Espionage

[RulerOfDaPeople]

Anybody use spys? What do you use them for? What have they done for you?

I never bother with them. I don't really see much point other than to thwart enemy spies from sabataging my improvements. Basically, I'm finding spies reletively useless. But maybe some one here can shine a little light on them for me that I find a good use for them.

 

[Supr49er]

You can use them before you attack a city by the 'Support City Revolt' mission or the 'Foment Unhappiness' mission. You can sabotage city walls.

You can spread your culture to their border cities.

You should use the 'Perform Counterespionage' mission every 20 - 30 turns (depending on what speed you're playing).

You can steal their technologies.

You can put a spy near the border or on your critical resources (oil wells).

 

[Trojan Sheep]

I love to run an EP only economy in the mid to late game, basically becoming a leech on society and letting all the other nations do the research. Since your success rates are largely based on your overall EP produced it can become very lucrative and entertaining if you like causing mischief on the side.

 

[Hammurbabble]

I don't take things as far as Trojan Sheep (although I might try it one of these days), but -- I've found that if you concentrate on a single target, putting all your espionage in one basket so to speak, you can amass enough points to steal technology, and that's a good thing. This is without cranking up the espionage slider.

I've also used spies to slow down someone's culture victory by sabotaging culture buildings, and (of course) to drop defenses in a city before an attack.

 

[Iranon]

Espionage is more efficient than science when you fall behind. If you have a more advanced neighbour whom you can't easily bully for techs, it's an efficient way of catching up.

They allow it to more easily recove from deliberately REXing beyond what your economy can support or waging drawn-out wars for strategic reasons. Also, spy specialists are highly efficient; the specialists themselves both normal and great provide more 'commerce units' than others and a single infiltration mission can be milked for many many techs if there's someone to leech from.

 

[gostanford22]

i like it to change their civics as well, useally to freemarket, so i can establish my corps in their land.

 

[Mik1984]

Espionage is also efficient when you are well ahead - other civs don't want to trade techs with you and stealing them is cheaper than researching. Moreover once you start spymongering the benefits spread across all other civs, you will find very easily other civs at 70% cost ratio.

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

So the best way to steal a tech is to concentrate your espionage points on one civ? Stealing a tech is something I love to do, but almost never am able to pull off.

I also tried to start a revolt in a neighboring city that had the Uranium I needed, but it didn't work and got caught. Really all I need is to stretch my borders on row of tiles over to get it. What do you reccomend without war? This leader is liked by every other single civ in the game and I don't want to take the hit for declaring war on him. It wouldn't be worth war anyway because they passed UN resolution that no one could build nukes. I just want it for nuclear plants if I need them.

Also how do you use a great spy? The only option I saw was to infultrate city, and what does that really do beside just let you see the city all the time beyond the fog?

I like to REX like crazy with an imperialistic leader, so maybe espionage could become extremely useful after all.

Plus Trojan's style sounds like fun!

 

[cronullasharks]

Bringing 3 spies is an essential part of any offensive stack for me

Once I have established my next target I focus all my esp. points on them and use the "revolt" option but you gotta bring at least three cause failure is not an option

It just means less turns camped outside the city bringing down defence while they pepper your stack

But I`m sure some of you better players can explain to me why this is a waste of resources.

The other thing is , once I have decided who I`m after next , hostilities start right away without direct fighting.....poison the water , spread unhappiness , sabotage production.....just cause general havoc , anything you can do to soften them up just remember to save enough points for the real assault

I simply cant function without lots of spies , I make loads of them

 

[Bigfoot3814]

I don't take things as far as Trojan Sheep (although I might try it one of these days),

Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with this term.

 

[Polobo]

Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with this term.

Trojan Sheep is the name of a poster at the beginning of the thread

OP, you really need to read up and understand exactly how Espionage Points works (manual and war academy). Points are applied against an entire civ. The points necessary to perform passive and active missions, however, vary based upon the city in which the mission is being performed.

You need to bring multiple spies to ensure mission success, and points are not spent for failed missions.

Espionage is not generally going to be useful in a culture war. The city revolt option places the city into revolt for 1 turn only, and I don't believe that your borders will adjust during that period (though you may deny them the resource if no other city has a cultural radius containing that tile.

For a culture war you want to building culture producing and, most importantly, multiplier buildings. If you are going to try and catch up to a civ in tech via espionage you are basically going to covert most/all of you science slider percentage to espionage slider percentage.

I find passive benefits to be quite nice. Post court-houses I can usually get all civs to at least demographics and then apply EP points evenly unless/until I have specific target/objective in mind, at which point I refocus upon that particular civ (or multiple as the case may be).

 

[Trojan Sheep]

Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with this term.

Well you start by building a giant sheep out of wood, let the enemy take it into their castle, and then remember you should have gotten inside as they launch the entire thing back at you with a catapult... or something like that

You need to bring multiple spies to ensure mission success, and points are not spent for failed missions.

One thing I'd add to that, is to be careful about having multiple spies on top of eachother, but this is actually bugged in 3.13 as the penalty for having multiple spies in the same tile or having recently moved always applies (I uploaded a fix in bhruic's unoffical patch thread, and it is also included in my mod).

Espionage is not generally going to be useful in a culture war. The city revolt option places the city into revolt for 1 turn only, and I don't believe that your borders will adjust during that period (though you may deny them the resource if no other city has a cultural radius containing that tile.

I've actually found espionage to be great for cultural contests, destroying all the enemy's cultural buildings in a given city can have a dramatic impact on a culture war, although simply seeding culture in the city or causing revolts won't accomplish much. Again though this is bugged in 3.13, if a city does not have a monument (or rather, if they do not have the cheapest building in your instance of civ) you will no longer be able to sabotage buildings in that city. A fix for this is included with the other fix I mentioned, but you can always just avoid destroying monuments.

 

[buffalo6542]

another use of the spy is to steal $$ form the oppenent. Also if a rival civilization ahs the lead on u in the space race, than sabotage the work they have done. a third option is when in a wonder race. sabotage production