Espionage direction poll (Part 1)

[azum4roll]

See bold for full question.

We have current 4 espionage rework drafts, and I'm sure other people have more ideas. Instead of flooding the Congress with a dozen of proposals, we can first decide the direction we're heading for via unofficial polls.

The draft threads in no particular order:

axatin's Espionage Rework (Draft)

Building on the Drafts by amateurgamer, azum4roll and Stalker0 and on the discussion in those threads, I would like to discuss with you my own thoughts on the Espionage topic. All ideas and in particular all the numbers used are preliminary, feel free to comment and make suggestions. First of...

forums.civfanatics.com

AG's Espionage Rework Draft

Hi everyone! This is amateurgamer! This post will be a detailed draft on a espionage rework to be proposed in the next Congress. The goal is to lay out the details of what the rework will look like with some numbers picked as a starting point. The draft is broken into multiple sections that will...

forums.civfanatics.com

azum4roll's Espionage Rework Draft

I'm with @Enginseer that if you want CS spies and major civ spies be balanced with each other, the easiest thing would be simplifying major civ spying to have automatic missions (= CS rigging in strength) + active button (= coups in strength). So I've come up with the following proposals...

forums.civfanatics.com

Stalker0's Espionage Proposal (Draft 1)

Building off the work of AG and Azum's earlier proposals. I look the concept of the standard passive spy bonus and the "coup-esque" missions. I have written a new proposal with some of that in mind, for debate here and on discord. Stalker0’s Espionage Proposal (Draft 1) NOTE: I will be using...

forums.civfanatics.com

The first poll is the least controversial:
Should spy missions (against a civ) be consisted of one or more "passive missions" and one or more "tactical missions"?

Definitions:
Passive missions: missions that are automatically carried out when a spy has finished establishing surveillance. If more than one exists, the player is required to pick one. Passive missions are only effective while the spy is still in the city, and immediately have no effect when the spy leaves/dies/is caught. These missions don't have a success rate and can't fail.
Tactical missions: missions that have a chance to fail, but are usually more impactful. Effects are instant (when you click the button), but can be something like placing a buff on the spy owner/debuff on the target that lasts a certain number of turns, regardless of whether the spy is still in the city. If failed, the spy is at best captured and at worst killed.

Spy missions in the current version are neither of them (has a duration before taking effect, but effect stays even if the spy leaves).

There are no obligations to propose following the poll results, but it should be a good starting point to making your proposals for the next congress.

The next poll will be based on the result of this one. (Technically we don't really have ideas if the result is No...)

 

[Stalker0]

I'm also about to finish a draft of a "super simple" system. I want to also determine if people want to go back to a much simplier easier to use system with less levers, or if they truly prefer concepts with lots of missions and options as we have now.

 

[usadefcon1]

The first poll is the least controversial:
Should spy missions (against a civ) be consisted of one or more "passive missions" and one or more "tactical missions"?

FYI the words "tactical missions"? didn't make it into the title of the poll.

 

[azum4roll]

FYI the words "tactical missions"? didn't make it into the title of the poll.

There's probably a hidden character limit. Either way I can't edit the question.

 

[Rosete]

A lot of spy gameplay is clicking through menus. Menu of spies, select target city from a menu, select mission via a menu. So the more intricate you try to make it, the more of a chore it became to play.

I'd prefer a dead simple spy system where you set it and forget it. Spies became a yield bot that serves as a small catch up mechanic.

When spy are meaningful and impactful to the state of the game, it always feels bad. People don't like it when spies can directly steal from your coffer, or hinder your production in a meaningful way (remember when you can prevent AI from building anything with delay spy action?). Likewise, it also doesn't feel good when counter-spy is strong and meaningful. Because then the entire system is frozen. Neither situation is very fun to engage with. Either you feel helpless against enemy spies, or you would feel helpless seeing your own spies getting murked.

At the end of the day, the spy system has a lot of clicking on menu to do stuff. The more indept the system is, the more menus you have to click through. VP has done away with a lot of menu clicking. Tech/policy is click once and forget, building stuff has automation, diplo/congress stuff is click once every ~50 turns. Why then do spies have to be so intricate?

 

[ma_kuh]

I like the idea of simple tactical missions that you can request on-demand (after setup), but that are balanced around being about as valuable as the passive effect. So you can opt into the complexity, but if you just use the passive effect you aren't really at a disadvantage.

 

[tsmith7163]

I'm in a tradition immortal game - I'm pretty much enjoying the current espionage system - and I don't really think it is more cumbersome than anything else - i think it is more engaging and flexible then it ever has been- I have diplomats to see votes and level up and improve relationship, a counter spy in capital, I have different tactical missions with different durations some to hurt opponents ( tourism, gold) some to help me ( science yield, tech) and the rest to rig CS potential to coup- I've been killing spies at a good rate but some have got through to hurt (but much more manageable and with more clarity than lump sum of the past)- the only thing I don't like is it does not seem like the PS, Military base and CIA are not showing up in spy resistance calc. - ( a caveat I've been lucky so far as I'm going for SV and no Science yields have be stolen only gold and faith so it's possible my RNG experience as killing my science stealing spys has biased me a bit....) .

TBH - I did not read all proposals in-depth yet - but I do agree with the wide vs tall disparity- and not getting anything from rigging does kinda suck but in my experience this is usually not to common and there are other ways to counter - ( diplomats, coups) and if it is a far away CS that you can't reach, it kinda makes sense that would be tougher to rig.

However I do like that the Public Works spy reduction and having multiple reasons to build it similar to the way other buildings are built for multiple reasons (yields, unhappiness reduction, supply cap increase, capital strength, gold, specialists, etc.)

I do have faith that those smarter and with more experience in this community will figure out the appropriate improvement if need be- as they have every time in the past- as the game is simply awesome- it is so freaking fun to play!

 

[rkkn]

previously I always hated it when I saw that spy pop up on entering renaissance or after a spy is done doing its thing.

But that was only because it felt like I was wasting time trying to squeeze out a tiny bit of benefit from something that was mostly useless. If instead spies are interesting and useful (and would have me make different choices depending on my overall strategy), then I don't care how complex it is.

 

[azum4roll]

Wow opinions on espionage are really diverse - we have people who want it to be as simple as it can be, while some people want it to have more different choices so they're interesting... I don't think we can ever appease everyone.

 

[pineappledan]

espionage need to be good enough that a certain civ can get a free spy at game start and also maybe make them slightly better, but then also have 2 big naval bonuses on top.

In other words Spies need to be good enough to be worth somewhere between 25% and 40% of a UA's power

To me, that doesn't sound like they have to be that powerful, or even that interesting. being able to steal techs, rig elections, and maybe some other bits of intrigue, vision and a smattering of yields was plenty. The espionage system has never been interesting to me, I just want it to be small, give some benefits, and stay out of my way.

 

[Stalker0]

espionage need to be good enough that a certain civ can get a free spy at game start and also maybe make them slightly better, but then also have 2 big naval bonuses on top.

In other words Spies need to be good enough to be worth somewhere between 25% and 40% of a UA's power

Technically not true. England could just lose the spy if whatever the system finishes up as it wouldn't work with that feature. the White tower could give them an extra spy as a smaller portion of the power package with some other feature to replace it.

 

[CppMaster]

Yeah, I'd also prefer spying less demanding when it comes to clicks. It's a game about building a civilization, not about James Bond. I'd love if spying could be automated somehow!

 

[azum4roll]

Yeah, I'd also prefer spying less demanding when it comes to clicks. It's a game about building a civilization, not about James Bond. I'd love if spying could be automated somehow!

Do you think placing spies in CS is already too many clicks? The new system should have similar amount of clicks both in CS and major civ cities. You won't need to reselect a passive mission as long as the spy is still there, and you can completely ignore tactical missions if they aren't your thing.

Even simpler and it'll become just another yield modifier.

 

[Anarcomu]

Maybe add a small list to choose between your cities and all others, so the menu with cities can be bigger.

 

[CppMaster]

Do you think placing spies in CS is already too many clicks? The new system should have similar amount of clicks both in CS and major civ cities. You won't need to reselect a passive mission as long as the spy is still there, and you can completely ignore tactical missions if they aren't your thing.

Even simpler and it'll become just another yield modifier.

Cool!

 

[Tekamthi]

I appreciate the thought everyone has put into this -- nothing here jumps out at me as the perfect system, just different. I enjoy the current system for the most part, and I enjoyed the vanilla system for the most part. However, both feel somewhat disconnected to the game world imo: when i'm engaged in a really good game of VP, I feel some connection to the world and map, however spies might as well exist an another dimension of the civ multiverse, none of the civ 5 spy systems have ever felt like anything but a spreadsheet minigame.

I voted no but I think I'd prefer a 'sometimes' option for the OP question, and am not sure I understood fully -- if we're going for simultaneous passive (safe) and active (risky) missions, I'd prefer to have some input to the spy's focus, maybe even make it 100% focused on passive effect so as not to risk spy death or incident with host civ in some cases. Alternatively, sometimes I'd maybe wanna forego the passive effect to accelerate the tactical mission.

Ultimately, unless someone has a plan for a civ-2-style spy system that works in civ 5 and can be used competently by AI, I just want the spy system (and all VP systems) to gel, to stop undergoing major overhauls just to achieve something different but not better. 5 years ago VP community consensus was we were a few revisions away from a 'gold' edition, a final version -- some of the changes since have been great (AI improvements in particular), but these proposals strike me as change for sake of change.

 

[pineappledan]

I don’t want to be prompted by spies other than to pick their location

 

[Stalker0]

5 years ago VP community consensus was we were a few revisions away from a 'gold' edition, a final version -- some of the changes since have been great (AI improvements in particular), but these proposals strike me as change for sake of change.

I also use to think about the “gold version” but candidly it was a fallacy that didn’t line up with the will of the community. The truth is the community doesn’t want a gold version, there remains a hunger for change and new things even 5 years later. People like switching things up in the mod, and it remains a continuous work in progress.

At this point I honestly think the only way we would get a gold version is when the devs just stop wanting to work on the project, and whatever we finish up with would become gold by default.

 

[Tekamthi]

I also use to think about the “gold version” but candidly it was a fallacy that didn’t line up with the will of the community. The truth is the community doesn’t want a gold version, there remains a hunger for change and new things even 5 years later. People like switching things up in the mod, and it remains a continuous work in progress.

At this point I honestly think the only way we would get a gold version is when the devs just stop wanting to work on the project, and whatever we finish up with would become gold by default.

Thats fair, I wasn't altogether a fan of this paradigm necessarily. But I have yet to grasp what makes these proposals really stand out from the status quo, we're just changing the field labels and cell formulas of the civ 5 espionage excel spreadsheet that was tacked on as an afterthought in vanilla.

Anyway I can see a lot of thought went into all of these, and I trust that each of the authors have theorized a system that would be at least as much fun to current implementation.

 

[Stalker0]

Anyway I can see a lot of thought went into all of these, and I trust that each of the authors have theorized a system that would be at least as much fun to current implementation.

No be paranoid!!!

In seriousness, while we have all done our best on the various drafts, they are still drafts. Espionage is a complex topic, and as this discussion shows, we have a lot of diverse opinions. More than anything we need feedback to try and do some polish before we release any of these ideas into the wild.