Espionage - why not?

[VincentCecelia]

I just recent played a demo of CivRev on Xbox360 (Jonesing for Civ5) and spies was discovered at writingconfused but they took 25 hammers to build (at the time i made 3 hammers a turn).

I hate civ 4 espionage as well, but in CivRev, you can go to a city (unfortify the opponents unit, destroy a building, or destroy production. None of that time/point based mess, and much more effective to use. Simple, to the point.

 

[Panzeh]

I've never seen an espionage mechanic that wasn't fiddly as all hell.

 

[parabellum9x19]

I've never seen an espionage mechanic that wasn't fiddly as all hell.

yeah, was super fiddly in the Total War series as well (spies AND assassins, ugh)

 

[Earthling]

Didn't vanilla civ4 have basically no espionage? I haven't played it since warlords came out, and I haven't played that since BTS came out, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I seem to remember spies only becoming available at nationhood or so.

Yeah. About the only meaningful thing was sabotage of spaceship parts though, which has always been kinda abusable though and I DON'T want that ever back again.

Overall, I could live with no espionage actually. BtS's system was annoying and it was made worse by the fact that turning it off unbalanced the game anyway (turning too many espy points into culture).

If they brought it back, most actions need to be toned down and I wouldn't want it as a prominent role, it should probably just run off of gold entirely and maybe a building or two, no whole separate economy. It shouldn't be things so trivial/common that it will lead to insane diplo problems (AI in BtS could easily accrue significant modifiers against each other for espionage) and should be present throughout the game.

I really really liked the establishment of "embassies" in civ3 for one, so maybe a minor system with something like that, the ability to steal world maps/investigate cities periodically later on, and maybe a few straightforward missions relating to war intel, or perhaps city state influence and so on could work. For example a way to spend gold on an "espionage" mission that actually decreases a rival's influence with a city state could be all right. Peeking into opponent cities for a gold cost wouldn't be bad either, but they would have to fix things up where, say, all buildings in a city aren't visible to all players anyway. (I'm annoyed if we still have to do this looking on the map, by the way )

Oh and I actually voted the last option though because at this point I wouldn't trust game developers to get it right. And it's not much of a loss leaving it off all together seeing as I wouldn't want a huge system anyway. It's not just civ, it's again pretty much every game that had an espionage mechanic, just doesn't work too well.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Didn't found the right answer - should be in the game if they'll figure out how to do it smoothly.

 

[City Builder]

... but it required strong micromanagment and consumed a lot of time and effort... the AI was pretty much always way way better at it, due to the level of attention required to make it work properly.

That's exactly what I'm thinking, plus I'm a lazy gamer and don't want to put that much time and effort into any one aspect of any game. For every 1 spy I would actually send out, I'd be notified of about 5 or more spys that were found near my cities sent by the AI, the AI doesn't get lazy, or bored with a particular feature I suppose.

 

[Charybdis]

Information about current research, information about what their cities have/their city view, those were good parts of espionage.

The annoying sabotage of my lands frankly was just aggravating.

 

[craig123]

I'm not bothered whether espionage is in or not. If it were to return, why not just have an "intelligence advisor" (like the military, foreign, science and economic advisors) that provides useful info on what your rivals are doing? The quality of the information could increase with techs/social policies/buildings/wonders.

 

[alpaca]

I loved the passive part of Civ4 BTS' Espionage system. Getting to see what your most relevant rivals were doing with their units and what they were building was very useful and interesting. I've also exploited the game mechanics to get tech stealing for absurdly cheap prices (mostly by founding your own religion and only spreading it to a few of their cities, which yields a -40% modifier).

But apart from tech stealing I agree that espionage shares the problems it does in practically all games: Expending resources for something that is merely destructive is not usually a good idea in a free for all game. However, if you have a clear rival or an enemy who's just becoming too strong, it starts making sense again. So, in a way, this would work perfect with the secret pact in Civ5, and I would love to have some options to bring down the big bad guy of the block in a concerted effort. I'd rather have an abstract representation than a spy unit to save on micromanaging, though.

 

[Scaramanga]

More like:

Espionage - why?

 

[Minmaster]

yea it did kinda get ridiculous that we started using spies to bring down city defense to 0, using them like seige weapons. to me, spies became more of a military conquest unit than a tool of espionage. pretty overpowered too.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Espionage giving Information would be good (letting you see inside enemy cities/Territory see their units, etc.)

Since it seems Map trading is outs Espionage would be the way to get it.

Espionage with City States also would be a good idea. (Gold to drop relations)


Possibly providing unhappiness in an enemy city.... particularly enemy Puppet cities.... particularly if they used to be yours.