Covert ops discussions

[Question]

So far it seems that national projects are a total waste of time as its much better to have all your spies out there spying than wasting their time at HQ.

Firaxis has decided not to include spy rate chances other than a vauge estimate...does anyone know what these are?

The only info i can find is that stealing science = 15/20/25% of the current tech you are researching. But stealing tech is obviously a better deal.

One big problem is that survelliance web makes level 4 and above ops impossible and you cant destroy the web. They really need to put in a level 3 "destroy building" option. It makes the culper quest line impossible to complete if all available cities have the web built.

Also i really dont get how you can fail a easy mission with a special agent when there are no defending spies...i even tried sticking 4 spies in the HQ with the + operation success project and it didnt seem to help at all.

 

[Yzman]

I am a bit confused too. In my previous games, I have only made it to level 4 once. My last game I couldn't get over level 1....only stealing energy for me. And then to top it off, I kept failing and having to send the spy back.

What am I missing?

 

[Question]

Im looking at the game files now and as i understand it....the success rate is basicallly a random roll of 1-100 and then reduced by difficulty. You have the mission base difficulty which appears to be reduced by 5 * spy rank (so up to 15 for special agents) plus a defending spy rank chance.

For example steal tech has a base difficulty of 50 so with no defending spies and a special agent, you only have a 65% chance to succeed.

Defending spies affect the difficulty by 5 * rank + 5 so up to 20 for special agents.

Max chance of success appears to be 90% and min chance of success appears to be 10%.

Im not sure how to find data for the national secret projects, because in CovertOperationsSystem.lua, it only says :

local player = Players[playerID];
if (player:HasPerk(GameInfo.PlayerPerks["PLAYERPERK_NATIONAL_SECURITY_PROJECT_OPS_RECON"].ID)) then
for info in GameInfo.PlayerPerks_NationalSecurityProjectEffects{PlayerPerkType = "PLAYERPERK_NATIONAL_SECURITY_PROJECT_OPS_RECON"} do
difficulty = difficulty - info.OperationSuccessPercent * player:GetNumUnassignedCovertAgents();
end
end

But it doesnt actually tell you where to find info.OperationSuccessPercent. Any ideas?

 

[Question]

I am a bit confused too. In my previous games, I have only made it to level 4 once. My last game I couldn't get over level 1....only stealing energy for me. And then to top it off, I kept failing and having to send the spy back.

What am I missing?

Theres probably a defending spy lowering your intrigue. It doesnt seem possible to get intrigue high enough to do anything but the most basic stuff if its a 1 on 1 spy battle, which is a failure of the system. Nor can you stack multiple spies into a city to increase your chances.

 

[Question]

Heres the intrigue data for counter intelligence apparently

-- Called to get the amount of intrigue an agent removes from a city when performing
-- counter intelligence
function GetCounterIntelligenceIntrigue(playerID, agentIndex)
local agent = Players[playerID]:GetCovertAgentByIndex(agentIndex);

local intrigue = GameDefines.COVERT_AGENT_COUNTERINTEL_INTRIGUE;

if (agent ~= nil) then
if (rank == CovertAgentRank.AGENT) then
intrigue = intrigue + 1;
elseif (rank == CovertAgentRank.SECRET_AGENT) then
intrigue = intrigue + 3
end
end

return intrigue;
end

From what i can tell recruits dont lower intrigue at all while agents lower intrigue by 1 per turn and special agents by 3 per turn.

Meaning that even ARC will find it impossible to produce more intrigue than a defending spy can remove, unless agent rank modifies intrigue produced as well (i cant find any data for that though). For reference steal research produces 15 intrigue and steal tech produces 20 intrigue.

 

[Question]

Funfact : the affinity covert ops all have higher base difficulty compared to coups.

I dont get it. A coup is far more powerful...

 

[ggmoyang]

The only info i can find is that stealing science = 15/20/25% of the current tech you are researching. But stealing tech is obviously a better deal.

No. It's hard to determine.

We need to factor in success chance and spy indentification/KIA chance (since you lose spy turns if this occurs)
Also, we need to calculated expected value of steal tech in each situation. And even if you get or beakers with steal tech, will it benefit you?

As you can see, there are too many factors involved so it's hard to make conclusion.


I end up stealing science anyways, since 600 or 800 beaker is still quite good and there's no random factor involved. Intrigue level 1 is easier to get too.

 

[ggmoyang]

If you see word GameDefines, then look up GlobalDefines.xml.
COVERT_AGENT_COUNTERINTEL_INTRIGUE is 1, so it's 1/2/4 intrigue reduced per turn according to agent level.

And national security project bonus is defined in CivBEPlayerPerks.xml.
Both support/recon is 1, which means 1% bonus per agent. Not worth it in most cases IMO.

 

[Question]

No. It's hard to determine.

We need to factor in success chance and spy indentification/KIA chance (since you lose spy turns if this occurs)
Also, we need to calculated expected value of steal tech in each situation. And even if you get or beakers with steal tech, will it benefit you?

As you can see, there are too many factors involved so it's hard to make conclusion.


I end up stealing science anyways, since 600 or 800 beaker is still quite good and there's no random factor involved. Intrigue level 1 is easier to get too.

Its actually pretty easy to calculate. The difficulty for steal tech is only 15 higher than steal science. With no counter spies and a special agent, you are looking at 65% chance to steal a whole tech vs stealing 25% of beakers that do not overflow.

Unless you are trying to go for a domination win and beelining affinities, stealing tech will let you progress through the techweb much faster.

But beelining affinities is pretty silly anyway since you still need infra to build the high affinity units and most of those techs are non-affinity techs.

 

[ggmoyang]

A full tech is not necessarily more expensive than 1/4 of certain techs.

And there's no need to finish tech web.

 

[Question]

You would have to be going pretty deep into the tech web and be unlucky with tech stealing for that to happen though. And most of the techs are useful regardless of what affinity you are so its not a bad idea to go wide.

Thanks for the national secret project info by the way.

 

[Lucius_]

I would be happy if I could complete the redacted quest just once. I have never seen a city at 4+ intrigue in 3 games.

 

[ZHONN]

I always prefer to steal science if I can. I just change my research choice to the most expensive and useful tech one turn before the steal happens. It can be very powerful with proper beelining.

 

[ohmydayum]

Has anyone been able to use worm strike, dirty bomb or sabotage?

 

[Cyon]

Has anyone been able to use worm strike, dirty bomb or sabotage?

Second this question have anyone done it??????????

So spy in hq only gives you a 1% higher success rate? Seems really pointless, should be like 5% higher per spy in HQ rather!

 

[ShaggyCan]

Has anyone posted anywhere all the ways to get extra agents in one place? I had like a dozen my first game!

 

[Monado]

Has anyone been able to use worm strike, dirty bomb or sabotage?

I used a worm strike on ARC's Central. 3, maybe 4 worms pillaged 4 or 5 tiles, sometimes attacked the city for a little bit of damage that just regenerated.

Basically just a bunch of free XP for the ARC's ranged units.



Just use Coup.

 

[Maximus_Light]

Yeah, I've found that covert ops is really only useful in the earily game, I actually did manage to get the Culper cell Wonder, but I did it with ARC and I barely made it by hacking satellites and it was on normal to.
I feel like it's a good system but because it's so easy to stop Lv.4 and higher operations we never really get to it in it's fullest. If the human hive was the only thing that out right prevented operations I don't think it would be so bad, it's just so easy for anyone to stop Lv. 4 and higher operations that causes any issues, otherwise the system is great so far.

 

[Guynemer]

I used a worm strike on ARC's Central. 3, maybe 4 worms pillaged 4 or 5 tiles, sometimes attacked the city for a little bit of damage that just regenerated.

Basically just a bunch of free XP for the ARC's ranged units.



Just use Coup.

I used a worm strike on the Slav HQ, whatever it is called, and a few turns later it was just... gone. I didn't have any units in the area to see what happened, but apparently the worms wiped it out.


¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I've noticed siege worms of the wild variety also rarely attack cities, even while being slowly tinked to death by pop 1 cities they could one-shot.