Better Espionage

[baseballfan45]

Spys in Civ3 suck. its easier and way less costly to have a full scale war. I RARELY use spys. Civ 4 needs A way better system for spying.

 

[Phoenix]

I agree. And the terrorist element must be included (possibly as a spy mission that can only be performed by certain governments) - how can people cliam that terrorists shouldn't be included - they are a huge part of the current world order and for anyone saying that they would be offended I say this - yes terrorists have killed a lot of innosent civilians (and we are all upset and remorsful about that) but bombers and tanks have killed a lot more people and nobody would dream of objecting against them.

 

[warpstorm]

I wholeheartedly agree about espionage (including the old dirty tricks department). This is an aspect of Civ3 that was too expensive for the value. You can tweak it in the editor, though. The AI will use it too.

 

[Kyborgi]

Agreed. And terrorists should be available to every government, being much cheaper for some and causing unhappiness/rioting if found out that democratic governments are supporting it if certain factors aren't filled.

 

[Arathorn]

Spies are quite valuable, under the right circumstances. I use tech stealing from spies in the vast majority of my games. Now, the fact that spying is only effective/cheaper than buying on the upper levels is a problem, I would agree....

Propaganda, while much more expensive than war, can be an effective tool. It has its limitations (very strong ones, granted), but I wouldn't call it completely useless. I certainly prefer it slightly underpowered to way overpowered, a la Civ2.

I would argue that Civ3's spying system is a huge leap forward from Civ2.

OTOH, I also agree 100% that it could use improvements. In the 1/3 new, 1/3 old, 1/3 improved model, I'd put this in the 1/3 improved area. Don't throw it all out and do something new but a few small changes to make it better.

My $.02,
Arathorn

 

[dh_epic]

I agree that espionage needs to be better. A few quick things.

- put the espionage and diplomacy screen in one of the main civ screens. for a team that claims to put a lot of emphasis on good UI, they seem to ignore one of the most important axioms: consistency (why do i trigger one set of functions from a hotkey / menu, and another set of functions from clicking on a special icon on one specific city?)

- democracies should be victim to propaganda, absolutely... even if it's to a lesser effect, or if it's more expensive

- it should be possible to instigate a civil war or revolution

- it should be possible to sell weapons illegally to start war between people you are peaceful with

- terrorists. they're not usually FROM a nation, which is why George Bush can claim that the geneva convention doesn't apply to them and he can punish them as he sees fit. (a loophole, since he argues they're not part of any nation.) as such, funding terrorism would have to be done not by creating units, but selling weapons to unhappy or resisting citizens in another civ ... or by taking "secret" control of barbarians, in modern form.

 

[warpstorm]

Civ3's UI had major problems. They never put an emphasis on it.

 

[Scrooge]

Agreed. Civ3 Espionage sux big time. I dream of them putting back the thrilling Civ2 revamped spies instead of some dead >uncover spy< option buried somewhere under a menu of menu.

 

[baseballfan45]

i think you should also be able to stage a coup

 

[Hygro]

One thing I always wished in civ3 espionage is that I could right click a city and select "investigate city"

I hope in civ4 it's simple in this sense.