Espionage: How to counter it?

[Killroyan]

In my last game I get sabotaged to bits by 4 AI who just love to destroy my improvements. I think I am not exaggerating when I say that 1 pasture has been destroyed over 8-10 times. It is just incredible. I have tried to put a unit on it only to see another pasture getting destroyed. I have put spies everywhere to see if that would help. My cities all have jails/courthouses/security bureaus and the cities that get hit have spies in them.

As far as I know the best ways to do something about this are:
1) Perform counterespionage missions, but against 4 AI's that is hard
2) Security Bureaus (but I already have them and somehow a spy is never caught)
3) Place a unit on the resource (how much does this help?)
4) Place a spy on the resource (does this work?)
5) Outespionage the AI by generating more espionage points (but again, against 4 AI's that is hard)

So what am I missing? Can I use my vasal for espionage missions? Should I concentrate on 1 AI more?

 

[Ghpstage]

Station a spy on the tiles being hit regularly, apart from that I ignore them. The AI is too bad to do real damage with espionage . Worst come to worst go steamroll them.
You can tell whos doing it by mousing over the name i nthe scorelist to keep an eye on the esp points they have against you, if they're dropping down every few turns you've found your culperate. Then all thats left is back.

 

[Shurdus]

In my last game I get sabotaged to bits by 4 AI who just love to destroy my improvements. I think I am not exaggerating when I say that 1 pasture has been destroyed over 8-10 times. It is just incredible. I have tried to put a unit on it only to see another pasture getting destroyed. I have put spies everywhere to see if that would help. My cities all have jails/courthouses/security bureaus and the cities that get hit have spies in them.

As far as I know the best ways to do something about this are:
1) Perform counterespionage missions, but against 4 AI's that is hard
2) Security Bureaus (but I already have them and somehow a spy is never caught)
3) Place a unit on the resource (how much does this help?)
4) Place a spy on the resource (does this work?)
5) Outespionage the AI by generating more espionage points (but again, against 4 AI's that is hard)

So what am I missing? Can I use my vasal for espionage missions? Should I concentrate on 1 AI more?

I do not think you can use your vassals for missions.

You mentioned the methods. Placing units on the tile does nothing afaik while placing a spy on the tile helps in catching the enemy spy. In cities where a security bureau is present it does not help to place a spy because the bonusses of the spy + bureau to catching the enemy spy do not add up.

The counter espionage missions make it more expensive for your opponents to run missions against you but it does not influence the possible outcome of a mission afaik. The same goes for spending more on espionage, it makes missions more expensive so the enemy can annoy you less often but the outcome of a single mission is not influenced by it.

One thing you did not mention is opening borders. With closed borders missions become more expensive. I do not know what the influence of closed border on the chances of succes of an individual mission are.

 

[Killroyan]

Closing borders is a good point. Haven't thought of that but I do get some get good resources from them. And yes GHP, I am doing that right now, steamrolling the sabotaging b..ards That will serve them right. But this is the first time in my gaming experiences with civ that espionage is really starting to tick me off. I mean every turn something gets destroyed by a spy. It is really annoying (which is actually a good sign since the AI puts up a fight).

 

[Zubbus]

No we don't think you're exaggerating at all. I think we've all had a tile destroyed 10 times. But you're just run over that is all. If you put your spies in the right places you catch enemies' spies. Caught spies are destroyed so those 9 other times of coming back to destroy things again wouldn't have happened Sure they'll build more, but the attacks would come in much more slowly.

The Statue of Liberty is 1 of my favorite wonders so I always go for a it and get a number of espionage building techs on the way.
Well it's not exactly that much of a favorite actually, but I've found I usually can win it so might as well.

 

[Shurdus]

Sitting Bull and Stalin can be real heavy on the espionage, so getting hit by them is more or less a given. Let us be grateful they do not actively sabotage buildings or let us swap religion or civics all the time, that would be annoying...

 

[Killroyan]

Well Stalin is one of the advisaries. Catherine and Louis (vasal) are the two others. The fourth one, Mehmed is getting pummeled by me right now and is of no concern anymore.

Assigning more espionage points to stalin or cathy, would that help?

About the EP drop from the AI, that is a good one. Have to check that later on.

 

[Zubbus]

Yes. Would help a lot and should have been done already
You may also consider completely stopping espionage points going into civs that you think are NOT spying on you right now. You can always catch up there later.

 

[Ghpstage]

Assigning EP to someone won't help at all, your 'resistance' to espionage is purely from the total EP you have made, doesn't matter who you sent it to. The only way it could help is if you use the counterespionage mission with spies, and that'll just make missions more costly for the AI.

 

[the reverend]

If you have some workers set to Automate Trade network, having a resource pillaged by a spy is an annoyance, but nothing too severe, as your workers will automatically rebuild the resource in a few turns. Now, when they destroy a non-resourced mine, and after cycling through all your units and cities, you have to track down where the mine was destroyed and rebuild it...

 

[Zubbus]

"Total EP I have made" and "specific EP I have spent on that particular Civ"? Man this is complicated.

 

[Killroyan]

Ok I finished the game. I steamrolled them. Being charismatic and getting 21 exp units out of the heroic epic city will do the trick normally

Things I noticed in this game, the last part:
1) When I stationed a spy on the pasture that got repeatedly hit, it wouldn't get pillaged anymore, but other improvements would be destroyed.
2) In the end it was just Catherine and her vasal, so I appointed all EP towards her. I still got improvements destroyed. So it does indeed not help or my vassals (everyone else) was sabotaging me too.
3) If it is the total amount of EP that is counting then they should pay a fortune for those actions since I was making somewhere around 3 times as much as the others.
4) I never caugt 1 spy destroying my improvements???? Normally that message will pop up, but I never saw it in the remaining part of my game.

 

[dido]

If you have some workers set to Automate Trade network, having a resource pillaged by a spy is an annoyance, but nothing too severe, as your workers will automatically rebuild the resource in a few turns. Now, when they destroy a non-resourced mine, and after cycling through all your units and cities, you have to track down where the mine was destroyed and rebuild it...

you can track it in the log

 

[Shurdus]

If you have some workers set to Automate Trade network, having a resource pillaged by a spy is an annoyance, but nothing too severe, as your workers will automatically rebuild the resource in a few turns. Now, when they destroy a non-resourced mine, and after cycling through all your units and cities, you have to track down where the mine was destroyed and rebuild it...

When you see this, bring the log up by pressing ctrl + tab. Look for the message that says the mine is destroyed. Click on it and AFAIK you see the location of the now destroyed mine. You can then look for a worker and restore it.

@Killroyan
Not catching any spy is very unfortunate indeed. It is also rather curious that the pasture you place a spy on is not destroyed. Then again the AI gets rather curious advantages against the human player so I would not be surprised if seeying your spies was one of them.

Not catching any spies is also rather strange since you would expect to catch a few, even if the chances of catching an individual spy is rather low.

 

[Killroyan]

The chance to get caught during destroying improvements is pretty low so I could be just unlucky but I never got one message saying that I captured this or that spy. Maybe I just missed it. Should check the last save and check the event log. But with all the spies running around and security bureaus everywhere you would expect to catch at least a few of the buggers.

I am almost certain though that the AI apparantly knows where the spies are. I placed 5 at the spots that got hit the most and after that these tiles never got hit again afaik.

 

[pigswill]

Total EPs is over the course of the entire game. For instance if Cat had generated 1000EP before you allocated any EPs to her and you were generating 100 ep/turn and Cat was generating 50ep/turn it would take 20 turns (20*100+0=2000 vs 20*50+1000) for you to match her total EP against you.

If you were having the same tile sabotaged then instead of allocating a spy you you allocate spare workers to the tile and rebuild the pasture every time it was sabotaged.

 

[nbcman]

@ Killroyan

Bhruic did a thread on spy detection here.

Closing borders increases spy detection by 150%. (changes multiplier from 10 (ESNIIM) to 25 (ESIM)).

Also, station some spies on points of entry into your lands (road/railroad choke points) to increase the chance of detecting enemy spies as they are moving to their targets.

 

[TM Moot]

Best way is to click "No Espionage" on the Custom Game screen before you start ;-)

 

[Killroyan]

@TM Moot: Should do that. Always forget that one.

@Pigswill: I did have two workers glued to that tile almost 10 times rebuilding is a lot. But after the spy it never got destroyed again. But with 50% of the land in my hands and generating around 500 eps/turn you do expect it to get harder. Just read Bhruics article and apparantly it doesn't do that much

@NBCman: Thx for the article. According to it roughly I had apparantly 0,6% chance of catching them as long as they didn't step on a tile with a spy or came near a city. Closing the border would have increased that by a nice step but I understand now why I didn't catch one.

 

[Ghpstage]

Best way is to click "No Espionage" on the Custom Game screen before you start ;-)

The game then changes points gained from buildings like courthouses into ... not very well thought out. Besides espionage is an interesting addition to the game, the AIs can be annoying with it at times though I agree. Just make sure no AI stealing techs lives