Apollo OCC domination - No war, only coups.

[ggmoyang]

Flipping capital is fine, the problem is easy intrigue buildup with Establish Network exploit and counterintelligence not scaling with speeds.

 

[Moon Pine]

Establish Network, move your spy and repeat to build up intrigue fast.

Genius! I think this is the core of the game-breaking issue!
I've never had a chance to try the radiation bomb or the worm attack. Thanks for the tip I'll try out before they fix it.

 

[kingsbury]

Flipping capital is fine

I disagree, I think that needs to be changed or made far more difficult.

 

[sprang]

How about a mechanic where you can't repeat a mission in a city within, say... 40 turns.

So you can't just spam Steal Energy over and over. You at least have to move to another city.

 

[ggmoyang]

I disagree, I think that needs to be changed or made far more difficult.

It is already hard and it's impossible to do in city with surveillance web.

How about a mechanic where you can't repeat a mission in a city within, say... 40 turns.

So you can't just spam Steal Energy over and over. You at least have to move to another city.

I agree if that applied only to establish network.

 

[sprang]

I agree if that applied only to establish network.

40 turns from end of mission means if you steal energy, you can steal science, then tech, then try energy again. Or go to another city, Est Network, steal energy there, and keep moving. You just can't camp on the easy ones.

Or, if they fix the HQ "Nat Sec Projects", there could be a "Advanced Infiltration Training" that keeps agents at home to speed up the time to re-attempt a mission in a city. Like each agent at home knocks 25% off the re-attempt time.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Yeah, I don't think flipping capitals should be allowed. I didn't even know the trick with establish network, just done the usual, establish network > syphon energy > syphon science > flip capital, bang, Chinese capital is mine.

 

[aguliondew]

This makes spies useful and a fun way to play the game. Otherwise we would be back to stealing tech. Instead of gold/science/units.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah figures. I saw this in my arc LP and mentioned the boosted intrigue from establishing a network. Even on standard speed, I got almost 1 full intrigue level per establish.

It seems an easy fix for this exploit, so hopefully it'll be in the first big patch. Just make it so you can't reestablish a network with a particular city for a certain number of turns from the last time you successfully did it.

 

[s0nny80y]

If the AI doesn't declare war on you for a coup on any of their cities, I think this is broken...

 

[atc_chief]

This may be slightly OT, but you seem to be an espionage pro so I'll ask anyway

How does intrigue increase in general terms? Does city size mean that spying is more likely to be successful, hence higher intrigue?

Once I build the spy station (or whatever it's called that allows you to start spying), some cities already have an intrigue level. However, some cities never seem to rise in intrigue. Is it necessary to spend on research and culture perks to get cities to intrigue 4?

 

[s0nny80y]

The Recon project helps especially when you only have one agent in the field and the rest in HQ, thus increasing the success of your operation.

Spy specific buildings help as well as the presence of other foreign operatives in the target city.

 

[ggmoyang]

This may be slightly OT, but you seem to be an espionage pro so I'll ask anyway

How does intrigue increase in general terms? Does city size mean that spying is more likely to be successful, hence higher intrigue?

Once I build the spy station (or whatever it's called that allows you to start spying), some cities already have an intrigue level. However, some cities never seem to rise in intrigue. Is it necessary to spend on research and culture perks to get cities to intrigue 4?

Intrigue goes up with successful ops.
City size have no effect.
Intrigue is shared among all players.
A counter intelligence agent will lower intrigue set amount per turn. Since it's not scaled by game speed, getting higher intrigue level is easy in quick speed.

 

[syderbob]

Thanks it worked,

quick speed , apollo, small map (6), protean, extra worker, +2 science, one city. Bee lined for +40% intrigue. Turn 95 domination victory. Probably could push it faster.

>>>> to add to this though, I tried this in a standard quick speed game I was playing and I could not get one capitol past 3 stars no matter how much I tried. although I only tried to start doing this at around turn 67