The AI already comes to you to warn you off attacking when you're building up forces/when they sense that you're going to attack in a certain direction.
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The AI already comes to you to warn you off attacking when you're building up forces/when they sense that you're going to attack in a certain direction.
I think tying in espionage into diplomacy would be interesting, but not in the way that was suggested.
Perhaps there can be a one time trade deal where players gets one turn to look at what another Civ can see (selectively) on a specific target.
That way allies can work together. The AI may come to you requesting data on a specific city or city state and if you happen to have a spy in a city and don't want to let them in on it, you can bluff and say no. And when your spy is potentially exposed by a 3rd party in a counter intelligence, the diplomatic ramifications will mean there will be collateral damage both from the target civ and the civs you lied to.
A corollary to that is exchanging line of sight information could become tradeable as well though this isn't directly tied to espionage. I am keen on opening up more avenues for allies to work together and to have agreements in place, outside defensive pacts or declarations of friendships that are more under the table -- similar to how the old 'agree to work together against X' used to work in the earlier builds of Civ5.
Trias
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Yes, but the AI can hardly read your mind, which is what this espionage ability allows the player to do to the AI. This type of asymmetric feature has always been a bad design choice.
The AI will never be able to read your mind. It can anticipate actions based on set rules, and how well it can anticipate it also related to how well it is allowed to cheat.
Parts of the Civ3 AI -- the military part -- for example was functionally omniscient so their SoDs could be lured into traps by emptying cities or simply be strung around while the human player readies their units.
Espionage as a concept isn't bad for the AI, if you build it in such a way that the AI needs to perform the same operations a human has to to reveal certain bits of information that it has but can't use or pass on to another module in the AI subsystems until certain conditions are met, such as performing a spy operation.
Tying espionage less to units but to operations and a Civ3 style sub screen, but with agents, is also a fairly safe way to create a feature the AI can understand.
From the preview, Espionage seems more tied to intrigue with city states, which actually is quite a neat idea as it makes it more of an arms length feature against your real competitors, and the rationing of agents means you probably can't find out everything you need to know or do everything you want to do.
Trias
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I wasn't saying that espionage in general was bad for the AI. (As you say, if implemented the right way it may even be helpful for the AI. What I was sating was bad for the AI (and bad in general) is allowing the human player to use espionage to read the AI's mind, which is what they are saying. You apparently, can use a spy to obtain (part of) the AI's midterm/long-term plans.
As a rule of thumb, you should not be able to do things to the AI, that you could not do to a human player. This clearly is such a thing.
I would assume it would use the same criteria to predict an attack by an AI opponent as one by a human player. The difference is probably more that whatever criteria that is would be more in line with how AIs actually act, as opposed to how humans act. That does put it in favour of the human player, but it's not a mechanic only the human player would be able to use, and it would seem no more in favour of the human player than any other situation in which you can do something the AI cannot successfully predict. It's only allowing you to read the AI's mind as much as it is allowing them to read the minds of their opponents.
Trias
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That is not what I am getting for the various articles. They are literally saying that you can use spy missions to get data on the inner workings of the AI. For example, to you could learn that the AI is planning to backstab you in 15 turns. This data based on the innerworkings of the AI, that is not determined by the rest of the game state. This means that AI won't be able to use this on the player. (A fact also suggested by the mention that this option will only be available in single player.)
While this is true in general, there *are* game mechanics thinkable to make this work - under special circumstances even in the current game!
All you need is a "warm-up phase" for war. So, if you want do declare war on a certain civ, you have to make this decision, say, 10 or 15 turns in advance by checking a checkbox. Until the turns are over, you will not be able to declare war. After the turns are passed, you could still decide, whether or not to declare. You could even leave the checkbox active, to declare later on immediately - the AI spy will have the possibility to learn about your "readiness for war".
As I mentioned, there are already circumstances, an AI spy could learn about your plans: If you have accepted a "let's declar war in 10 turns" agreement with another civ!
See, there *are* ways to make the AI "psychic"...
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By the way: this could work for MP, too.
I guess it depends on how the AI gathers its data. Will it simply be able to see that an opponent is set to planning a war on someone, or will it be able to see what the AI is doing, and extrapolate from there based on certain criteria. I guess you're probably right that it's the former, in which case I don't know how they tell if a human is planning an attack. Though I assume it'd be similar if not the same to how they can guess that you're preparing for an attack currently.
But then, my original point was that the AI is able to see that you're preparing for an attack on them. They aren't entirely reliable in doing so, but they can do it to some extent, so it's not like they're going to be completely cut out of this mechanic (and would presumably still be able to act against other AIs in any case).
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
FWIW, if you reach an agreement with another civ to declare war in 10 turns, the AI could presumably discover this through espionage. It might not be entirely reciprocal between the player and the AI, but at least it'll be less pronounced.
MadDjinn
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Though, that option isn't used very frequently. But it might give the AI 'something' on the player.
Yes, assume that the AI will not be able to use a feature, at least against the human player, as they can't read your mind. If they 'could' guess about your intentions, all you'd have to do is fake them.
I consider this part of espionage, from what has been posted, to be more of a 'random chance positive diplo modifier' for the player with an AI. Given that almost everything is negative diplo modifiers, that can't be bad.
But don't forget that AIs (likely anyways) can use it on each other. There are always games in vanilla where one AI gets OP due to speed running through their neighbours/former friends. If the targets are given time to move units around/build more units/defensive buildings/etc rather than an extra wonder, they might survive longer.
edit: and there's no concerns about 'asymmetrical' feature design here when the AI can do a lot of things that the player can't.
bcaiko
Emperor
The balance could be that the "Inner thinkings" option for the spy is incredibly risky. Reading the articles on espionage so far, I've come to thinking that certain missions make it more likely that your spy will be caught.
crashcrush
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I wonder what you can really do with the information? We already know you can share information with other AI's, which if they're about to be attacked will either get you sucked into a war or put you in one of those positions where you do something nice for them but they still wind up pissed off at you (Hey, Izzy, Monty's about to come burn your house down. Oh, you want an alliance.... Nah, not now, thank you <cue denouncement music>).
If it's information that you're about to get attacked, well, the other AI's don't help now, not sure how this changes it other then to invite a premeditated dogpile.
What will be more interesting is if you can confront the aggressive civilization - in which case you might be able to get them to back down or force them to attack early/before they're completely ready.
I guess the other question I have is just because the AI decides to attack you 15 turns from now with 15 archers, if you suddenly have a tank show up on their border will that give them pause? That's probably the most likely/useful scenario. And, while you know the attack is coming, not sure that you really have any sense of the composition of the force (or at least we haven't seen that mission yet.)
I think it's going to be an interesting feature that could be a lot of fun.
If it's information that you're about to get attacked, well, the other AI's don't help now, not sure how this changes it other then to invite a premeditated dogpile.
What will be more interesting is if you can confront the aggressive civilization - in which case you might be able to get them to back down or force them to attack early/before they're completely ready.
I guess the other question I have is just because the AI decides to attack you 15 turns from now with 15 archers, if you suddenly have a tank show up on their border will that give them pause? That's probably the most likely/useful scenario. And, while you know the attack is coming, not sure that you really have any sense of the composition of the force (or at least we haven't seen that mission yet.)
I think it's going to be an interesting feature that could be a lot of fun.
This. Basically the game being balanced is not that AI & the player are equal in all aspects. There are things where human has a great advantage (where u have to plan 50 turns ahead or fighting a war tactically etc). While in other cases AI has the advantage (more happiness, gold, diplo with other AIs, general info about map & measure of things that a player can't see/calculate). For example in cIV AI units used to haved extra sight & in ciV DoF civs can ask for luxuries for free.
In short they need to strike the right balance between player & AI so the player feels that it is fair. So if they add some features to player as well as some to AI exculusively (or just make it less idiot !), I am sure it won't hurt balance if done properly.
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