Espionage and Council of Esus

[Master_Hugian]

Have given an idea some thought and with to share it to see how duable it might be to mod.

First this is what I would like to accumplish with these ideas.

1) Make espionage a part of every game and not something rarely done, and then generally only then by those who specialize in it.

2) Remove the micromanagement of spies as you move them from city to city.

3) Add more misdirection to allow espionage to fool even human players

4) Change how Council of Esus spreads and make it a function of espionage

________________________________________________________________
New System

*Ratcatchers (and spy units) are removed. Instead espionage is conducted in the espionage screen. When selecting a city in the screen and browsing through the costs to perform the missions, you should actually be able to perform the missions. Due to all the missions requiring no more spies, all missions are increased in cost by 25-50%.
You may only perform one espionage mission per city, and all mission are conducted at the beginning of the next turn. (Distorts players from AIs and adds a slight delay)

(Alternative) Before you can perform missions, you must first do the Infiltrate City mission.

Council of Esus
* Instead of being spread by units, it is instead spread as part of a mission. Upon spreading the religion to that city, whenever one of your spies get caught it instead say you have caught a spy of the undercouncil (thus not revealing who funded the spy)

Svartalfar

* The svartalfar ability to kidnap great people is turned into a Svartalfar only mission. On a successful attempt, it notes to the player that the great person has been assassinated (same as the assassinate great person mission). Failure however, reveals the true intend. (Council of Esus may not protect against this)

You have heard this one before
Membership is no longer revealed unless you are part of it (Perhaps showing a simbol next to the score, otherwise all other referances to it are removed)
Alignment is not changed, of course they will pretend to be good, can't use slavery though in this act.
Religion shown is not changed from previous religion.

What do you think?

 

[Schwarzbart]

How about instead of a direct Effect to the Aligment how about the Crime Rate will drain your Standing toward evil if you are Memer of the Under Conciel or even addopt the Religion?
So if yous still can have the Crime in check no negative influence to the Aligment but as soon you let the crime go uncecked it have negativ effects to you alligment.

 

[Master_Hugian]

How about instead of a direct Effect to the Aligment how about the Crime Rate will drain your Standing toward evil if you are Memer of the Under Conciel or even addopt the Religion?
So if yous still can have the Crime in check no negative influence to the Aligment but as soon you let the crime go uncecked it have negativ effects to you alligment.

My thoughts for why you should stay good when you adopt it is that your opponent does not know you changed religion, and considering that religion is the only way to change alignment its something that must be considered. You may not act good any more (which when you think about it, is quite hard to define, what can't you do while good?) but everyone else believes you are still a devout follower of the Order ect...

I have also started looking through the code and have figured out the file I wish would need to modify to allow espionage screen missions.
CySpyAdvisor.py

I will have to change the missions part of the interface so that instead of just giving a drop down of missions, it would allow you to select them. This is were I am currently stuck and trying to piece it together from tutorials. One problem I am having with this is I am not sure what other files it is called on. It is something I am still trying to understand

 

[Master_Hugian]

I have started to add four widgets

self.MISSION_NAME = "MissionText"
self.BUTTON_NAME = "MissionScreenButton"
self.CANCEL_NAME = "MissionCancelButton"
self.ASSIGN_NAME = "MissionAssignButton"

self.MissionScreenInputMap = {
self.MISSION_NAME : self.MissionScreenButton,
self.BUTTON_NAME : self.MissionScreenButton,
self.ASSIGN_NAME : self.MissionAssign,
self.CANCEL_NAME : self.MissionCancel,
}

However that is how far I have gotten.

Currently trying to figure out what I need to change

 

[Opera]

Hmmm.

I personally think Esus doesn't fit as a religion.

Anyway, I'm against the removal of spy units. Working it all through a window doesn't sound really interesting to me.

Removing tech trading could be a neat way to enhance use of Spies by stealing techs.
And there's certainly some other ways to enhance spies.

Also, yeah, as Esus is a religion, it shouldn't show in any way where it is. Currently, it shows the Holy City in the religion panel, it shows the influence in the Religion Overlay, as well as in the upper bar when you're talking to a fellow.

 

[Master_Hugian]

Well, I have thought about it some more and agree that removing spies are the wrong way of doing it. One thing though that has always put me of is the spies teleporting to your city after a mission.

One thing to change is that whenever you perform a mission, the unit stays there but if it tries to perform a mission again to quickly, the chance of success is reduced and the chance of being caught is increased.

Another thought is if spies tend to stay in a city (Which sounds appropriate) Have a new mission called Infiltrate City which upon success reduces the spies movement to 0 and adds the citizen promotion which removes passive chance of getting caught.

As for Council of Esus, what if it was changed to a Corporation. Though how that would change things mechanically is something I would have to think about.