City visibility inconsistency?

[6K Man]

I don't think I've seen this question answered anywhere else, so hopefully I'm not missing anything obvious here, BUT:

I seem to be experiencing some weirdness when viewing certain AI cities in BtS. Now, as I recall, you used to be able to get city visibility in Vanilla Civ4 through owning the shrine to match a religion in the target city. And that this was removed in favour of allowing city visibility as a passive espionage ability - get enough EPs, and all their cities are viewable (as opposed to "Investigate city", which has a higher EP threshold).

Anyway, I digress. Why is it that I can view some of Wang Kon's cities (Pusan, Wonsan) and not others (Seoul, Pyongyang)?

Spoiler :

Also, note that I do NOT have enough EPs to get City Visibility, according to the Espionage screen:

Spoiler :

Any ideas as to what's going on?

 

[6K Man]

Oh - I should add that I don't have any units in his cities, nor have I recently overflown them, or anything like that (to my knowledge anyway).

 

[ripple01]

You don't have enough espionage points to view Seoul, but if you click on Pusan or Wonsan on the Espionage screen I think you'll see that you have enough points to view those cities. Different cities take different amounts of espionage points to view.

Cheers,
ripple01

 

[6K Man]

Ah. I guess that falls into the "you learn something every day" category.

I guess the differences are due to the presence of spies, buildings, etc?

 

[Ghpstage]

I think it also includes the things that make active missions cheaper too i.e distance from your palace, shared religion, trade routes

 

[PieceOfMind]

I think it also includes the things that make active missions cheaper too i.e distance from your palace, shared religion, trade routes

Bingo.

Both the passive and (active?) espionage missions share the same ways of cost reductions, at least as far as I can tell. Someone might like to confirm this though. The capital is often the hardest city to get visibility for.

The shared religion, trade routes, and open borders are pretty big factors too.

It has nothing to do with the presence of spies or units.

 

[r_rolo1]

Indeed, piece of mind, espionage modifiers apply to both passive and active missions.

P.S You forgot having the shrine of a religion present in a city as a cheapening factor