Guy Fawkes? Really?

[Lurking Liu]

My Great Wall of Russia spawned the Great Spy, Guy Fawkes.

Now, I'm not saying anything about the Gundpowder Plot being right, wrong, or indifferent, and the first person who does will get a pie in the face. My qualm is... Didn't he sort of fail? As in, catastrophically so? Didn't his plot get uncovered before it could hatch, resulting in almost everyone involved with him being killed, himself being hung, drawn, and quartered, and then burned in effigy every year?

...Can't I have Nathan Hale instead? He might have been executed as well, but at least he met with some success.

 

[Horizons]

Yes, you can pop a Guy Fawkes in 2000BC and he will build a Scotland Yard in your prehistoric fishing village.

 

[Seanirl]

Yeah... but well... at least he was a FAMOUS spy

That's SOMETHING great

 

[the Intricacy]

it would occur to me the most famous spies are also the ones that got caught, like Nathan Hale. The good ones went off into old age in anonymity, right?

 

[Angst]

I haven't got BtS yet, can you tell some of the names on Great Spies? Thanks beforehand.

 

[uniteatteri]

The great spy names:

Spoiler :

From CIV4UnitInfos.xml

Pebekkamen
Ephialtes
Jing Ke
Qin Wuyang
Calippus
Leone Alberti
John Barlow
Francis Walsingham
Hattori Hanzo
Balthasar Gerard
Anthony Babington
Ishikawa Goemon
Gaspar Graziani
Guy Fawkes
John Honeyman
Nathan Hale
Charlotte Corday
Giacomo Casanova
Allan Pinkerton
William Melville
Belle Boyd
Sidney Reilly
An Jung Geun
Claude Dansey
Mata Hari
J. Edgar Hoover
Moe Berg
Ethel Rosenberg
Julius Rosenberg
Claus von Stauffenberg
Suzanne Spaak
William Donovan
Speaker
Viktor Griph
Nolan
Atlas
Foshaug
Joe Matise
Eystein
Daniel Cole
Max Gogf
Mark Swiss

 

[Withouthatred]

Anybody know the names of the rest of the great people?

 

[uniteatteri]

Anybody know the names of the rest of the great people?

They're all listed in ...\assets\XML\Units\CIV4UnitInfos.xml

 

[Celtic21]

There was a list of all the names in another post.

 

[weimingshi]

it would occur to me the most famous spies are also the ones that got caught, like Nathan Hale. The good ones went off into old age in anonymity, right?

This is unfortunately too true, history only records names that made an impression. yet one of the trait for a good spy is to go unnoticed, they would purposely let other people take credit for what they achieved just to hide from public. I'm not saying that the ones that got discovered and left a mark on history book ain't good spies. But those truly great ones, if they existed we wouldn't know. Cause they never got caught.

 

[Nooble]

WHere's James Bond?

 

[Will9]

If you look at the last 10 or so names on the list, you'll notice they aren't all famous spies or even spies.

 

[Celtic21]

The only few names I recognize are Fawks, Hale and the two Rosenbergs. Dont Think I've heard of the other ones.

 

[Optimizer]

That's because spies usually spy against their mother country, and therefore do not become national heroes like engineers, artists or other more patriotic professionals.

And Mata Hari was probably not a real spy at all.

 

[Kushluk]

Are you kidding? He rocked in "V for Vendetta" and I loved his hat!

 

[Lurking Liu]

Allan Pinkerton

The guy who gave McClellan all that faulty information about how the Army of Northern Virginia was ten times its actual size? Now, had he been a double agent that'd certainly count, but... =P



Actually, I'm starting to see a pattern. Some of the people who are listed as Spies are largely in the counter-espionage field. After his bad advice to L'il Mac, he founded the Pinkerton Detective Agency. But, still. Some of the people on the list are pretty big intelligence failures =P

 

[Will9]

But, still. Some of the people on the list are pretty big intelligence failures =P

Like the BTS testers.

 

[Duuk]

Actually, I'm starting to see a pattern. Some of the people who are listed as Spies are largely in the counter-espionage field. After his bad advice to L'il Mac, he founded the Pinkerton Detective Agency. But, still. Some of the people on the list are pretty big intelligence failures =P

J. Edgar Hoover is on the list, so your answer is correct.

Although I'm offended that Oleg Penkovsky, Deepthroat, Alger Hiss, and Kim Philby were omitted. Although they may be "too recent".

Which is weird, because J Edgar Hoover and Wild Bill Donovan are on the list during the same timeframe.

 

[Xiahou Mao]

Hattori Hanzo was a ninja and spymaster in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu (yes, Civ 4's Tokugawa). He quietly handled Ieyasu's subterfuge, and at one point helped him escape an attempted assassination and smuggled him through dangerous territory to safety. He's become almost a mythical figure as one of the few known historical ninjas in the time since. He appears in various videogames, like Samurai Shodown and Samurai Warriors, and a character in Kill Bill used his name.

Ishikawa Goemon, meanwhile, was a less successful ninja. He attempted to assassinate Tokugawa Ieyasu's then-master, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but was caught in the act and roasted to death in a cauldron of boiling water. Even he has still spawned various folk tales in the years since, and I'm pretty sure the Goemon series of videogames (Legend of the Mystical Ninja on the SNES, for those who remember back that far, with a lot more games released in Japan) can trace back to him in some fashion.

 

[Dominico]

The gunpowder plot is interesting, i love the idea that it is all just a plot to prop cement the Protestant leadership against catholics. The tunnel was never found, gunpowder was not so easy to come by in massive amounts, and the room was rented from a known catholic...

My favourite bit is when poor guy fawkes was allegedly caught red handed with the gunpowder, and they asked him is name...

"John Johnson!" was his hurried reply lol Thats like the name you would think up in a comedy movie or if you were a child caught. If it was all a set up, i feel very sorry for all the people killed for it!

Also it was illegal to not celebrate Bonfire night up to recently also!

Suppose we will never know though... do i get the pie in the face?