(6-CP) Tweaked Version of azum4roll's Espionage Overhaul

[Recursive]

Counterproposal to: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/6-43-espionage-system-overhaul.685902/

Out of the systems proposed thus far, I like azum4roll's the most as I want to keep advanced actions and spies being powerful. However, I don't like a few aspects of the proposed system, so I decided to propose some tweaks.

I propose everything that @azum4roll's proposal contains, except for the elements quoted below, which are modified:

Mission cooldowns:
Target city is blocked from being hit by the same spy mission for 15 turns once it's hit by one. The missions coloured in RED below also block each other.
The same spy is blocked from performing missions for 15 turns after performing one.

I propose to exclude stealing technology from the missions subject to a cooldown in that city. This mission doesn't directly harm the city owner, and it makes sure the spy owner (unless there are no techs to steal) has something to do with their spy.

However, it still triggers the cooldown for that spy.

Security formula:

Source	Value
Base	10
At least one player doesn't have spies	+1000
England	+15
Empiricism	+12
Bletchley Park	+10 global
Public Works	+5 each
Piazza San Marco	+10
Constabulary	+15
Wat	+20
Police Station	+10 +1/ Population (+10 more with Police State)
National Intelligence Agency	+10
Great Firewall	+50
Every time the city is hit by a spy mission	+2 (scaling with game speed, less on slower speed)
Population	-2 each
Trade Routes from/to this city	-1 each
Excess Unhappiness	-4 each

Add the following Security modifiers:
Settler difficulty: +20
Chieftain difficulty: +10

Players on lower difficulty levels will likely be targeted by spies more often due to being in the lead, and players still learning the game should get a buff to their Security as a result.

Target city defense

"Strengthen local defenses" mission not active

All Fortifications owned by this city are pillaged. City is blockaded, cannot perform ranged strike or benefit from extra strength from buildings for 3 turns.

1500

80%

70%

Negating building defense for 3 turns is too overpowered, especially in the capital. While garrisons do help, ranged and aerial bombardment can reduce a city to 0 HP too easily. Especially if the garrison is killed; notably, there is another proposal to make garrisons easier to destroy.

Instead, increase the sapped turns to 5 (blockaded, +20% damage taken, can't heal, can't ranged strike). This makes it last for most of a lategame siege, and a good chunk of a midgame siege. Considering there's an entire counterspy mission devoted to blocking this mission, at least in part, I don't think this is too overpowered, as it still leaves the city with a fighting chance if units can defend it, and its CS still takes effect.

Name​	Prerequisite​	Effect​	Network Point cost​	Identify chance​	Caught chance​
Target city defense​	"Strengthen local defenses" counterspy mission not active​	All Fortifications owned by this city are pillaged. City is blockaded and cannot perform ranged strikes for 5 turns. (Blockaded effects are: +20% damage taken, city can't heal, applies Isolation, breaks City Connection)	1500​	80%​	70%​

Arm the local populace

Target city must be unhappy

Target city enters resistance for 2 turns. (3 + Era number) Rebel units spawn around the city. No Tourism is generated in the city for 10 turns.

1500

30%

30%

3 + Era number Barbarian units means 10 in Information Era, and 6 in Renaissance Era. Given the AI's strong bonuses VS Barbarians, a lot of units are needed to make a difference.

I propose a slight tweak to 5 + Era number Barbarians.

I find the Tourism penalty is too punishing (for Tall capitals that happen to be unhappy, which is pretty much never), and not very punishing otherwise. However, as it now shares a cooldown with the other two spy missions, it's fine, I guess. I originally proposed a cost reduction to 1000, but unhappy cities have a NP generation boost, and if this is part of a mutually exclusive group of 3, I feel like it would create weird incentives otherwise.

Name​	Prerequisite​	Effect​	Network Point cost​	Identify chance​	Caught chance​
Arm the local populace​	Target city must be unhappy​	Target city enters Resistance for 2 turns. (5 + Era number) Barbarian units spawn around the city. No Tourism is generated in the city for 10 turns.	1500​	30%​	30%​

AMENDMENT 1: Changed my proposed replacement for the cooldown. Removed the proposed replacement for the steal gold mission.
AMENDMENT 2: Removed the cooldown replacement, as azum4roll has added it to his main proposal.
AMENDMENT 3: Added Security bonuses on the two lowest difficulties. Changed proposed adjustments to "Arm the local populace" quest (now only 3 -> 5 base Barbarian units).
AMENDMENT 4: Realized that stealing tech was not excluded from azum4roll's implementation of the mission countdown. This counterproposal now proposes to exclude it.

 

[azum4roll]

- If the target city can't be hit by spies for 15 turns after any action is triggered, and many players are targeting the same city, then spy actions will simply be triggered on cooldown, which gives an advantage to whoever goes first after the target city owner, and it's entirely possible that other civs will just have their spies sitting there forever, never able to take any advanced actions because civs earlier in the turn order are using their spies first.

I've already said that the cooldown ends after the mission performer's turn, so everyone gets to take turn doing missions.
Moreover, it always takes more than 15 turns to get enough NP for each mission.

- No cooldown makes investments in Security a more meaningful decision because they'll reduce the rate at which your city can be targeted.

No cooldown means the possibility of having local defense and rural infrastructure disabled at the same time, while the city is stuck in a riot with barbarians spawning.
It's also possible for a spy to stockpile a lot of NP and spend them for back-to-back missions (risking the 10% chance of losing everything).

Instead of a global cooldown on missions, missions with effects over a length of time can have an equivalent local cooldown in that city.

Mission-specific cooldown is a pain to show to the players. They'll need to be on the mission selection screen to see those, which is two menus in and shouldn't be accessed outside of picking a mission.

Losing 20% of your treasury is unfun, and makes it so you can essentially never stockpile Gold.

Losing 50% of your treasury without a cooldown (old system), or 120% of your net GPT (common in current system), is unfun.
Losing 20% every 15 turns is perfectly ok; you can easily make that amount back if you had that much to begin with.

Furthermore, the Tourism penalty is too punishing (for Tall capitals that happen to be unhappy, which is pretty much never), and not very punishing otherwise. I'd remove it and reduce the mission's Network Point cost to 1000, as it can only be triggered while unhappy anyway.

It's just there for thematic reasons, and I think it's an interesting thing to have.

Negating building defense for 3 turns is too overpowered, especially in the capital. A city without Combat Strength could be easily reduced to 0 HP from a handful of ranged or air attacks.

You still have the bonus HP, raw damage reduction, and garrison CS. It's not the same as a freshly settled/conquered city.
Making the city isolated and lose city connection is interesting too, and I'm fine with either.
I think "can't heal" and "+20% bonus against it" is already implied with "Blockaded"?

 

[Stalker0]

I've already said that the cooldown ends after the mission performer's turn, so everyone gets to take turn doing missions.

So either Recursive and I are both missing something, or this isn't correct. Let me walk through an example.

We have 5 spies in a city from Civs:
A
B
C
D
E

Spy A does a mission, triggering the 15 turn cooldown. After Civ A's turn on 15, the cooldown ends. It is now Civ B's turn, and they do a spy mission. No one else can now do a mission on this turn and for 15 turns. At the end of 15, Civ C can do a spy action and chooses to do so, etc etc.

Ultimately this means that Spy E had to wait 60 turns in cooldowns before doing a spy action. Is this not correct?

 

[azum4roll]

I think you're overestimating the amount of spies that would sit in a single city, even if it's a capital.

However, there's a valid concern of not knowing why the city is still in cooldown after 15 turns. I'll edit my proposal to add a notification that a mission has been performed in city X if you have a spy there.

 

[Stalker0]

I think you're overestimating the amount of spies that would sit in a single city, even if it's a capital.

Using my current experience with the AI as of right now....I really don't think I am. There is a LOT of incentive to put spies in the tech leader's capital as one example.

Even now when I try to run spy missions, so often I can't do many missions because they are locked behind cooldowns, and those are mission specific. If they were a global cooldown....no way I would get in.

 

[azum4roll]

That sounds like room for AI improvement. Instead of waiting in a traffic jam, maybe they should divert their spies elsewhere? The rank 2 civ's capital is likely emptier.

 

[Stalker0]

That sounds like room for AI improvement. Instead of waiting in a traffic jam, maybe they should divert their spies elsewhere? The rank 2 civ's capital is likely emptier.

and lose all of those wonderful NPs I've built up.....um, sure.

 

[rkkn]

That sounds like room for AI improvement. Instead of waiting in a traffic jam, maybe they should divert their spies elsewhere? The rank 2 civ's capital is likely emptier.

unless having a spy in a city tells you how many other spies are also in the city, that's not really a usable suggestion. The only way you can find out if there were other spies is when you get hit by the cooldown and have already invested a bunch of turns building up NP. And you still don't know how many others are ahead of you. Are you going to have to wait another 45+ turns, or are you next in queue? No way to know.

 

[azum4roll]

Do you have a better suggestion that, at the same time:

• doesn't make spies queue;
• doesn't allow combo hits on the same city;
• is clearly shown on the UI?

 

[rkkn]

well, I think the possibility for combo hits on the same city is desirable. I would only add a short-ish self cooldown. Any individual spy has to wait 5? turns before performing another action even if it has enough NP.

but for meeting the no-combos criteria, just make having a spy in the city show you how many other spies are also there

 

[pineappledan]

Do you have a better suggestion that, at the same time:

• doesn't make spies queue;
• doesn't allow combo hits on the same city;
• is clearly shown on the UI?

Yes.

 

[azum4roll]

well, I think the possibility for combo hits on the same city is desirable. I would only add a short-ish self cooldown. Any individual spy has to wait 5? turns before performing another action even if it has enough NP.

but for meeting the no-combos criteria, just make having a spy in the city show you how many other spies are also there

The reason for separating arm local populace, target city defenses and sabotage rural infrastructure was that they're too good together.
And then there's sabotage production that, if done every 10 turns, completely stops the city from building anything.
We can have different cooldowns for different groups of missions, but that's a pain to convey.

 

[rkkn]

well, I think sabotage production is just way too strong, regardless of any cooldown. I would rather get hit by every other mission simultaneously, excluding steal great work, than get hit by sabotage production when I'm 8 turns into building a wonder

 

[rkkn]

to add to that, I don't think there should be any spy missions that outright undo things you've done. sabotage production should instead reduce the city's production output (and this reduction should apply to production instant yields as well).
All the other ones are fine, except steal great work. like the faith one is -50% faith per turn. that's fine. Erasing your stockpile of faith would not be fine.
sabotage defenses is also fine (as modified here). makes it harder to defend your city, but that's it. it doesn't like, delete promotions off your units or something.

 

[azum4roll]

well, I think sabotage production is just way too strong, regardless of any cooldown. I would rather get hit by every other mission simultaneously, excluding steal great work, than get hit by sabotage production when I'm 8 turns into building a wonder

Getting hit by every other mission simultaneously pretty much means you're losing the city, which hurts more than losing buildings, which hurts more than losing progress on production.

You do sabotage missions at the cost of not doing missions benefiting yourself (mainly steal tech), so sabotage missions need to be N times better, where N is the number of potential winners.

 

[rkkn]

You do sabotage missions at the cost of not doing missions benefiting yourself (mainly steal tech), so sabotage missions need to be N times better, where N is the number of potential winners.

that is not true. First of all it only needs to be a little better since you only need to bring down players that are actually threatening your victory. Generally this is only one or two civs.

And then sabotage production DOES benefit yourself. You prevent them from building a wonder so that you can get it instead.

Getting hit by every other mission simultaneously pretty much means you're losing the city, which hurts more than losing buildings, which hurts more than losing progress on production.

Only if you're already under siege and having a rough time defending it. If you're at peace just chilling out and have a standing army, you can fight off rebels with pillaged fortifications. Meanwhile sabotage production works to steal your wonder even at peace on the other side of the world, no matter how prepared you are.

 

[azum4roll]

Meanwhile sabotage production works to steal your wonder even at peace on the other side of the world, no matter how prepared you are.

If they manage to have a spy with enough NP in the city you're building the wonder in, that is. This is very situational, and deserves the power.

 

[rkkn]

it doesn't deserve to be stronger than the other options, none of which cost any less NP

 

[Anarcomu]

I'm definitely voting against any proposal which add 'sabotage production' back to the game. That mission was a real pain when you were a target. At one point I even stopped building Wonders in my capital (more productive city) simply because there were a spy which would reset my production every now and then.

EDIT : a Sabotage Production mission which simply reduce output, like rkkn suggested, is totally fine, as long as it does not remove any already made production. Basically, I agree with rkkn's sentiment in this comment :

to add to that, I don't think there should be any spy missions that outright undo things you've done. sabotage production should instead reduce the city's production output (and this reduction should apply to production instant yields as well).
All the other ones are fine, except steal great work. like the faith one is -50% faith per turn. that's fine. Erasing your stockpile of faith would not be fine.
sabotage defenses is also fine (as modified here). makes it harder to defend your city, but that's it. it doesn't like, delete promotions off your units or something.

 

[azum4roll]

I'm definitely voting against any proposal which add 'sabotage production' back to the game. That mission was a real pain when you were a target. At one point I even stopped building Wonders in my capital (more productive city) simply because there were a spy which would reset my production every now and then.

Back then there was no limit to how much production is reset. You could station a spy and keep doing sabotage production and the AI would never finish anything.
But here, you can only remove up to 10 turns of production every 15 turns. During cooldown, you have 15 turns to build the wonder without any interruption.