Poor espionage point accumulation.

[shulec]

Emperor/Immortal level.

When I play games where I wonder rush Stonehenge, the Great Wall, and Pyramids (and Oracle on a good day!), I usually pop a great spy early on and settle him. This yields invaluable passive espionage revealing AI research and power (I use espionage for this and then one or two city revolts when attacking).

If I rex or rush, then I don't build the wonders ... then I don't get the GW, and no Great Spy ... and no espionage points. Courthouses are always a priority as is CoL/Confuciousim, but I find I can't spare more then 10%-20% of my slider to espionage points. End result, poor espionage.

Can anyone give me tips to boost my espionage points.

p.s. I am getting much better on building workers (a previous weakness) and trying to quickly grow my cities, but this still does not seem to help.

[Matthew5117]

Well, by poor espionage, what do you mean?

If you mean only a few EPs on all the leaders? Maybe in the range of 3-8? Well that's very typical pre-certain techs that allow EPs (like Democracy and Communism).

However, if you really want to dedicate yourself to the espionage aspects of the game, people build the GW and that's it. Also, they typically have the Philosophical trait to speed up those GSs.

Other tips include having a bigger empire so that you can build more courthouses and ultimately more EPs.

[Sisiutil]

In games where I don't build the GW I generally don't worry about E-points until much later in the game. I make do without them, frankly. I need that transmuted commerce for research, gold, and sometimes happiness through culture to battle war weariness.

Another option--which I've never done with any degree of great success, but some people swear by it--is to focus all your EP on one civilization and focus your espionage efforts against them.

[Roland Johansen]

You could also go for a full espionage economy: once you can use the espionage slider and can build spies, you start investing all of you commerce into espionage points and use those to steal technologies. You of course need to focus these espionage points on one opponent that has interesting technologies and is not too far away (as distance is a cost modifier and it takes a while for your spies to walk over there).

The advantage of this method is that in most circumstances there will be a few nearby opponents from whom you can steal technologies for a lower cost than self-researching them. You do absolutely require the spy to stay for 5 turns in a city to get the -50% cost modifier on the mission. There are also certain religion bonuses on espionage cost that can significantly reduce the cost of these missions.

One of the most influential modifiers of espionage cost is based on the total amount of espionage points generated by a civilisation during the whole game (independent on whether these espionage points were used or not). This means that if you base your economy on generating espionage points and investing them to steal technologies, then you will generate far more espionage points during a game than your opponents and all missions, also the passive ones will require far less espionage points.

So the advantages of espionage based research include: lower cost of technologies, bonus on all other espionage efforts.

The disadvantages include: negative diplomacy modifiers with opponents who discover your espionage attempts and you can not get ahead in the technology race by stealing technologies. In the best case, you have the best technologies from everyone else.

The espionage based economy is not that useful when you're playing at a level that is not challenging you and where you usually get far ahead in the technology race compared to your opponents.

Post 1, 21, 29 and 33 of the thread Spy detection contain a lot of information about the various modifiers affecting the success and cost of espionage. The posts contain some lengthy formulas so in some posts of that thread, I tried to explain the formulas in words but they're not my formulas. Bhruic and Krikkitone looked them up in the code of the game.

[madscientist]

There are two ways to use espionage, equally divided eps to see power rating/research or focus it against only 1 leader and steal techs or use them for battle.

I rarely use the espionage slider but when I do it's usually full blast and post alphabet. 10-20% espionage get's poor return. It's best to either fully steal everything or research all normally.

[Roland Johansen]

Originally Posted by madscientist

I rarely use the espionage slider but when I do it's usually full blast and post alphabet. 10-20% espionage get's poor return. It's best to either fully steal everything or research all normally.

I agree. You can focus on either espionage point multipliers or research multipliers in your cities.