Espionage-based UHVs

[hangman]

So I've been thinking about the possibility of using espionage as the basis for some UHVs in the developing RFCA mod. Any help from experienced python and SDK modders would be appreciated.

A lot of the modcomps I'm suggesting could be applied to non-RFC mods, but since the primary focus is on UHVs, I thought it would be better to post it here.

At the moment, these are just ideas, so feel free to brainstorm.

Here are some ideas I've had:

• With UHVs, there's the tech race, the building/wonder goal, and the resource accumulation goal, but I think we could do more with it. Resource accumulation would go hand-in-hand with the passive espionage effects, so it should be possible to substitute a goal like "get 3000 EPs by 1000AD" with "make all the cities visible in three different civs by 1000AD," which also entails exploration. As it is, espionage works against the player, and it's impossible to prioritize individual cities. This would be an important addition because passive effects are currently based on the EPs against the player himself, and are not 'spent' on passive effects. This allows accumulated EPs to count against all cities at once, which makes passive effects easy to attain. To add difficulty and an element of strategy, I think there should be some city prioritizing system in place, as well as a method to 'purchase' passive effects against a particular city, so that EPs aren't spent based on which city you happen to discover first.
• For active effects, one possibility is that you could make it so that successful acts of sabotage decreases the stability of the target civ, so one UHV could be "destablize at least one civ until they collapse." It could be set up so that certain actions give larger or smaller stability hits, or none at all.
• On that note, you could commit enough acts of espionage in a place far away enough so that two nations would go to war with each other. This would require a mechanic for foreign relation hits based on which nation's border is closest to the spy, and code to check whose spy it was if they go to war.
• Alternatively, you could set a goal for a particular active effect, like "sabotage production in five cities" or "assassinate ten units." These are kind of straightforward though, so any creative ideas here would be welcome.

Relevent posts: RFCA#671

 

[Leoreth]

I personally don't see any challenge in exercising espionage actions on their own (it's just sending out spies and triggering them), so they only carry additional flavour compared to the "acquire X espionage points against Y civs".

What I'd rather do is to design the challenges so that they require espionage to be solved. For example, I don't know how Japan is balanced in RFCA, but it could have a clear science disadvantage compared to the Chinese civs, making it near impossible to catch up with research alone. You could then make a "be the most advanced civilization in X" goal, so the player has to facilitate his espionage abilities to beat it.

 

[hangman]

I personally don't see any challenge in exercising espionage actions on their own (it's just sending out spies and triggering them), so they only carry additional flavour compared to the "acquire X espionage points against Y civs".

I agree that they are pretty simple, and probably not that exciting in that form. I think we could make up for that with added complexity though. For example, with the destabilization UHV I'm proposing, it would partially depend on how stable a given civ is, and would require a lot of EPs and spies, if it's balanced correctly.

What I'd rather do is to design the challenges so that they require espionage to be solved. For example, I don't know how Japan is balanced in RFCA, but it could have a clear science disadvantage compared to the Chinese civs, making it near impossible to catch up with research alone. You could then make a "be the most advanced civilization in X" goal, so the player has to facilitate his espionage abilities to beat it.

At the same time, though, there are always workarounds, and building spies and espionage as opposed to research doesn't pose a clear advantage usually. You'd have to seriously hamper the civ's research to make espionage more appealing, which would make the gameplay unnecessarily rigid for that kind of UHV, IMO. With the culture/wealth spam UHVs, I generally pick several relevant techs to research while my civ is still small, build the relevant buildings and wonders, and then use the slider to accumulate the resources later. Hampering research like that would probably make that kind of strategy difficult to implement.

BTW, thanks for the reply. So far it's mostly been me thinking aloud If anything, talking about it helps me to see new issues with implementing them.

 

[Leoreth]

But if the Japanese get more espionage via Shintoism, it should be the better way, right?

You also shouldn't forget the research coefficient, which influences research speed, but not stealing costs, so you're actually better off investing your commerce into espionage of a civ that researches faster than you (e.g. Chinese dynasties).

 

[Panopticon]

"Steal X techs" provides an incentive to build up the EspP early.

 

[hangman]

But if the Japanese get more espionage via Shintoism, it should be the better way, right?

Eh, not necessarily. There's also tech brokering, which should be turned off anyway, but I find that if you research one relatively advanced tech, even if it takes a while, you can trade it to several other civs for a lot of different techs. Playing the game that way would give it more of a diplomacy flavor rather than espionage.

You also shouldn't forget the research coefficient, which influences research speed, but not stealing costs, so you're actually better off investing your commerce into espionage of a civ that researches faster than you (e.g. Chinese dynasties).

I guess in any case, it's worth a test play.

"Steal X techs" provides an incentive to build up the EspP
early.

This is what I meant in a nutshell. I guess the debate is whether it would be better to do "steal X techs" or "be the most technologically advanced by year Y," and hinder research. IMO, I think it would be better to make the UHV more rigid so that the game mechanics won't have to be.

 

[Leoreth]

I just find it more elegant not to give a player who has special ability A the task "use special ability A", but rather a task that can best be solved by using A, but not exclusively.

It has to be judged whether that's possible in this case, of course.