Are the advanced spy actions working as intended?

Yeah, what I find quite grating is the gold one. I mean, I have 2000 gold, a enemy spy goes to a city, and steals 1000. What is half of my treasury doing there? I think that for gold or any other yield it should be capped at the yield to substract divided by cities. So if I have 20 cities, the max that can be stolen from one is 100 gold. Could be by population to make it a better representation of city importance. But right now it's quite ridiculous and for many turns I was not able to get any gold at all due to spies in cities in which I was counterspying.

I've got a different idea. How about the cap for gold steal be capped by how much gold that city makes? also if multiple spies steal from the same city, they split that gold amount between the spies, rather then each spy getting the yields the city makes from you. or each spy magically gets the yields of city, but it only effects you once. same with science and other similar actions
 
Found the way to move the function to Future Tech, I think. Time to test it (in TechChanges.sql, you can change it to a different tech that you like in place of Banking).

EDIT: This doesn't seem to be working (at least according to the Science Tree) so I'm going to set the enable to zero and see what happens instead.
If you're using modpack, you have to change everything related to sql/xml in Civ5Units.xml instead. Except text, which is found in the Mongolia file, for some reason.
 
Gold stealing seems the opposite to real life, where poor weak countries are fleeced, whilst rich powerful countries rob them dry.
 
Gold stealing seems the opposite to real life, where poor weak countries are fleeced, whilst rich powerful countries rob them dry.

Civ 5: Robin Hood Edition :lol:

Yeah I'm sure the gold thing is a bug. Not sure why it keeps reoccurring like this.
 
Wow, how hard coded into the game is this function? Is there a way to have an option to turn it off? Or, how many different places does it turn on? I have shut off the logical items and it's still enabled.

If you're using modpack, you have to change everything related to sql/xml in Civ5Units.xml instead. Except text, which is found in the Mongolia file, for some reason.

I don't see the Civ5Units.xml in the mods themselves, which modpack are then in?

EDIT: I shut off the functions in the core table entries and then loaded a save and it was still enabled. This time I will start again from Turn 1 with enabling the disabling and see if that helps. But any other help is greatly appreciated. ;)
 
Any luck? That post by @Gazebo implied that the Advanced Spy Actions were possible to disable, but I tried changing the entries under "-- Blocks advanced actions entirely in a city -- 1 enables" with no effect. Perhaps changing

Code:
UPDATE Technologies
SET UnlocksEspionageAdvancedActions = '0'
WHERE Type = 'TECH_BANKING' AND EXISTS (SELECT * FROM COMMUNITY WHERE Type='COMMUNITY_CORE_BALANCE_UNITS' AND Value= 1 );

and starting from before Banking will prevent the actions from being enabled?

 
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@smorgasborgas so far no luck, I tried doing both of those things and it won't disable. I also tried moving the tech forward with no luck as well. I wish there was an ability to turn it off in options, but I'm thinking that the coding must be too mixed in.
 
I thought I had it when I changed 'BUILDING_POLICE_STATION' and 'BUILDING_ARSENAL' to 'BUILDING_WALLS' in BuildingChanges.sql


Code:
UPDATE Buildings
SET BlockScienceTheft = '1'
WHERE Type = 'BUILDING_WALLS' AND EXISTS (SELECT * FROM COMMUNITY WHERE Type='COMMUNITY_CORE_BALANCE_BUILDINGS' AND Value= 1 );

Code:
UPDATE Buildings
SET BlockGoldTheft = '1'
WHERE Type = 'BUILDING_WALLS' AND EXISTS (SELECT * FROM COMMUNITY WHERE Type='COMMUNITY_CORE_BALANCE_BUILDINGS' AND Value= 1 );

When I loaded a save from 5 turns back during which I had tech stolen 3 times per turn by the same civs from the same city, I replayed those turns with no tech theft at all. It seemed to work for 20 turns or so before it reverted. I am having trouble imagining why it would work for a while and then revert? The BuildingChanges.sql file itself hasn't reverted.

Anyway, I think I'm giving up until this is fixed. It's unplayable when 3 techs are stolen per turn every turn.
 
I'm playing another game on Marathon. I'm in the middle of the pack and I'm still getting targeted by roughly 3 successful Advanced Spy Actions per turn on average. I just have to disable them for now.

To be honest I normally turn spying off as it is to irritating & similar to problems you have. Spy defences never make much difference whether you have them or not. For this version as Spain I am using it, but early days yet, to see how it plays out. The only country will use it is England, & also Greece if going for diplomacy.

I do agree there should be more diplomatic actions against it, as in real life it causes massive friction.

I have started to turn off spying as well. The spy mechanisms have so many flaws in civ5 and there's not much you can do to prevent science/gold/tech stealing until very late game. Very frustrating

I started disabling the VP spy system and using @Tomatekh's Great Spy (Brave New World) mod on Steam and it's been working really well. It's similar to the Civ IV system with an actual spy on the map. England and Statecraft don't balance with it, but besides that the AI seems to use it quite well.
 
It seems to have gotten worse, 4 out of every 5 turns there is a successful assassination AND a successful theft. I am not the point leader nor the warmonger. I have spies in every city and every anti-espionage building available. I like enabling espionage and diplomacy but this is too much. And since nobody else seems to mention this issue it I'm wondering if it's a conflict with another mod?

Spoiler it is constant throughout the game :

civ.png

 
It could be something with Marathon speed somehow making spy actions faster instead of slower.
 
I findstr for "marathon" in the mods file, and there isn't anything about espionage in there, it must be hard coded...
 
Sorry to bump such an old thread, but this problem hasn't been fixed even after all the overhauls. It must just be some multiplier somewhere (not in a config file that I can find) that is making spy actions FASTER rather than slower in Marathon speed. Each turn I have 3-4 successful Advanced Spy actions hit my cities. If it were a bug that would require fundamental changes I would just play with espionage disabled, but it's got to just be a one line change.

I don't have any spy related mods, just unique city states and barbarians evolved.
 
Have you made a bug report since the spy system overhaul?

You're much more likely to see a fix at some point through that system than making a forum post.
 
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