A Spy Has Been Stumbled Upon (Penalties, Retaliation and Double Agents...)

[JFLNYC]

With the weak opponent, it wasn't needed, because you'd roll over him before the WW got too bad anyway. The bad relations were achievable in a single turn, no matter how good they were at the start of the turn. To top it off, the espionage system meant that you had as many tries as you could pay for to get your spy caught. Then you could insert another rather quickly to regain the ability to investigate cities. In short, it was far too easy to exploit in every meaningful situation.

But that wasn't you original point. You said:

In Civ III, at least, it was easily exploited to provoke a target AI into declaring war on you, so you got the war you wanted without the penalties of being the one to declare. All you had to do was demand something from an AI, keep doing so until he got furious with you, then attempt an espionage mission designed to fail. Boom, war is on and you look like the poor, innocent victim. I played Civ 2, but too long ago for me to remember how well it worked.

All I'm saying is that wasn't so because you couldn't necessarily provoke a war so spies weren't as easily exploitable as you implied.

 

[Solomwi]

Those posts make the same point: the ability to choose the time and place of a war without the designed penalties for doing so made the espionage system the source of an easy exploit. It was so, because if the opponent was so weak that you couldn't provoke the war, he was irrelevant, and the negative effects that the exploit avoided didn't have time to kick in. If the only time you can't use exploit X is when it's meaningless to use it anyway, that doesn't make X any less of an exploit. That was the case here.

 

[Bast]

It's up to you to retaliate! I always ask them for tribute right after this just so they know I'm ticked off. Sometimes I'll just outright attack them!

That's not always convenient for those who wants to play a peaceful game.

The other option is that I have my espionage at 20% which so far as deterred any spies from any activity in my cities but I think they sabotaged a farm.

I don't mind, I just hate the poison water. And "perform counter-espionage" on all of them.

 

[Thalassicus]

It was in Alpha Centauri as well. If you performed some missions and got caught, it counted as an "atrocity" and carried serious international penalties. Attempting to kill millions of people by poisoning the water supply is no small matter.

The UN charter could in turn be repealed or re-instated, allowing you to perform atrocities at will without any negative impact. Using nukes (planet busters) was also considered a "major atrocity" I believe, resulting in declarations of war.

 

[JFLNYC]

Those posts make the same point: the ability to choose the time and place of a war without the designed penalties for doing so made the espionage system the source of an easy exploit. It was so, because if the opponent was so weak that you couldn't provoke the war, he was irrelevant, and the negative effects that the exploit avoided didn't have time to kick in. If the only time you can't use exploit X is when it's meaningless to use it anyway, that doesn't make X any less of an exploit. That was the case here.

The flaw in this logic is that weak opponents weren't necessarily irrelevant. There are many reasons to want a war with a weak opponent (land, resources, route to another opponent, etc.). You couldn't use spies to choose the time and place of the war without declaring it yourself, with the resultant penalties.

 

[Kranden]

Double your pleasure, double your fun, Double your pleasure with double spy....

wait what were we talking about?

 

[JFLNYC]

Stop Spy Spam!!!

 

[Solomwi]

The flaw in this logic is that weak opponents weren't necessarily irrelevant. There are many reasons to want a war with a weak opponent (land, resources, route to another opponent, etc.). You couldn't use spies to choose the time and place of the war without declaring it yourself, with the resultant penalties.

They were irrelevant to the point because you could openly declare war on them, then beat them down without incurring any additional WW. You could kill any units that strayed into your borders, take their cities quickly enough not to accumulate points for ending turns in their borders, minimize the enemy attacking your units, and you were usually fighting with significantly better units, avoiding WW from losses. The bottom line with opponents weak enough not to be able to declare war is that they were too weak for WW to actually penalize you, too. Again, if the only time you can't use an exploit is when you avoid the penalties it avoids anyway, it's no less an exploit.

I tend to agree with you on BtS spy spam, for the record.

 

[TopDog]

Feyds ideas are alrite, however, when you play marathon games at the modern age you capture nearly a spy per turn. A pop-up would therefor get tedious. The simplest option is if the spy is caught +20% espionage points to that city for X turns or if you capture the spy and find where its from +100 espionage points against that civ automatically.

This way there is a deterrent to spamming spies and it also rewards espionage spending (i.e +20% will be more if your sliders already on 10, 20 %)

 

[Big J Money]

As for my alternate ideas...

One of YOUR spies is captured...
*Spend 1XX gold and XXX esp points to extricate your spy quietly 60% chance (guarantees no allegiance if fails)
*Spend XXX esp points to 'silence' the spy before he hemmorages information 80% chance (10% chance of spy flipping sides and giving opponent XXX esp points vs. you)
*"If you are captured our government will deny you ever existed..." (90% chance spy is captured, regular % chance discovered as yours, 1% chance of escape and promotion to Great Spy)

This sounds cool, but there is a problem. Wouldn't this mean the mod couldn't work in multiplayer?

=$=

 

[Innawerkz]

Feyds ideas are alrite, however, when you play marathon games at the modern age you capture nearly a spy per turn. A pop-up would therefor get tedious.

I am feeling unloved. I bring up this exact same issue and offer an alternative suggestion, only to have it repeated a handful of posts later.

The simplest option is if the spy is caught +20% espionage points to that city for X turns or if you capture the spy and find where its from +100 espionage points against that civ automatically.

This way there is a deterrent to spamming spies and it also rewards espionage spending (i.e +20% will be more if your sliders already on 10, 20 %)

The biggest problem with ANY of our implementations is addressing how the AI approaches Espionage. Everyone agrees the AI spams spies - especially JFLNYC (Down with spy spam!!). We can already out-pace the AI in technology by ignoring the Espionage slider. IMO, this idea would essentially have the AI giving you a free Espionage advantage.

The combined AI spy spam will provide too much of a boost. I doubt they would alter their tactics to address this. In fact, with the increased Espionage bonus it would be easier to catch them. The bonus would get bigger, making it easier to catch them, providing a bigger bonus, making it easier to...

This sounds cool, but there is a problem. Wouldn't this mean the mod couldn't work in multiplayer?

Unless all of you have the same 'MOD", you are correct. Multi-player would be unplayable.

 

[leckig]

I wonder when CIV will get to a point, that:

- You catch a (example) german spy
- You nuke one of the german cities to get some sweet revange. Or you cancell a trade deal.
- Germany will learn to stop spying you expecting that they may be sorry after all.

Basically, when will CIV be able to learn from mistakes. I think CIV 6 will.