Espionage and Beyond the Sword

[BobTheTerrible]

With the edition of a new espionage system in Beyond the Sword, I think it offers some great possibilities with the Revolutions mod.

In games like medieval total war, you would be able to use units like assassins on your own men, for example, to eliminate a particular general whose loyalty was questionable, or to eliminate a weak faction heir.

Now that we have upgraded espionage in Beyond the Sword, I have an idea that would be perfect with this mod - the possibility of collecting intelligence on your own cities/civ. Alongside investing espionage points into spying on other civs, you would also collect intelligence on the state of your own empire.

This could have several effects. First of all, you could be able to see more specifics on rebellious cities (for instance, maybe more espionage points gradually reveal the specifics of the rev index screen). But secondly, the more that's invested in espionage, the less there's a chance of a revolt happening; your men collect intelligence on potential rebellion leaders, and eliminate them before they become a threat, or are able to use propaganda to sway the masses, etc. This would have an increased effect on recently captured cities (as in my games it seems near-impossible to hold onto any cities captured past medieval times). There's also the possibility for some cool random events here as well/

In short, what I'm suggesting is to have the espionage slider double as a way to make your empire less rebellious.

I'm not suggesting that you go through and revamp the espionage system to add the player's civilization as an addition the "weight" part of the espionage screen, just something simple that keeps track of all the points the civ generates and does something with that.

Finally, there should be no penalties for failing to invest in espionage, only benefits for investing in it.

Thoughts?

 

[Aeven]

This is a good idea, and I would love to see it implemented From what I understand however, the first BtS version will be a simple upgrade.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

the first BtS version will be a simple upgrade.

I know, this is a suggestion for future versions

 

[jdog5000]

There definitely needs to be some good tie-ins with the expanded espionage system, and I hadn't thought about how to use it internally ... you raise a very intriguing idea.

One thing I don't want, though, is for people to ever wonder why their cities are contemplating rebellion ... since rebellions are often negative events, if the reasons why they are occurring are not transparent it could be discouraging for many people. Also, it's not like the unhappy citizens would try to keep the reasons they're unhappy secret, that doesn't get them closer to happiness ... but there are lots of other ways your espionage spending or spies could be used in this regard.

Perhaps spies could be used to suppress rebellions at the cost of some gold or some temporary unhappiness. For example, you could get say 5 or 8 turns of guaranteed no rebellion in the city for taking out the current leaders, plus a 15% reduction in current rev index. The mission would give you a temporary hit in happiness, maybe -3 that dies off over 9 turns or something along those lines (you'd have to decide if you could afford the unhappiness). Maybe it would also cost some gold to pay for propaganda brochures, so that it didn't complicate the espionage point system. Perhaps the cost would be cut in half if you have some security/espionage buildings in the city to provide further tie in for these systems.

If there were a few options of different types/costs, this could replace the current bribe a city system. Maybe there'd be straight propaganda campaign options that didn't create unhappiness, and then risky options to assassinate rebel leaders that have a chance (depending on current espionage produced in the city perhaps) of either having a big effect in your favor, a medium effect with temporary unhappiness, or actually sparking the revolution you were trying to put down! How does that sound?

One of the things I'm working towards in plans for future updates is having your actions or changes in society more directly spark revolution events ... so a city that's simmering in unhappiness might boil over when you switched civics. These events are related now as they have an effect on rev index, but they don't directly effect the timing of rebellions yet.

More ideas like this are definitely great and will help make the mod more awesome!

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Since I don't like espionage as is in the game, I definitely think that it needs to be representative of not only intelligence gathering and subversion of your enemies but also of your own civ. I want to make it so that certain buildings will give +1 Happiness for every X% of espionage invested. I think I'll change the name from Espionage to Intelligence so it covers a broader topic.

The question is: Should you have to (and be able to) invest EP in yourself? Or (and perhaps more interestingly) should a rebellion come into it's own prior to the actual full-blown revolution itself (i.e. the civ is created but has no territory) and then you can start to invest EP in that civ as though you were infiltrating some kind of underground rebel group.

This rebel group could start accumulating culture in cities getting closer to the edge of insurrection, and your missions could attempt to reestablish friendly culture in the city.

What I do know is that I don't want spies being used to effect in what are my cities... spies are for foreign missions.

 

[orinsul]

maybe just a 'secret police' misson that can be caused by spending your esponaige points gather for other states which elimnate a chance for a revolting in chosen city for 20 turns at the cost of 30 turns of unhappiness or lowered production.
Not entirely sure its needed though, If you want to be oppressing your people happy police state does the trick

 

[Endovior]

Since I don't like espionage as is in the game, I definitely think that it needs to be representative of not only intelligence gathering and subversion of your enemies but also of your own civ. I want to make it so that certain buildings will give +1 Happiness for every X% of espionage invested. I think I'll change the name from Espionage to Intelligence so it covers a broader topic.

The question is: Should you have to (and be able to) invest EP in yourself? Or (and perhaps more interestingly) should a rebellion come into it's own prior to the actual full-blown revolution itself (i.e. the civ is created but has no territory) and then you can start to invest EP in that civ as though you were infiltrating some kind of underground rebel group.

This rebel group could start accumulating culture in cities getting closer to the edge of insurrection, and your missions could attempt to reestablish friendly culture in the city.

What I do know is that I don't want spies being used to effect in what are my cities... spies are for foreign missions.

A thought on implementing that:

Use "Require Complete Kills", and have the rebellion start out as a number of spies (or spy-equivalent rebel units), which will cause increasing amounts of trouble on their own until they get a city, after which they'll proceed as normal. Having your own spies operating domestically will help you to locate and defeat the rebels, as they do against enemy spies. It remains a contest of espionage spending; the rebels gain a portion of the income of disaffected cities as their own, and they spend it all on espionage! Of course, if you do manage to wipe out all the rebels, the rebellion is over... but other civs might complicate things by 'gifting' units to the rebels.

This might work to the player's advantage, as well; if he loses cities to his foes, the captured cities may (based on the rebellion factor) produce rebel units, for his benefit, in occupied territory.

 

[jdog5000]

Complete Kills would be an option, though part of that functionality is already in the game by setting rebel to having never founded a city ... this also keeps them alive with just units. Once they do capture a city however, then they are killed if they lose it. I've contemplated adding a flag to rebels that keeps them alive even after losing their last city. Once they became established (held enough cities for long enough), their rebel status would disappear and they could then be wiped out as usual.

Spawning rebel units if their motherland takes a city from them is definitely a good idea, and I will definitely consider how to add some espionage spending for rebels which may not be easy. Gifting units to the rebels is definitely something that could be expanded, to allow outside parties to more readily influence a conflict. The AI never gifts units currently (as far as I can tell), and it also requires the giftee to own territory in the current model which rebels will not always. Perhaps a way to implement this would be for rebels to request units from nearby friendly civs, which would be fairly easy to implement.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Complete Kills would be an option, though part of that functionality is already in the game by setting rebel to having never founded a city ... this also keeps them alive with just units. Once they do capture a city however, then they are killed if they lose it. I've contemplated adding a flag to rebels that keeps them alive even after losing their last city. Once they became established (held enough cities for long enough), their rebel status would disappear and they could then be wiped out as usual.

I would say that it would be reasonable to add a new variable in the player class: bRebel. When a rebellion starts, the civilization is marked as a rebel. It only loses the tag when it concludes a peace treaty with the mother country after which point it's treated like a regular civ. So there would have to be some other value that stores the civilization it has spawned from. These two values could be very useful because they could also affect bonuses and penalties for rebel civs or in the interactions between former rebels and their mother countries. It could also be used to make it easier at some later date for a possible reunification if the the two maintain good relations and work well together in the future.

But anyway, you can make it so that when it checks if the Complete Kills option is in effect, it will say that either complete kills OR if the civ is a rebel... that way, even without the complete kills selected (or forcing the player to have complete kills in a Revolution mod game), the rebellion will require complete kills to end.

Spawning rebel units if their motherland takes a city from them is definitely a good idea, and I will definitely consider how to add some espionage spending for rebels which may not be easy. Gifting units to the rebels is definitely something that could be expanded, to allow outside parties to more readily influence a conflict. The AI never gifts units currently (as far as I can tell), and it also requires the giftee to own territory in the current model which rebels will not always. Perhaps a way to implement this would be for rebels to request units from nearby friendly civs, which would be fairly easy to implement.

The events system could be a good way to do this...

 

[Atwork]

Check out Trojan Sheep's Superspy Mod. Maybe you'll find it a good start toward an enhanced espionage system.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=259221&highlight=espionage

 

[glider1]

What do Revolutions players think of the espionage mission "influence religion"? I have just used it on a Renaissance civ which converted his state religion from Confucianism to my own state religion in one foul swoop. He's still running organised religion despite that most of his cities are Confucian with very few cities containing my religion. Also, he's taken a temporary big hit (-7) from all his other Confucian friends.

If that isn't a big enough hit on him, what about on the rev index?

Any experiences, thoughts?
Cheers

PS) I am using the Super Spy addon with Revolutions but I believe the "influence religion" mission is a vanilla BTS mission.

 

[jdog5000]

He'll probably be racking up RevIndex points in many of his cities ... how long does the change tend to stick? The AI should switch back as soon as it can. Was it a pretty expensive mission?

 

[glider1]

@Jdog
Conclusion to the particular case of this "influence religion" mission have been:
1. Civ reverted back to his familiar religion after 17 turns on standard

2. My relations with the civ went from annoyed to pleased back to annoyed.

3. Looking at the rev index only broadly in chipotle, there only seemed to be slight negative effects.

4. Diplomatically there were no religious wars declared on him during the period.

5. It did seem to change his colonising mindset *I think*. He became Hindu due to my espionage and his small new world outposts were Hindu due to other reasons. Thus he may have been happier to liberate them off. Now that he's back to his old religion, I'm not sure how the liberation decision will play out.

The cost of the mission from memory was around +500 ep points or so. For me it has not been easy to pull this mission off more broadly on other civs but I may not be trying hard enough. It could end up being a game breaker tactic but I'm not sure and so far in my game, it has definetly not been a game breaker.

EDIT: When I think about it, this "influence religion mission". Does it have any historical backbone to it? A spy able to switch the state religion of a nation? I'm not sure how good this particular mission is in terms of being "enjoyable" for me. If the mission was to influence the religion in one city or so, maybe that would be better.

Cheers.

 

[StormLord-711-]

Think of it as using hidden political pressure to force a ruler to convert.

And come to think of it, this might be a good way to convert the cities in those pesky theocratic kingdoms...hmm. I have a game going that this would prove useful in, since I could probably unite all the world powers behind my religion.

 

[glider1]

Think of it as using hidden political pressure to force a ruler to convert

Ok it will be interesting to see whether you can introduce a big hole in gameplay by exploiting this espionage mission. Problem for me is that political pressures to change religion is already there via the diplomacy screen. The espionage equivalent is historically mysterious to me. However I will get out the encyclopaedia and search for any examples in history where espionage has caused the underlying state religion of a civ to flip over......

I might perhaps just need to turn on the world news channel. There might be a real world example right now.
Cheers.

 

[ocitalis]

I have used the 'change religion' mission a few times. The main drawback is that it is very expensive. Also the low/moderate success rate (around 30-60% I think) makes it a little harder. At least once I used it with good results, and twice with fair results.
I think it took about 10 turns for a switch-back normally. In the right situation it is good, and I often check the pricetag on it when looking at espionage missions, but the cost seems high most of the time (as is appropriate).

Diplomacy utilizes overt dealings, offers that must be accepted, to effect a religion change. Espionage involves covert actions and secrecy to cause the same change, and doesn't require any acquiescence from the target. To me, the espionage mission seems sufficiently different to be justified as meaningful.

I would characterize the mission as the stealthy support of religious leaders/officials/policymakers that are advocates of your religion, (perhaps they actually belong to your religion, perhaps they are traitors, perhaps they are moles planted for the purpose), such that they successfully persuade/force/hijack the target nation into the change.

As for historically, I dont know of any particular striking example of this. But most/all neighboring nations that have different religions would certainly encourage their religion to gain believers in the neighbor's nation, and tacitly (to say the least) support any officials in the neighbor's government that share the local religion.

If there is an issue with this mission, it would be in the cost calculation, rather than the mission itself.

 

[glider1]

Yep ok, overt verses covert is the clincher.
Cheers.