Countering Spies

Thanks la fayette.

One thing has come to mind though. ElephantU mentioned, as I suspected, that there's no upkeep on dip/spy. Since CIV2 doesn't have capitalization for quite a long time, to a limited degree it may at times be beneficial to build these units just to disband them for some build somewhere. Normally people disband the obsolete fighting units at one stage or another for this sort of thing, and I imagine that there are people who purposely build old units just to disband them in a better time (not wasting pruduction therefore), but do dip/spy get the same return for disbanding them as regular units? I've never noticed what regular units get (half the original cost back?). Of course the benefit here is obvious if there's no upkeep as indeed there is not, and if the return ratio is the same as regular units when disbanding. There's also the added bonus that these units can get to specific cities much easier for disbanding.

If all this is true, the only disadvantages I can think of for producing dip/spy in a city which has nothing useful to produce, is that the miltary doesn't look larger to other civs, plus of course they're almost useless to actually do any fighting compared to regular units.
 
If you believe spies are "useless for actual fighting", you are using them incorrectly. The spy is the most dangerous unit in the game! With a bag of gold in its pocket, it can "defeat" a high-flying stealth bomber, a rampaging tank, or the unweary battleship that stops too close to a loaded transport or to the land.

When you disband a dip/spy in a city, you get 1/2 its cost (15 shields) in your production box.
 
Charles 22 said:
Thanks la fayette.

One thing has come to mind though. ElephantU mentioned, as I suspected, that there's no upkeep on dip/spy. Since CIV2 doesn't have capitalization for quite a long time, to a limited degree it may at times be beneficial to build these units just to disband them for some build somewhere. Normally people disband the obsolete fighting units at one stage or another for this sort of thing, and I imagine that there are people who purposely build old units just to disband them in a better time (not wasting pruduction therefore), but do dip/spy get the same return for disbanding them as regular units? I've never noticed what regular units get (half the original cost back?). Of course the benefit here is obvious if there's no upkeep as indeed there is not, and if the return ratio is the same as regular units when disbanding. There's also the added bonus that these units can get to specific cities much easier for disbanding.

If all this is true, the only disadvantages I can think of for producing dip/spy in a city which has nothing useful to produce, is that the miltary doesn't look larger to other civs, plus of course they're almost useless to actually do any fighting compared to regular units.

Unless you have no open trade commodities and have built every wonder, then when in doubt, build a caravan/freight. Or at least a settler to found another city. Or something. Rarely does it pay off to build normal units as sheild storage devices. The only times I will do this is (probably in D+n games) when I have not learned trade and can't build anything useful yet, I will sometimes build dips to later be disbanded into a wonder. I picked that up from watching a succession game where someone wiser than me (For some reason I'm thinking either Smash or SG1, but I could be wrong) called them the Poor Man's Caravan. Once you have trade, I'm hard-pressed to think of why you wouldn't build vans - they also have no support, at WORST you get the 50% sheild return of other units if you disband them, but more likely they are worth much more either delivered or at least put toward wonders.
 
TimTheEnchanter said:
Unless you have no open trade commodities and have built every wonder, then when in doubt, build a caravan/freight. Or at least a settler to found another city. Or something. Rarely does it pay off to build normal units as sheild storage devices. The only times I will do this is (probably in D+n games) when I have not learned trade and can't build anything useful yet, I will sometimes build dips to later be disbanded into a wonder. I picked that up from watching a succession game where someone wiser than me (For some reason I'm thinking either Smash or SG1, but I could be wrong) called them the Poor Man's Caravan. Once you have trade, I'm hard-pressed to think of why you wouldn't build vans - they also have no support, at WORST you get the 50% sheild return of other units if you disband them, but more likely they are worth much more either delivered or at least put toward wonders.

I agree with you to some extent, but at this point, as my games usually go, the spy is more practical. For one thing because I'm pretty sure every unit gets 50% return on disbands, and for another because I'm guessing that spies are more inexpensive, therefore more flexible. Of course if it's true they're cheaper, there would be a time when you might get sick of a great many cheap units and would rather cash them in and start building more expensive cashflow units just so they don't accumulate enough to get annoying.
 
Ace said:
If you believe spies are "useless for actual fighting", you are using them incorrectly. The spy is the most dangerous unit in the game! With a bag of gold in its pocket, it can "defeat" a high-flying stealth bomber, a rampaging tank, or the unweary battleship that stops too close to a loaded transport or to the land.

When you disband a dip/spy in a city, you get 1/2 its cost (15 shields) in your production box.

The way my games usually go, bribing units is very impractical simply because I'm not a big money storer. The few times I try it I'm amazed it costs so much for one lousy unit. Seems a tremedous waste to me. I guess there's limited situations where blowing so much money is a good desperation move, but I've never seen once where I tried it and it wasn't asking for twice what I had in the treasury total. Seems the sabotaging a unit would work far better than that. I have used that a bit, but as I'm new to it I haven't really analysed too deeply whether it's such a good move. I just used a few to sabotage simply because the modest amount of spies I had built up, and that only for trying to counter the sabotage of enemy spies (which of course accomplishes nothing), didn't have a whole lot of purpose at that point in the game. All the wonder building was pretty much over and all the techs discovered.

Yes, I did find out today, through gameplay, that indeed the spy/dip was getting the same return for disbanding as the regular military units do.
 
That's good to know, only I don't tolerate having the rug yanked out from under me when I go to war. My wars are far too slow and pondering to put up with a democracy.
 
Having a large and strong army is not excluded when having a Democracy. Once you learn how to use one properly you can have it all. Money, science, and troops.

Buying units that are closer to another Civs city than your own will become NONE units. They can be your easy core group of troops.

Plus, once you get your cities developed, they can support multiple units and not go into disorder.
 
Nice Duke, but it seems rather a cheap way to go about war by bribing units all the time. I try to make my games somewhat difficult by trying to not do a lot of things the AI doesn't do. For all the time I've been playing CIV2 in this recent resurgence, the AI did bribing only once, today, and that was only because I had a unit dug in that he couldn't destroy in piecemeal attacks that kept him from getting to where he would like to go.
 
Charles 22 said:
...the AI did bribing only once, today, and that was only because I had a unit dug in that he couldn't destroy in piecemeal attacks that kept him from getting to where he would like to go.
You mean the AI actually stopped a self-destructive course of action and changed to a different, more effective solution to a problem??? What version are you using? ;)
 
TimTheEnchanter said:
You mean the AI actually stopped a self-destructive course of action and changed to a different, more effective solution to a problem??? What version are you using? ;)

2.42 (prince level). It does this sort of thing a lot from my experience. For example, I have two cities on the same continent as one of my enemies, the USA, with a lot of no-man's land inbetween. He sent approximately 30 units over time to atttack the foremost city. I, on the other hand countered this somewhat at first by having a battleship and a cruiser to wait two hexes off the coast. Every turn I would send one of them to a couple of those coastal hexes to see his units approaching. Not all of them hit those coastal hexes as there was a lot of manuever room.

Over time I then set up a bomber and a stealth bomber in the rearmost city. If the ships needed rest from bombardment I would then send the planes, which had no threat of being intercepted. His armies stopped coming. Now he has started sending stealth bombers and they eliminated my then reinforced ships (Aegis cruiser reinforced) and now I'm sending in a stealth fighter and more ships to try to control those approaches. As things have worked out, I can probably let him go ahead and send the armies now, but it is pretty interesting as-is. The further from my cities I'm engaging him, it's probably the better. Now if I will just manage to get a carrier out there I'll be all set.

I see lots of times where the AI will send armies to one point and will just give up and start attacking elsewhere (and then usually at least sporadically attack the original city again.
 
When the AI sends a dip or spy into your territory, It is up to no good. You can expell them and keep your reputation, but they are not destroyed, and they will still keep coming back. My best strategy to combat this is to bribe the spy. It may cost more than you think it is worth, but it is effective.
 
geofelt said:
When the AI sends a dip or spy into your territory, It is up to no good. You can expell them and keep your reputation, but they are not destroyed, and they will still keep coming back. My best strategy to combat this is to bribe the spy. It may cost more than you think it is worth, but it is effective.

By saying it's effective, are you saying the continuance of spies from that same civ coming over ceases, just because of one bribe?
 
Well computers do bribe a bit more on diety... for instance if you drop a large force off and take a computer capital it won't hesitate to come in the next turn with a spy/diplomat and bribe it back... along with the survivors from your attack (assuming ur not a democracy of course...). I personally can't stand playing on anything other than diety anymore, too easy... and even on diety you usually gotta give the computer some advantages at start to make it more interesting. My fav currently is starting on a world map with everyone having monarchy researched and that gov set at start as well as explosives (Engineers) researched. Combine that with computers starting with 4 warriors and 4 settlers spread out a bit and you get some nice big computers (30 cities for a few in very early AD's).
 
Oh yea, its probably been mentioned already but you can counter spies/diplomats with other spies/diplomats. Having your own in cities they attempt to do certain missions in hurts their chances of success and increases the likelyhood you catch them and foil their mission :-).
 
The best defense against dips and spies is to bribe them first. It will usually cost you more gold than you really want to spend, but it is an effective ploy. If you just expell them, they will just come right back, and you may miss them the second time.
 
Yeah, I already mentioned how bribing can almost never work for me, just because I never have enough in the treasury to even halfway meet the bribe amount. I'm not into playing as a democracy basically.
 
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