How to counter coups?

I recently finished a game with arabia and got a little bit anoyed by the constant couping of the AI


I've had all my spies stationed in my allied city states to prevent coups however Every single time the AI just tries a coup and succeeds?


How do you counter coups?


Does a spy in a city state actualy helps to counter a coup will it decrease the change of succeeding?

Some of my spies where promoted other's don't(more then 60% promoted). SO has a high ranked spy better change of countering coups?


Because this was just ridicoulous I just nuked darius (who stole my city states ) and conquered the other 2 civs


Any thoughts? or help?

After the patch, spies should make a huge difference in coup chances, but both now and post patch, your best defense is having high influence. If you only have 5 more influence, you'll end up losing a lot of CS's. If you always have 100 more influence than the next guy, you'll almost never lose a CS.

Rooftrellen said:

After the patch, spies should make a huge difference in coup chances, but both now and post patch, your best defense is having high influence. If you only have 5 more influence, you'll end up losing a lot of CS's. If you always have 100 more influence than the next guy, you'll almost never lose a CS.

Click to expand...

So what you are saying is that the patch will increase the ability to prevent coups by having a spy inside the city state?

It will actually increase the ability for coups to occur without a spy on defense, and chances should be as now with a spy in the CS.

Rooftrellen said:

It will actually increase the ability for coups to occur without a spy on defense, and chances should be as now with a spy in the CS.

Click to expand...

Yeah I've readed that but what I didn't get was if it buffed the defending spies in a city state ability to prevent a coups?

Spies, money, quests. Up to emperor you can retain CS allies with a good mix.

Money is the biggest limiter in my opinion. Gold is the difference between fighting for 1 or fighting for many.

Just finished a game with Songhai and fought for 10 CS I needed for diplomatic victory.

In my most recent game as China I'm battling for just one critical CS. Another civ has them at the moment so I'm scouring the world for a wonder and saving my gold so I can pad my influence once I find a wonder. All the while Rome is sitting on a huge treasure chest and can swoop in at any time.

Two games two different outcomes with gold being the key and effort being the constant.

Rooftrellen said:

It will actually increase the ability for coups to occur without a spy on defense, and chances should be as now with a spy in the CS.

Click to expand...

So depressingly, this will effectively make coups MORE frequent rather than LESS frequent, right?

I go with my answer from the other thread about how to prevent tech stealing: Turn of Espionage. It prevents both tech stealing and coups. It's a win/win.

Rooftrellen said:

It will actually increase the ability for coups to occur without a spy on defense, and chances should be as now with a spy in the CS.

Click to expand...

We don't know that for certain. Though I agree the way the patch notes read do seem to lead that way. Still, the base coup chance could have been lowered and it could be that spying in CSs without a spy is as effective as it is now.

bcaiko said:

We don't know that for certain. Though I agree the way the patch notes read do seem to lead that way. Still, the base coup chance could have been lowered and it could be that spying in CSs without a spy is as effective as it is now.

Click to expand...

It's possible, but coup chances are so low if you take care of your CS's as is, it would be pretty sad to see chances decrease further.

When a coup DOES succeed, it almost always leaves you the ability to get the CS back almost instantly, besides giving you a warning that enemy spies are going to attempt a coup again if you get it back, letting you bolster your influence so it doesn't happen again.

bcaiko said:

We don't know that for certain. Though I agree the way the patch notes read do seem to lead that way. Still, the base coup chance could have been lowered and it could be that spying in CSs without a spy is as effective as it is now.

Click to expand...

So currently we can't get a answer at the question :
Will defensive spies in city states decrease coups changes drasticly after patch?


Coups are allready broken I thinx more then 50 % of the community would like to see them nerved either by having a counter or I thinx what most people want is a waiting period if a spy does a coup it can't coup again it has to wait some turns...

.


I'm just going to put off espionage ridicoulous broken game mechanic in my opinion... Untill they balanced it of course

apocalypse105 said:

So currently we can't get a answer at the question :
Will defensive spies in city states decrease coups changes drasticly after patch?


Coups are allready broken I thinx more then 50 % of the community would like to see them nerved either by having a counter or I thinx what most people want is a waiting period if a spy does a coup it can't coup again it has to wait some turns...

.


I'm just going to put off espionage ridicoulous broken game mechanic in my opinion... Untill they balanced it of course

Click to expand...

coups are very annoying to deal with. i have noticed though that when i fail in a coup the anger bar is filled with the city state - meaning a failed coup makes it very expensive to regain influence with them. the only problem with this is that an AI on Immortal/Deity has pretty much unlimited gold, meaning they can regain all that lost influence very easily, which leads to the infinite coups every few turns. personally i dont like how much luck is involved in using spies presently, introducing 'chance' into civ is not my favourite thing and judging by peoples generally poor opinion of Spain's UA I'm probably not alone in not liking so much chance to be involved in a game of strategy.

other than turning espionge ill resort to capturing city states. i had a war with elizabeth that lasted a thousand years and she had 8 city state allies. by the end of the war she had 4. sometimes the only way to stop it is to use force. not the best solution its crude but effective.

woodshadows said:

coups are very annoying to deal with. i have noticed though that when i fail in a coup the anger bar is filled with the city state - meaning a failed coup makes it very expensive to regain influence with them. the only problem with this is that an AI on Immortal/Deity has pretty much unlimited gold, meaning they can regain all that lost influence very easily, which leads to the infinite coups every few turns. personally i dont like how much luck is involved in using spies presently, introducing 'chance' into civ is not my favourite thing and judging by peoples generally poor opinion of Spain's UA I'm probably not alone in not liking so much chance to be involved in a game of strategy.

Click to expand...

Indead high level players on civ 4 olso have the opinion that the option "random events" is useless
Because its to random.

But I thixn the biggest problem is the city state mechanic the expansion made gold less valuable for city states however this is easy beeing fixed by picking the patronage branch or if you have a lot of gold. As result the Ai can just constantly steal you're city states

The quest system is only usefull early in the game because you don't have that many gold in the end game its still the same system as in vanilla..


THey really need to change the hole "city state mechanic" to something else

apocalypse105 said:

Indead high level players on civ 4 olso have the opinion that the option "random events" is useless
Because its to random.

Click to expand...

There's a huge difference between a random event and between a random outcome to a planned event, however - just saying.

I think CS mechanism is pretty good but they need to tweak it so that one can only give them Gold when they have either the Gold quest open or when someone has bullied them making them bankrupt. Instead, there should be more other quests, and they should come up a bit more often.

kaspergm said:

There's a huge difference between a random event and between a random outcome to a planned event, however - just saying.

I think CS mechanism is pretty good but they need to tweak it so that one can only give them Gold when they have either the Gold quest open or when someone has bullied them making them bankrupt. Instead, there should be more other quests, and they should come up a bit more often.

Click to expand...

I agree a planned event shouldn't be random...

And limiting the gold giving would fix the problem and increasing quest would olso make it better


Back on topic : I'm pretty much going to pick the option no espionage untill I know it is fixed in the patch

Genocide is my preferred solution to dealing with coup happy civs. They are usually ones who are going culture, couping all the cultural city states, so I get some nice landmarks out of it.

From the Patch notes:

Corrected an issue that caused the AI to attempt coups too often, when chances of success were too low. Also implemented a new factor: Attempting a coup in a location where there is no defending spy (the current ally does not have a spy there) is >=2x as likely to work as it would if there was a spy there.

Click to expand...

So they are reducing coup frequency and making it easier to defend, but again, you have to put a spy in that CS. It means you can't defend all 10 of your CS from being couped, but your key CS can be more easily defended.

Also, I'd like to point out coup does not appear to be 'random' There's an element of chance involved in success or failure, but if a CS is being coup'd, the Civ behind it values it more than your long term friendship. So there's a reason behind it. The CS has something the AI wants or is trying to deny from you.

It doesn't have to evolve into all out war, but that's sort of the competitive co-operation that can now occur in Civ games.

dexters said:

Also, I'd like to point out coup does not appear to be 'random' There's an element of chance involved in success or failure, but if a CS is being coup'd, the Civ behind it values it more than your long term friendship. So there's a reason behind it. The CS has something the AI wants or is trying to deny from you.

Click to expand...

Well you see, in that sentence there is the heart of pretty much all the problems in CiV diplomacy: The AI doesn't value long term friendship. You can form Declarations of Friendship and Denounce all the same leaders, when suddenly the AI will for whatever petty reason Denounce someone you made DoF with or befriend someone you Denounced or someone who Denounced you, which will make the whole alliance thing crumble because "you denounced their friend" or "someone they like better than you denounced you" or "you made a DoF with someone they denounced" modifiers will start popping up all over the place.

dexters said:

From the Patch notes:



So they are reducing coup frequency and making it easier to defend, but again, you have to put a spy in that CS. It means you can't defend all 10 of your CS from being couped, but your key CS can be more easily defended.
.

Click to expand...

Will the rank of the spy be important ?

I mean will a high ranked spy have more change of succeeding a coup.
And will a high defensive spy have a lot of change to counter it?


Or will it allways be as effective..

Because I thinx it will still be broken because the only way to get you're spies to a high level is by stealing techs and the Ai just does it constantly.
There is basicly no other way to get promoted besides tech steeling and defending

kaspergm said:

Well you see, in that sentence there is the heart of pretty much all the problems in CiV diplomacy: The AI doesn't value long term friendship. You can form Declarations of Friendship and Denounce all the same leaders, when suddenly the AI will for whatever petty reason Denounce someone you made DoF with or befriend someone you Denounced or someone who Denounced you, which will make the whole alliance thing crumble because "you denounced their friend" or "someone they like better than you denounced you" or "you made a DoF with someone they denounced" modifiers will start popping up all over the place.

Click to expand...

I agree the best way to conduct diplomacy in civ 5 is : ignore diplomacy only use it for getting gold..
Wich is kinda sad

However the Ai does value friendship but as you say everything is pretty much random you could have good alliance with 3 people when suddenly they start denouncing eachother and they all get hostil towards you and you have the feeling like " what happened guys? "

kaspergm said:

Well you see, in that sentence there is the heart of pretty much all the problems in CiV diplomacy: The AI doesn't value long term friendship. You can form Declarations of Friendship and Denounce all the same leaders, when suddenly the AI will for whatever petty reason Denounce someone you made DoF with or befriend someone you Denounced or someone who Denounced you, which will make the whole alliance thing crumble because "you denounced their friend" or "someone they like better than you denounced you" or "you made a DoF with someone they denounced" modifiers will start popping up all over the place.

Click to expand...

But while it lasts its very workable.

I don't understand the fetish with permanent long-term alliances. I suppose someone can make a mod with permanent alliances.

But if you play the normal game, the reason alliances aren't locked forever is because they can shift over time as interest change, and more often than not I know exactly why they change. There's various flashpoints over diplomacy. AI competes/coups your CS, AI invades any AI you are friends with, you invade someone making the AI feel uncomfortable, you click yes to every friend request, pissing off everyone and making you look like a cheap prostitute. A lot of it is two sided. Obviously the human side is dependent on how you react to AI invading buffers empires, killing/crippling your trading partners, stealing your CS etc. but the biggest change in Civ5 is the AI pretty much is programmed to react negatively to all of the above as well, rather than standing there and grinning with a -10 we hate you modifier in the diplo screen that means nothing.


The only reason people seem to be upset is that in the old game, they're like the popular jock who did the dumping (of allies); so Civ5 throws a wrench in that and your long time ally may decide to part ways mid-game. Rage!

apocalypse105 said:

Will the rank of the spy be important ?

I mean will a high ranked spy have more change of succeeding a coup.
And will a high defensive spy have a lot of change to counter it?

Click to expand...

AFAIK, only steal techs and defending against steals levels up your spy. CS shenanigans do not, this includes rigging elections.

Now the proposed patched will allow us to defend against coups. But nothing there says it will always be successful, only that you get about 2x more success rate couping a CS without a defending spy.

So a number of possibilities here. They upped the success rate of couping an undefended CS, they reduced the success rate of couping a CS with a defending spy, or they did a bit of both. Either way this is a much welcome change.

Also note the reduced coup frequency in the patch notes preview.