Bring Back the Espionage Tools of the Past!

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searcheagle

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Civs 1 & 2 had many (fun) tools that Civ3 left out. I would like to see them included once again.

Civ I
1. Inspect City (Retained)
2. Establish Embassy (Retained)
3. Steal Technology (Retained)
4. Industrial Sabotage (Retained)
5. Incite A Revolt (Retained)
6. Meet With King (Retained)
7. Bribe Armies [Units]

For more information how the features worked in Civ 1, go to http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/manual/civ1_man.htm#3c

Civ II
1. Sabotage Improvements
2. Sabotage Specific Improvements
3. Observation Range of 2
4. Bribe Unit (Only if the units is by itself)
5. Ignore Zones of Control (If you have Civ 2, you know what this)
6. Deport Spies
7. Inspect City (Retained)
8.Establish Embassy (Retained)
9. Steal Advance
10. Steal Specific Advance
11. incite A Revolt (Retained)
12. Poison the Water supply
13. Implant a nuclear device.

For more information on Spies In Civ II, go to http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/reference/Civ2manual.zip

*Note: One of the incite revolts does not turn the city over to you, rather it starts a civil war.

I would like to see them bring back the spy options that fell between the cracks, be brought back.
 
Actually, they made the game overly easy. I lost interest in Civ2 when I discovered how easy it was to crank up my economy and send out my army of spies and diplomats to buy the enemy outright -- troops and cities, and the weaker the city, the lower the price. It made it so conquest through warfare was counterproductive to winning the game, and that was the most entertaining part. Acquiring cities through manipulative means in Civ3 was much more difficult.
 
i was happy to see spy units back- but a spy's function is more along the line of sabotage, assassination and espionage- don't see how a spy could make - let's say Nashville- join Russia regardless of that spy's actions - i can however- see that spy stealing a new tech from lockheed or something-
 
I would prefer that. Leave the loss of a city to either come from some form of controlable (sp?) internal turmoil (ala rioting due to poor happiness or something) or external forces like that enemy tank army on the hill. Don't make cities buyable. Please!
 
Therin lies a key problem. In Civ2, spies were too powerful for their cost whilst, like caravans, adding a ridiculous level of micromanagement to the game. In civ3, they took the right step in abstracting Espionage but-at the same time-made them too expensive and too powerless to be worth the effort. Now, unfortunately, it seems like they have swung back towards civ2 in many ways.
Personally, I think a combo of a civ2/civ3 method might work best. In such a system, you don't build spies, you instead convert your idle citizens to 'Intelligence' specialists. Each specialist gives you a certain number of 'Intelligence Points', which can be further boosted by the investment of money and the construction of Intelligence Improvements.
Now, at this point the system can go in one of two ways. Either (a) all espionage/sabotage missions occur almost 'automatically' based on point allocations or (b) after you successfully plant a spy in a city, all acts of sabotage (not espionage) are performed by the player on a mission-by-mission basis.
If (a) then your Espionage screen is where you determine what % of your intelligence points you wish to allocate to different nations and different missions types (i.e. Counterintelligence, Sabotage and Espionage). The number of points determines both the frequency of missions and the base chance of success.
If (b) then a player uses the espionage screen to first plant a spy in a city then-after that-he recieves frequent intelligence regarding that city (how frequent depends on how many intelligence points you have). In addition, the player can select sabotage missions to perform, with the number of missions per turn depending on how many spies you have planted in a city. The chance of success will depend on your intelligence points, the number of unused agents you have in a city, and the number of enemy agents in the target city and how many intelligence points your opponent has at his disposal.
I personally prefer option (a) myself, as it has an almost 'set-and forget' approach, which allows you to dictate broad Intelligence policy, rather than individual missions-whilst also retaining the appropriate amount of game balance (i.e. not to weak, not too powerful). Even (b), though, in spite of the Micromanagement incurred, retains the best elements of both the Civ2 and Civ3 systems whilst at the same time ensuring Game balance.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
Option A is great Aussie_Lurker.

Just one question... how would it work when an enemy nation caught you?
 
Well, with option (a), there are 2 forms of failure when it comes to Espionage/Sabotage. The first is when the RNG is higher than your unmodified success chance-and simply represents a lack of opportunity or success to perform the mission. The player would not be informed of such failures. The other form of failure is where the RNG is lower than the unmodified success chance, but higher than your chance when modified by your opponents Counterintelligence levels. In the case of Sabotage, this will result in an operative being caught in the act-which will cause you to lose Intelligence Points and possibly spark an international incident. In the case of Espionage, however, it gives the opposing player a chance to 'Expose' or 'Subvert' the spy. If the player chooses Exposure, then the result is much like that for failed sabotage (though maybe not as extreme). However, if Subversion is selected, then it means that the all future Intelligence operations operate at a large penalty and-on a failed Espionage mission-there is the chance the agent will report false information (i.e. info planted by the enemy government).
There is another type of 'Failure', and this is when one of your spies is exposed by enemy counterintelligence-when not engaged in a mission himself. Here, the choice for the enemy is between expulsion (but no incident) or subversion.
Hope that makes sense.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
Aussie, i really like this idea for espionage, particularly option A. Someone could allocate intelligence points for the home front, ie. uncovering foreign spies in your territory. that way you could have just a defensive intelligence agency, protecting your interests, or you could broaden your sights and try to steal from one or multiple opponents. I think you have something here. It isn't too complicated, which is really nice, as a lot of the ideas that have recently been put forth are almost 2 pages of text long, this is sweet and simple.

If it doesn't come with the game, i wonder if this could be modded. Very cool idea. I read a lot of your posts, keep it up. :goodjob:
 
I just read a post, in general discussion, about kiling great people. Atrebates posted a neat idea. he suggested that intelligence operatives be able to assassinate Great People. I think this is a great idea, lending more unpredictability in when you use your Great People, and significantly increasing the importance of both Great People, because they can be assassinated, and Intelligence, as you will atleast know when an opponent has a Great Person, and you might be able to cripple then by taking it out at a critical point in the game.
 
Just use gold instead of introducing the concept of intelligence points. That way you can budget a massive espionage operation if you choose, or have no intelligence operation at all.
 
The good thing about Option A-Peanut-is that I have seen a system very similar to this working very well indeed in 'Birth of the Federation' (Civ meets Star Trek:TNG!) It was truly brilliant-the best thing about that game in fact-for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because it was %-based allocation, you didn't have to keep going back and changing your allocations due to changes in your number of Intelligence Points. Also, if your Counterintelligence was especially good, your operatives would actually come to you asking if you wanted to Implicate another nation for the attack you just performed ;)!

As for missions, I think assassinating and bribing Great People would be fantastic, as would Sabotage of city and tile improvements, and sabotage of ongoing production. Also, stealing gold or generating mutinies would be good. Basically, there are a whole heap of missions which would be good-its just that the CPU would determine which ones to perform based on whats there to steal or sabotage.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
 
fantabulous, that was a silly word. But yes, i think the percentile system is great, and the point system, independent from gold, by dedicating civilians, or building structures, and then allocating points is a great idea.
 
Spies are nice...

But if Civ4-spies can buy my city for 150 gold like in Civ2, I won't play this game. I hated it, when some ***** civ sent out spies and bought my cities when I could've wiped them from the planet...
 
Yeah, I like the intelligence option suggested here. But my big worry is that espionage might take up too much time when playing- distracting you from other pursuits.
However, its good system that looks like it probably won't suffer that problem, my only concern would be managing intelligence specialists, switching in preparation for ops. How about strucures for boosting intelligence output, either small wonders (like MI5, or national intelligence agency... whatever) or city improvements
 
Civ commodities are fungible. Trade can be converted into gold, gold can be converted into shields, etc. How do these intelligence points fit into that model? There needs to be a system for converting them to other civ commodities. That is why I suggested doing away with them entirely and simply using gold. I can understand food units. I can understand trade units. I can even understand shields as an abstraction for labor. I don't understand intelligence points intuitively.

Dedicating a citizen or building improvements are interesting ideas. I suggest those only work for counter-intelligence (CI) operations, for hopefully obvious reasons. Both the citizen CI agent and the improvement could augment the overall CI budget in their own city.

Let's suppose you are spending enough gold each turn to CI to have a 30% chance of finding an enemy spy. Having a CI specialist in a city might raise the chance of that to 35%. Alternately, having a Counter-Intelligence Field Office (needs a better name) might raise that to 40%. The advantage is that you can get a quick grasp of what the costs are, as that citizen could be working a tile or serving as an entertainer, while you could have used the production and maintenance money for something else. The Intelligence Agency small wonder would increase both your espionage and counter-espionage abilities.

You should be able to conduct espionage operations from the beginning of the game, rather than having to discover a technology for it. Some technologies and improvements make a civ more resistant to espionage, while others increase the ability to conduct operations against another civ. Furthermore, since your tax revenues increase over time, you can also increase your intelligence budget.

I think most espionage and CI operations should be automatic rolls by the game engine. The player's involvement is indirect in that the player controls the budget, improvements, small wonders, and (possibly) specialists. Acquiring techs, military information, etc. would happen randomly according to the previously described mechanism. Direct player involvement would come when seeking specific information, performing sabotage operations, and the like, and getting notified when an enemy operation has been defeated with knowledge of the perpetrator.

Vilati Timmadar said:
Spies are nice...

But if Civ4-spies can buy my city for 150 gold like in Civ2, I won't play this game. I hated it, when some ***** civ sent out spies and bought my cities when I could've wiped them from the planet...
Click to expand...

That's not a flaw in espionage as a concept, but espionage as it was implemented in that game. Furthermore, a proper emphasis (in the game design) on culture, ethnicity, and religion should make it hard to buy and keep cities unless your hold on them was tenuous to begin with.
 
Aussie_Lurker said:
Therin lies a key problem. In Civ2, spies were too powerful for their cost whilst, like caravans, adding a ridiculous level of micromanagement to the game. In civ3, they took the right step in abstracting Espionage but-at the same time-made them too expensive and too powerless to be worth the effort. Now, unfortunately, it seems like they have swung back towards civ2 in many ways.
Personally, I think a combo of a civ2/civ3 method might work best. In such a system, you don't build spies, you instead convert your idle citizens to 'Intelligence' specialists. Each specialist gives you a certain number of 'Intelligence Points', which can be further boosted by the investment of money and the construction of Intelligence Improvements.
Now, at this point the system can go in one of two ways. Either (a) all espionage/sabotage missions occur almost 'automatically' based on point allocations or (b) after you successfully plant a spy in a city, all acts of sabotage (not espionage) are performed by the player on a mission-by-mission basis.
If (a) then your Espionage screen is where you determine what % of your intelligence points you wish to allocate to different nations and different missions types (i.e. Counterintelligence, Sabotage and Espionage). The number of points determines both the frequency of missions and the base chance of success.
If (b) then a player uses the espionage screen to first plant a spy in a city then-after that-he recieves frequent intelligence regarding that city (how frequent depends on how many intelligence points you have). In addition, the player can select sabotage missions to perform, with the number of missions per turn depending on how many spies you have planted in a city. The chance of success will depend on your intelligence points, the number of unused agents you have in a city, and the number of enemy agents in the target city and how many intelligence points your opponent has at his disposal.
I personally prefer option (a) myself, as it has an almost 'set-and forget' approach, which allows you to dictate broad Intelligence policy, rather than individual missions-whilst also retaining the appropriate amount of game balance (i.e. not to weak, not too powerful). Even (b), though, in spite of the Micromanagement incurred, retains the best elements of both the Civ2 and Civ3 systems whilst at the same time ensuring Game balance.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Click to expand...

I like the Aussie's Ideas on many levels.
First off- Simple.
2. No micromanagement-not required to do something about it
3. abstract-player does not have to manage the details
4. control-control of outcomes and goals.
5. ability to change the odds of an outcome.

More later.
 
They should bring back bribing units, poisioning water supplies and planting nuclear blast. These are all realistic and fair
 
yes...but the missions shouldnt be quite as expensive as they were in civ3
 
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