Dawn of Civilization General Discussion

[Leoreth]

Thanks, and thank you for playing!

Entries in your hall of fame will remain there unaffected. The only problem is that there is no way of telling with which iteration of the mod they were accomplished, and the meaning of achieving a victory might change as the mod changes.

 

[CHEESE!]

How might I edit a player's stability in the WorldBuilder?

 

[bluepotato]

How might I edit a player's stability in the WorldBuilder?

In the StoredData menu, after selecting a civ you'll see a "stability" option. You might also want to change the "turnsToCollapse" variable to -1 if the civ is on collapsing, or 0 if you want it to collapse.

 

[Oblivionyx]

What do you guys do with Espionage/Spies? I never use it and I feel like I should be doing something with it, aside from looking at other civ's cities in late game, lol.

 

[1SDANi]

What do you guys do with Espionage/Spies? I never use it and I feel like I should be doing something with it, aside from looking at other civ's cities in late game, lol.

I try to always have 1 spy and direct all my espionage towards my biggest rival. I have espionage at 0% but all the courthouses, jails, post offices, and constabulatories I build grant a large amount of espionage. I only use spies to steal technologies or send cities into anarchy (which removes their defensive bonus and thus lets me use all my siege units for attacking)

 

[Enyavar]

I try to always have 1 spy and direct all my espionage towards my biggest rival. I have espionage at 0% but all the courthouses, jails, post offices, and constabulatories I build grant a large amount of espionage. I only use spies to steal technologies or send cities into anarchy (which removes their defensive bonus and thus lets me use all my siege units for attacking)

Exactly this.
Plus, I steal money if there's money in the treasury and no interesting tech. And I convert them to my civics and/or religion if that option benefits me (attitude). And I sabotage their buildings (e.g. the library in a culture competition). And I spread culture, again only in a cultural war. Or I approve of any other missions if there is no other chance and I have a 50% waiting bonus: Collect them espionage points towards Great Spy, you know?

 

[JHLee]

I thought easy missions like stealing gold didnt give Great Spy XP?

 

[Enyavar]

Right, so I do nonsensical missions as well, just to rack up the Great spy counter. Just in the late game when there are more esp points than anyone would need.

 

[Tigranes]

I thought easy missions like stealing gold didnt give Great Spy XP?

I think Leoreth fixed it so that you get at least 1 point per mission, even the most easy one.

 

[JHLee]

I've been giving Austria (HRE) a try for the last couple of days and I am stuck.
Is it possible achieve the new third UHV goal as Austria?
You have to be at pleased/friendly with 8 independent European civs in 1850.
The Euro civs that can exist at that time are:
France, England, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Prussia, Italy, Greece, Russia, Sweden, and Poland, and the Ottomans which makes 12.

Since you have to vassalize three for the second UHV, that leaves 9.
You can't guarantee that they will even exist.
I have never seen Poland make it till the Industrial era.
Sweden is really unstable and keeps collapsing and returning.
You have to rely on luck for Greece to exist. Even when they spawn they will not be stable.
Also you'd have to give up a lot of core/historical cities to be friends with Prussia, Turkey and Italy.

Ah well, at least it is still a fun civ to play. Especially if you forge a Grossdeutschland...

 

[bluepotato]

I think Leoreth fixed it so that you get at least 1 point per mission, even the most easy one.

I don't think so, after stealing about 10 techs and spreading my culture I still only have 4 great spy points. I never got any for stealing gold, either.

 

[bluepotato]

Now I'm actually curious about the whole great spy thing, I played a game on Monarch/Epic with Ethiopia, and even after stealing pretty much every single tech (except the last 4 rows, didn't have time for that) starting from the renaissance era (also stole some from Arabia in the medieval era) I was nowhere close to getting a great spy. I had 15 great spy points out of 33, which definitely doesn't feel right. Is this intended?

 

[Leoreth]

Can you give an example of a mission you think should provide spy points but doesn't?

 

[bluepotato]

Can you give an example of a mission you think should provide spy points but doesn't?

The problem is, I have no idea which mission gives spy points and which doesn't, I can't find an entry in the civilopedia about it. But when you build up your entire economy around spying and you still can't get a great spy, that probably means it doesn't work correctly. If great spies should work like great generals, then even in a "normal" game where you don't use spies too much you should be able to get at least one, and in a game where you use spies really aggressively you should be able to generate 2 or 3, just like how Rome can easily get 3 great generals. (or maybe more, haven't played Rome for a while so I'm not sure)
So I don't have very specific ideas about the great spy points since I don't know how it currently works (I assume it's based on the spy's survival chance but I don't really know, I didn't look at the code), but here's a really simple suggestion: you should get more spy points for missions that cost more, e. g. 3 for stealing a tech and 1 for stealing gold, poisoning water, creating unhappiness. It could also take the spy survival chance into account, but every successful mission should give at least 1 great spy point.

 

[Orbii]

... It could also take the spy survival chance into account, but every successful mission should give at least 1 great spy point.

The current Great Spy generation system comes basically from this, as back in the day you could very easily acquire Great Spies because of how every successful mission gave at least 1 Great Spy point, with the result being that even non-Espionage focused strategies could very easily and reliably generate Great Spies. There's some old strategies out there that demonstrate how ridiculous this got, which is why the system is as it is now.

Personally, I haven't touched espionage since those changes due to how difficult it is to get Great Spies. I think the system's kind of in an unfortunate place where it's either broken or useless.

 

[bluepotato]

Then maybe instead of making great spies impossible to get, they could simply be made useless for non-Espionage focused strategies. Removing the "Infiltrate city" mission would probably be sufficient, I think it's a bit OP in BTS anyways. The great spy building (is it called secret service?) is pretty much useless if you don't go for espionage, and it's much better than nothing for spy economies.
Or maybe do it in another way, make it so that only tech stealing gives you spy points, let's say 2. This would mean you could get a great spy after stealing 16 techs, sure it isn't easy but if you actually rely on espionage it's definitely possible, especially with this huge tech tree.

 

[Enyavar]

I'd say that the Great Spy Points (GSP) could be scaled on the amount of Espionage Points (EP) that the spies spend on their missions. Because good spy strategies should be more rewarding when you wait, the GSPs need to be calculated on the EP-costs before the waiting-bonus. I dunno about the correct scale, because there needs to be testing... but stealing 500 gold from your rich neighbor should really earn you one GSP.

However, there should also be a cap at maybe 3 GSP per mission; and to prevent an over-abundance of Great spies, the threshold to earn additional GSs should be steep. Normal games where you just rack up EPs with jails/courts/agencies/etc in a dozen cities should only give you 1-2 GSs over 200-300 turns. More or less like it is now. For aggressive espionage players however, sky is the limit, and they should be forced to go for EP-costly missions and then be rewarded for that. For example, there should be, in a sum, less GSPs for small-time arsonism (burning the enemies monument 20 times in a row), but a lot more GSP for burning the factory.

- "switch civic", "switch religion", "steal tech" should give always at least 1 GSP.
- passively exposing an enemy spy should also give 1 GSP.
- first-time missions could be rewarded with always 1 GSP: First time poisoning wells, First time stealing gold, First time creating unrest...

 

[hnrysml]

The flaw I fund frustrating with the spy system atm is that basically the more espionage you have the harder it is to get great spy points from successful missions, so if you've invested a lot in espionage and all the missions have a high success rate you'll never get spy xp

 

[KeeperOT7Keys]

The flaw I fund frustrating with the spy system atm is that basically the more espionage you have the harder it is to get great spy points from successful missions, so if you've invested a lot in espionage and all the missions have a high success rate you'll never get spy xp

this is a problem for me too, when you make plans and station your spy in a foreign city for 5 turns you get a lower xp than not waiting at all. I think these bonuses should not change the GSP earned since they are also the part of spy mission nad spy has a chance of being caught, a GSP should be calculated with using the probability of original mission. at least something like that..

 

[Leoreth]

Can we go back to actually identifying the problem? Still waiting for reports on spy missions that don't give experience contrary to what is expected.