Sneaksies! An attempt at learning the Espionage Economy

Hail fellow Civfanatics!

I won my very first Civ IV game about three months ago and I have been playing pretty well on Monarch difficulty. I have painted myself into corners and dug myself out of them. I have won Diplomation, Culture, Space and Conquest. I believe I have learnt all I could from Monarch and I wish to move up to Emperor. But before I do, there is one thing I have never managed to do and that's getting a hang of espionage.

I would really love to figure out what to do with my EPs beyond just putting them on the civ that looks like the tech leader for planning my research for trades, build some spies, blow stuff up, steal techs and just be a cheeky little pain in the rear to my neighbours. In short, I would love to learn what's called "Espionage economy" as a final lesson before jumping to Emperor.

To do this, I selected a Pangaea map with Suleiman of the Ottomans as the leader.

My reasons for picking him are, he is Imperialistic and Philosophical. I am theorising Espionage Economy will play out a lot like a Specialist Economy. Having that little extra oomph with Philo is welcome in this situation. The second reason is the Ottomans get, in my opinion at least, the best Musket unit.

Since Espionage Economy should have a synergy with Nationalism Civic, I am hoping to draft a bunch of these guys when cloak and dagger is just not enough to get the job done. Imperialistic will net me a bunch of Great Generals to settle in the Globe Theater drafting city to make my draftees that much better.
Detailed settings:


And the start:

Oof! That start makes me sad. Suggestions and critique welcome. Thank you.

Edit :
A few self-imposed restrictions:
1. No cottages. If cottages are captured, they must be destroyed and the tile can't be worked until they are gone.
2. I must set the research slider to 0% once Code of Laws is available.
3. Representation and scientist specialists are allowed, so is bulbing techs. But at least 10 technologies must be stolen from AIs. (Would have set a higher number, but will have to see how the AI tech pace develops)
4. Steal at least 500 gold from the AIs.
5. Spies must cause city revolts and any war I start must first have spies blowing up the target's strategic resources.

Update: Game abandoned for being uninteresting.

Before you go any further, read this (if you haven't already): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252496 - the #1 key to doing well with espionage is understanding what all the espionage cost multipliers are and how you can manipulate them. OneLeggedRhino posted a couple games here on the S&T subforum recently which relied a fair amount on espionage, and if you haven't read those they might be worth glancing through (he provides a lot of detail and screenshots).

Regarding the start... it'd cost you probably at least 3-4 turns to get to anywhere with better food even if you got lucky. SIP is your only reasonable option here, and it is a plains-hill which is always nice.

I'd be thinking Fishing -> Mining -> BW, worker -> workboat -> warriors, then look towards a settler and a second worker. You've got a handful of 4-yield tiles early but no 5- or 6-yield tiles, so expanding early is going to be important - you can't just rely on your capital for your early production.

coanda said:

Before you go any further, read this (if you haven't already): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252496 - the #1 key to doing well with espionage is understanding what all the espionage cost multipliers are and how you can manipulate them. OneLeggedRhino posted a couple games here on the S&T subforum recently which relied a fair amount on espionage, and if you haven't read those they might be worth glancing through (he provides a lot of detail and screenshots).

Regarding the start... it'd cost you probably at least 3-4 turns to get to anywhere with better food even if you got lucky. SIP is your only reasonable option here, and it is a plains-hill which is always nice.

I'd be thinking Fishing -> Mining -> BW, worker -> workboat -> warriors, then look towards a settler and a second worker. You've got a handful of 4-yield tiles early but no 5- or 6-yield tiles, so expanding early is going to be important - you can't just rely on your capital for your early production.

Click to expand...

I read that article on Espionage and it was Rhino's threads that made me sign up for an account at Civfanatics. So I have some idea of how Espionage works and can be used, theoretically. But I haven't built a single spy in all these months of playing the game and I fear I might be losing out on a whole facet of the gameplay. So I want to practically put the Espionage Economy into action for learning purposes. And I just want to get one game centered on it out of the way before moving up a difficulty, in case it won't work on higher levels.

I played for 32 turns and here's what happened:
I first moved my warrior 1 NE to see if he can reveal anything useful in the fog of war. Turns out the RNG wants to smite me and not only do I not see food, but I see jungle


Since there is no compelling reason to move, I settle the settler where he started and Istanbul is founded.


I started on a worker and opened up the tech tree to figure out what to do next

I could open mining, fishing and Bronze Working. Worker finishes in 12 turns, starts farming the rice on turn fifteen and then starts mining the hills while fishing comes in and I make a work boat. But this means I have to rely on non-irrigated rice and grassland mines to grow the city. That wasn't an appealing course of action.

I decided to switch builds to a settler.

Since Suleiman is imperialistic, the PH tile under the city and working forested Plains hill will get me the settler in 15 turns, three turns after the worker would have been done, but on the same turn he would have started working on the rice. A very risky move, but this is not a great start anyway, might as well get the heck out of Dodge as soon as possible

Not all is lost however and the exploring warrior reveals Stone just outside the cap's BFC. He also finds lots of Jungle, Bananas, Gems, Sugar and Incense, all in easy reach. Then he promptly feeds a panther!


Edirne was settled on turn 17, 1 East of the Stone.

Capital started on Workboat right away after the settler.

After the workboat, it started working the clams and built a worker. I got two more warriors out to grow Edirne to size two and explored a bit. I haven't encountered any other Civs yet. I finished teching Bronze working, revolted to slavery on turn 31, after Istanbul's worker finished. There's Copper 1 SE to the capital. Worker was sent to mine that. Once he is done, he will build a road to the stone to hook up the two cities and quarry that. Masonry being researched.

Edirne grew to size two and started a worker. He will be sent back to improve Istanbul's tiles. I stopped here. The lay of the land:

Haven't met any one else on turn 31 and that's very odd for a Pangaea.

As for plan for the future:
I have stone, so Pyramids are definitely on the cards. I am debating building the Great wall for the Great Spy. But I am not sure about the GW.
I am tempted to pickup sailing and go check out the little islands near the cap. This might actually be a good Pangaea map to build the Great Lighthouse upon. There are at least two islands I can see with food, that will benefit from the GLH. Though, I am not sure if that's a good hammer investment. Istanbul does have hammers to throw at whatever I want as it has lots of hills, enough food to grow into them and should be a mainstay as a production centre throughout the game.
Iron Working could also be a priority, given all the jungle around.

Any advise, comments, critique welcome. Thank you for reading.

Fantastic production capital like that plus nearby stone plus espionage game equals a pretty obvious direction here. GW will be an incredibly easy build, and an early Great Spy (especially with Philosophical Sully) will be useful.

I am leaning towards the GW too. But I usually don't build a lot of wonders and will take Pyramids over GW any day. Is GW worth delaying the Pyramids for, since I haven't encountered anyone yet?

I am certain there are some jerks just waiting in the fog to ruin my day. A 'tremendous' start like this just isn't complete without Ragnar and Shaka around. (Ok, now I am just tempting fate and the RNG! )

I was under the impression that the Great Wall was a centerpiece to the EE. On Emperor, especially with stone, you have time for both wonders. GW can go before henge sometimes, but usually not before T50, sometimes as late as T70. Mids anywhere from T80 to T120. Try to see who is Ind and what resources everyone has (if possible).

If you're interested in espionage economy, you can't miss the deity always war series by snaaty. I think 2 and 3 are the games with the detailed EE discussions so I've linked them, but there are 1st and 4th games too in case you care.

Deity AW 2
Deity AW 3

I think they settled on GW and infiltrating with the first spy, but please don't take my word for it. They're all so much better than me and they have a lot to say about spying, especially for the early game like you're asking about.

OK, I am sold on the Great Wall. The only reason I hesitated was due to not meeting any AIs yet. Didn't want to spawn a Great Spy and not have anyone to infiltrate. But this is Pangaea and I am sure I will find some one to use the spy on.

Thanks for the links JustBen, will check them out.

I have also given this some thought and I want to really force myself to use EE and not start falling back into old ways of teching away and smashing everything with brute force. So I am making a few rules:

1. No cottages. If cottages are captured, they must be destroyed and the tile can't be worked until they are gone.
2. I must set the research slider to 0% once Code of Laws is available.
3. Representation and scientist specialists are allowed, so is bulbing techs. But at least 10 technologies must be stolen from AIs. (Would have set a higher number, but will have to see how the AI tech pace develops)
4. Steal at least 500 gold from the AIs.
5. Spies must cause city revolts and any war I start must first have spies blowing up the target's strategic resources.

That's about it for now. If there's anything else that will make this more focused on EE, please share. Thanks for the help, guys.

I have also given this some thought and I want to really force myself to use EE and not start falling back into old ways of teching away and smashing everything with brute force. So I am making a few rules:
1. No cottages. If cottages are captured, they must be destroyed and the tile can't be worked until they are gone.

Click to expand...

You do realise that once you reduce your science slider to 0% that any cottages you have will not contribute any science at all right? In fact as you will likely be putting the espionage slider up they will generate exactly what you want.

Ghpstage said:

You do realise that once you reduce your science slider to 0% that any cottages you have will not contribute any science at all right? In fact as you will likely be putting the espionage slider up they will generate exactly what you want.

Click to expand...

That's actually an excellent point that hasn't occured to me. I am going to finish the third turnset (where I plan to finish blocking off land) and then figure out if the no-cottage rule needs to stay or go. Thank you for pointing it out

The second turnset:
After the anarchy is over, I build a worker in Istanbul. I don't have the Stone hooked up yet, so I whip the worker to overflow into the Great Wall once the stone's online. On turn 47, I spot Kublai Khan's borders to the North. He is not particularly close.


I then meet this gentleman.

Me and my big mouth, joking about Shaka being on the map.

The largest Civs popup comes out and I am number 4 despite only having two cities.

A bit worryingly, Shaka is only two on the list, although he has been playing his normal REX style and already has three cities.

Great Wall is finished in Istanbul on turn 55.

I set it to work on the Pyramids.

The screen shot didn't come out, but I ran into Frederick around this point and put my EPs on him.


Next was Ramesses who founded Hinduism.


Then this gentleman showed up.

I am not sure how I feel about Mansa being on the map. It will mean the tech pace will be pretty high, but it also means I might not get much return when I try to broker stolen techs. He is also a bit too far for easy spying. Still, EPs switch from Freddy to Mansa.


Kublai researched Writing by turn 69 and wanted to open borders.

Sure, why not?

My own tech path was Iron Working, because I want to settle to the North to block Kublai off from my wing of the Peninsula and that meant busting Jungle, Hunting to hook up the Jumbos for happiness, Animal Husbandry for Pigs for my third city and Pottery for Granaries.

I am pretty sure I messed up my tech path. I should have bee-lined Alphabet for spies instead of chasing after Pottery. I don't regret Iron Working, though, as I need to block off land soon since Kublai Khan settled very close to the planned third city and already stole Pigs thanks to his Creative trait.


That is a shot of the North towards the mainland. This is a shot of the Eastern Peninsula.

Good land where I can easily settle seven good cities. There are also islands that can be settled nearby to the West. The GT draft city dot is just a place holder till I figure out if there's sea food there in the fog.

The mainland's map.

I don't have open borders with anyone except the culture-trolling, pig stealing, writing teching jerkwad, so only know where everyone's borders start. I have lots of room to work with here. But I think me and Kublai aren't going to get along well. (Could you tell? ). I have Iron, Copper and Jumbos and I think a war is in the cards.

My tech situation.


Diplo screen. Mansa being Mansa is already taking heat from Shaka and Kublai.


Speaking of heat, I am really tempted to do this.

I might not as there's no point in starting a war when Kublai has copper and will not agree to peace quickly, but that worker looks so yummy

Demographics.

Shaka's already upto 5 cities. Me and Kublai are dragging our feet with only two.

I think I should now bee-line Alpha and once the Great Spy is spawned, send him to infiltrate either Kublai or Freddy and start causing some trouble. Though, based on what I know of the map, I want to play nice with the nice guys (Freddy, Ramesses and Mansa) while I pick off the useless ones like Shaka and Kublai who tech like snails and aren't of much value for spying upon. I am debating delaying the Pyramids by a few turns by building Granary to ensure that the GE won't interfere with the GSpy. But I am not sure if that's a good move since Ramesses can build wonders like a man possessed. He got the Stonehenge and I am betting he gets the Oracle too.

All suggestions, comments and Critique welcome. Thank you for reading

If you war with Kublai, plan to raze that city; it's blocking your way and it wastes the copper.

City #3 simply will not work unless Beshbalik is razed. I would actually found that city on the bananas; it still grabs the pigs, but it picks up the iron for a powerful production site. Bananas don't become viable food for a good while anyway, so punting it for a 3F capital tile doesn't seem like a bad idea.

I would absolutely plan to war Kublai in this situation, though; espionage game or not, he's in your way, and competing with a Creative civ for land is never fun (particularly not one with an attitude problem like the Khans). Settle on the bananas, get the iron, build/whip swords and axes, and take care of business.

I'd also go Mysticism next; you're getting to the point where border pops are necessary for viable cities.

I am not sure settling city # 3 on the Banana tile is a good idea. As you rightly said, it needs Beshbalik out of the way. I intend to switch to full war mode once the Rice city is settled and Pyramids are online. Beshbalik is going to be razed and I will settle a new city which can work the pigs and Copper. If I settle city 3 on bananas, it will be left without a five food tile. If I don't manage to dislodge Khan, then I am guessing a city that can't work its best tile to the max effect till Calendar is the least of my worries and this could be a very short game. Although, now that I look at it, 1 S of the original dot is not a bad site.

As for Mysticism. I want spies next as GS is about to spawn in 9 turns. I want revolts in Khan's cities for the war, so Writing -> Alpha is higher on my list right now.

Apologies for double-posting. But the Oz-man's comments about city position got me thinking and I went back to the drawing board to figure out if I can get a better city from the third settler.

I re-arranged my planned dot-map:


I moved three 1 East of the Bananas onto the riverside grassland hill. This lets me keep Bananas in the first ring and picks up iron immediately, too. (Thanks Oz-man for pointing out I needed border-pops to acquire it, that got me thinking )

That city, combined with the new location of 4, which is moved one South, off the coast, but with Rice still in the first ring, should block Kublai's advance towards my Peninsula and give him a natural settling flow towards Horses and mainland.

The plan now is to settle my land peacefully, since the window for rushing Kublai seems to have closed and play for the long haul.

I also found a nice article on Espionage Economy that is concise and discusses things in an easy to understand manner. (I sorta zoned out on the Spy mission costs article, as it was code I couldn't figure out. ) This article may be a bit outdated, thanks to 3.19 patch, but it has the basics down and I would recommend reading it for anyone interested in EE.

That's quite a bit better if you're set on avoiding Mysticism (it wastes the green hill, but it's still a pretty nice production site). I still think you ought to rush Kublai (the danger isn't so much that he fills your peninsula as it is that he expands outward into the continent and becomes a pain that way), but 4 will block him just fine.

Worth noting: he hasn't built a road from Karakorum to the second city yet, so he might not be able to build axes in his capital/best production city.

There were unforeseen consequences. (What do you mean I am out-teching you, you don't even have Math before me? )

So, I am going to re-start at the second turnset's end check point and tweak a rule. I now have to turn off research as soon as I have Alphabet, instead of at Code of Laws. I am not allowed to build research and I may even ban Representation if AIs continue to all replicate Polytheism. (Because you are going to get to ToA and Parthenon before Shaka blows you up, or Ramesses builds it, right, Frederick and Kublai? )

doesn't make any sense to try to learn EE on Monarch...you're forcing yourself into unfavorable situation.

I wouldn't think about EE under Immortal...

EE has very few specific cases where it can come handy and I am 100% sure it won't come on Monarch unless you screw yourself delibirately.

vranasm said:

EE has very few specific cases where it can come handy

Click to expand...

Like no tech trading.

vranasm said:

doesn't make any sense to try to learn EE on Monarch...you're forcing yourself into unfavorable situation.

I wouldn't think about EE under Immortal...

EE has very few specific cases where it can come handy and I am 100% sure it won't come on Monarch unless you screw yourself delibirately.

Click to expand...

I have to admit you are correct. I played a few more turns, and it's not really been fun or educational. (Which is a shame, as the map is really amazing). I feel that I am merely gimping myself.

Is it better if I just abandoned this game and started up an Immortal game? I only played two Immortal games seriously, but didn't get too far in them as I wanted to try them out after I learnt the difficulty setting. (Remember these, Vranasm? ) I am willing to attempt the jump to Immortal straight from Monarch, even if I get my butt kicked, I desperately want to learn EE. (I am stubborn that way ). Thoughts?

If you're used to playing at Monarch, I wouldn't jump right into Immortal with the first EE game you play; Emperor will probably work for you. The real key is that you need to play on a difficulty where the AIs are teching as fast as or faster than you can by yourself.

I decided to continue with research off at Alpha to see if this game is salvageable.

I settled Ankara on the discussed spot on turn 72.


On turn 74 I meet the last AI, Charlemagne and discover that Kublai is boxed in between me and Charlie.


Pyramids are completed on turn 77. I immediately swtich to Representation.

I don't have any specialists yet, but the extra happiness is welcome.

On turn 79, I receive my first Great Spy. This is where I made my first rookie mistake with EE. I don't have Alphabet and thus, no info on the tech picture at large. The first GSpy is excellent for infiltration purposes, providing 3000 Espionage points against the target. Since I had no clue who had techs I wanted, I decided to just settle the GSpy in the cap, to stack with Palace's EPs and to provide beakers via Representation Civic.


Bursa was settled on turn 85, completely blocking off Kublai from my Peninsula
.

Alphabet was finally teched on turn 95, research was turned off and all commerce was directed towards Espionage. Istanbul started on a much needed and very late spy. I traded Alphabet around for the only techs I could get and to cause some mischief.


I spread my 34 EPs around, with the focus placed on Frederick.

This was rookie mistake number two. When running an EE, it is far better to just focus on one AI, this way, EPs accumulate much faster, allowing for faster stealing of techs and sooner catch-up to parity.

The good news though, is that I at least picked the right target for spying as Freddy was No.2 most advanced Civ.


On turn 104, I got another Great Spy. I settled this one too.

This is rookie mistake number three. I looked at the tech trade screen and thought that it's a waste of a GSpy to infiltrate Freddy. (He had jack, crap and garbage to steal. I could have easily traded Alpha around to get that) But infiltrating him was still the better move as it would have given me a bank of 3000 EPs that I can use as Freddy accumulates techs.

Buddhism spread to me and I converted immediately. Both warmongers on the map were Buddhist and it's the largest bloc.

Turn 112, my first ever tech steal!!

I get Mathematics off Freddy for 251 EPs. I think I saved some 150 beakers on this tech. But I am just glad I finally built and used a spy, regardless.

But not all was well and Kublai took a barb city that I was sending Swords to raze. It blocked a better city spot that could work the double Gems. Needless to say, I declared immediately, razed the city, killed his stragglers and took peace on turn 116.


Meanwhile, Shaka was boxed in on the other end of the continent by Ramesses. Shaka objected to this, using the only language Shaka knows.


I got a Great Scientist on turn 122, I built an academy in Edirne as this will be my GP farm where I run scientists.


The next few turns were uneventful as I settled the rest of my Peninsula and started colonising the islands. My economy was shot to bits as I didn't have Currency or CoL. (I never turned the research back on after Alpha). But I survived by carefully ensuring City governor wasn't running artists and working commerce tiles.

On turn 140, winning the Music race finally convinced me to quit the game. (At least not bore the good people of Civfanatics by posting about it).

I was behind in tech at this point, true. My economy was shot, also true. But I was still out-teching the AIs!

This is the tech screen.

It takes me five turns to research Calendar and six to research Currency, respectively. If I put one turn into Calendar, Charlie will give me a great trade for Aesthetics. If I research Currency for a few turns, I can steal it off Freddy for a very favourable Beaker : EP cost.

Demographics:


I admit that I have pyramids and am running Representation, but I simply faffed about for several turns here and the AI still can't pull away on Monarch. I will now only continue to keep picking up momentum as more economic techs become available. Had I been playing this game normally, I would have been in a dominant position by this point, having Elepulted Kublai. I was merely gimping myself and playing poorly, and that doesn't really teach me much. (I did learn something, the three rookie mistakes will help me not repeat them next time I try EE).

I am merely pulling teeth to give the AI a chance here and that's neither fun to play through, nor worth wasting the time of what few audience I may have attracted. As a result, I am shutting this game down.

Overall, I like EE. It does save beakers and is a powerful economy in itself. Had I teched Currency and CoL first, I could have simply shut research off and ran amok here. But for a normal Monarch game, EE has a very limited value. If teching CoL and Currency anyway, might as well just keep teching and keep the ball rolling. Only situation I can think of that EE shines in on Monarch is if stuck in semi-isolation with an AI that thinks all its techs are monoploy. I am now curious to see how Oz-man's Great People Series handles GSpies

Thank you for reading