How am i supposed to deal with foreign spies?

[Boombar]

Is's early industrial era. I have rank 3 counter-intelligence spy in my capital and rank1 spies in my other cities. Constabularies everywhere. Empiricism (-25% enemy spy effectiveness).
Almost 10k gold lost in few turns! Great people getting assassinated. RIP great works.
How am i supposed to do to counter this?

 

[Enginseer]

Better spies. Otherwise, steal back the gold of what they have. How do you think foreign nations are getting their "secret" technology. Can't safeguard them all.

 

[ElliotS]

Is's early industrial era. I have rank 3 counter-intelligence spy in my capital and rank1 spies in my other cities. Constabularies everywhere. Empiricism (-25% enemy spy effectiveness).
Almost 10k gold lost in few turns! Great people getting assassinated. RIP great works.
How am i supposed to do to counter this?

Great works can't be stolen from your capital, so keeping as many there as possible a good start. You can also invest a religious belief into Mandirs to prevent GP assassinations.

However the best defense is often a good offense. A counter-spy in your capital is often sensible, but I'd be using my other spies to steal techs/great works/coup city states. Note that being a diplomat levels spies up pretty quickly.

Other than that it's largely about correct use of force. Have a big military and tell people to stop spying on you. If they don't consider smashing their knees. It's fact that you'll get spied on more when you're weak, and less when you're strong. So don't be surprised that if your response to them telling you to screw off is to whimper that they're going to keep bullying you. Especially if you're lopsided and have a lot to steal and nothing to threaten them with.

 

[CrazyG]

What exactly happens when you ask someone to stop spying on you? Just now I asked England to stop, they said fine, but I'm still getting spied on and since its the classical era I'm pretty sure its England.

 

[Enginseer]

What exactly happens when you ask someone to stop spying on you? Just now I asked England to stop, they said fine, but I'm still getting spied on and since its the classical era I'm pretty sure its England.

They have a less likelihood of spying on you, but they'll stop if they respect your military might or your diplomacy enough. Otherwise, denounce her.

 

[ElliotS]

What exactly happens when you ask someone to stop spying on you? Just now I asked England to stop, they said fine, but I'm still getting spied on and since its the classical era I'm pretty sure its England.

Yeah, just like you can lie to the AI and keep spying on them regardless, the AI might do that to you as well. They'll stop more often if you're poised to feed them their teeth though.

 

[Strigvir]

"Spy effectiveness" bonuses don't work against extra spy actions, they only affect duration of heists/tech steals. The level of spies doesn't do much either, it's twenty something percent to kill a spy upon such actions at level 3, which averages to death of an enemy spy after 4 successful assassinations/gold steals. So don't play tall in a game with a lot of civs, unless you are Venice or other civ with guarantied access to religion (for Mandirs).

 

[legoras]

Best solution - do not play game with activated espionage.. this is the most dumb stuff in CIV 5.
Especially if you usually winning at technology.

 

[Gazebo]

"Spy effectiveness" bonuses don't work against extra spy actions, they only affect duration of heists/tech steals. The level of spies doesn't do much either, it's twenty something percent to kill a spy upon such actions at level 3, which averages to death of an enemy spy after 4 successful assassinations/gold steals. So don't play tall in a game with a lot of civs, unless you are Venice or other civ with guarantied access to religion (for Mandirs).

Your numbers come from the espionage screen tool tips correct? Also, how useful is that information? I know that screen is one of your personal 'favorites.'

 

[Rambo919]

Same problem, with the added bonus of ALL my spies still being recruits by 1945 with only one single enemy spy being caught in the whole game so far..... do I HAVE to do active spying to get the idiots leveled? Is counter-spying useless now?

 

[Stalker0]

I personally never counterspy. Generally my spying goes like this:

Normal Game: Spy the tech leader until I catch up in techs. Shift to CSs to help get votes.

Tourism Game: Spy the tech leader for a time, then switch to thieves, and then diplomats for the civs that are going to be the hardest to get influential on.

 

[tu_79]

Same problem, with the added bonus of ALL my spies still being recruits by 1945 with only one single enemy spy being caught in the whole game so far..... do I HAVE to do active spying to get the idiots leveled? Is counter-spying useless now?

Maybe doing something easy for noob spies, like being an ambassador, or doing city state coups, helps them leveling faster? I was slightly dominating in techs, and my resident spy in capital caught foreign spies.

 

[crdvis16]

If you're the target of spying then that often means you're doing really well in the game, so I think it just goes with the territory of being ahead. There's lots of buildings and wonders that will eventually crack down on the spies even more.

If they don't take your requests to stop spying seriously then as others have said, get a bigger army to make them think twice and possibly use that army to punish them.

I could also see them continuing to spy if they simply despise you due to diplo modifiers. There are repercussions for being hated by the AI.

 

[Rambo919]

I find it really hard to believe that the leading civ would be technically legs open for the worlds spies, its usually the other way around

 

[tu_79]

I find it really hard to believe that the leading civ would be technically legs open for the worlds spies, its usually the other way around

It's easier to get one tech from a civ that knows 10 techs more than you, than it is to steal one tech from another civ that only has one more tech. Technically, you can't get their secrets, it's that they don't care that much for old stuff.

 

[Rambo919]

I'm thinking more of my treasury being pilfered down to zero every second turn...
Tech leakage is a given, money just going poof is a magic trick.

 

[tu_79]

I'm thinking more of my treasury being pilfered down to zero every second turn...
Tech leakage is a given, money just going poof is a magic trick.

A tip. Spend all your money.
What I fear more is GP assassination, when that happens, I remember I haven't built constabularies yet.

 

[Rambo919]

except when ur trying to save up to trade for a city.... which the ai admittedly shows absolutely no tactical sense in so it feels like ur taking advantage but still.

 

[Y.O.]

My spies level up through counterintelligence (I sometimes keep a spy in the capital if I know an enemy Civ could get a tech that may help them against me), but it's definitely not as fast as having the spy do actual spying, which makes sense to me. Do you have constabularies built?

 

[Rambo919]

in almost every city at this point, (I even made sure to build them before castles since the tech unlocked them) the only cities they arnt in yet are the newly aquired ones im still building infrastucture in. At least half of the attacks are on my capital where I have had the same spy since I got a spy the first time, the dude must be blind or something. its the 2017-12-15 version if that matters.