Enhancement Project for the Spy Unit

[spincrus]

As we all know, the spy unit has been rendered pretty much useless in Civilization IV. "Steal Plans", "Destroy Production" and "Sabotage Improvement" just don't cut it anymore.

Therefore, I'd like to come up with a thread that could combine some of the ideas of the community on what we could do to improve the Spy unit. The graphics are there, the sounds are there, so get your skin-tight leather and latex suits ready, put your silencer on, and proceed with the mission .

Here are some of the ideas I could come up with, WITHOUT adding too much stuff to alter the CURRENT gameplay. Keep in mind, it should be an ENHANCEMENT, not a complete gameplay modification.

Note: Instead of giving the abilities I'll mention in this post to the spy unit, a new unit called "fanatic" or "propogandist" or "televangelist" or something like that can be created (similar units were available in previous Civilization games, even in the Call to Power series).


Initiate Revolt:
- This spy ability should come in handy for those moderate-culture rival cities that are way too close to your borders, such as founded on an empty spot right in the middle of your empire, or do more than just damage the production of the city.
- If you have some percent of cultural influence over the city (say, 51%), the revolt could cause the city to flip to your empire.
- Realistically speaking, this should cost around 30% more than destroy production, as it has quite a bit of side effects to have one of your cities revolt and initiating a revolt takes much more political propaganda than just infiltrating certain facilities to destroy production, or steal plans.


Steal Technology:
- This spy ability should not steal the whole technology, but a certain percentage of a certain technology known to the rival and not known to the player.
- Success rates should be around the same as steal plans.
- Aside from the success rate of the mission, there can be a second rate of success (between 40% to 80%), which could be the percentage of research stolen.


Steal Map:
- This should steal the worldmap from the rival, without stealing all the plans (without stealing all the unit locations of the rival, including the line of sight through the holy city controlled by the rival).
- Higher success rate than steal plans, and costs less.


Infiltrate City:
- Same success rate as steal plans, costs a bit more.
- When you're on a city with the spy unit, you can see what the rival city is producing and also quite a bit of the details. However, this mission could allow the spy to be a PERMANENT viewer of the city, CONSUMING the unit and giving PERMANENT line of sight of the city (if a holy city, including the line of sight of the holy city, IF the rival's state religion is that of the holy city).


Sabotage Building:
- Say the city has quite a bit of SAM Infantry garrisoned, and also a fighter or jet fighter on a patrol mission. Wouldn't it be nice to at least destroy the bunker?
- Success rate and cost the same as sabotage improvement.


Assassination:
- Two possibilities:
a) This mission can either kill a random unit garrisoned in the city...
b) ...or, the option I like more, it can cause certain amount of + for a certain amount of turns in the city. Once done, it can't be repeated again until the negative effects fade away, to prevent spamming of this ability.


and last, but not least,

Striptease:
- The spy unit can start stripping, giving every city of your empire +5 for 100 turns.



Well, this was my effort.

If you have any Python scripts or any other work you'd like to share for this project, please don't hesitate to post under this thread.

 

[TheLopez]

As we all know, the spy unit has been rendered pretty much useless in Civilization IV. "Steal Plans", "Destroy Production" and "Sabotage Improvement" just don't cut it anymore.

Therefore, I'd like to come up with a thread that could combine some of the ideas of the community on what we could do to improve the Spy unit. The graphics are there, the sounds are there, so get your skin-tight leather and latex suits ready, put your silencer on, and proceed with the mission .

Here are some of the ideas I could come up with, WITHOUT adding too much stuff to alter the CURRENT gameplay. Keep in mind, it should be an ENHANCEMENT, not a complete gameplay modification.

Note: Instead of giving the abilities I'll mention in this post to the spy unit, a new unit called "fanatic" or "propogandist" or "televangelist" or something like that can be created (similar units were available in previous Civilization games, even in the Call to Power series).


Initiate Revolt:
- This spy ability should come in handy for those moderate-culture rival cities that are way too close to your borders, such as founded on an empty spot right in the middle of your empire, or do more than just damage the production of the city.
- If you have some percent of cultural influence over the city (say, 51%), the revolt could cause the city to flip to your empire.
- Realistically speaking, this should cost around 30% more than destroy production, as it has quite a bit of side effects to have one of your cities revolt and initiating a revolt takes much more political propaganda than just infiltrating certain facilities to destroy production, or steal plans.


Steal Technology:
- This spy ability should not steal the whole technology, but a certain percentage of a certain technology known to the rival and not known to the player.
- Success rates should be around the same as steal plans.
- Aside from the success rate of the mission, there can be a second rate of success (between 40% to 80%), which could be the percentage of research stolen.


Steal Map:
- This should steal the worldmap from the rival, without stealing all the plans (without stealing all the unit locations of the rival, including the line of sight through the holy city controlled by the rival).
- Higher success rate than steal plans, and costs less.


Infiltrate City:
- Same success rate as steal plans, costs a bit more.
- When you're on a city with the spy unit, you can see what the rival city is producing and also quite a bit of the details. However, this mission could allow the spy to be a PERMANENT viewer of the city, CONSUMING the unit and giving PERMANENT line of sight of the city (if a holy city, including the line of sight of the holy city, IF the rival's state religion is that of the holy city).


Sabotage Building:
- Say the city has quite a bit of SAM Infantry garrisoned, and also a fighter or jet fighter on a patrol mission. Wouldn't it be nice to at least destroy the bunker?
- Success rate and cost the same as sabotage improvement.


Assassination:
- Two possibilities:
a) This mission can either kill a random unit garrisoned in the city...
b) ...or, the option I like more, it can cause certain amount of + for a certain amount of turns in the city. Once done, it can't be repeated again until the negative effects fade away, to prevent spamming of this ability.


and last, but not least,

Striptease:
- The spy unit can start stripping, giving every city of your empire +5 for 100 turns.



Well, this was my effort.

If you have any Python scripts or any other work you'd like to share for this project, please don't hesitate to post under this thread.

spincrus, I've been thinking about enhancing the spy as well. As for some other functionality, how about either the ability to kidnapp or assassignate great persons? This would especially be good since I have been making/modifying great persons that are more usable in the field rather than just using them to enhance cities.

Oh and one more thing, the unit should cost more to maintain to represent the effort, resources, etc. required to support the new units operations.

 

[spincrus]

I completely agree.

Besides, being able to kidnap or assassinate (latter is more favorable IMHO) a great person would also mean to be able to stop the AI from starting a golden age.

 

[MrUnderhill]

If you mixed in a little regicide, assassination could be very fun. You wouldn't even need to start a war to take over a civ, just get open borders, send a squad of spies to the enemy capital and tell them all to kill.

If you did this, though, you might want to add more anti-spy units like Detectives (requiring Scotland Yard just like spies do ), or else ROP abuse could make a comeback.

 

[Roetghoer]

Ofcourse most of these options should be in the game but there is also the matter of consequences to your diplomatic stance with the counterparty during peace-time.

I've given this a little thought:

Initiating a revolt,
upon capture -> -3

Steal tech,
upon capture -> -2 ALSO, the spy may succeed but the civ finds out about it afterwards, like a 20% chance orso, also inflicting a -2 in diplomacy.

Steal map -> should be same setup as steal tech maybe with a -1 penalty

Infiltrate city, i wouldn't add this one, it undermines the infiltration due to religion. Founding a religion and spreading it to your neighbours then has less appeal!
It would also, indirectly, mean that you would be able to build loads of spies. And i reaally like having only 4 (alive). You know that spies are in short supply in real life, and very expensive as well so the limit gives a better game IMO.

Sabotage building, I LOVE IT, and ofcourse this wouldn't have any penalty because you won't use it during peace time, (right???)

Assassination, i wouldn't have it kill an entire unit (1 unit could consist of 100, or more, men of infantry! so were's the reality in that) in fact, i don't really know what to do with this option anyway

And last but not least, the striptease, Hell yeah.... (using state property...)

 

[TheLopez]

If you mixed in a little regicide, assassination could be very fun. You wouldn't even need to start a war to take over a civ, just get open borders, send a squad of spies to the enemy capital and tell them all to kill.

If you did this, though, you might want to add more anti-spy units like Detectives (requiring Scotland Yard just like spies do ), or else ROP abuse could make a comeback.

Actually what you could have is a new wonder: INTERPOL that would allow you to create these types of detectives.

 

[Throttle]

The enhanced spy is a great idea.
The striptease sounds quite odd though: spies are stealth units and they usually do not show them off.

 

[spincrus]

I should remind you that not all new spy missions must be added, but 1 or 2 more missions for the spy would be great.

Or, all these missions could be coded in Python, shared here at CFC to the public, and whoever wants whatever mission can implement it in their mod.

@TheLopez: I don't think it's a good idea to introduce a new wonder. That's adding too much to the game for just the enhancement of a single unit. What we should focus on is to make the unit a bit more worth building than what it is right now, without having to add too much to the game. It should be easily moddable, or "pluggable" as the guys over at Apolython like to call it. The less files altered, the better compatibility.

@Throttle:

@MrUnderhill: Good idea, but the spy can already reveal enemy spies. Maybe an "assassinate spy" feature? No need to add a new unit, when our latex-covered chick is standing there, gently swinging her pistol.

@Roetghoer: Exactly what I wanted to add. Actually I dreamed about that last night, very briefly though. We should discuss how the AI should react to failures, and even the possibility of the AI to have a certain chance of finding it out, even if the mission has succeeded!

 

[WineShark]

I think a huge issue is that spies can't be eliminated. They should operate more along the lines of subs: only other spies see them and can interact/attack them. (Spy vs. spy!)

All the above powers are cool and "retro Civ" but difficult to counter if all you can do is keep your own spies at home and pray the opponent’s spies get a bad roll.


Off topic (but involving spies): the Manhattan Project should not give nukes to all civs. You should have to research the tech and build the program, or somehow steal the secrets via spies to build nukes. That way the "Pandora’s Box" of nuclear weapons can play out differently than in our own world.

 

[RED DIAMOND]

I think a huge issue is that spies can't be eliminated. They should operate more along the lines of subs: only other spies see them and can interact/attack them. (Spy vs. spy!)

All the above powers are cool and "retro Civ" but difficult to counter if all you can do is keep your own spies at home and pray the opponent’s spies get a bad roll.


Off topic (but involving spies): the Manhattan Project should not give nukes to all civs. You should have to research the tech and build the program, or somehow steal the secrets via spies to build nukes. That way the "Pandora’s Box" of nuclear weapons can play out differently than in our own world.

I was tempted to change the invisability of spies to that of subs(ie. can be visually detected by one other counter unit). In the end I just added an Infiltrator unit(think suitcase nuke) and a Sapper(thiink fast guerilla unit only visable to counter unit). Those enhancements have REALLY changed the game for me. The AI is DARN sneaky

I was also looking into your off topic subject of having civs indiviually have to research the Manhattan Project to gain access to nukes. I think I am going to implement that system into my personal mod.

The info is in the CIV4ProjectInfo.XML file. Under the entry for The Manhattan Project is this block
>>>Begin Block<<<<<
<iMaxGlobalInstances>1</iMaxGlobalInstances>
<iMaxTeamInstances>-1</iMaxTeamInstances>
<iCost>1500</iCost>
<iNukeInterception>0</iNukeInterception>
<iTechShare>0</iTechShare>
<EveryoneSpecialUnit>SPECIALUNIT_NUKE</EveryoneSpecialUnit>
<EveryoneSpecialBuilding>SPECIALBUILDING_BOMB_SHELTER</EveryoneSpecialBuilding>
>>>End Block<<<

What needs to be done is to change the Max Global Instances to -1. Then you would need to set the Everyone Special Unit and Special building to NONE. This will make it so everyone needs to research the MP to get nukes.

PS> This did not work

 

[Alpedar]

What would i like to see about spies: (It is much more rework, not only little enhancement)
1) Anti spy units available bit sooner than spy itself
2) Some early spies (Sun-Tzu was speaking about using spies, so it is not only modern time thing). They should be much weaker than modern age spy (only weaker version of steal map, etc.)

 

[Junuxx]

Good idea! I want to poison cities' water supplies again! Yeah! -2 health for 20 turns!

other options:
Cultural damage. (City loses some culture, or culture production is lowered for x turns)
Bribing units.
Sabotage research.
Steal gold
Upset populace (more angry faces)
Demoralize (unit losing experience/promotion)
Steal resource (Can only be perforemd on resource square. You gain the benefits of the resource for 10 turns)

And I agree with Alpedar, early spies!

 

[Junuxx]

By the way, you can already infiltrate cities. Just put a spy in an enemy city and you can see production and even enter the town to see more details.

 

[RED DIAMOND]

I added an early spy to my game its very easy to do, ALL in XML. Open notepad and get to work To make it easy just mod the scout to have an additional feature by just setting investigate to 1 in the XML file, this way you won't have to make a whole new unit.

BTW, Spies in the vanilla version are not useless

 

[spincrus]

@Alpedar: An earlier version of spy? Hmm, maybe called a Rogue?

@RED DIAMOND: The spies are useful, yes, I've done a LOT of damage to the Incas in my recent game by constantly destroying all their resource mines/routes with all 4 of my spies stationed on their continent (they're on a separate continent, controlling the whole piece of land), carried by a submarine. I like them, but they need at LEAST 1 more ability to be perfectly useful.

@Junuxx: I'm aware of that, but I'm talking about an ability that CONSUMES the spy (so that you can build more again, just like the missionaries) and it PERMANENTLY infiltrates the city, until the city is razed/destroyed OR the spy "removed" by the rival's own spy (or maybe even a policeman sort of specialist).