Espionage is pathetic

I mean, really, as a game mechanic, it's almost entirely useless. You don't get your first spy until the start of the Renaissance. If you send him out to steal tech -- about the ONLY offensive task available, he spends _110_ turns (Marathon game) just getting ready to TRY to steal a tech. And there's a good chance he'll die in the attempt -- with absolutely no replacement possibility. (The subsequent spies given at the start of each new era -- for a grand total of a whole whopping _5_ available for use during the entire game -- are **reinforcements; not replacements.) That's over two **centuries** of prep time. And with defensively allocated spies PLUS a Constabulary, added to the inherent possibility of failure, it's pretty obvious that the likelihood of successfully stealing a tech is somewhere between slim and none. In the end, if your spies steal TWO techs between @1400 and 2100 A.D., that would be outstandingly "successful".

It's all so pathetic, why even bother putting it in the game?

Hello Patch, remember me from Addicted to Pirates?

I've actually turned espionage off, I just find it adds nothing to the game.

You get a replacement in around 10 (30 in M) turn. Everything is slow in marathon. You sent your spy to the wrong city.
One point of spies to keep up science, so it works best in immmortial / deity, where if you are a bit lucky you can steal a tech 5-7-9 turn. I played games with 10 tech stolen.
They also good for several other purpose.

I can't agree with that. I find spies very useful. You can get free influence to the city states, steal techs and get to know what AIs are planning. Always place spy into tech leaders capital. At first stealing is slow (well, I'm playing in epic not marathon so I don't know if spies are terribly slower with marathon) but after your spy levels up, it starts being faster. Also, when a spy dies, you will get a replacement spy in a couple of turns.

The most important thing, however, is the intrigue. Knowing what your enemy is planning is useful - no, it's sometimes necessary. When your spy tells you that your neighbor is plotting against you, or that he has launched secret attack into one of your cities, you will be ready. Or you can make him declare war to somebody else.

Imo there needs to be more options to level up spies. Iirc they currently only level up when they steal a tech or kill an enemy spy. A building or two could be made or tweaked for this purpose... And certainly ideologies should help in this regard. I know about Industrial Espionage, but it doesn't help much if your spies are all base level and the enemy has elite spies guarding their cities. There should be another tenet that gives you an extra spy and raises the starting level of all spies by one imo.

I seldom use them to try to steal tech. They are much more useful for rigging CS elections, and as diplomats in AI capitols. They are very useful not only for diplomacy victory, but vital for keeping someone else from getting a diplomacy victory if I'm going for a different type of victory.

You guys aren't doing it right. It always works the same.

DON'T send your spy to the number one guy. Send him someplace else like your neighbor who you need parity with. Spy it up until he comes to you and asks you to stop. If you dont stop, he will assign a counter-spy and you are dead. Instead, move to the next guy, rinse and repeat. Don't go after number one if you can help it. Once you are number one, park your ace back in the cap.

That's how it works.

Just out of interest, has anyone successfully used a spy for a coup in a CS?

It looks like an interesting option, but I've never tried it because a) the chances of it succeeding always seem too low, even with a well levelled-up spy & b) it's probably asking to be attacked by whoever the ally happens to be....

Completely disagree. Spies are very useful. If it's taking that long to steal a tech, your spy is in the wrong city. If all cities have such bad potential, there's plenty of other options for spies. You can use them as diplomats to gain intrigue, which is itself very usesful for diplomacy, and to negotiate WC votes. You can place them in essential city-states to gain influence, a very useful tactic. Or you can keep them in your own cities to gain some positive modifiers by 'forgiving' the AI. Spies are great for manipulating diplomacy, getting techs, getting WC votes, and gaining CS influence. I use them a lot and thing they're a great mechanic. Also, you get replacement spies relatively quickly. The only thing you ever truly lose is spy 'levels' and time, 10 turns or so, spend not having a spy.

noz3112 said:

Just out of interest, has anyone successfully used a spy for a coup in a CS?

It looks like an interesting option, but I've never tried it because a) the chances of it succeeding always seem too low, even with a well levelled-up spy & b) it's probably asking to be attacked by whoever the ally happens to be....

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I do it sometimes, and I am usually successful. It can't be used if you're at 0 influence and the AI is allied, but when things are closer it's a very useful and reasonably reliable mechanic.

Thanks Mrwho - do you take a big diplo hit with the allied civ if you're successful with a coup?

noz3112 said:

Thanks Mrwho - do you take a big diplo hit with the allied civ if you're successful with a coup?

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not at all. You just get extra influence just a little over what the current ally has. No diplomatic penalties at all.

IF the coup does fail however, you will lose the spy and get negative influence with the CS.

The coup chance depends on your current influence vs the current ally influence. Generally you want to invest so money before couping so that you improve your chances.

85% coup chance is a good number for attempting it. I fail usually 1 in 10 coups if I abide by this law. However during desperate times, I was even able to steal CS with coup chances as low as 34%!

Yes spies are pathetic if having tech lead because barely ever there is chance to level them up.

Way to often there is nothing interesting to do with them. While interesting things like spying on city take many turns to set up.
And those interesting things do not level them up.

The coup is even worth trying on CS allied with Alexander if you can afford to lose the investment in gold to get to the level of influence necessary for having any chance to work.. There's a fair risk of failure but it's still a much cheaper alternative than ousting him with bribes, and one I got away with quite a few times (especially in a Venice game where I bought with MoV the 3 CS he had an insane level of influence with, and got 3 more through coups. Only one spy failed).

I don't use coups in all games - most of the time I prefer to use spies as diplomats - but if I have an extra spy I do mostly coups. As I play on King or Emperor, it's fairly rare there are that many techs around for me to steal by Industrial (unless at times at the bottom of the tree while I work on the top), and I almost systematically keep my Renaissance spy in my capital where he'll level up.

I wish tech stealing was a flat number of beakers per turn. So many times, I've had a spy in someone's capital for 40 turns, then I researched the last tech that person knew and the forty turns was for nothing.

Diplomatic tourism and city state election rigging are generally far better simply because you're actually guaranteed to get something out of it.

It's less of an issue if you're miles behind in tech, but that doesn't happen that often and if you're miles behind, you're probably screwed anyway.

player1 fanatic said:

Yes spies are pathetic if having tech lead because barely ever there is chance to level them up.

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I usually don't have problems leveling up 2 spies (the Renaissance and Industrial ones) in turn merely on defense in my capital. Sometimes I get a third to SA rank before the AI gives up trying to steal techs. The rest level up with the NSA. I prefer to risk being stolen from (by Industrial I usually am quite ahead in science) and use my better spies as diplomats or for coups. When I kill or fail to kill a spy, this can generally be used for diplomatic gain anyway.

I'm not quite sure the better spies deliver better intrigue information than the recruits, but it seems so. I rarely seem to get incomplete info (X is planning a sneak attack but we don't know on who etc.) from the agents and special agents.

Main issues IMHO:

Spies should be more effective in all tasks, when leveled up.

All tasks should help in leveling up spies, not just stealing and killing other spies.


Anyway, whole system is too underdeveloped. Most probably the weakest mechanic in Civ5.

player1 fanatic said:

Main issues IMHO:

Spies should be more effective in all tasks, when leveled up.

All tasks should help in leveling up spies, not just stealing and killing other spies.

Anyway, whole system is too underdeveloped. Most probably the weakest mechanic in Civ5.

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I'm not sure I agree. I think for the most part the system works fine. Maybe spies should level up performing coups, and perhaps they could perform a task or two more (like organizing sabotage of luxury tiles and perhaps perform a more active form of propaganda that would temporarily worsen ideological pressure on the target civ) which would add a small active dimension to the ideological combat (as of now it's pretty much limited to snatching their mercantile CS and not trading your luxury resources to someone you'd wish to go in Revolution... but you're rarely the provider of luxuries to the AI...). But on the whole the system works well, I think. It can give you or the AI a small edge at times - gain a few techs per game, get you a few CS per game, without taking too much place. I like especially how limited the number of spies is. It forces you to make choices and employ them as best you can for your needs. And that means that with the AI's spies it doesn't become a major annoyance, having to stop wave after wave of spies. The diplomats providing intrigue in particular can be very useful in the late game, and it's great that this is limited to a few target civs, and further limited by having to keep a diplomat where you might want to buy votes for the WC... and that's often not from the same civs you wish to keep an eye on. On the whole it's a bit limited but it's far more balanced than in some previous versions of the game where the spies did more and were either useless because they failed too often, or else overpowered and annoying (destroying buildings and poisoning cities and whatnot).

I play with Espionage turned off. Yeah it is very poorly implemented.

Diplomats, however, are priceless when jerkass AI wants to ban all your luxuries and you need friends to vote against him.