Espionage Updates - Lets talk planning

[Enginseer]

I didn't even propose for a lower limit.

and I am proposing for a lower limit to affect bigger maps.

Note that this has snowballing effects. The more spies you have, the faster you can gain spy points!

This would be addressed with diminishing returns of the retirement system since the National Intelligence Agency would eventually reward you for constant retirement (as all new Spies would begin Level 2). The game would keep track of how many spy points were earned from retirement and reduce the spy points generated from retirement appropriately. Let's assume 1 spy at 100 Spy Points generated.

	0 Spies generated from Retirement	1 Spies generated from Retirement	2 Spies generated from Retirement	3 Spies generated from Retirement	4 Spies generated from Retirement
Spy Points generated from Retirement	100 Spy Points (or moved to 50 if required nerf)	50 Spy Points (or moved to 33 if required nerf)	33 Spy Points (or 25 if required nerf)	25 Spy Points (or 20 if required nerf)	20 Spy Points (or 16 if required nerf)
Amount of Spies needed to retire to generate another Spy	1 Spy needed to retire (or 2 if required nerf)	2 Spy needed to retire (or 3 if required nerf)	3 Spy needed to retire (or 4 if required nerf)	4 Spy needed to retire (or 5 if required nerf)	5 Spy needed to retire (or 7 [because rounding lol] if required nerf)

So under this table having more spies can help you gain spy points, but the amount to retire starts going up more to generate more and having missing spies and lack of experienced spy can hurt your espionage efforts more often.

It actually doesn't matter if we just remove the moving part from the formula. Pre-establishment spies aren't doing anything anyway.

That's the point why we need relocating cost to be 1 turn. There should be a small base penalty for attempting to relocate them constantly, but not a big penalty.

Doesn't RA require DoF (and DP require Embassy)? I don't think they should stack like that. I'd just have DoF, DP and Vassalage.

Some people play with different settings. Considering that denouncing makes you unable to establish embassy, it can be just slower establishing relations as a Diplomat there for obvious reasons.

Steal Great Works/Tech: If these were instant we don't even have to account for the case where there's nothing to steal! Sadly "instant missions" for "hurting others" were voted out, so I guess stealing GW will always have a duration if we follow the poll results...

It is what it is

The problem is that partisans have a one-turn cooldown before they can move, so they're mostly dead before they can do anything.

If you were to incite a revolt with no foreign support, then yeah they will die before they can do anything. Incite a revolt with foreign support (you) and you might have something. In other notes, it's not like we can't not buff Partisans spawned from spy events.

Is there any indicator that the city owner was sabotaged recently?

We can add one.

I don't understand. Is it not already based on the base yields per turn of the city (pre-modifiers)? Gold siphon is extra feels bad because gold is the yield that also has a high consumption per turn.

We don't have a lot of yield modifiers in the first place for this to be relevant. Gold siphon always feels bad because it is always a %-based, we can however nerf it by combining it with Faith siphon and adding an arbtirary value to siphon with the %-based being the cap. Like ONLY being able to steal up to 25 Gold per Turn in the Renaissance Era scaling to 50 Gold per Turn in the Industrial Era (etc...)

In general, what are the durations of these new spy missions?

Same duration as Stealing Great Works and Technology as this is how impactful as these new spy missions should be.

I will definately take a look at this, but I highly recommedn keeping all proposal discussions in their own threads. My goal with this thread was a more "centralized planning". Aka what are the proposals we are going to submit, I could record the links for each one here, and then we can work on each one individually to get it "ready for prime time".

I didn't want this thread to just be another "create a new espionage system" thread.

My intent isn't really to rework the system (aside from adding the retirement system) but to simplify it more so the AI isn't forced to make bad decisions. Ex. Siphon Tourism vs. Stealing Great Works (How does the AI really balance the decision-making there?? Especially human-wise; it is better to just combine those 2 with an aim to hurt this target city culturally instead).

 

[azum4roll]

That's the point why we need relocating cost to be 1 turn. There should be a small base penalty for attempting to relocate them constantly, but not a big penalty.

There's no difference if we remove spy moving time and +1 turn to establish presence.

Incite a revolt with foreign support (you) and you might have something.

The units would be blocking your path in that case. And anything that requires "timing" and has a "chance to fail" just isn't good imo. All the preparations for nothing!

 

[KlHannibal2]

Regarding the general direction of the spy system: I would like it to be based more on resources you invest. Not like everybody gets a number of spies at a certain point. More like you actually have to build spies and infrastructure to support them. Now the only real investment is policy choices.

 

[ma_kuh]

And anything that requires "timing" and has a "chance to fail" just isn't good imo. All the preparations for nothing!

I think "chance to fail" could be reinterpreted as "chance to receive 50% benefit" and it would cover most of the same ground without being a complete waste of time.

 

[pineappledan]

In every other respect. % chance actions are being hunted down. I don't know why they are tolerated in the espionage mechanics.

What's more, the % chance is more yields. Always more, more more, as if we didn't have a plethora of other means to attain yields. More complexity and randomness for more of the same.

 

[axatin]

Given the fact that the player has little control over the number and effectiveness of their spies, I'm beginning to like a simpler and more straightforward approach like the KISS system more and more. Such a system would also be easier to use for the AI. @Stalker0 What about the original vanilla system, have you also considered reverting to it completely (except for the city-state/coup part)?

However, I'm not entirely unhappy with the current system, and there were also people who said in the comments that they like it and only want to see minor adjustments, so I'm also considering making a proposal that would stay close to what we have now. Not sure yet.

 

[Stalker0]

Given the fact that the player has little control over the number and effectiveness of their spies, I'm beginning to like a simpler and more straightforward approach like the KISS system more and more. Such a system would also be easier to use for the AI. @Stalker0 What about the original vanilla system, have you also considered reverting to it completely (except for the city-state/coup part)?

However, I'm not entirely unhappy with the current system, and there were also people who said in the comments that they like it and only want to see minor adjustments, so I'm also considering making a proposal that would stay close to what we have now. Not sure yet.

My Kiss is pretty close to Vanilla, I think a few tweaks are in order (I mean vanilla isn't the best) but my version will be close. I just need to take some time to round out the rough edges, the biggest one is that security can actually scale with wide play a bit too much

I do like Azums representation of "current system but improved". I think that as a foil to the KISS is a good metric stick to see if people want to keep plugging away at our current models or if we want to abandon ship and go back to basics. My only hestitation there is that the removal of coups might be "too much" for some people. I kind of like coups myself I will admit.

 

[bryanw1995]

I like the current espionage system.

 

[youngsteve]

I like the current espionage system.

I like it so much that I nearly always turn it off. Shame really.

 

[Siegfroh]

One thing I dislike with spy system as it is currently is that it takes ages to send them somewhere and then do something and finally see the results.

A possible solution could be - once a spy has settled down in a city - to give the chance to have them perform an action every turn (maybe reducing their chances of success for the next turn), but with much lesser yields (e.g. stealing 2-5 science points or gold, or culture etc., or sabotaging the production of something by 2-5 points). Any turn of inactivity could increase his chance of success and reduce his chance of being caught. Several spies in the same city could combine their efforts, maybe even yielding more (e.g. 2 spies stealing or damaging 5-12, 3 spies 8-20 points). So the spies could also be used to decrease the speed another civilisation is building a wonder we want to build ourselves, or to delay the production of fresh units in case of a siege.