not a dead end. Alas, it's not. You can't build Infantry or Factories, if you hadn't research Corporation.
 
I would say, that ORG trait is very good for EE, not only for cheap Courts, but due to the higher aomunt of cities. And EE has very good correspondence with the amount of cities, specially in later game, when you passively generate tons of esp. points via buildings. It's significantle could be seen, if you take expensive civics, like Org. Religion. And you have to take, because EE is mostly about transforming hummers into esp. points.


Also, Charlemagne is good for EE, due to the fact of great amount of cities (cheap settlers and very low upkeep), and cheap castles, although this like a pleasant bonus, not main advantage.


I would also suggest you to write a chapter about placing a capital. Because capital place is very important for EE.


And to be fair, Corporation is not a dead end. Alas, it's not. You can't build Infantry or Factories, if you hadn't research Corporation.

Real EEs work differently Iwo Jima. Most :espionage: comes from Cottages and GPs, and that already in early game, so far before one can build all those buildings you mention. Cheaper Courthouses are always nice, but the higher :commerce: from FIN and the faster GPs from PHI greatly outweigh the small bonus of cheaper Courthouses. It's very good if one has the GW, because then, one can build Scotland Yard a lot earlier. Security Bureaus are the buildings that are needed / built extremely late or even not at all, because they're expensive and the gain from them is small.

And better than re-placing the capital is gifting away cities near it, though that can be difficult sometimes.
 
Real EEs work differently Iwo Jima. Most :espionage: comes from Cottages and GPs, and that already in early game, so far before one can build all those buildings you mention. Cheaper Courthouses are always nice, but the higher :commerce: from FIN and the faster GPs from PHI greatly outweigh the small bonus of cheaper Courthouses. It's very good if one has the GW, because then, one can build Scotland Yard a lot earlier. Security Bureaus are the buildings that are needed / built extremely late or even not at all, because they're expensive and the gain from them is small.

And better than re-placing the capital is gifting away cities near it, though that can be difficult sometimes.

Real EEs, I think you mean pure EEs, as all pure economics is more for fun, than for real effectiveness. I switch to EEs only when open Alphabet and Courthouses, but usually mix it with other types of economics. And only if I loose tech leadership.

I believe, that if you are FIN, CE with generating science is working better. EEs mostly for those civilizations, that are not so well suited for tech research. EEs allows to transform hummers into science (spies need hummers, esp. buildings need hummers), so EEs is very good addition to "builders" and "warmongers". It's a strange plan to play EEs with Korea, for example.

Second advantage of EEs, is that you can have a lot of passive esp. "research" due to buildings, so it will hinder your production, but not slows you research. But of course, you can switch it inside out, stop your research, but free your production. Although you need to produce spies anyway, and they are not cheap.



Trick with gifting cities should be insert to the guide as well. Although, not any city could be gifted, you need have some amount of opponents culture in it.
 
Real EEs, I think you mean pure EEs, as all pure economics is more for fun, than for real effectiveness. I switch to EEs only when open Alphabet and Courthouses, but usually mix it with other types of economics. And only if I loose tech leadership.

I believe, that if you are FIN, CE with generating science is working better. EEs mostly for those civilizations, that are not so well suited for tech research. EEs allows to transform hummers into science (spies need hummers, esp. buildings need hummers), so EEs is very good addition to "builders" and "warmongers". It's a strange plan to play EEs with Korea, for example.

Second advantage of EEs, is that you can have a lot of passive esp. "research" due to buildings, so it will hinder your production, but not slows you research. But of course, you can switch it inside out, stop your research, but free your production. Although you need to produce spies anyway, and they are not cheap.



Trick with gifting cities should be insert to the guide as well. Although, not any city could be gifted, you need have some amount of opponents culture in it.

Are you trying to annoy me?

Moderator Action: This is trolling. Address the issue and not the poster.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

When I write "real EEs" , I mean "real EEs" , if I'd mean pure EEs, I would write pure EEs. Read "Replay #9" to see what I mean.

And to the rest of your post: No.
 
Are you trying to annoy me?

When I write "real EEs" , I mean "real EEs" , if I'd mean pure EEs, I would write pure EEs. Read "Replay #9" to see what I mean.

And to the rest of your post: No.


Ahh, ok. Real EEs from Real Player with Real Megalomania. And the Real No as the Real Final Argument. I see.

Alas, I don't need your approving to write things I consider right and correct. So, if you disagree, discuss it civilized or do not comment my posts at all.

Moderator Action: This is also trolling. Again, stick to the subject matter and do not comment on the other poster. The two of you need to stop this sparring, it is getting very tiresome.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
Before I'd settle a Great Spy, I'd build a 2nd Scotland Yard. Infiltration mission is probably the best use though, except you play for an espionage-assisted cultural-victroy, then Scotland Yard in the Buro capital is a must.

Ive been thinking about this.If you build a scotland yard 1st you will only be getting spy points from your capitol,which will be without a couthouse.(im assuming here the spy is our 1st GP).Im not great at maths but I know 100% of nothing is nothing,or in this case 100% of our starting palace 4 spy points.So with scotland yard we are generating 8 spy points,but,if we settle the great spy we get 16 spy points and 3 beakers.

I think I can see why scotland yard running through commerce and the slider can generate more ESP eventually,but I just cant see how it competes with a settled spy in the very early game-turn 50-70 I guess normal speed.Also a second scotland yard,hmm,im still not so sure,ive always just settled the spys in my capitol.The reason bieng that the spy multiplyer buildings(after the courthouse)come 100 turns later-constitution/democracy/communism.

I like bieng proved wrong,what am I missing?
 
Ive been thinking about this.If you build a scotland yard 1st you will only be getting spy points from your capitol,which will be without a couthouse.(im assuming here the spy is our 1st GP).Im not great at maths but I know 100% of nothing is nothing,or in this case 100% of our starting palace 4 spy points.So with scotland yard we are generating 8 spy points,but,if we settle the great spy we get 16 spy points and 3 beakers.

I think I can see why scotland yard running through commerce and the slider can generate more ESP eventually,but I just cant see how it competes with a settled spy in the very early game-turn 50-70 I guess normal speed.Also a second scotland yard,hmm,im still not so sure,ive always just settled the spys in my capitol.The reason bieng that the spy multiplyer buildings(after the courthouse)come 100 turns later-constitution/democracy/communism.

I like bieng proved wrong,what am I missing?

Usually I do the same. Because before Alphabet turning slider into ESP has no sense. And you can get Alphabet (assuming early GW) not very soon from the moment of generating GSpy. It's also depends on amount of commerce in capital. If you need to build GW quickly, probably it's production oriented city.

But the question is, that your second Great Man could be not GSpy, or you could wait your next GSpy far too long. So, it could be situation, when you generate a lot of ESP via slider, but still have no Scotland Yard. And therefore all additional ESP from settled early GSpy could be negated by the lack of ESP, you could get via SY.
 
Ive been thinking about this.If you build a scotland yard 1st you will only be getting spy points from your capitol,which will be without a couthouse.(im assuming here the spy is our 1st GP).Im not great at maths but I know 100% of nothing is nothing,or in this case 100% of our starting palace 4 spy points.So with scotland yard we are generating 8 spy points,but,if we settle the great spy we get 16 spy points and 3 beakers.

I think I can see why scotland yard running through commerce and the slider can generate more ESP eventually,but I just cant see how it competes with a settled spy in the very early game-turn 50-70 I guess normal speed.Also a second scotland yard,hmm,im still not so sure,ive always just settled the spys in my capitol.The reason bieng that the spy multiplyer buildings(after the courthouse)come 100 turns later-constitution/democracy/communism.

I like bieng proved wrong,what am I missing?

EE is already effective far before multipliers come into play. Stealing a tech before those often costs only 1/2 or even 1/3 of what they'd cost via normal research. A 2nd Scotland Yard can be powerful via the slider if you have a 2nd, strong, Cottage city. Infiltration mission is probably better though. Settling a Great Spy takes too long until he outproduces the other 2 options, and it doesn't really snowball, like the Infiltration-mission with tech-steals does.

The difference between our games is probably the number of Cottages. I don't know when T70 is, but at 1 AD, I usually got a size 11-12 capital. A 2nd Cottage city could very well be size 10, and 10 Hamlets + 100% Slider + Scotland Yard is 2.5 times more than settling it. It still probably can't compete with the Infiltration-mission though.

How you get a 2nd Great spy by T70 btw. would interest me ^^ . If you say, you hire Scientists, I ask you what you want with an Academy ^^ .
 
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