building up intrigue

[ErichRommel]

Still dont fully understand how intrigue is built. So you always choose the highest possible mission to get more intigue? Or do these high missions use up your intrigue and its smarter to do lower missions to build up?

 

[x2Madda]

Each successful mission builds intrigue.

Intrigue looks like this:
1=========100

Suppose you 'establish network' it now looks like this
1=|=======100

That will remain there until the AI places a counterspy which lowers intrigue every turn. Same applies to your cities too.

As far as I can tell each mission builds the same amount of intrigue however if someone could check the XML to confirm, that would be great.

At the moment their is an exploit in that because each spy mission seems to be worth the same about of points for building the meter, you can send a spy to a city and build intrigue by establishing a network over and over again until you hit maximum level.

 

[Fabio1701]

The 'exploit' semester to be the only way to get to level 4 or higher ops, so of they fix it you can stay goodby to worm attacs

 

[x2Madda]

The 'exploit' semester to be the only way to get to level 4 or higher ops, so of they fix it you can stay goodby to worm attacs

Can say goodbye to worm attacks already because it takes so long to reach intrigue Lv5 without the exploit that it seemed like a pipe dream until the exploit was discovered then on top of that you need to get to Harmony Lv11 which at that point you(they) can create buildings that give -2 maximum espionage level.

With Coup being the only unlocked Lv5 ability from the start of the game and it also being the best ability, it seems they got it all wrong. Coup should be unlocked, the rest are major inconviences but not by the time you reach them in the affinity tree.

The spy system in general needs tweaking, I think they don't need to rebuild it but a shuffling of numbers and removing establish network, making it a default action when a spy is in a city (which it probably should have been in the first place).

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I can't get to lvl5 with exploit, AIs keep assigning counter agents

 

[Fabio1701]

I have been trying the exploit now and.... OMG IS IT BORING! just an ass load of clicking. this needs tweaking.

 

[Quineloe]

Intrigue is really the worst new concept of the game. Coup is incredibly powerful, and it even works on Capitals. With a teleporter Satellite, you can instantly reinforce the captured city with a large army.

So obviously it needs to be counterable. If there was a sure way to do this, it would be overpowered.

However, a counterspy is so incredibly strong, all you'll ever get to do is Siphon energy. All the other highend abilities are just out the window at this point. Intrigue is really only good for embarrassing a new player who doesn't get a Spy Agency (I'm amazed you can tell who has the spy agency from the diplomacy menu. It's a bloody SPY agency, it wouldn't broadcast its existence to the entire world. This is almost as stupid as being able to check how much research per turn someone is generating)

There's also standard buildings that prevent any detrimental abilities by hard capping intrigue at 3.

The whole intrigue system needs to be redone from scratch. I don't really see anything worth salvaging there. The game in general needs to be far more conservative with throwing information around. I'm a huge opponent of the demographics window. If you want to know how much military someone has, spy on him. Don't look it up on a chart.

The only decent part about the spy is the detailed city info window you get after establishing a network, and that part is actually broken, I usually don't get to see that window on 1 out of 3 cities.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

It's the best new feature, they just did a bad job balancing it.

 

[ErichRommel]

Actually you can reach lvl 5 with no exploit and just selecting always the highest option, prooved in my game yesterday. Failed the coup though Slingshotting to computing with kozlov rocks

 

[Fabio1701]

Actually you can reach lvl 5 with no exploit and just selecting always the highest option, prooved in my game yesterday. Failed the coup though Slingshotting to computing with kozlov rocks

good to know. it should indeed be that doing a high level op will increase intrigue more than doing many low level ops.

 

[aguliondew]

The difficult of the op varies depending on if the AI has a counter spy and if you have the increase chance to success when spies are at HQ. Been stealing technology a lot and it is easy to do unless their is a counter spy their. Then it become a moderate chance to succeed.

 

[Lunchmoney]

I've not been able to get above Intrigue level 3 yet....

 

[m15a]

I've got a spy up to level 5, too. I think I did each option in order. Maybe stole technology twice. Might have helped that I destroyed the rest of Polystralia through war, though.

Is there a way of knowing whether there's a counter spy or that anti-spy building in a city?

 

[CaptainPatch]

Is there a way of knowing whether there's a counter spy or that anti-spy building in a city?

The counter-spy you can see at the bottom of the city report, as well as the counter-spy's level (if one is present). You might have missed seeing the city report because it pops up directly over that city. The catch is that you can check for counter-spies _only_ in those cities that you have agents operating.

Not sure how to check for the building.

 

[m15a]

Thanks, CaptainPatch!

 

[saraswati]

Hmm, still having trouble building up intrigue past level three, even with trying over and over on the highest level intrigue mission available to my spy.

I'm wondering whether or not there is any effect on intrigue buildup if your spy gets caught or detected on a previous mission? Also, if my intrigue level is at three in a city and I reassign a spy there, is there any advantage to performing a level 1 or 2 intrigue mission in order to get an easy success? Or should I just keep plugging away at the highest level intrigue mission available?

Thanks if anyone can explain this mechanic.