Espionage is pathetic

[Lochlann]

Now, before anyone conjectures that those large numbers are because the Difficulty is set too low, stop and think: If the Difficulty is _easier_, why would stealing tech be _harder_?

Stealing techs is harder because your tech level is so much more advanced than the AIs' tech level. As others have said, the espionage system is geared to help civs who are behind in tech, not those who are ahead. If your tech level were closer to the level of the AIs, stealing techs would be easier. (Or so the theory goes.) Thus the suggestion to increase the difficulty level: on harder levels, you won't be as far ahead in techs, and therefore tech-stealing would be easier.

Now, I don't know if this theory has been proven or not. It stands to reason, though. Why would super-advanced civs want to steal techs from their technological inferiors? It makes sense for the game to prompt advanced civs to do other things with their spies, such as counter-intelligence or CS shenanigans. Think of the ridiculous steal time as the game saying "hey, it'd be far more advantageous to do something else with your spy, you're clearly already pwning at the tech race."

(Though, I still think something is off here. As I've said, I have played many Marathon games on Prince and King where I enjoyed tech superiority similar to--and even greater than--what you've described, and I've never seen anything approaching 100+ turns for steal times.)

I sent a second agent to another city that had a Potential of 4-1/2 stars, and a tooltip = 3,300. My #2 city has only 3-1/2 stars, and the tooltip = 2,619. Now, after that second agent did his Surveillance and began Gathering Intelligence, the starting counter was _130_ turns. Which is odd, because while the other three cities have Constabularies (-25% chance), the target's #2 doesn't.

I'm not sure why you're caught up on comparing your cities to the AI cities. Your capital vs. theirs, your #2 city vs. their #2, etc. Again, I don't think the Potential of your cities factors at all into your stealing chances/rates. It factors into the AIs' chances/rates. (If I'm totally wrong about that, please someone correct me!)

 

[Olleus]

The simplicity of the espionage system is its greatest skill. I could see something like a few extra missions like stealing great works or inciting captured cities to revolt back to a CS or another civ, but nothing more.

More spies would be a terrible idea. They are free and there is no cost to using them, apart from an opportunity cost. If you have enough spies to do everything that you want spies to do, then there's no decision to be made any more. The fun thing is deciding whether to steal an extra tech, or defend at home, or if you really need to buy an extra couple of votes for the world congress. If you could do all those things, then the entire system becomes 100% pointless.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

It's unfortunate the number of spies you receive doesn't change with the number of players.

 

[Martock]

Thus, I disagree with the original poster 100%. The current espionage system is incredibly good! I hope they don't mess with it too much. If someone feels it is "pathetic" I would suggest either playing different difficulty levels or time settings to make it less "pathetic" for you, or largely ignore it and have your agents be diplomats or on counter-intelligence. It doesn't hurt you at all.

While I can't say the espionage part is pathetic, to me it is disappointing. I'd like to see more options available and more agents made available to a player. I'm not saying we should be able to produce them like any other unit, but simply be given more than just 1 or 2 per era. And for the record, I only play on Deity. At this point, my agents are almost entirely on counter-intelligence or doing diplomatic work. The few times I've had spies in a city, the time ranges to steal a tech were always over 100+ turns so I've largely given up on that aspect of the current system.

 

[isau]

As spies, they're still far too inadequate to follow their stated name: ESPIONAGE agents. But serving as diplomats at the World Congress, they _do_ have some real value. Ergo, yes, a player should retain the Espionage component.

Still pathetically underpowered though.

I have to say I 100% disagree with you. I think spying is one of the most balanced and smoothly implemented aspects of this game. It was pretty good in G&K too except that the AI liked to flip city states too much.

The need to decide between a Spy and a Diplomat is part of the opportunity cost.

You keep mentioning how unfair it is that once or twice you've seen very long times between tech steals and how 6 spies aren't enough. But if tech stealing was faster and each player had more spies, every tech in the game would just get stolen and within short order there would be nothing left to steal. The fact that sometimes the steal time is long just means that it is possible to defend against spies. Your suggestion that the target of a Spy should have almost no defense would apply to every civ in the game, not just the player. If everyone could just easily snatch everyone else's tech the game would be broken.

The only improvement I'd like to see to Spying is a policy tree that provides more. For example, perhaps an early Spy/Diplomat could be granted by Piety. But overall I think the system is close to perfect.

 

[Gabriel Pyyrhic]

Imo there needs to be more options to level up spies. Iirc they currently only level up when they steal a tech or kill an enemy spy. A building or two could be made or tweaked for this purpose... And certainly ideologies should help in this regard. I know about Industrial Espionage, but it doesn't help much if your spies are all base level and the enemy has elite spies guarding their cities. There should be another tenet that gives you an extra spy and raises the starting level of all spies by one imo.

A successful coup also levels them IIRC.

 

[Gabriel Pyyrhic]

Stealing techs is harder because your tech level is so much more advanced than the AIs' tech level. As others have said, the espionage system is geared to help civs who are behind in tech, not those who are ahead. If your tech level were closer to the level of the AIs, stealing techs would be easier. (Or so the theory goes.) Thus the suggestion to increase the difficulty level: on harder levels, you won't be as far ahead in techs, and therefore tech-stealing would be easier.

Now, I don't know if this theory has been proven or not. It stands to reason, though. Why would super-advanced civs want to steal techs from their technological inferiors? It makes sense for the game to prompt advanced civs to do other things with their spies, such as counter-intelligence or CS shenanigans. Think of the ridiculous steal time as the game saying "hey, it'd be far more advantageous to do something else with your spy, you're clearly already pwning at the tech race."

(Though, I still think something is off here. As I've said, I have played many Marathon games on Prince and King where I enjoyed tech superiority similar to--and even greater than--what you've described, and I've never seen anything approaching 100+ turns for steal times.)


I'm not sure why you're caught up on comparing your cities to the AI cities. Your capital vs. theirs, your #2 city vs. their #2, etc. Again, I don't think the Potential of your cities factors at all into your stealing chances/rates. It factors into the AIs' chances/rates. (If I'm totally wrong about that, please someone correct me!)

Nope, you are correct. Potential (a factor of beaker production and espionage buildings (ie Police Station etc)) affects the chances of another Civs espionage attempts.

I do not believe tech disparity matters (although I could be wrong on this). If you target a Civ that has no techs you can use, but has a very high science output then it would appear to have a high potential (assuming of course it had no espionage buildings to counter this), but when your spy had completed its "stealing" you would receive a message to the affect of "THIS CIV HAS NO TECHS YOU CAN STEAL".

So in other words, low potential means either : low beaker output, or high espionage buildings/wonders or both of the aforementioned.

 

[CaptainPatch]

The concern seems to be that with more spies and shorter waiting periods, everyone would just be stealing tech in an ongoing round-robin of Spy vs Spy. But that's NOT what I'm objecting to nor advocating.

Like any other gaming mechanism, the mental challenge is to sort out the proper prioritization of allocating limited resources. Along those lines, if you want LOTS of spies, make it possible, but make the investment cost reflect the reality of robbing Peter to pay Paul. As for their efficacy, limit their ability to where nothing is a Sure Thing. My objection to the number of turns before even making the attempt (110, 120, 130) is NOT predicated that at the end the targeted tech WILL be acquired. That was never my assumption. My assumption is that after Gathering Intelligence, there would be a _chance_ of successfully stealing the tech. Likewise, there would be a _chance_ of being killed, a chance of being captured, and a chance of just being stymied. A _few_ turns of prep, then the attempts start. A 1% chance of a successful theft is vastly more desirable than a mandatory 100+ turn waiting period -- as well as being a superior model of Reality.

 

[Dralix]

Now, before anyone conjectures that those large numbers are because the Difficulty is set too low, stop and think: If the Difficulty is _easier_, why would stealing tech be _harder_?

It's not harder, it takes longer. Time to steal is based on science output of the city, and the AI is handicapped on lower difficulties.

 

[jessie23]

Don't forget about the vision aspect of spies.

A low level one can help bombers target cities / units that are beyond a fighters vision range.

They can also be useful for artillery strikes at cities behind hills/forest/jungle that are difficult to gain vision on.

 

[CaptainPatch]

It's not harder, it takes longer. Time to steal is based on science output of the city, and the AI is handicapped on lower difficulties.

And it's that longer that makes it harder.

Just as I feared, the first spy, having started Intelligence Gathering at 120 turns, got all the way down to _2_ turns to go when the message popped up, "There's no longer anything here worth stealing."

That's crap. Pure and unadulterated. If the idea was that the Difficulty was set too low, an Advisor should have popped up to say, "You're probably wasting your time." As the the case turned out to be.

If there was ever an argument for, "You're best off using your spies as Diplomats", this is it. (Though I suspect that when it comes to delegate trading, just like swapping resources, the AI demands ridiculously exorbitant exchange rates. That would be from those nations whose delegates would be voting against your interests. Those that offer reasonable exchange rates are the ones that would most likely _already_ be planning to vote the same way you do.)

**Bleep** it. Just set all the spies to Counter-Espionage and try to preserve the tech lead.

 

[Dralix]

Ok, you've convinced me. Espionage is worthless - on marathon, when you have a huge tech lead.

 

[Lochlann]

**Bleep** it. Just set all the spies to Counter-Espionage and try to preserve the tech lead.

Bingo. I think that's more or less what it comes down to -- and what it should come down to, for players with the tech lead.

Try playing a game where you don't have such a commanding tech lead, or where you're behind on tech. Then see what kind of steal-times you're looking at for your spies (in high-Potential cities). If you're still getting such ridiculous times, that's when I'd agree that the system is not working as intended, because in that case the hindrance would be striking exactly those players whom tech-stealing is supposed to help.

(This is why others have suggested going up one or more difficulty levels. Not because this has any direct effect on spy steal times, but because this will force you into situations where you're not in a runaway tech lead.)

EDIT -- or what Dralix said.

 

[Yzman]

And it's that longer that makes it harder.

**Bleep** it. Just set all the spies to Counter-Espionage and try to preserve the tech lead.

I'm surprised it took 3 pages to get to this. This is what people have been saying.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Bingo. I think that's more or less what it comes down to -- and what it should come down to, for players with the tech lead.

Axtually that just shows how bad the system is.
There should be things to do with espionage when you are the leader too, as well as ways to level spies not related to stealing or defending of stealing techs.

 

[Dralix]

I wouldn't say the espionage system is bad, by any means, but more options would be good. Sabotage production would be a great start.

 

[Gort]

The religious beliefs are far more in need of fixes than espionage. There's some stuff in there that's amazing, and some stuff that's just dross that nobody will ever pick.

 

[bluefeli]

I thought it like you.. But now It's a big part of strategy for playing civ5. And Great guys explained why it is important perfectly already.

 

[fyar]

Axtually that just shows how bad the system is.
There should be things to do with espionage when you are the leader too, as well as ways to level spies not related to stealing or defending of stealing techs.

There are things to do when you're the tech leader:

1. Protect your tech lead with counter-espionage.
2. Rig city-state elections.
3. Incite city-state coups.
4. Set up a diplomat for tourism propaganda.
5. Buy world congress votes with your diplomat.
6. Spy just for the reconaissance (to know what they have, what they're building, and to spot for your bombers).

I typed that in 1 minute, there probably are more things.

 

[player1 fanatic]

There are things to do when you're the tech leader:

1. Protect your tech lead with counter-espionage.
2. Rig city-state elections.
3. Incite city-state coups.
4. Set up a diplomat for tourism propaganda.
5. Buy world congress votes with your diplomat.
6. Spy just for the reconaissance (to know what they have, what they're building, and to spot for your bombers).

I typed that in 1 minute, there probably are more things.

1) sometimes AIs are nice and dont want to steal, living you with agent recruits for the rest of the game
2) sometime you have so much money that benefit is insignificant
3) Needs experienced agents. Thus you stealing tech or having bad relations so other steal from you
4) valid use. Recruit can do this
5) valid use. But takes a lot of turns of giving introductions to switch diplpmats from nation to nations
6) very nice use. Its annoying that set up time is very long and that number of agents is very low through the whole game.