Grand Proposal Spies

[Impaler[WrG]]

This is a followup / add-on to Aussies modern times thread found here
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=182473,
the intent of this thread is to focus on how spying can be made for interesting in Civ4. This is not a mod-preview and I am not planning on implementing any of these ideas in the concivable future, though I would be supportive of anyone who wishes too and might help out.

Problems: We all know spying is Civ4's weakest element, so weak its almost none existent, the 3 main reasons are..

1 SPIES OCCURE TOO LATE IN THE GAME
2 SPIES CANT DO MUCH
3 SPIES CANT EARN PROMOTIONS

The solution is simple more options for spy actions and earlier appear in the game so they can actualy have a chance of affecting the outcome. Now the interesting part rather then just one generic spy their should be a series of 4-5 spy type units starting in the Classical age and continuing all the way to Communism and possibly beyond. Each sucessive spy has an expanded repetuare of abilitys and retains all the abilities of its prepocessors. The early spies might just have the "look at City Screen" ability and not even be invisible. The national unit limit for successive spies also rises and spies would be upgradable like other units. This serves to familiarize the player with the spies basic usage and abilities early on in the game and makes the successive versions that much more desirable as you have a working inteligence corps that can be upgraded.

Some Ideas for abilites spies should recive...

Steal Technology - avalible late in the game and risky
Sabotage existing Buildings - avalible mid game
Poison Water supply - Kills population, mid game
Incite Rebelion - adds Angry faces, mid game
Steal Gold - Steals gold from central treashury
Counter Insurgency - can only be conducted in the Territory of a Civ your at war with, tile must be vacant of enemy units, attempts to summon a "Rebel" Unit under your control. Unit will have zero exp and is the default Draft unit of the Civ in whos territory it was generated.
Assasination - can only be performed in a City that has 1 or more GreatPeople merged in it, randomly removes a GP, late game
Worker Strike - can only be performed on Worker units, kills the worker, late game
Incite Anarchy - gives the Civ 1 turn of Anarchy, very hard to pull off

 

[Major]

In the mod I'm doing with Dubmetender on sea colonies, we have also included some new functionalities for the spies.
We have already coded the ability for the spies to steal technology, to nuke a city (a kind of huge terrorist attack) and to launch a secret nuke production when the UNO has voted for the Non Proliferation Treaty.
We have also added a new unit that looks like more or less to the spy, the ecoterrorist, from CTP. This unit can destroy dirty buildings or nuclear plant (provoking a nuclear explosion).
We also created a unit called the televangelist (from CTP again) that can "convert" a part of the population of a city. This population will adopt your culture.

For our first beta release, we do not plan to add more abilities, but later, I think we will add some new spy actions like inciting rebellion or contamining the population thanks to a virus with the ecoterrorist

So, like you, we wanted to make the non-conventional war more important

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yeah, I think we should actually look beyond spies alone, and look more at the variety of ways in which civs can negatively impact on each other in a non-combat fashion. I am sure you are all familiar with the Bad People mod of RogerBacon. Well why not expand it beyond the 'Organised Crime' sector? As I have suggested elsewhere, couldn't Great Prophets or missionaries be joined to foreign nations' cities-effectively 'seeding' said nation with YOUR culture(and possibly, in time, your religion)-and draining off part of their gold in the process (but THEY get the bonus hammers!)? Likewise, Great Merchants could be merged with foreign cities to produce a 'Franchise'-which again drains cash away from the foreign city, in return for the bonus food. Great Artists could found 'Cultural Enclaves' in foreign cities-again to seed that city with YOUR culture. The flip side of this, though, is that there MUST be an ability to remove said people from the city.
Lastly, what if spies-instead of being moved around routinely-could be 'merged'/'unmerged' to a city? The spy would act as Line of Sight into the city, and could be 'activated' by the player on a routine basis to perform various nefarious acts. If unsuccessful, he gets caught, you lose the Line of Sight and get a diplomatic penalty. If successful, you get the results of the mission AND you get XP. When a spy recieves sufficient XP, they can choose various espionage specialties. Even if spies are never mergable with the city, they should DEFINITELY be able to specialise in various tasks.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

So, some possible mission types: Well there is the existing Investigate City (which should NOT be automatic BTW)-which should be the staple of ALL spies. All other mission types should be tech based. So:

1) Destroy construction projects (req. Construction).

2) Assassinate Great People (no Tech Requirement).

3) Spark a Religious Revolt (req. Priesthood and a religion different from the state religion): causes the city to enter 1 turn of revolt, and generates a basic combat unit and a missionary-for that religion-under your control.

4) Spark Ideological Revolt (req. Communism or Fascism and an Ideology different from the State one). Much the same as a Religious revolt, but would obviously require ideologies in the game. Failing that, it would allow the controlling player to change any one of the other nations' Government, Legal, or Religious civics, for a minimum of 1 turn of anarchy.

5) Destroy existing buildings and improvements (req. Chemistry) very obvious this one.

6) Steal Technology (req. Scientific Method) another obvious one.

7) Commit Terrorist act (req. Explosives) causes -1 happiness and -1 health for X turns.

8) Poison Water Supply: Requires Chemistry or Engineering. Causes -2 health for X turns.

Aussie_Lurker.