Spy’s abilities

[Melendor]

I would like to see the spy:
- Stealing money (can be use again City States);
- Stealing map;
- Giving 10% bonus to attack the city he is.

 

[Dentalfury]

I like a few of those ideas. However,

- The stealing money mechanic might be more realistically altered to be the Counterfeiting ability where the spy in question would do his best to undermine an enemy economy. Also, I can't really see a how a spy could 'steal' the vast sums of money that the in game gold is supposed to represent. I would see the overall effect being something like minus x amount of gold for y turns. Keeping it short though would be key for balancing issues along with a diminishing returns.

- Stealing Map, honestly, I don't know why sharing maps wasn't in vanilla. It's so annoying to have to search every last little corner of the world with your units who, on auto, typically blunder into inescapable situations with barbarians. So, stealing maps and even troop positions along with the general 'plotting' intrigue seems plausible.

- 10% Attack Bonus vs. Cities with a spy, seems very reasonable. You would have to make it a medium-term ability though in the sense that you shouldn't be able to just move a single spy from city to city as you are conquering someone to start providing critical defensive info on the city in question. It shouldn't take as long as stealing a tech though, or people wouldn't even bother using it.

Here are a few of my thoughts,

- Poison City, a pretty straight forward halting of growth for x amount of turns. I think just halting the growth as supposed to causing population loss is not only balanced but a little more realistic. As soon as the locals figure out their water/food supplies are contaminated their find a different source to make efforts to clean the old one up. Also should be subjected to diminished returns. You could add things like releasing viruses or setting off nukes later in the game but the nuke might be a bit over-powered.

- Sabotage Production / City Improvement / Tile Improvement - Also straightforward, I would also make this ability scaling with the rank of the spy too. So, you can either blow up an improvement, or simply disable it for x amount of turns for balancing. Taking out tiles would achieve the same effect as Pillaging and could be repaired conventionally.

- Risk Mechanic, not so much an ability but a display to the player to show how hard it will be to perform a specific action. For instance, say you wanted to blow up a silver mine in Carthage, the game would display how long it would take to do, say 10 turns, and it would have a 20% risk factor because its a precious national resource. There will be guards! Then, later in the game, after the mine is repaired from your previous joy-riding with the mining cart Indiana Jones style you want to take it out again. Now it will take 15 turns and be a 50% risk. You could also make the risk not just tile wide but City/Nation wide similar in the way that happiness is sometimes factored. It would be heightened right after a successful or failed attempt and slowly go down over time.

Thoughts?

-Dental

 

[Galgus]

I especially like the Risk Mechanic idea.

It would also be nice for map sharing to be a diplomatic trade option- with the recipient knowing what areas of the map you have seen, but not what is there.

 

[Dentalfury]

I especially like the Risk Mechanic idea.

It would also be nice for map sharing to be a diplomatic trade option- with the recipient knowing what areas of the map you have seen, but not what is there.

Yup, I would make it dependent on having a Declaration of Friendship too. Your not likely to give critical map data to a questionable neighbor for the right price.

 

[PFSIKH]

I like a few of those ideas. However,

- Poison City, a pretty straight forward halting of growth for x amount of turns. I think just halting the growth as supposed to causing population loss is not only balanced but a little more realistic. As soon as the locals figure out their water/food supplies are contaminated their find a different source to make efforts to clean the old one up. Also should be subjected to diminished returns. You could add things like releasing viruses or setting off nukes later in the game but the nuke might be a bit over-powered.

- Sabotage Production / City Improvement / Tile Improvement - Also straightforward, I would also make this ability scaling with the rank of the spy too. So, you can either blow up an improvement, or simply disable it for x amount of turns for balancing. Taking out tiles would achieve the same effect as Pillaging and could be repaired conventionally.

- Risk Mechanic, not so much an ability but a display to the player to show how hard it will be to perform a specific action. For instance, say you wanted to blow up a silver mine in Carthage, the game would display how long it would take to do, say 10 turns, and it would have a 20% risk factor because its a precious national resource. There will be guards! Then, later in the game, after the mine is repaired from your previous joy-riding with the mining cart Indiana Jones style you want to take it out again. Now it will take 15 turns and be a 50% risk. You could also make the risk not just tile wide but City/Nation wide similar in the way that happiness is sometimes factored. It would be heightened right after a successful or failed attempt and slowly go down over time.

-Dental

I think the Total War series has/had some of this functionality.

I want some ability to sabotage/plunder when I catch a foreign spy short of going to war (sometimes).

 

[Dentalfury]

Actually, the best example i know of when it comes to spy options is from Alpha Centauri. Spys were still units and you could pretty much do anything. Even blame your activities on a 3rd party to start war.

 

[Cliomancer]

Being able to subvert an enemy's defences would be an excellent option.

If we wanted to keep the mechanic simple, spying during peacetime would be for acquiring technology (or influence in city states) while during war it could switch to increasing the attack rating against the city.

(The switch could be justified as the target civ keeping their tech under tighter security against your agents during war, and your spy needing time to assess how the civ is marshalling their defences.)

Do spies currently grant a view of the area around the city they're in? I think that'd be something useful to include.

 

[Dentalfury]

I'm pretty sure that spies give line of sight to the city they are stationed in after they have done their initial surveillance. I think ive used it to great effect when it comes to ranged bombardment.

Although, i wouldn't make impossible to steal techs during wartime. If anything thats the most common time to steal it. Maybe make it rank dependent.

 

[Bobby Digital]

what about allowing them to sabotage (read: destroy) buildings in the city?

 

[thegingerninja]

What about assassinate citizen? You could have your spy kill some of the population to cripple the city. You could have one called assassinate governor where you can try (high risk) to kill the city's governor. It would cause a new thing called rioting where the city loses its ranged attack and a percentage of the population i.e. 20% would become barbarian units called rioters brigands cutthroats looters etc. They would be weaker than the era's units and would raze the tile improvements and attempt to burn the cities buildings. The cities combat strength would calculate the chance of them successfully razing a building. They would be able to killed by units and the barbarians in the city would not be able to be seen so moving a unit into the city would initiate a turn-by-turn chance of the unit killing the barbarians.

 

[jozef57]

i would realy like the posibillity to conduct sabatage, saboteurs and maybe even terrorist ( i know this is volitile subject please do not be offended, but i would like something like this incorperated in civ again. i know many people who love civ, and this is what we most miss in civ v. also more divers promotion posibillity's

 

[phos_hilaron]

I think there are some strong ideas here. It is clear that the community wants espionage expanded.

 

[headcase]

Definitely like the map idea, as it provides greater benefits to lesser civs. The other ideas sound good too.

 

[muhtesem insan]

"Feed inaccurate intel" could be another abilty. You could feed an intel that says there'll be an attack to city A while you were planning to make a suprise attack from other side of the country.

 

[Deggial]

And the AI is able to do the same to you? Oh, I see the "Espionage is broken!"-threads comming!

Seriously: An espionage with the possibility of false information is worthless in CiV! You would always have to mistrust your spies; all gathered information would be rendered useless. After all, there is no possiblity in CiV to double-check the information, no closer interrogation - nothing that could be done in real life to reappraise what you have learned by your spy.

 

[Atreju]

The espionage system of civ V...isn't really espionage, you only can steal tech with a few spies and have a 1 range sight around the city and find out some intrigues of AI civs well and increase influence in cs.I would like to see more actions also useable in the endgame, my spies in civ V don't get higher ranks when successfully doing a coup in a cs and technology tree is already compleatly explored same with other civilizations.So, how to get higher ranks for your spies?
I'd like to add all these actions from civ II and IV like killing the governor to make the city not working for one turn(producing no gold, culture, units/buildings, science etc. at all), destroying a building or an improvement of a tile.

About the terroristic actions already mentioned above I'd say to make them available for civs that chose autocracy as ideology including missions with no return of the spy.In civ II there is the high risk mission to bring a nuclear bomb into the city and use it there.I could imagine introducing this in civ V, high risk(only special agents can do it) and not as strong as a normal atomic bomb , but lots of buildings in the city should be destroyed and tiles in a range of 1 or max. 2 of the city should get fallout and destroyed improvements.But if a spy suddenly attacks with a nuclear bomb, the bomb shelters maybe should be useless or at least there should be a chanche that the city didn't find out what's going on and noone is warned.Then there is a diplomatic penalty if your spy got caught.
Also an idea for multiplayer would be to have a spy on chat of an other players to maybe find out something.

Edit: I suggest that spies can also be killed if they are not trying to steal a tech.It's just annoying that in the end game the enemy has a spy in your city and I have one in my but I can't stop him watching my city for the next 999999999turns.