My first try at an Espionage economy

I finally got around to trying a pure espionage economy, by pure I mean early in the game the science slider is dropped near 0, and relatively soon dropped to 0, and eventually all tech comes from tech stealing.

I played a small fractal map on emperor level with Hannibal (fin/cha). I had 2 near neighbors, Saladin and Alexander, and chose to ReX rather than go for the Great Wall. I did build Stonehenge while waiting for my capital to grow to happy cap before spamming settlers.

I researched the worker techs, plus IW because of a lot of jungle, then alphabet for spies. After alphabet was in, I turned up the Espionage slider, leaving science at 20% so that I could self research the remaining cheap techs ... I think it is surely a waste of hammers to steal techs like priesthood and polytheism. I shortly turned the slider down to 10%, and once Aesthetics was the cheapest tech available, to 0%. My capital was devoted to production, 3 cities were cottage spammed (2 were good ones with a couple flood plains and lots of river tiles, 1 was mediocre, coastal and no river). My 5th city was a blocking city that claimed a gold resource, and produced perhaps 10 hammers and 20 commerce at it's population limit of about 8.

I was pleased by the results. By the time Liberalism was discovered, the EP cost of stealing a tech was only about 60% of the beaker cost to research. Shortly after getting Republic and having jails up, I had more EP than I could use, and started stockpiling gold. I kept building macemen and use the gold to upgrade my CR2 maces to grenadiers and later riflemen. All fell before the might of my massive army.

I found that this is a very powerful option for an economy. One benefit I didn't realize before playing the game is not needing to build libraries and universities. With a CE or SE, they have to be built for Oxford, with no need for beakers, there is no need for libraries, universities, or Oxford, freeing up lots of hammers for military.

Additionally, pretty much all big cities eventually get markets and grocers anyway, and with all the gold you can generate in an Espionage Economy, these buildings are even better than in either a CE or SE. Better than in a CE because your % of commerce going to gold is higher. Better than a SE because there is far more base commerce to start with. I suppose it is still a CE, and maybe we need to talk about SCE (science cottage economy) and ECE (espionage cottage economy) just as there are 2 primary SEs ... SSE (settled specialist economy) and TSE (transition specialist economy ... using lightbulbing early then cottages or espionage later).

Nice work, xanadux! Trying the strategy without relying on the Great Wall definitely makes me feel a bit more confident about the espionage economy's viability if I try to make an attempt at it myself in a future game.

My biggest concern about the espionage economy is it forfeits a tech lead that is useful in wars and space races, but it occurs to me that if you find yourself with a significant surplus of espionage points, you can divert those points to sabotage, disruption, destroying space ship production, etc.

not having a tech lead is not a problem. Militarily, tech parity plus advantage of numbers is a devastating advantage. Advantage of numbers with highly promoted units and the right units will win the vast majority of battles. An example is your opponent has grenadiers and cannon, and you do too, but you have 3x as many, and have CR2 grens. You will lose very few units attacking cities. Of course you never get the free specialists, or found a religion, or get the Liberalism bonus, but this is compensated by needing far less commerce to get the techs. Generating a huge amount of gold is easily possible, and that means lots of well promoted units and the ability to field a huge army.

Also, generating a single Great Spy is the same as building Oxford for a science economy (scotland yard). Each additional GS is another Oxford. Jail + Intelligence Agency + Scotland Yard is just as good as library + university + academy + Oxford. And you can do it in as many cities as you get Great Spies. By restraining Great Person generation early game, you can make a lot of Great Spies late middle game with the spy specialists allowed by the EP buildings.

I love espionage, I'm glad someone is singing it's praises instead of bashing it. Because of the fact that it is using the same source of production as a scince based economy does you can adjust your slider to accomodate a liberalisim rush, or if you just feel like abandoning it all together. If you get great spies at all and put them in a rivals city, you can realy appreciate how powerful they are.

I think it was UncleJJ that pointed out that for a pure EE using cottages to generate commerce for a high espionage slider the best use of a GS is for Scotland Yard.

However, there is a huge early boost for an infiltration mission, and I can see that this could be the best use for a GS even though SY gives much higher long term returns.

On another note, I am starting to think that Espionage should be the default economy for players at Emperor and above (along with Great Scientist lightbulbs on Immortal and Deity).

well that certainly makes sense as I think the infiltrate is 50% and scotland yard is 100% right?

Looking over xanadux's remarks makes me feel even more strongly that an EP is best suited to warmongering. The advantage seems to be an incredible amount of surplus hammers and gold, which means large armies and lots of upgrading. My favorite choice would probably be Stalin.

Anyway, my question is about techs. You say you research until Aesthetics is the cheapest option. I don't have the civilopedia open; but, what all does this include? Alpha? Maths? CoL? I'm particularly curious about CoL because the courthouses add to EPs; but maybe those EPs are a drop in the bucket when the espionage slider is set so high?

P.S. Gilgamesh is also great for an EP getting courthouses with Priesthood.

What I did in the game is research to Alphabet, and then drop the slider. Initially to 20%, then 10% science, then 0. Just to clear the cheap techs. Math and CoL I stole ... they are expensive enough to warrant the hammers to build spies. The techs I self researched after having alphabet for spies were techs like priesthood, polytheism, masonry, and monotheism. I did self-research aesthetics at 0% science ... took about 50 turns, but I wasn't planning on building the wonders, and had plenty of other usefull techs to steal. With an EE, you just have to resign yourself to not building many or any wonders. The Great Wall is of course awesome to get for an early Great Spy, but sometimes it is really more necessary to use those hammers for REXing. I would say that on Monarch level and below, go ahead and build the GW every game, on Emperor, it depends on the situation, and above Emperor, only if you have stone in the capital's FC.

Courthouses are great, but if the Espionage slider is high, +2 per city is not a huge boost. Certainly worth building, but not a huge priority. Engineering for +25% espionage castles is a big early game priority. I would recommend applying all EPs to a neighboring civ that has Engineering.

Alex of sumeria is great! It is also one of the only times I use castles, the extra trade route boosts the esionage even more.

Wow. I've read about espionage economies in many posts, but this is the first time I've seen anyone actually try it! Good job!

deanej said:

Wow. I've read about espionage economies in many posts, but this is the first time I've seen anyone actually try it! Good job!

Click to expand...

Just look in the Sucession games subforum the RBtS1 games ( a and b teams ) where they could only research early woker techs and Alpha ( like xanadux did ). Espionage can be very powerful in the late game ( when the spy multiplierts start to appear like mushrooms ), and paradoxically works very well with fin civs ( more money to pour in the espionage slider )

Awesome inspiration here. I find that the Great Wall is 'great enough' that I usually want to get it if at all possible. With an EE, you get early great spies, protection from barbarians and a nice boost in gg production for all the warmongering you'll do. My current game and my last both saw me get 3 great spies in a row as my first great people. Settling two of them first (bc of running representation of pyramids) and using the third for Scotland Yard gives me 56 EPs a turn with 0% on the spy slider, allowing me to outspy 4-5 AIs at the same time. I can only imagine how effective it would have been with an EE..hmm perhaps I'll transition..

Edit: I'll probably play the current game as a hybrid economy since I'm playing as Elizabeth and I already settled two gret spies. I'm taking advantage of my high EP generation to steal a few techs however to supplement my normal research.
Next game I'll go back to my old favourite Capac, I think he has the optimal traits for going for great wall + EE. Probably also worth it to get representation anyhow since he's not charismatic, unless I get tons of luxury resources.

Elizabeth may be the best leader for an espionage economy. Cottage spam for the EPs with the financial trait, do your best to build the Great Wall, and delay massive GPP generation until the late-mid game EP buildings that allow lots of spy specialists. I think on Emperor and Immortal, all you would have to do is get 3 or 4 decent cities, keep the power rating up, and once Republic, Democracy, and Communism hit, will have Scotland Yard in every city for massive 200% EP bonus ... 4 cities with all the EP buildings is 20 base EP, plus probably 80 EP from towns, and you have 1200 EP/turn which is about the equivalent of 2000 beakers/turn.

And I have to say it again ... it is really nice to not have to build libraries and universities. With 5 cities, instead of building those buildings, you can have about 20 CR2 maces to upgrade to rifles.

xanadux said:

Elizabeth may be the best leader for an espionage economy. Cottage spam for the EPs with the financial trait, do your best to build the Great Wall, and delay massive GPP generation until the late-mid game EP buildings that allow lots of spy specialists. I think on Emperor and Immortal, all you would have to do is get 3 or 4 decent cities, keep the power rating up, and once Republic, Democracy, and Communism hit, will have Scotland Yard in every city for massive 200% EP bonus ... 4 cities with all the EP buildings is 20 base EP, plus probably 80 EP from towns, and you have 1200 EP/turn which is about the equivalent of 2000 beakers/turn.

And I have to say it again ... it is really nice to not have to build libraries and universities. With 5 cities, instead of building those buildings, you can have about 20 CR2 maces to upgrade to rifles.

Click to expand...

I think you're right. I'm going to transition my economy in this game since it seems ideally suited for it. Would you believe that I got my fourth great person and it was a fourth great spy despite gp2 being 50/50 engineer/spy and 3 and 4 being 67/33 in favor of a GE!?!? Holy cow..

The fact that my second city grabbed horses AND stone and that it allowed me to build the great wall and the pyramids without doing an oracle slingshot is just ideal for running an EE backed by some representation science.
Also I've been warring alot since I had Catherine as a close neighbour and she rexed like crazy, stealing happy resources close by and putting unwanted cultural pressure on my cities. If I hadn't been able to steal five expensive techs already I would be lost by now, especially since the first grab was construction to allow me to overpower Cathys armies with war elephants.

I only wish I had built more Scotland Yards instead of settling three GSps in the capital..

Well one issue with the Espionage economy seems to be its efficiency, so actually Finacial, etc. shouldn't be needed. It might be better to have a few cities (perhaps a Bureaucratic Capital?) producing the EP commerce wise, and Have the remainder of cities devoted to Hammers. (although given that you want to move up the Democracy direction, going for US Cottage spam might be the best.)

Krikkitone said:

Well one issue with the Espionage economy seems to be its efficiency, so actually Finacial, etc. shouldn't be needed. It might be better to have a few cities (perhaps a Bureaucratic Capital?) producing the EP commerce wise, and Have the remainder of cities devoted to Hammers. (although given that you want to move up the Democracy direction, going for US Cottage spam might be the best.)

Click to expand...

I think in my game an EE would be more effective had I used three of the four gspies for Scotland Yards instead of settling three and only building one SY. Bureaucracy is certainly a boom and I do use it, but I'm devoting two other grassland river cities purely to commerce anyhow and getting a 100% boost from SY is just insane. It's like getting an early Oxford U in both the capital and each of these cities coupled with the fact that early on the AI will not want to devote commerce to espionage at all mostly.
I agree with you that financial lose some of its value for an EE compared with a CE since you can spend more money on gold and still keep up tech parity with your opponents but it's still the strongest trait you can have imo although it would be interesting to try out an EE with some non-financial leaders. I'm thinking Napoleon.. hmm

One question I have is regarding spies. If you place two or more spies in the optimal target city (the one that is cheapest to steal techs from), do you increase the chance of detection? Of course the chance will increase since two spies will be tested for detection probability each turn, but will the fact that the spies are placed in the same location increase the chance even further? Should different targets be chosen for each spy or is it best to always use the most cost effective target?

I'm not sure if there is a check for each spy. What I do is have all my spies (other than the defensive ones) sit just inside my territory, and when I am ready to steal, send them all in at once. After 5 turns of sitting, I steal all the techs I want, and if it will be a while before I steal again, they return to my territory.

With all the EPs generated in an EE, spies don't get caught very often. The chances of a spy being caught depend on total # of EPs generated for the whole game, regardless of who they are put against. So it isn't really much of a factor.

xanadux said:

I'm not sure if there is a check for each spy. What I do is have all my spies (other than the defensive ones) sit just inside my territory, and when I am ready to steal, send them all in at once. After 5 turns of sitting, I steal all the techs I want, and if it will be a while before I steal again, they return to my territory.

With all the EPs generated in an EE, spies don't get caught very often. The chances of a spy being caught depend on total # of EPs generated for the whole game, regardless of who they are put against. So it isn't really much of a factor.

Click to expand...

Right, but do you send the spies to the same city or to different cities? If there's no extra penalty for massing spies in one location once they're going for their missions, it would obv. be best to use the closest/cheapest target for all of them.

Edit; Oh and one other thing, is it cheaper to steal techs that many civs know, similar to the research bonus of well-known techs? Someone really need to study the scripts here..