Espionage

[TimNewbie]

Hi All,
yesterday I found that, thanks to all your replies to my threads, I finally start to understand CIV IV! What a revelation! I even started to assign specialists to my cities, something I haven't done before. I am trying to achieve a cultural win this time. Also, I want to get the best out of the espionage options, but I just don't get that fully yet. In the right lower corner I see all the Civs I met. Behind some of them I can see what they are researching, but not all. The point is,, how did I do that? And did I do that, or what? I know that with spies I can see into cities en damage them if I want to. But how can I see random information, like research and maybe other stuff? I'm playing BtS by the way.
Thanx again!

 

[Cam_H]

Tim,

In the top right hand corner of the screen (under the orange Civilopedia icon) is the Espionage Advisor. It will outline tribe-by-tribe where you're spending your espionage points, and how many points you need to get 'passive' benefits (such as follow their technological progress) or 'active' benefits (e.g. cause a city revolt). The Civilopedia goes into a fair amount of information on Espionage within the section 'BTS Concepts'.

Cultural victories and Espionage aren't especially congruous, but that's not to say that there's no espionage component when pursuing a Cultural victory.

 

[TimNewbie]

Really??!! Espionage advisor? Haven't seen that before. Thanx!

Cultural and espionage combined, works for me to activate revolt in a city. Because I am new to the game, I try to find out as much as I can per game played, even if there isn't really an effective relation between some action

 

[Cam_H]

Yeah, well ... despite the smilie ... I'd recommend Cultural Victory on the Higher Levels as a valuable albeit somewhat messy and incomplete guide that's well worth checking out.

 

[TimNewbie]

Thanx again! I didn't mean anything with the smile though. Hope u didn't misunderstood me with the smilie...

 

[madscientist]

Espionage has 2 uses in BTS in my opinion. Tech stealing and war.

At higher levels using espionage to steal techs and trade them off is sometimes needed to keep up in technology. If you are at a level where you usually out-tech the AI then this is much less important and I would use it to monitor what others are researching. To steal techs focus all the eps towards that leader and send spies to the nearest city, usually an AI that shares your border. Also let the spy sit in that target city for 5 turns to decrease the espionage cost of the mission.

In war, you can send the target city into revolt just before an attack and all of a sudden it get's NO defensive bonus. You can now use you can use the seige weapons for direct attacks and collateral damage resulting in a fast city conquest. Send your spies to the next city, repeat. This works best during the middle age/renasance era where the enemy has alot of castles and you have only trebs. LAter game, naval ship and aircraft work better than bothering with spies.

Getting eps is a slow process, but you can speed that up by getting Great Spies. I generally like to settle them, getting 12 eps towards any AI although going for Scotalnd yards are also useful. The Great Wall is the strongest thing in getting an early great spy followed by Code of Laws for courthouses which give you 2 eps and opens a spy specialist slot. Mid game Jails/Bureaus/Agencies get you alot of eps although I find they are quite hammer expensive and will focus them in certain cities first (particularly cities with Scotland yards and settled spies).

There ar emany walkthoughs demonstrating game strategies, including my own RPCs. The classic RPCs Peter III and Mao were good examples of 2 different approaches to espionage.

 

[Aoxomoxoa]

On the flip side, as you lay through the game and your land improvements sometimes mysteriously disappear, and that nice forge you just spent 10 turns building goes kaboom and Sitting Bull is in your game you can be pretty certain you've just been...

ESPIONAGED!!