(7-16) Kidnap Specialists Spy Mission: Cost Drop To 750, Remove Capital Only [Spy Update 4]

[Stalker0]

Host Note: This proposal was passed with a modification - it can't be used in puppet cities.

This is one of a series of proposed tweaks to the Spy system to polish the new version.

Proposal: Reduce the cost of the Kidnap Specialist Spy Mission from 1000 to 750. Remove the requirement that this can only be done in the capital.

Rationale: This mission suffers two problems.
1) Its simply too expensive for its benefit.
2) As a capital only mission, it has heavy competition from other missions. Even at a cheaper cost, its hard to justify using it compared to stronger "capital only" missions.

By removing the capital restriction, we give this mission a whole new niche. It can now be utilized for secondary spies, and you can use it on several cities together to really ramp up your GPP rate in your capital.

Normally capital restrictions exist to ensure that a mission cannot be spammed that would have a major boost or detriment. For example, we don't want a person stealing 3 techs from the tech leader at the same time, or stealing the entire treasury of one city. But for this mission, the GPP reductions are spread across the cities. Having two cities with a -1 GPP isn't really that much more harmful than 1 city.

Removing the restriction will give this mission a tremendous new use case without much impact to the people they are spying against.

 

[hokath]

I like the way this gives more options to people going after the Cultural Victory.

 

[azum4roll]

Capital restrictions are used for non-scaling benefits. Tech steals, treasury steals and +1 GPP are always the same whichever the target city is, so a restriction is added to ensure you don't just pick a random puppet city (pretty much always 0 security) to do it easily.

 

[Legen]

This seems a bit overpowered. You could send all your spies to a faraway or backward civ who can't punish you, and get an Austria-like capital with minimal repercussions. Damn if you're also playing Austria on top of that.

The current Capital restriction at least makes you annoy multiple civs instead to pull that off, so there's a bigger risk attached.

 

[Stalker0]

This seems a bit overpowered. You could send all your spies to a faraway or backward civ who can't punish you, and get an Austria-like capital with minimal repercussions. Damn if you're also playing Austria on top of that.

The current Capital restriction at least makes you annoy multiple civs instead to pull that off, so there's a bigger risk attached.

Think of the cost of that though. How many tech steals or great works are you giving up for those GPP points?

The fact you can do this in far away cities is exatly the point, because right now why would I ever do this in a capital when I have just straight up better missions that I want to do there?

 

[azum4roll]

Is +1 GPP per specialist that underwhelming? It's equivalent to +33% GPP, stacking multiplicatively with other modifiers. If you already have a high GPP rate (like Austria or Civilized Jewelers), you should be actively going for this mission (at 750NP) instead of steals.

You can also use this to harm Austria, if you want to.

 

[Stalker0]

Is +1 GPP per specialist that underwhelming? It's equivalent to +33% GPP, stacking multiplicatively with other modifiers. If you already have a high GPP rate (like Austria or Civilized Jewelers), you should be actively going for this mission (at 750NP) instead of steals.

You can also use this to harm Austria, if you want to.

Its only 15 turns, so the +33% GPP is a misleading example. Yeah its pretty underwhelming.

 

[azum4roll]

Its only 15 turns, so the +33% GPP is a misleading example. Yeah its pretty underwhelming.

Assuming a +50% GPP modifier (Garden + National Monument) and 10 specialists worked (reasonable at late Renaissance), you get 450GPP (15 * 2 * 10 * 150%) from 1500NP. Which is not quite as good as a tech by itself, but if you count the enemy's loss and also other sources of modifiers...

 

[Stalker0]

Assuming a +50% GPP modifier (Garden + National Monument) and 10 specialists worked (reasonable at late Renaissance), you get 450GPP (15 * 2 * 10 * 150%) from 1500NP. Which is not quite as good as a tech by itself, but if you count the enemy's loss and also other sources of modifiers...

But you also have to factor in the delayed benefits. A tech you will gain immediately, whereas these still have to tick to get to a gp, the benefits are spread thinly across many gp so you won’t speed any single one of them up very much…and if the capital isn’t the next one to build that gp it will take even longer to get the benefit

Not to mention the base 15 turns to claim your benefit.

All that delay adds up to weakening the benefit

 

[axatin]

Sponsored.

 

[Recursive]

Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.