BtS Espionage - Need some help please

[Blim]

Heyall….long-time lurker, first-time poster here….

I’ve only recently began playing BtS and I need some clarifications on the new espionage aspects that have been incorporated into the game. I’ve browsed these forums looking for some answers, though not extensively, and found a couple, but there are still several things I do not understand.

What I’d like to do is provide my current understanding and then others can tell me where I am wrong, provide some explanations and give me additional tips on how to combat espionage.

1. I station a Spy in each of my cities. This Spy will supposedly prevent any enemy espionage from occuring in my cities. How effective is this, or are they mostly useless and is it better to use them actively in enemy territory?

2. Mines, farms, towns, etc.. are regularly being destroyed by enemy Spies. Do I need to station a Spy on each of my worked squares? This seems highly impracticable to do, to say the least. Rebuilding destroyed improvements is reminding me of the whack-a-mole aspect of pollution in Civ III and is rather annoying.

3. Do Spies on the borders of my territory detect enemy Spies infiltrating through my lines? I am wondering if setting up a network of Spies along my borders would be effective…??

4. I assume the more EP points I have over another civ makes their espionage success rate plummet. So if I pump more EP points into a particular Leader, the success of their infiltration activity will much more improbable. Is this correct?

5. What does the little red Spy icon on the bottom right-hand Leader list represent? Some of the Leaders have it, and sometimes they don’t.

6. Where is the Kill Spy option that is mentioned in the manual? It says it will "Kill all spies within your spy's visibility". Is a Spy's visibility distance simply a neighboring square?

7. How do you get the mission “Spies Cannot Enter Our Borders” that is mentioned in the manual? Have I just not accumulated enough EP points yet?

8. Here are some numbers from my current game I do not understand: On my Leader List it indicates that Catherine’s Ratio with me is 2179/6071. Yet on the Espionage Screen (Cntrl-E) I have a discount for Catherine of 98%. How does this ratio correspond to this discount?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[dirtyparrot]

Welcome Blim, I'll try to answer most of your questions.

1) Stationing a spy in each city does prevent enemy espionage in that city.

2) It would be a complete waste of time stationing spies on every mine, farm, and cottage. At most I might station a spy on a key resource. Instead of building spies build troops or infrastructure.

3) Not unless the spy finishes its turn on the same tile as your spy iirc

4) That's partially correct. The more espionage points you have again a particular civ the less missions costs for you (there are other ways of reducing cost such as having your spy remain stationary for 5 turns). The points added over the entire game to calculate cost (so it will count already used espionage points when coming up with the total).

5) It means that you have more espionage points allocated to them than they do to you. You can hover the mouse over that particular leader on the scoreboard to see the exact amounts.

6) That does not exist

7) That does not exist either

 

[Fabio GP addict]

1. I station a Spy in each of my cities. This Spy will supposedly prevent any enemy espionage from occuring in my cities. How effective is this, or are they mostly useless and is it better to use them actively in enemy territory?

- A normal spy unit does nothing to prevent enemy spy's actions by stationing in your cities. [edit: I'm wrong, your spies help thwarting opponent's spies, I completely forgot about it !]

The only [edit: best] way to effectively use them is to reach an enemy city, which is close, has open border agreement with you, and run a spy mission using the accumulated Espionage Points. If you want to slow down (not stop) opponent's spies you have to chose the counterespionage one. You can also steal gold, steal techs (very important), destroy buildings, increase unhelathiness or unhappiness, influence civics or religion (very nice when aiming at diplo wins) and more.

2. Mines, farms, towns, etc.. are regularly being destroyed by enemy Spies. Do I need to station a Spy on each of my worked squares? This seems highly impracticable to do, to say the least. Rebuilding destroyed improvements is reminding me of the whack-a-mole aspect of pollution in Civ III and is rather annoying.

There is nothing you can do against that directly, you are probably accumulating less EPs than some of your opponents (check this by mousing over AI names in the scoreboard). Increase them with proper buildings, running spy specialists in cities, with the espionage slider and with the espionage advisor, where you can assign your EPs to each enemy.

3. Do Spies on the borders of my territory detect enemy Spies infiltrating through my lines? I am wondering if setting up a network of Spies along my borders would be effective…??

Absolutely useless ! Spies can only run missions or pillage enemy improvements.

4. I assume the more EP points I have over another civ makes their espionage success rate plummet. So if I pump more EP points into a particular Leader, the success of their infiltration activity will much more improbable. Is this correct?

That's the way to do it. The problem is to understand who is running espionage against you.

5. What does the little red Spy icon on the bottom right-hand Leader list represent? Some of the Leaders have it, and sometimes they don’t.

It represents whether you have an Espionage Points advantage or not towards that leader.

6. Where is the Kill Spy option that is mentioned in the manual? It says it will "Kill all spies within your spy's visibility". Is a Spy's visibility distance simply a neighboring square?

never heard about it, if you find out something useful come back on this

7. How do you get the mission “Spies Cannot Enter Our Borders” that is mentioned in the manual? Have I just not accumulated enough EP points yet?

I also have doubts on this. Never seen those missions in my games ...

8. Here are some numbers from my current game I do not understand: On my Leader List it indicates that Catherine’s Ratio with me is 2179/6071. Yet on the Espionage Screen (Cntrl-E) I have a discount for Catherine of 98%. How does this ratio correspond to this discount?

She has 2179 points versus you, you have 6071 against her. I don't know the exact formula but this surely leads to a high discount.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

The discount you have against her doesn't depend on how many EPs you have against her, but how many EPs you both have spent against anyone during the whole game.

 

[Fabio GP addict]

The discount you have against her doesn't depend on how many EPs you have against her, but how many EPs you both have spent against anyone during the whole game.

Do you mean by this that the more you run missions in foreign cities (= spend points) the more you get a discount ? I thought this was also a factor but not the only one.

And so, why should you increase your EP's towards your selected targets ? The advantage in accumulated points has no effect on mission costs ?

 

[cripp7]

something you should read is Settled Great Spy by MadScientist, Espionage Guide 1.0, Espionage and it's uses

Those, plus Mad's Mao game (link's in his article), should help you along.

 

[naterator]

Regarding question 7, i haven't heard of such a thing, but i noticed this:

	<Define>
		<DefineName>USE_SPIES_NO_ENTER_BORDERS</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

In the GlobalDefines XML. I tried changing the value to 1, but it had no effect on spies crossing borders. Anyone know what it means?

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Do you mean by this that the more you run missions in foreign cities (= spend points) the more you get a discount ? I thought this was also a factor but not the only one.

Spending here means generating points. So, if you build a Jail, you increase your spenditure, even if you're isolated. I once played (didn't finish because it was a Large map) one of madscientist's open RPCs where we were Monte in the new world and I built the Great Wall and settled the spy. When I met the AIs I had a lot of discounts because I'd spent (generated) more EPs than them.

And so, why should you increase your EP's towards your selected targets ? The advantage in accumulated points has no effect on mission costs ?

Only to be able to perform the missions and also because of the passive effects, such as city visibilty and see what they're researching.