AG's Espionage Rework Draft

[amateurgamer88]

Hi everyone! This is amateurgamer! This post will be a detailed draft on a espionage rework to be proposed in the next Congress. The goal is to lay out the details of what the rework will look like with some numbers picked as a starting point. The draft is broken into multiple sections that will be easier to digest. The draft will be worked on periodically and refined until the next Congress where sections of it will be their own proposal.

Please note that this is an attempt to steer Espionage in a certain direction. The numbers will need to be adjusted based on player feedback. In addition, the post encourages discussions so some ideas may be changed and/or refined. Feedback and suggestions are welcomed. For those who prefer discussions on Discord, there will also be a thread there to discuss this topic.

The draft is broken into the following sections:
1. Espionage Variables
2. Spy Travel
3. Spy Mission Type and Selection.
4. Siphon Mission Change.
5. Spy Mission Duration.
6. Counterspy Mechanics.
7. Espionage buildings (like Constabulary) and Espionage Policies/Tenets (like Double Agents)
8. Spy Experience.
9. Number of Spies
10. Diplomats

1. Espionage Variables:

Spoiler :

The goal of this section is to define two variables used for espionage and the proposal changes.

Security Level:

Spoiler Current Mechanics :

The Security Level is a value between 5 and 50 (shown as a star rating) that changes during the game. Each city is initialized at level 50 when the first spy is recruited. Each turn, city security is modified based on the Spy Resistance, which in turn is based on city population, trade routes and other factors. Spy Resistance is shown as a percentage value, and it modifies City Security each turn by (Spy Resistance value)/20. So, if the shown value is -20%, City Security will decrease by 1 each turn.

After each completed foreign Spy Mission, City Security is reset to the maximum value of 50.

Spoiler Proposal Mechanics :

The Security Level is a value between 5 and 50 (shown as a star rating) that changes during the game.

The Security Level in a City is determined by:

• Base: 5
• Capital: +15
• Constabulary and Police Stations: +5 each
• NIA: +10
• Bletchley Park: +10 in all Cities
• Completion of a foreign Spy Mission: +5 for 15 turns (can stack)

Instead of starting from 50 and decreasing, Security Level will start at a lower value and is increased by various factors including completion of foreign Spy missions. The more spies operating in the City, the more likely the City Security will stay at 50 resulting in consistently shorter durations for all missions.

Spy Resistance:

Spoiler Current Values :

• -10% per trade route going to or coming from the city
• -2% per population
• a negative value for city unhappiness which is calculated as (City Population - Local Happiness) / (City Population) (*)
• +50% if a counterspy is present in the city
• +50% for Constabularies, Police Stations and Military Bases, +15% from NIA
• +10% for each Public Works
• +34% for the "Empiricism" Policy (Rationalism Branch)

Spy Resistance sign will be changed so positive is bad while negative is good.

Spoiler Proposal Values :

• +5% per trade route going to or coming from the city
• +1% per population
• Unaffected by city unhappiness
• -25% if a counterspy is present in the city
• -10% for Constabularies and Police Stations. -25% from NIA
• Unaffected by Public Works
• -30% for the "Empiricism" Policy (Rationalism Branch)

-% reduced for Trade Routes and Population due to how unfair they were for tall Capitals where spies are concentrated.
Unhappiness no longer a factor due to its opaqueness and how swingy it can be.
Counterspy will remain one of the strongest defenses against foreign spies.
Constabularies and Police Stations, while offering modest gains, won't completely win the defensive battle by themselves.
NIA is a good addition for the capital where more enemy spies are expected.
Public Works are there for happiness. Let's keep it that way without it influencing other things.

2. Spy Travel:

Spoiler :

To get to any City on the map, it takes the Spy 1 turn regardless where the City is at. Deployment between foreign Cities also takes 1 turn. Upon arrival at a City, the mission selection screen shows up. The player can pick a mission or choose to redeploy the Spy.

Following capture, a Spy is unavailable for 5 turns before it can be redeployed again.

3. Spy Mission Type and Selection:

Spoiler :

The proposed espionage system in foreign Cities will work similarly to espionage system in City-States. There will be two aspects to it: a passive bonus for stationing a Spy in a foreign City and risky missions that act like the current Coup.

Regarding missions, they will no longer "steal" yields from the targeted City due the difficulty to balance these. Yields will be produced and the amount will be shown on the UI.

Mission	Type	Base Capture Chance	Base Duration	Description
Surveillance	Passive	N/A	1	Any foreign city. Mission will keep looping while the spy is stationed in the City. While stationed, the spy will yield 1/3/5% (for Rank 1/2/3 Spies) of the City's Science before modifiers. In addition, the spy's owner will learn what the City is producing.
Reduce Gold	Active	15%	15	Any foreign city. Reduces the City's Gold by 5% for 15 turns (can stack up to 25%). (See Active Mission Change for more details)
Reduce GPP	Active	15%	15	Any foreign city. Reduces the City's GPP by 5% for 15 turns (can stack up to 25%). (See Active Mission Change for more details)
Reduce Culture	Active	15%	15	Any foreign city. Reduces the City's Culture by 5% for 15 turns (can stack up to 25%). (See Active Mission Change for more details)
Reduce Science	Active	15%	15	Any foreign city. Reduces the City's Science by 5% for 15 turns (can stack up to 25%). (See Active Mission Change for more details)
Reduce Tourism	Active	15%	20	Foreign Capital Only. Applies a -20% modifier to the Capital Owner's Tourism for 20 turns. Mission unavailable once the modifier is above -100%.
Reduce Delegate	Active	15%	20	Foreign Capital Only. Reduces the Capital Owner's number of delegates by 1 for 20 turns. Mission unavailable once the Capital Owner loses 5 delegates.

Surveillance is a Passive mission where a spy stationed in foreign Cities will provide yields. The yield isn't stolen from the targeted City and the amount is dependent on the yields of the City. Therefore, it's never a bad idea to station a Spy in a foreign Capital.

Active missions are selected through the UI. All options are available until the max stack is achieved. When the option is selected, the game does a roll on the capture chance. The capture chance has a base chance shown in the table above and is further modified by things like spy ranking, buildings and policies. If captured, the spy is no longer available to the spy owner and the spy owner cannot send a spy to the targeted City for 5 turns.

4. Active Mission Change:

Spoiler :

Siphon Missions will be removed under this proposal. Instead, all missions except for Surveillance will become Active Missions. These require the spy owner to make the call on what mission to perform and when to perform it. The Base Capture Chance has the modifiers below and the final number will be shown to the player on the UI.

The capture chance are modified as follows:

Modifier Type	Capture Chance Modifier	Notes
No Defensive Spy	-200%	Capture chance always capped at 0%.
Rank 1 Defensive Spy	+5%
Rank 2 Defensive Spy	+10%
Rank 3 Defensive Spy	+20%
Rank 1 Offensive Spy	-5%
Rank 2 Offensive Spy	-10%
Rank 3 Offensive Spy	-20%
Espionage Buildings	+%	See Espionage Buildings for more information
Policies/Tenets	+/- %	See Espionage Policies/Tenets for more information
Security Level	+1% for every 2 Security Level
Presence	-2% per turn (stacks up to -20%)	Stack resets after performing an Active Mission or moving to a different city

5. Spy Mission Duration:

Spoiler :

The following proposal has been passed:

-The base duration, once modified by game speed, will be the Standard duration.
-Mission duration can be shortened by Spy Power. Spy Power is affected by the rank of the spy and UA. Rank 1 gives nothing. Rank 2 gives -10% of the Standard duration while Rank 3 gives -25% of the Standard duration. England gets an additional -10% of the Standard duration.
-Buildings increase the Standard duration for Foreign Spies.
-Policies and Tenets can increase/decrease the Standard duration for Foreign/Friendly Spies.
-Duration is capped at +/-33% of the Standard duration.

The new proposal will see the adjustment of the durations of Active Missions that scales with the gamespeed. The base durations are shown in 3. The duration can still be modified by Spy Resistance and Policies/Tenets. The duration are shown along with Capture Chance beside each mission giving the player the idea of the risk and rewards of the missions.

Spy Resistance is a %. Positive % increases the duration while negative % decreases the duration.

The % change is limited to +/- 50%. A mission with base duration of 20 turns can vary between 10 turns and 30 turns depending on the modifiers.

6. Counterspy Mechanics:

Spoiler :

The following proposal has been passed:

-When a counterspy kills an enemy spy, the mission does not come into effect (no gold/tourism/tech is stolen etc.)
-To make up for this, kill chance is slightly decreased with an additional modifier: -10% kill chance for every level the attacking spy is above the first level (the level of the attacking spy is currently not considered in the kill chance calculation)
-The level restrictions for counterspy missions are removed, giving more options to use also low-level spies defensively

Four Counterspy Missions:
1. +50% chance to Identify and/or Kill foreign Spies.
2. +10% chance to Identify and/or Kill foreign Spies. City Ranged Attacks are 50% stronger while Spy is active in this City.
3. +25% chance to Identify and/or Kill foreign Spies. +2 Happiness and -25% Unhappiness from Needs in the City.
4. +15% chance to Identify and/or Kill foreign Spies. Merchants, Engineers, Scientists, Artists, Writers, and Musicians all produce +1 of their basic Yield

The new proposal states the following:

• Spies can no longer be killed. Instead, they are captured if there is a counterspy in the City. If there isn't a counterspy in the City, then Release Spy occurs.
• Once you capture a Spy, you get options to pick from. More options are unlocked behind buildings and Policies. (More details below)
• The four counterspy missions above will be removed. Instead, they will be replaced by the missions below.

Mission Type	Prerequisite	Description
Release Spy	None	Captured spy returns to owner after 5 turns and can be redeployed afterwards.
Imprison Spy	None	Captured spy is unavailable to the owner for [5 * X] Turns where X is the Spy Rank of captured Spy and there's a diplomatic malus with the spy owner
Release Spy after Ransom Paid	Constabulary in City	City owner gains GPT for 10 turns. GPT is { [1 Gold per Turn, scaling with Era] * X } where X is the Spy Rank of captured Spy)
Release Spy after Intel Gathered	Police Station in City	City owner gains [50 * X] Science where X is the Spy Rank of captured Spy.)
Make Spy into a Double Agent	Double Agent Tenet	Gain 1 Science per turn in all Cities for [2 * X] turns where X is the Spy Rank of captured Spy. {Science can stack})
Make effective propaganda with Spy	Police State Tenet	+10% CS to all military Units for [5 * X] turns where X is the Spy Rank of captured Spy. {can stack})

Spoiler Spy Retirement :

Spies will go into Retirement as a way to "reset" their level.

Once a spy hits level 3, then it will have a Retirement counter of 5. Once the spy has been captured 5 times, then the spy will be forced to retire and a level 1 spy will be the replacement.

7. Espionage Buildings and Policies/Tenets:

Spoiler :

Constabulary:
+5 Security Level

Police Station:
+5 Security Level

National Intelligence Agency:
+10 Security Level

Bletchley Park:
+10 Security Level in all Cities

Foreign Service:
-15% Capture Chance for friendly Spies.
Friendly Active Mission durations extended by 25%

Shadow Networks:
-15% Capture Chance for friendly Spies.
+15% Capture Chance for foreign Spies.

Empiricism:
+30% Spy Resistance
+15% Capture Chance for foreign Spies.

Covert Action:
-15% Capture Chance for friendly Spies.
Friendly Active Mission durations extended by 25%

Double Agents:
+15% Capture Chance for foreign Spies.
Foreign Active Mission durations reduced by 25%

Police State:
+30% Capture Chance for foreign Spies.

8. Spy Experience:

Spoiler :

There are three settings for Spies: Owned Cities, Foreign Major Civilization Cities and City-State Cities.

Setting	Gain XP from and amount	No XP from
Owned Cities	Capturing Foreign Spies (Gain [30 * Y] XP where Y is the rank of capture Spy)	Stationing the Spy.
Foreign Civilization Cities	Successful Active Mission (Gain [20 * {4 - Y}] XP where Y is the rank of the friendly Spy.	Surveillance Mission.
City-State Cities	Rigging an election (Gain 10 XP) Successful Coup (Gain 20 XP)	Stationing the Spy.

9. Number of Spies:

Spoiler :

Unchanged from the current state. More playtesting will be needed to determine if changes are needed.

10. Diplomats:

Spoiler :

In addition to what is already available, Diplomats will also have agendas and the player gets to pick which agenda to go for once the diplomat arrives in the City. Agendas can be changed once every 10 turns (scaling with gamespeed). These agendas are the same for all civilizations (though maybe UA can unlock new ones).

For bonuses and maluses that can stack, they will start decaying after 20 turns.

Agenda	Bonuses	Notes
Improve Relations	10% of the average Culture between the two civilizations added to both civilization's Culture per turn +10 Opinion per turn (up to +200)
Share Intelligence	25% of the average Science between the two civilizations added to both civilization's Science per turn +10 Opinion per turn (up to +200)
Spread Disinformation	Increases the Empire Needs Modifier by 2.5% in all Cities of the Capital Owner (up to 50%) -10 Opinion per turn (up to -200)
Trade Deals	Increases yields from Trade Routes between the two civilizations by 25%. +10 Opinion per turn (up to +200)
Acquire Military Secrets	All newly built Friendly Units gain +2 XP (up to 40 XP) -10 Opinion per turn (up to -200)

To be continued...

 

[usadefcon1]

The counterspy mechanics sound really interesting. Especially the Double Agent part!

 

[usadefcon1]

Kill Spy should still be available, but behind a prerequisite just like the other higher level mechanics.

Perhaps with the completion of Authority.

 

[alchx]

Make effective propaganda with Spy
will be a very strong choice if stacked with various captured spies. There will be a stable combat bonus in the late game.

Perhaps it's better to only give the CS bonus against the spy's owning civ? It will turn out very logical. Caught a spy, got a combat bonus, and declared war on the owner state. We will not declare war on our friends, we will simply express our disapproval. And against enemies it will be very good.

 

[Zaazuk]

Perhaps it would be worth creating a separate topic. However, I will ask here. Why is everyone only talking about Spies so much? Why doesn't anyone want to create an interesting Diplomat system?

For example, it would be possible to strengthen various existing agreements (treaties on science, borders, etc.) for your state if your diplomat is in the capital of the state with which you sign an agreement.

It would be possible to come up with new agreements available to Diplomats: cultural agreements, production agreements, tourist agreements, agricultural agreements and some other interesting (mainly Peaceful) missions.

 

[axatin]

Before tweaking the numbers and going into too much details, I think it would be good to have a more general discussion about how we envision espionage to be (and yes, I admit that I also didn't start that discussion when I made my espionage proposals last congress).

Some general questions to discuss:
- Should spies be able to perform missions that directly harm enemy players (like "steal gold from treasury") or should their missions be used only to compensate an advantage an enemy player has (like "copy a GW" or "steal a tech")?
- How strong should a spy be in general? How many spies should we have in the game?

I personally like the missions to harm enemies, but I've seen people saying they prefer the old, passive, espionage system. Balancing is harder if the missions actually harm enemies, because we need to prevent that one player it hit by too many spies.

We need to agree on a general level of spy strength, or we will keep tweaking numbers and missions without knowing where to go. I would say, the current strength of spies in city-states (rigging/couping) is fine and that should be the reference for balancing the other missions (including diplomat missions). Currently, siphon missions are often too weak, stealing a technology is too strong. The number of spies should be increased to 2 per era if playing with 8 players + 16 city-states, as spies are weaker than in BNW and there exist more missions to choose from. (The scaling of spy numbers depending on the number of players/city-states in the game is not well balanced currently, that's yet another issue that needs to be addressed).

 

[der_weihnachtsmann]

Let's say we have a City with Security Level of 40 and Spy Resistance of 5. Then, the base Progress will be 8 and the spy will be captured after [(100 - 8) - 5] = 19 turns.

Its divided by 5 no?

 

[der_weihnachtsmann]

-Duration is capped at +/-33% of the Standard duration.

I think the top cap should be higher than 33 %, as you get a lot more from shorter mission durations than you lose by longer durations.

Also the yields from the capture missions are obviously too low (except from proganda).

And security level has no impact in the capture formula, maybe 1/2 would be more appropriate. And where is even the formula for that, i thought the idea of the proposal was to not have that?

And how about just making multiple siphon missions in one city scale multiplicatively rather than additively?

 

[amateurgamer88]

Kill Spy should still be available, but behind a prerequisite just like the other higher level mechanics.

Perhaps with the completion of Authority.

This is definitely a topic up for discussion. How much chance do we want in the game?

I think it does involve how we should define espionage which is part of the reason for this post. We have time to discuss the nuances and the purpose of espionage. If it's integral, then chance may feel terrible. If it's just a small mini-game that has some impact, a bit of chance is probably fine. We have some chance in combat in terms of damage variation. There are enough battles for that to even out. Will there be enough missions for kill chance to even out or will a few bad rolls be too punishing?

Make effective propaganda with Spy
will be a very strong choice if stacked with various captured spies. There will be a stable combat bonus in the late game.

Perhaps it's better to only give the CS bonus against the spy's owning civ? It will turn out very logical. Caught a spy, got a combat bonus, and declared war on the owner state. We will not declare war on our friends, we will simply express our disapproval. And against enemies it will be very good.

There are two things to consider with this.

First, how much is too much bonus? With all the promotions and such, what would be a good value? We definitely need more data to determine this.

Secondly, I'm not sure about how the game computes these things. Is it too much for the game to keep track who you have a bonus against? Maybe it's just easier to tweak the numbers?

Perhaps it would be worth creating a separate topic. However, I will ask here. Why is everyone only talking about Spies so much? Why doesn't anyone want to create an interesting Diplomat system?

For example, it would be possible to strengthen various existing agreements (treaties on science, borders, etc.) for your state if your diplomat is in the capital of the state with which you sign an agreement.

It would be possible to come up with new agreements available to Diplomats: cultural agreements, production agreements, tourist agreements, agricultural agreements and some other interesting (mainly Peaceful) missions.

This will be a separate topic. I will leave my thought briefly on this below.

Diplomats system is, as you mentioned, peaceful approach to the game. There are a few issues for late game regarding peaceful approach.

1. If you are the leader, then it's more likely you'll be hated due to you being closest to winning the game. This will severely limit your options assuming you have any friends you can have agreements with.
2. If you are not the leader and wish to catch up, then it's, in my opinion, better to hurt them while strengthening you to close the gap. While it is nice to grow stronger through peaceful means, VP/Civ 5/4X are games based on momentum and, if you cannot stop the leader's momentum, you will struggle to catch up, let alone overtake them.

Another question about Diplomats is how this can be implemented without overlapping with the WC in-game? The Tourist Agreement you speak of seems similar to Passport System. How do you make the two different without stepping on each other's toes? Does the WC not serve as a peaceful means to aiding you in certain ways? Then, there's also the entire diplomacy system we already have. Is it insufficient? Another post would be justified if people think work still needs to be done there.

I personally see the spy system unique enough in itself and is one of the last things needing to be improved in VP.

I think the top cap should be higher than 33 %, as you get a lot more from shorter mission durations than you lose by longer durations.

Also the yields from the capture missions are obviously too low (except from proganda).

And security level has no impact in the capture formula, maybe 1/2 would be more appropriate. And where is even the formula for that, i thought the idea of the proposal was to not have that?

And how about just making multiple siphon missions in one city scale multiplicatively rather than additively?

Regarding the upper cap, I would like to see data since that's implemented following the latest proposal. We can probably better gauge what to set that once we get player feedback.

I think it's too early to decide on whether the yields are too low. We simply don't have data to back that up right now. There are also matters to consider. How many spies will be captured in a game? How many yields will those spies get assuming that most of them won't get full amount due to capture compared to counterspies? I want counterspy to give benefits but I don't want the benefits to be enough to help propel a leader to victory even faster. Generally, the leader civs will have the most spies sent against them and, if they benefit so much they snowball out of control, I think it's a bad design at that point.

I'm not sure I understand the third point. Security level affects the base amount of the Progress so, the higher it is, the faster Progress bar can reach 100%. As for the formula, this is taken from Axatin's post:

My goal for the proposal was to simplify matters. Security Level wasn't used for the actual duration calculation. It's mainly used to determine capture chance.

I've made siphon missions this way because I'm not sure how everything is computed. I want to simplify everything because, if we have lots of spies in multiple Cities, I don't want the late game to slow down because too much computation is needed to keep track and apply the necessary values.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Before tweaking the numbers and going into too much details, I think it would be good to have a more general discussion about how we envision espionage to be (and yes, I admit that I also didn't start that discussion when I made my espionage proposals last congress).

Some general questions to discuss:
- Should spies be able to perform missions that directly harm enemy players (like "steal gold from treasury") or should their missions be used only to compensate an advantage an enemy player has (like "copy a GW" or "steal a tech")?
- How strong should a spy be in general? How many spies should we have in the game?

I personally like the missions to harm enemies, but I've seen people saying they prefer the old, passive, espionage system. Balancing is harder if the missions actually harm enemies, because we need to prevent that one player it hit by too many spies.

We need to agree on a general level of spy strength, or we will keep tweaking numbers and missions without knowing where to go. I would say, the current strength of spies in city-states (rigging/couping) is fine and that should be the reference for balancing the other missions (including diplomat missions). Currently, siphon missions are often too weak, stealing a technology is too strong. The number of spies should be increased to 2 per era if playing with 8 players + 16 city-states, as spies are weaker than in BNW and there exist more missions to choose from. (The scaling of spy numbers depending on the number of players/city-states in the game is not well balanced currently, that's yet another issue that needs to be addressed).

I agree with the first point. That's why I made the post this early so we can have a proper discussion. I also want to steer the direction because I see that as more important than tweaking the numbers. The details are there because we still need to see how the pieces come together.

- Should spies be able to perform missions that directly harm enemy players (like "steal gold from treasury") or should their missions be used only to compensate an advantage an enemy player has (like "copy a GW" or "steal a tech")?

I'm leaning towards harming because, to overtake the leading civ, you have to close the gap which is done most effectively if they are slightly weakened and you are slightly strengthened. The leader is there because that civ happened to get momentum going a lot sooner. It's no uncommon that, to beat the leader, war is needed to harm them to the point where they are no longer the leader. Spies can be a non-war method of achieving that but will require a strong spy network that needs time to close the gap. Compensating doesn't slow down the momentum of the leader. Compensate may not even help anyone from closing the gap before the leader wins.

- How strong should a spy be in general? How many spies should we have in the game?

Before we think about the number of spies, we should first discuss where the spies should be located. Should they be in all foreign capitals, both friendly or hostile? Do we want them better distributed which makes wider civs a better target? How many of them should be assigned to city-states (I disagree that city-state (rig/coup) is fine. It's high reward with hardly any risks. I think we do need to visit those as a whole and that can still be the reference we use for balancing everything.)?

As for how strong, we have to figure out when espionage should have a noticeable impact. As soon as they're unlocked? Late game when the race to win is on? Somewhere in between? Depending on those answers, we may see scaling of certain missions or buffing of certain buildings/policies/tenets.

 

[der_weihnachtsmann]

Regarding the upper cap, I would like to see data since that's implemented following the latest proposal. We can probably better gauge what to set that once we get player feedback.

I meant from a logical perspective.
Example: During 60 turns and with a Base mission duration of 15 turns:
You get 4 missions without any changes,
6 Missions on lowest cap,
and 3 missions with highest cap.
The change in turns from normal to lowest cap is twice as high as from normal to highest cap.
In general i think its better to release the proposal with realistic numbers instead of having to wait 4 months until the next version and then adjusting. The most glaring example for me is the double agent option. In industrial era with 10 cities when you capture a level 3 spy you get 90 science total.

I'm not sure I understand the third point. Security level affects the base amount of the Progress so, the higher it is, the faster Progress bar can reach 100%. As for the formula, this is taken from Axatin's post:
My goal for the proposal was to simplify matters. Security Level wasn't used for the actual duration calculation. It's mainly used to determine capture chance.

Lets say we use the example you had, but with maximum security level 50. With 5 spy resistance you shave of 2 turns, decreasing with increased spy resistance. If you increase spy resistance by 1 to get 6 and have 0 security level, you would shave of more turns (3). So the only reason security level exists is to shave of a maximum of 2 turns to capture a spy which is less than a change of 1 to spy resistance.

 

[Stalker0]

Checking, in your proposal are you removing the other missions not listed?

Honestly the pillage tile mission should be removed. It’s too easy to fix (often just 3 turns in the late game, or even 2 with progress), that is never worth 15-20 turns of spy time. And being random, sometimes you’ll hit times the enemy might not even be using.

If you really want something with a sting, do like: “-1 to all strategic resources for X turns”. That is much more likely to have an impact and can be timed with war for a more tactical option.


The problem with the siphon pool is there is no way to check “spy popularity” when I choose a city. I have no way to know how many spies are there, or how many will join after I start the mission. That means siphon yields are just completely up in the air…which destroys the utility.

The real problem with siphon missions is that they are yield stealers, and so require careful balancing. A better mechanical solution is to make them yield generators for the stealer, with no loss to the defender. Then it’s fine if multiple people steal and the like. People seem to balk at that because it’s “not realistic”, but frankly it’s far from the least realistic thing in the game and it immediately solves a lot of problems.

 

[amateurgamer88]

I meant from a logical perspective.
Example: During 60 turns and with a Base mission duration of 15 turns:
You get 4 missions without any changes,
6 Missions on lowest cap,
and 3 missions with highest cap.
The change in turns from normal to lowest cap is twice as high as from normal to highest cap.
In general i think its better to release the proposal with realistic numbers instead of having to wait 4 months until the next version and then adjusting. The most glaring example for me is the double agent option. In industrial era with 10 cities when you capture a level 3 spy you get 90 science total.

Lets say we use the example you had, but with maximum security level 50. With 5 spy resistance you shave of 2 turns, decreasing with increased spy resistance. If you increase spy resistance by 1 to get 6 and have 0 security level, you would shave of more turns (3). So the only reason security level exists is to shave of a maximum of 2 turns to capture a spy which is less than a change of 1 to spy resistance.

I see your point with the duration cap. So we're looking at -33% and +100% for the caps?

At this point, I just put down the concepts. I'm open to numbers if someone wishes to do more detailed calculations and lay out better values. I started low for Double Agent because the Double Agent option has the following factors to consider:

1. Will the gains be affect by map sizes? Will the values be scaled with Era?
2. How many spies can be captured? The science stacks so we can see a pretty big variation as to how many stacks the science reaches.
3. Will the science be before or after modifiers?
4. Should higher ranked spies give more science and the duration be a flat amount?

I am open to changing the impact of the security level. However, I think we need to first figure out spy strength first. Once we figure out how strong offensive vs defensive spies should be, we can then adjust the numbers to fit what we are aiming for. As Axatin mentioned, we would otherwise be tweaking numbers not knowing where we are headed.

Checking, in your proposal are you removing the other missions not listed?

Honestly the pillage tile mission should be removed. It’s too easy to fix (often just 3 turns in the late game, or even 2 with progress), that is never worth 15-20 turns of spy time. And being random, sometimes you’ll hit times the enemy might not even be using.

If you really want something with a sting, do like: “-1 to all strategic resources for X turns”. That is much more likely to have an impact and can be timed with war for a more tactical option.


The problem with the siphon pool is there is no way to check “spy popularity” when I choose a city. I have no way to know how many spies are there, or how many will join after I start the mission. That means siphon yields are just completely up in the air…which destroys the utility.

The real problem with siphon missions is that they are yield stealers, and so require careful balancing. A better mechanical solution is to make them yield generators for the stealer, with no loss to the defender. Then it’s fine if multiple people steal and the like. People seem to balk at that because it’s “not realistic”, but frankly it’s far from the least realistic thing in the game and it immediately solves a lot of problems.

Other than steal techs, I'm not against including the other missions. I just don't know how to include them due to either not fully understanding how they work or how partial rewards will work with them. At the same time, I don't mind changing or removing the listed missions if there's a good case to be made. If you have suggestions on how to improve them or new missions, I think it would be great for discussion.

My concern with "-1 to all Strategic Resources for X turns" is how it disproportionally hurts Tall civs who are already, in theory, weaker in War. For Autocracy, a mission like this won't have much of an impact. I guess the question is whether we should have missions that hurts Tall or Wide more.

My thoughts on the siphon pool is that, when you start the mission, the values shown on the UI is locked in and unchanged regardless happens between mission start and mission end. The UI will do the calculations in the background tells you the duration and yields gained. The values only refresh whenever you are in the Mission selection screen. Therefore, the game doesn't need to do constant calculation which will likely slow the late game down a lot. I view this more as an event where, once you select a mission, you know what you get. Once you finish the mission and the spy isn't captured, then the next mission will have updated numbers.

This goes back to @axatin question on whether spies should harm enemies. I do think we need to reach some level of agreement before we can decide on the nature of siphon missions. Whether they are stealers or generators will impact the amount of yields generated for both offensive and defensive missions.

 

[der_weihnachtsmann]

I see your point with the duration cap. So we're looking at -33% and +100% for the caps?

Yes

 

[Stalker0]

My thoughts on the siphon pool is that, when you start the mission, the values shown on the UI is locked in and unchanged regardless happens between mission start and mission end. The UI will do the calculations in the background tells you the duration and yields gained. The values only refresh whenever you are in the Mission selection screen. Therefore, the game doesn't need to do constant calculation which will likely slow the late game down a lot. I view this more as an event where, once you select a mission, you know what you get. Once you finish the mission and the spy isn't captured, then the next mission will have updated numbers.

I can get behind that if the numbers lock when I send the spy rather than start the mission. It sucks sending a spy waiting 6 turns to get the mission list, and then finding out the mission you wanted will give you garbage.

 

[azum4roll]

Security level and spy resistance are still badly scaled since axatin's proposal didn't pass. Spy resistance is negative all the time before Police Station/Military Base. If you want to use them, better rebalance those numbers first.

The proposed spy capture mechanic is also too transparent. Since you can see the duration, you already know there's a counterspy present (due to counterspy affecting spy resistance affecting capture duration) and whether your spy will be captured by doing each mission. Why would anyone let their spies be captured then?

I have a separate draft here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/azum4rolls-espionage-rework-draft.683829/

 

[amateurgamer88]

Reworked the proposal. I looked through the discussion on discord and pivoted to a different approach.

There will no longer be siphon missions (due to how difficult it is to balance). Instead, there will be a passive mission that provides yields and active missions that will hurt the city owner and similarly to coup for City-States. Update the OP to include spy experience and diplomat missions too.

 

[azum4roll]

The spy missions seem to only hurt the target and give nothing to the spy owner? I don't see any incentive of spying on others, better put those spies in CS instead.

 

[amateurgamer88]

The spy missions seem to only hurt the target and give nothing to the spy owner? I don't see any incentive of spying on others, better put those spies in CS instead.

The active missions hurt the target. The passive mission provides:

If that's considered not enough, the tables are available to include other yields.

 

[azum4roll]

It's obviously not enough. For instance you get better yields from a counterspy that boosts specialist yields (also why can't that boost Civil Servants?) until late game (don't forget it's affected by yield modifiers that way).

Let's say there's a strong Tradition capital that produces half of the civ's science. Putting a level 3 spy there will yield 2.5% of that civ's science per turn, which is likely less than yours if you're wider than them.