sqeaky
Chieftain
Do people use it? I play on Emperor and usually don't find myself bothering with it; if I do at all it's for defensive purposes. I'm curious to hear what other people think. Cheers.
Espionage
- Thread starter sqeaky
- Start date
TheLazyHase
King
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2009
- Messages
- 867
Yes, people do use it. It'snot mandatory, but it's really powerful. The two main use are "revolt city" (because one turn of 0% cultural defense help in conquest), and "steal technologie" (because that's a cheap way to get tech).
BilboMcBaggins
Chieftain
"Because it's a cheap way to steal tech"
Definatly not from my experience.
I usually forgo espionage unless I Really Really want to keep an eye on one of my nearby enemies. Like preparing for full scale, conquering, multiple SoD/siege attack.
To me the amount needed to maintain watch on other civs is too high for the slight benefits it grants. I'd much rather have a tech faster by research, guarenteed, than a risky espionage move.
That on top of fact that carefully watching every move of 1 or 2 rival civs is just another 15-minute task I'd have to do per turn. I just take their annoying well-poisoning and such as a mere, slight annoyance and keep expanding my treasury, army, and tech tree.
Definatly not from my experience.
I usually forgo espionage unless I Really Really want to keep an eye on one of my nearby enemies. Like preparing for full scale, conquering, multiple SoD/siege attack.
To me the amount needed to maintain watch on other civs is too high for the slight benefits it grants. I'd much rather have a tech faster by research, guarenteed, than a risky espionage move.
That on top of fact that carefully watching every move of 1 or 2 rival civs is just another 15-minute task I'd have to do per turn. I just take their annoying well-poisoning and such as a mere, slight annoyance and keep expanding my treasury, army, and tech tree.
"Revolt city", to conquer a civ with mounted units or other 2 move units like Musketeers without waiting for the slow siege.
To steal techs, the best way is to get an early Great Spy from the Great Wall, and settle it. Focus your espionage on the civs who tech well, and steal them everything you want until quite late in the game. It becomes too expansive around Astronomy, in my experience, but you can steal a lot of useful techs before that without raising the espionage slider.
You can't stop a civ poisoning your water or other minor annoyances like blowing up your improvements, it's just too dirt cheap to do. If someone wants to do it, he will do it, no matter how much more espionage you have or the number of counterespionage missions you run. You just have to put a spy in each of your cities and on your key improvements, and hope for the best.
To keep an eye on other civs, just build courthouses and run a spy specialist here and there until you get jails, security bureaus and intelligences agencies. No need to raise the slider, unless you face some heavy espioners, but even then you usually can go away with 10% espionage.
To steal techs, the best way is to get an early Great Spy from the Great Wall, and settle it. Focus your espionage on the civs who tech well, and steal them everything you want until quite late in the game. It becomes too expansive around Astronomy, in my experience, but you can steal a lot of useful techs before that without raising the espionage slider.
You can't stop a civ poisoning your water or other minor annoyances like blowing up your improvements, it's just too dirt cheap to do. If someone wants to do it, he will do it, no matter how much more espionage you have or the number of counterespionage missions you run. You just have to put a spy in each of your cities and on your key improvements, and hope for the best.
To keep an eye on other civs, just build courthouses and run a spy specialist here and there until you get jails, security bureaus and intelligences agencies. No need to raise the slider, unless you face some heavy espioners, but even then you usually can go away with 10% espionage.
sabo
My Ancestors were Vikings
That's what I mostly use them for, if I start falling behind in techs I will build mostly espionage buildings and crank my slider to 30 or 40 percent. If you shop around after every steal for the cheapest city/civ you can catch up pretty fast.
Jerrymander
Epistemologist
Yeah, it's not necessarily a 'cheap' way, it's rather an 'alternative' way. If someone has a monopoly on a tech, not trading it, and you want it, you can use espionage.
Ohh yeah, it can be extremely cheap, like 4.5 less than the beaker count.
Defensive way to use espionage is running non-stop counter-espionage vs the possible mission conductor, not allocating points towards anyone in particular.
Here is a game w/ a very heavy espionage use: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=324004
Look around the half when espionage starts playing a significant role , and how ridiculously powerful it gets by the end.
Defensive way to use espionage is running non-stop counter-espionage vs the possible mission conductor, not allocating points towards anyone in particular.
Here is a game w/ a very heavy espionage use: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=324004
Look around the half when espionage starts playing a significant role , and how ridiculously powerful it gets by the end.
Bluto_Longneck
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2009
- Messages
- 61
Navarre said:
That's right!
To add to this, the GP-pool will be forever contaminated, so you are very like to get one or two more Great Spies, even if you run Caste with 10 scientists.
Use them to infiltrate the tech leader(s) and send your spies over to steal some nice techs.
HappyFunPal
Warlord
I turn espionage off & build more rifles 
Yeah, if you get another Great Spy and really need to steal techs, it's the way to go. Otherwise, a GP is a GP when it comes to triggering a Golden Age.
In a recent game I was facing Ragnar who turned to a monster after killing Sitting Bull, he was bigger, meaner and more tech-savvy than me. The espionage allowed me to steal him the military techs he was focusing on while I was researching the economic techs, I wouldn't have survived without it.
Usually I just settle the first one for the big espionage bonus and the little research, and I use the others for a GA, sometimes Scotland Yard if I had the Best Defense quest and feel like running a ridiculous espionage in the GW city.
When it comes to counterespionage, you can run 100% espionage, you can run as many counterespionage missions as you want, it won't stop someone from taking a dump in your water tanks any time he feels like it. It's just to cheap to do, even with 300% of the cost. The only way to stop it for good is to kill the bugger.
TheLazyHase
King
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2009
- Messages
- 867
It IS cheaper than researching. It's a fact ; if you know what influence the cost, yo ucan have 10-30% discount. Go war academy for more, if that interest you.
Like I told: 10-30% is nothing, it can be like over 4 times (300%) discount. I think 400% is achievable in a normal game. Espionage multipliers are multiplied one another, not added. That makes it so profitable.
About counter espionage: the buildings alone provide enough EP and touching the slider is wrong unless intended to use the espionage in more creative ways: revolts, stealing technologies and the like.
About counter espionage: the buildings alone provide enough EP and touching the slider is wrong unless intended to use the espionage in more creative ways: revolts, stealing technologies and the like.
If you're playing a map with layout/opponents that lends itself well to espionage, it can be massive.
The most important aspect is correctly identify strong espionage targets - somebody who techs well but is not a serious threat, keeps borders open at bad attitudes and is close (mansa/capac/lizzy rock for this) you can steal every tech with ease for the second half of the game.
What's more - you can keep up in tech easily with nothing more than prioritizing the espionage buildings in your cities (jail/IA/SB mainly.)
If you prepare target enemy cities for stealing techs, the results can be quite absurd. Here's some things to do:
- Pick a close target (no more than 10-20% distance penalty)
- Have open borders (much less chance of spy detection, 20% cost reduction)
- Spread your culture in the city (easily get 20-25% cost reduction)
- If you've gone espionage heavy, you'll probably have 25-40% reduction from total espionage spending ratio.
- Get a holy city, get your holy city religion in the target city, make sure he's not running your religion or he's in FR - 40% discount.
- Wait the 5 turns for 50% discount, much easier to do with open borders.
- (V Important!) use spies to destroy the security bureau in the city before tech-stealing. This makes all your other spies in the city have much less chance of being caught while idle, higher chance of mission success and reduces the mission cost by 33%.
So let's do the maths for a tech. Take a cheap tech, like fusion(!), at 20K beakers on Epic/Large. Note the following is what I have achieved several times in real games, it's not just theoretical number crunching.
Base mission cost = 20K * 1.5 = 30K
* 1.1 (distance) = 33K
(no *1.5 for security bureau, because you destroyed it right?)
* 0.6 (holy city/relgion)
= 19.8K
* 0.8 (open borders)
= 15.85K
* 0.65 (total espionage spending)
= 10.6K
* 0.75 (about 20 spread culture missions normally, but they're pretty cheap so the total cost to get the discount is made back by stealing about 1-2 techs.)
= 8K
* 0.5 (stationary spy)
= 4K
so .. I'm getting an 80% discount on techs using prepared espionage cities. Prepared cities in two well-chosen target civs is usually enough. Once you've prioritized the espionage buildings and spent a bit of time with a high espionage slider, you can drop down to 0% and still maintain high total EP ratios. Obviously the above is the optimum case, and I'd rarely get *every* one of those bonuses, although it has happened. If you drop the culture spread and holy city, you're still getting a 62% discount, or paying a bit over 1/3 price.
With just 8 cities with the EP buildings you'll get 352 free EP points. Due to each city having +100% espionage, running something like 20% slider should increase this value to around 700. That means you're getting the above fusion tech in about 6 turns, or an equivalent beaker rate of about 3500K per turn, with 20% slider. With 8 cities that's an equivalent beaker rate of 440 per city - with 8 cities you will seriously struggle to ever tech that fast using beakers, even with 100% science slider, full cottaged and low production.
With the great majority of your "research" coming from a few buildings in each city, this frees up the rest of your empire to concentrate on gold (paying the bills and upgrading troops), rush buying, production workshops, etc. Of course you'll never have a massive tech lead (you can achieve a lead by sheer breadth of techs if you choose good targets) but then again this strategy works best on immortal+ where you're unlikely to have a good tech lead anyway. It's kind of a waste of time on anything up to and (imho) including monarch - you're just stunting yourself by "only" keeping up with the AI on these levels.
Once you get it up and running well, it kinda feels like having the internet for half the game. Very powerful. A common strategy of mine on Immortal is:
-cottage heavy initial cities -> beeline rifles -> drafting war -> communism/democracy -> state property/caste -> workshop all commerce tiles less than village -> EP buildings everywhere to keep up in tech -> full military -> domination.
works great.
The most important aspect is correctly identify strong espionage targets - somebody who techs well but is not a serious threat, keeps borders open at bad attitudes and is close (mansa/capac/lizzy rock for this) you can steal every tech with ease for the second half of the game.
What's more - you can keep up in tech easily with nothing more than prioritizing the espionage buildings in your cities (jail/IA/SB mainly.)
If you prepare target enemy cities for stealing techs, the results can be quite absurd. Here's some things to do:
- Pick a close target (no more than 10-20% distance penalty)
- Have open borders (much less chance of spy detection, 20% cost reduction)
- Spread your culture in the city (easily get 20-25% cost reduction)
- If you've gone espionage heavy, you'll probably have 25-40% reduction from total espionage spending ratio.
- Get a holy city, get your holy city religion in the target city, make sure he's not running your religion or he's in FR - 40% discount.
- Wait the 5 turns for 50% discount, much easier to do with open borders.
- (V Important!) use spies to destroy the security bureau in the city before tech-stealing. This makes all your other spies in the city have much less chance of being caught while idle, higher chance of mission success and reduces the mission cost by 33%.
So let's do the maths for a tech. Take a cheap tech, like fusion(!), at 20K beakers on Epic/Large. Note the following is what I have achieved several times in real games, it's not just theoretical number crunching.
Base mission cost = 20K * 1.5 = 30K
* 1.1 (distance) = 33K
(no *1.5 for security bureau, because you destroyed it right?)
* 0.6 (holy city/relgion)
= 19.8K
* 0.8 (open borders)
= 15.85K
* 0.65 (total espionage spending)
= 10.6K
* 0.75 (about 20 spread culture missions normally, but they're pretty cheap so the total cost to get the discount is made back by stealing about 1-2 techs.)
= 8K
* 0.5 (stationary spy)
= 4K
so .. I'm getting an 80% discount on techs using prepared espionage cities. Prepared cities in two well-chosen target civs is usually enough. Once you've prioritized the espionage buildings and spent a bit of time with a high espionage slider, you can drop down to 0% and still maintain high total EP ratios. Obviously the above is the optimum case, and I'd rarely get *every* one of those bonuses, although it has happened. If you drop the culture spread and holy city, you're still getting a 62% discount, or paying a bit over 1/3 price.
With just 8 cities with the EP buildings you'll get 352 free EP points. Due to each city having +100% espionage, running something like 20% slider should increase this value to around 700. That means you're getting the above fusion tech in about 6 turns, or an equivalent beaker rate of about 3500K per turn, with 20% slider. With 8 cities that's an equivalent beaker rate of 440 per city - with 8 cities you will seriously struggle to ever tech that fast using beakers, even with 100% science slider, full cottaged and low production.
With the great majority of your "research" coming from a few buildings in each city, this frees up the rest of your empire to concentrate on gold (paying the bills and upgrading troops), rush buying, production workshops, etc. Of course you'll never have a massive tech lead (you can achieve a lead by sheer breadth of techs if you choose good targets) but then again this strategy works best on immortal+ where you're unlikely to have a good tech lead anyway. It's kind of a waste of time on anything up to and (imho) including monarch - you're just stunting yourself by "only" keeping up with the AI on these levels.
Once you get it up and running well, it kinda feels like having the internet for half the game. Very powerful. A common strategy of mine on Immortal is:
-cottage heavy initial cities -> beeline rifles -> drafting war -> communism/democracy -> state property/caste -> workshop all commerce tiles less than village -> EP buildings everywhere to keep up in tech -> full military -> domination.
works great.
In a decent sized empire, the buildings alone provide enough EP to keep up in tech through selective stealing and trading. That allows you to go full military for a domination. In maps/difficulties where the tech-speed is fast due to some large/techwhoring/friendly AI's and getting a tech lead is unlikely anyway, this can be (imho) by far the best approach.
sqeaky
Chieftain
a little late but if you have an example of that espionage game i'd like to see it. thanks.
Zero-Sum
Chieftain
Have wondered for a while, why doesn't the AI transport spies if your in another landmass ??
TheLazyHase
King
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2009
- Messages
- 867
In Better AI it does transport spy in your territory ; in stock it's just overlooked.
sabo
My Ancestors were Vikings
I usually play Monarch, and there were a couple of games I've played that the only way I was going to catch up in techs was to steal them. I concentrate building espionage buildings and cranking the spy slider up to 30 or 40 percent, If I can get to about 700 spy points per turn I have a chance. It will back fire on you sometimes if you have failed missions and the AI declares war on me, but it's just another tool to use when you're desperate.
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