The Espionage Overview screen
Espionage is of the main new features in
Gods & Kings, coming into play in the Renaissance Era. Espionage does involve spies, but not as physical units on the map. Rather, the action takes place through an interface (the 'espionage overview) that can be accessed by clicking on the espionage button in the top right corner of your screen, next to the social policy button. Within the espionage overview, you control the actions that your spies perform. On the left hand side of the interface is a list of your spies, outlining the current action they are performing, with the top right of the interface listing your cities, and the bottom right panel listing all other known cities, including city states.
When any civilization hits the Renaissance era, all civilizations receive one spy. As you begin each era, you will gain a new spy, meaning by the Future Era you will have a total of 5 spies at your disposal. If your spy is killed in the line of duty, it will replaced, but not for a number of turns, and in the meantime, you will have to go without.
A Blue Spy
The main drawback of this is that spies get promoted over time, and if your Special Agent is killed, it will only be replaced by a Recruit. There are three levels of spy; Recruit, Agent and Special Agent. A spy starts as a Recruit, and if it steals a technology, it will be promoted. Likewise, if it kills another spy, it will be promoted. The National Intelligence Agency, a National Wonder, will also level up all of your spies when it is built. These are the only ways in which you can gain spy promotions. Special Agents cannot be promoted, as they are already at the highest tier.
The good news is that your spies can only be killed when attempting to steal a technology from another civilization, or when failing in a coup attempt. Each are one of the three main areas of espionage, the other being intrigue. Each will be briefly outlined in turn.
But firstly, it will be useful to keep in mind that if you have a spy in a foreign city, you gain a line of sight in that city of 1 tile. In addition, except for City States, you are able to enter the city screen of cities you have a spy within, providing you with all the information you would be able to see through your own city screen. Secondly, it should be noted that whenever you move a spy from one city to another, there is one turn of traveling involved. You'll therefore want to minimise the number of times you move your spies about.
Stealing technology
In order to steal a technology from another civilization, you must send a spy to one of their cities. Once there, your spy will need to ‘establish surveillance’. On normal speed, this will take 3 turns, in which time you will be unable to view the city screen, and will not be ‘gathering intelligence’. Indeed, that is what begins once surveillance has been established.
You are only able to steal a technology that the civ in question has. It may be the case that the civ in question has no technologies that you don't already have yourself, so you will be unable to steal anything from them. You will receive notification of this if it is the case, once surveillance has been established.
If the civ in question does have a technology to steal, however, you will begin to ‘gather intelligence’. This works through ‘potential’. Although potential is simply a value assigned to a city, the best way to think of it is as a yield that each city produces, like research itself. So it can be considered that each city produces a certain amount of potential, which your spies harvest when gathering intelligence. The higher the cost of the tech in question, the more potential you need to be able steal it. The potential a city produces is determined by the research level of that city; the more beakers they are pumping out, the more potential you can harvest from them. This invariably means that capitals, or higher population cities, will be the best targets. If your spy is in a city producing a smaller level of potential, it will take more turns to steal a technology.
Boudicca's spy snooping around Hiawatha's capital
However, the potential produced by a city may be reduced through the counter-espionage buildings. A Constabulary, which becomes available at Banking, reduces the potential of a city by 25% (so this is what it means when it says that it reduces the spy stealing rate by 25%), and is required to build a Police Station, which becomes available at Electricity and reduces potential by a further 25%. The National Intelligence Agency, a National Wonder that requires a Police Station in all your cities to build, reduces potential by a further 15%, though note that at the moment this actually works to reduce potential in all your cities
except the one in which it was built. The Great Firewall, a World Wonder, reduces potential by 99.9% in the city in which it is built, and by 25% in all of your other cities. The natural potential of a city as determined by their research level, minus any such reductions, constitute the ‘base potential’ of a city.
Capitals and larger cities are more likely to contain these buildings, and you may therefore find it useful on occasion to explore alternative options. Either way, once you have established surveillance in a city, you will find out their potential, which is represented by a star rating in the espionage interface. If you hover over a city’s star rating, a tooltip will appear telling you the exact potential of the city, and (given you can see what buildings are in the city) indicating whether any counter-espionage buildings exist.
You can also increase the potential you are harvesting by using an Agent or Special Agent, as opposed to a Recruit. An Agent will harvest an extra 25% of the base potential of a city, whilst a Special Agent will harvest an extra 50%.
Police Station
Once you have finished gathering intelligence, there are two possibilities. Either you will be successful in stealing a technology, or you won’t! If you are successful, an option to select the tech to steal will come up. This is the first time you will see the techs that are available to steal, and you just have to pick whichever one you like. As noted, a spy that successfully steals a technology will be promoted.
For you to be unsuccessful the target civilization must be defending the city with a spy of their own; without a defensive spy, you cannot fail, even if gathering intelligence is taking you a long time! There is no way to find out whether an opposing spy is within the city. You are simply taking a risk by trying to steal a tech. The more highly promoted a defensive spy is, the greater the chance of it killing an enemy. And again as noted, a spy that kills another spy will be promoted.
It should be noted that all that applies offensively, applies defensively. By placing a spy in your own city for the purpose of counter-intelligence, you enable yourself to kill enemy spies. Your capital and larger cities will be the target of the AI, and you will often find yourself having to build counter-espionage buildings to reduce your cities’ potential.
There is a middle ground between success and failure. A middle ground where, although you are successful in stealing a technology, the AI finds out that it was you (as they do when they kill one of your spies). You will always be notified when a technology is stolen from you, but in this middle ground, you will also find out who it was that stole it. This is important because there are quite significant diplomatic consequences to espionage in
Gods & Kings.
Both in the situation described in the previous paragraph, and if your spy is killed, you will incur a diplomatic penalty for spying on your opponent. Your target will come to you the following turn and ask you to stop spying on them. You can either tell them you’ll do as you please, in which case you incur an additional penalty, or you can apologise and promise not to spy on them again, in which case you won’t receive an additional penalty, but if you’re caught spying on them again in the future.
Accessing the Espionage Overview
Similarly, if you kill an enemy spy you will receive notification of your success. If you click on this notification you will be taken to a diplomatic screen with the leader, where you will have the options of declaring war, denouncing, sternly asking them to stop spying, or letting their transgression slide. If you bluntly ask them to stop spying, you will incur a diplomatic penalty, whereas if you let the transgression slide, you receive a diplomatic bonus; the AI is pleased that you are willing to forgive them. Note that at the moment that the positive modifier you will receive out of forgiving the AI is only half the strength of the negative modifier you will receive for asking them not to spy on you (which in turn is so severe as to be the same strength as the negative modifier you will receive if you break a promise not to spy). The upshot of this is that you're best bet is invariably going to be to forgive the AI, and by doing so you're turning the theft of a technology into something a little positive.
Just to recap; tech stealing allows you to catch up on more advanced civilizations by harvesting the ‘potential’ of their cities. If you get caught, your spy might be killed, and you will incur a diplomatic penalty. You can defend against tech stealing with spies of your own, and if you kill a spy attempting to steal technology from you, multiple diplomatic potentialities arise.
Intrigue
Whilst you are in the city of another civ, you will come across pieces of ‘intrigue’. The espionage overview includes an 'Intrigue' tab which will list all the intrigue that you have received throughout the game.
One type of intrigue you can receive is if a civ is building a world wonder or project. This is perhaps not intrigue in the strictest sense, as it is simply information garnered from the city screen that you are free to view whilst having a spy in an opponent’s city, but it does come in the same form of notification, allowing you to potentially adjust your strategy given knowledge of the AI’s plans.
The major type of intrigue is about the AI’s military strategy. Are they planning a sneak attack? Have they embarked an army and provided it with naval escorts? Is it bound for the lands of another particular civ? This is the sort of thing your spies can find out, though your intel is limited by what type of spy you are using, with those that are more highly promoted uncovering additional detail about the AIs' plots.
This information will come to you in notification form (note that unfortunately at this stage if you simultaneously receive two distinct pieces of intrigue, such as ‘Theodora is planning a sneak naval attack’ and ‘Theodora is planning to attack Dido’, they will appear as two separate notifications). If you receive an intrigue notification that identifies the target, you can click on this notification and it will take you to a diplomatic screen with the target in question. Here, you can share your intrigue with them. If you choose to do so, you will receive a significant diplomatic bonus for sharing intrigue. You receive no penalty for failing to share intrigue. If you don’t wish to immediately share the intrigue, you can still do so later, and you'll receive the same diplomatic bonus.
If you inform the AI of a threat to them, they will take it into account and change their plans to deal with it. In this way, intrigue can be used selectively, depending on how you want the AI to change their plans.
The Intrigue panel in the Espionage Overview
You receive intrigue at certain times during your presence in a city. Once you have finished establishing surveillance, if any intrigue is available, you will receive it. Likewise, you will receive intrigue when you steal a technology. If there is no technology to steal, you are still able to stay in a city for the intrigue, and often, if you are the tech leader, this will be the primary purpose of visiting an opponent’s city.
Intrigue is not asymmetric, in that the AI cannot read your mind. Their spies do not get intrigue from your cities. However, the do get intrigue from other civs, whose plans they are able to read (as you are), and they may share that with you (there is a Steam Achievement for sharing intrigue with a civ that has shared intrigue with you). Do not be wary of the intrigue the AI provides (or the intrigue you yourself come across through spying). There is no deception within this system. If an attack does not eventuate (and you will find that most attacks do not), this is not because the intrigue was false, but because the AI has changed its plan, potentially as a response to intrigue that it has received.
Overall, the main point of intrigue at this stage is as a way to improve your diplomatic relations. This is owing to the significant strength of the modifier you receive for sharing the intel you come across. If you get intrigue, this will almost always mean you that you share it, and reap the resulting diplomatic bonus. Indeed, it will frequently not be just a side effect of attempting to steal a technology, but a reason in itself to deploy your spies to foreign cities.
City State Meddling
Espionage becomes a crucial tool in late game city state interactions. You can rig elections, and you can perform coups.
Rigging an election just means that you gain a small influence boost (and any opponent in the city is hit with a small influence penalty). To rig an election, you simply have to go to a city state and wait until election day, which comes around universally every 15 turns. The longer you have been in a city, the more influence you will gain out of election rigging. So you can’t just turn up the turn before an election and expect your spy to have a dramatic impact.
You will always be successful in rigging an election unless there is another spy in the city. Only one spy can rig an election at a time, and it’s the spy that has been in the city the longest that triumphs.
Election rigging is not by itself enough to win over an ally, but it can supplement gifts and quests, or lead to conditions far more conducive to carrying out a successful coup. Whereas election rigging results in relatively small variations in influence, a coup will have a much larger impact. The result of a successful coup is that you become the ally of the city state in question, replacing the current ally.
The diplomatic power of espionage
You can only carry out a coup if you are within 50 influence of the incumbent city state ally. The improved city state interface in
Gods & Kings allows you to see how far behind the leader you are by hovering over their icon. What is most important to note is that the closer your influence level is, the more likely you are to succeed; you will have a much greater chance of overcoming a 15 influence deficit than a 40 influence deficit. Additionally, the higher ranked your spy is, the greater the chances of success, whilst the higher ranked any defending spy is, the lower your chances. However, the highest your chances are going to be is 85%. So a coup is always a bit of a risk. If you are unsuccessful in a coup, your spy is killed.
When you are successful, you swap influence levels with the ally, and they sustain a further influence drop. If you are unsuccessful, however, the other party is unaffected, and you sustain an influence drop.
Diplomatically, election rigging and coups do not directly factor in. However, if another civ feels that you are competing with them for the favour of city states, that can have negative diplomatic consequences.
You are informed of the AI conducting coups, whether successful or not. You are also informed about any election rigging, though the culprit of the rigging is never identified.
Your city panel in the Espionage Overview
An additional point that bears mentioning is that the National Intelligence Agency, as well as reducing potential as noted in the outline of tech stealing, and promoting all your spies as mentioned in the introduction, also grants you an additional spy.
There is a general ‘stop spying on us’ diplomacy option that can be accessed under ‘discuss’ when engaging another leader. You can use this at any time, whereas the other espionage-related diplomatic options are all triggered by certain actions. If you tell another civ to stop spying on you, you will receive a penalty, equal to that which you would receive for telling them to stop spying after they've stolen a technology. This is similar to the “don’t settle near us” option, and you will probably find that you’ll use it just as infrequently.
Overall, espionage serves as both a tool to catch up to the tech leaders, and as a tool to supplement your diplomatic activities, as they pertain to both other civilizations and city states. You should not expect espionage to be able to make up for more fundamental deficiencies, such as poor research levels. Rather, espionage is a system that adds an extra dimension to your post-Medieval gameplay experience, introducing an additional layer that will need to be attended to in order to gain an edge in a tight game.
