Espionage question

UWHabs

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I recently got BtS, and haven't really read up much about espionage. My first real game, I didn't end up doing too much with espionage, since I was just getting used to it.

So, my first question, are there any ramifications of espionage? I think I was playing early on like how stealing techs was in old games - you get caught, and then the enemies get really angry at you. But from what I gather, is that not a possibility? Spies seem to get caught all the time, from messages I get, but I never saw any bad diplo modifiers. So even if I go steal a tech from my best friend, they won't get angry, will they?

Also, unless if you're playing a rare espionage economy game, does anyone touch the slider? Unless if you're focusing on one opponent, to get enough to use spies to revolt a city as you attack, is there ever any benefit?
 
Spying doesn't give anywhere near the diplomatic penalty you would get in civ2 or civ3. All that happens is you have a random chance to get a -1 "your spy was caught causing trouble" penalty if your spy gets caught in their territory or fails a mission.
 
Espionage is important because later on in the game, the spies of other civilizations will try to do nasty things to you, such as sabotage production in one of your cities, destroy mines & pastures, or poison your water supply. This happens in peace as well as war.

To defend yourself, you need buildings such as courthouses, jails, & security bureaus to build up your espionage points. You can also use the sliding scale in the upper left of the main screen to spend some of your treasury on developing espionage.

Click on the espionage menu in the upper right of the main screen. This allows you to weight your espionage efforts against those likely to do you harm- I weight mine against civilizations that don't like me and against my next-door neighbors.
 
IAlso, unless if you're playing a rare espionage economy game, does anyone touch the slider? Unless if you're focusing on one opponent, to get enough to use spies to revolt a city as you attack, is there ever any benefit?

In the early part of the game, you may have to. If you are in contact with 5 other civs, you probably won't be generating enough points to cover them all. I generally only produce 4 points total early on, so one civ won't end up with any unless I raise my spending by 10%. Once my economy starts to develop though I can drop it back down. And towards the end of the game, some civs seem to generate alot more points against you, maybe because of this tendency of the city governor to select Spy specialists. So I find I need to increase the slider then as well.
 
Question!

If I put a spy in every city of mine... would that be sufficient to stop enemy spies on my cities? What makes finding enemy spies easier? having more EP?
 
Question!

If I put a spy in every city of mine... would that be sufficient to stop enemy spies on my cities?

Not necessarily, you can still get sabotaged or poisoned even if there's a Spy present. Though having either a Spy or a Security Bureau will reduce the odds of it happening. They don't stack though so it's either one or the other.


What makes finding enemy spies easier? having more EP?

That and having Spys/Bureaus. It's a combination of those three things.
 
Espionage can be very annoying MM later in the game, when you have to keep doing counter-espionage missions to keep other players from pillaging and sabotaging you all the time. I turn if off in about half my games. I don't find it adds much to the game.

I turn off random events in about 90% of my games. I find random events add very little to the game, and there's a couple of events that can dramatically affect the outcome of the game. (Like the +2 health in every city random event. It's like having a free extra leader trait!) I don't want something random determining such a major advantage.
 
I turn off random events in about 90% of my games. I find random events add very little to the game, and there's a couple of events that can dramatically affect the outcome of the game. (Like the +2 health in every city random event. It's like having a free extra leader trait!) I don't want something random determining such a major advantage.

You do know that you can turn off individual events, don't you? If that's is the medicinal plant event, I've turned that off in my games along with all the barabarian uprisings. I've also turned off those events that require you to build x number of things before a certain time period. I find those just aren't very well balanced at all. Like I'm supposed to build 13 Libraries in order to succeed? I don't think so.
 
You do know that you can turn off individual events, don't you? If that's is the medicinal plant event, I've turned that off in my games along with all the barabarian uprisings. I've also turned off those events that require you to build x number of things before a certain time period. I find those just aren't very well balanced at all. Like I'm supposed to build 13 Libraries in order to succeed? I don't think so.


Sure, but there's too many of them for me to be bothered going through them all trying to figure out which ones I want and which ones I don't. Besides, I'm likely to get rid of the bad ones and keep the good ones, which may unbalance the intended gameplay.
 
I am not a very big fan of the current espionage system.

If a rival civ is annoyed with you, it doesn't matter if you have espionage slider at 100%, running counter-espionage missions every 10 turns or so, running kill spy missions, int. agencies, sec. bureaus, Scotland Yard, spy specialists, etc.. You are still going to get spied on every other turn, unless your civ is a lot bigger than your rivals.
 
Espionage is great and its fairly easy to get the lead over the AI. Most players (including me) push fairly hard to get CoL early and once you have monopoly on this tech you basically have monopoly on espionage. AI NEVER research this once its gone early and you're pumping out courthouses in most cities - bang, espionage lead.

Missions are useful, though a bit tedious (with exception of revolts during war time). IMO main benefit is when youve racked up enough points to see what they're researching and even more useful when you have the see/investigate city options - this makes victory in battle very easy once you know where to surgically strike. Raze a few cities with poor garrisons and AI will capitulate before their SoD even makes an appearance.
 
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