excessive enemy spies at higher difficulties

the AI should be in some way be afraid of hurting their reputation after so many failed espionage attempts. right now there's nothing holding them back despite multiple failures and repercussions are non-existent. i say after 3 failed attempts, they should hold back 10 turns or something.
 
Have to agree with most here, so much so that i've stopped playing. Spies are so annoying, tedious micro management. Same with corporations, reminds me of caravans in Civ II. Both have ruined the game for me, though I like BTS generally apart from the above 2 points :mad: Any mods around that disable either of the above? Or can anyone tell me how to do it?
 
Infantry#14 said:
perhaps the ai should target the human and themselves equally
Click to expand...

I agree 100%... The AI seems to attack the human player exclusively with espionage(emperor/marathon), but maybe it's espionage spamming itself too but I just don't realize it?

Perhaps the AI should also be more "selfish" when it comes to deciding who to attack. I'm tired of the AI extensively marching through enemy territory to hit me with a big stack of units when capturing my cities would only destroy his economy with the extra maintenance burden -- i'm talking about the early game (axemen) here. Maybe the AI is trying to vassalize me or something in order to surround the closest enemy? I guess less pointless suicide missions is what im asking for... less random attacks that are totally lacking in strategy.
 
Judging by these forums, I think we'll see major changes to the espionage system coming soon. I've taken notice that there is virtually nobody on these boards coming out to defend the current espionage system as it is. It's a tedious system, and Firaxis will listen to the gamers. A big emphasis was put into "less micromanagement" for civ4, at least the "tedious" types of micromanagement... I, for one, am tired of looking at the AI's espionage points to see who just poisoned my water supply again.

Another thing -- my cities have been poisoned about 9000 times (marathon/emp/solvers patch) but I have never, ever, ever seen the Foment Unhappiness used against me. Whats up with that? All the AI seems to do to me with espionage is constantly poison my water... and honsetly id rather they did anything else because that is insanely annoying.
 
hoopsnerd said:
Judging by these forums, I think we'll see major changes to the espionage system coming soon. I've taken notice that there is virtually nobody on these boards coming out to defend the current espionage system as it is. It's a tedious system, and Firaxis will listen to the gamers. A big emphasis was put into "less micromanagement" for civ4, at least the "tedious" types of micromanagement... I, for one, am tired of looking at the AI's espionage points to see who just poisoned my water supply again.

Another thing -- my cities have been poisoned about 9000 times (marathon/emp/solvers patch) but I have never, ever, ever seen the Foment Unhappiness used against me. Whats up with that? All the AI seems to do to me with espionage is constantly poison my water... and honsetly id rather they did anything else because that is insanely annoying.
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Completely agreed. On almost any topic on these forums, generally someone will defend it. I haven't yet read anything defending the current espionage system as being "just right".......
 
DrewBledsoe said:
Completely agreed. On almost any topic on these forums, generally someone will defend it. I haven't yet read anything defending the current espionage system as being "just right".......
Click to expand...


Yeah, there always seems to be a devils advocate... look at the 90 page Poland thread... :) I haven't seen that in this case though, this and only this...
 
Doing counterespionage as a mission works pretty well. I've caught around 10 enemy spies on a Emperor game so far and the AI has managed to poison water/foment unhappiness three times.
 
Actually I would say the current system is pretty good... except the poison/unhappiness missions at nonnormal game speeds

Other than that it seems reasonable, I do no more than make sure I'm building up espionage passively, and positioning spies, and rarely have too many problems.

There are definitely some tweaks that could be done (Diplomacy needs to be more anti-spy), but I wouldn't redesign the system.
 
Simply increase the cost of successive missions, then the AI will be forced to either stop spy-spamming you or look elsewhere.

The UN could get involved too. New resolution: "Anyone caught commiting terrorist activities is in breach of the UN charter" (and suffers massive happiness penalties)
 
I loathe having spies in the game. It reminds of the Civ2 spy spamming. Some of the AI's seem to be really hurting themselves spamming out spies. I keep a spy in all of my cities and scatter some more around my country side. I constantly get messages that foreign spies have been detected and eliminated. The AI must be wasting enormous resources building all these spies that get caught. It is very unusual for those spies to do much harm, mostly the effects are just annoying.

If someone is poisoning my water it usually means someone is planning war and I can usually figure out who it is. My forces are redeployed to the appropriate border waiting for the DOW and the invasion force (umh, nice big massacre thanks for the warning).

BTW My spies never enter any one elses territory. The attrition rate is too high and the results are often not worth it. (I like to play a peaceful builder game. If I were to play a war game I would need to reconsider this).
 
Peter Harris said:
I loathe having spies in the game. It reminds of the Civ2 spy spamming. Some of the AI's seem to be really hurting themselves spamming out spies.
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that's why backward civ leaders like toku, shaka, stalin are hurt more with espionage in the game. now they are even more so far behind in techs (because the spend so much on espionage), their armies are outdated and easily crushed in masses and they are much easier to screw over even on emperor level. like i said, some civs sacrifice waaaaaaaaaay too much to boost espionage points and perform missions every turn.
 
Minmaster said:
that's why backward civ leaders like toku, shaka, stalin are hurt more with espionage in the game. now they are even more so far behind in techs (because the spend so much on espionage), their armies are outdated and easily crushed in masses and they are much easier to screw over even on emperor level. like i said, some civs sacrifice waaaaaaaaaay too much to boost espionage points and perform missions every turn.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure this will be addressed in "the patch" (which is turning into a BTS Holy Grail). Let's hope it lives up to expectations.
 
Anyone know when this patch is due?

Anyone hear anything from Firaxis?
 
Krikkitone said:
Actually I would say the current system is pretty good... except the poison/unhappiness missions at nonnormal game speeds

Other than that it seems reasonable, I do no more than make sure I'm building up espionage passively, and positioning spies, and rarely have too many problems.

There are definitely some tweaks that could be done (Diplomacy needs to be more anti-spy), but I wouldn't redesign the system.
Click to expand...

Well, the system is alright, but the AI does spam spies WAY too much. A little less spamming combined with a little proactivity on the players part would make the balance just right :)
 
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