How can espionage be altered so it's not so annoying?
- Thread starter jpinard
- Start date
IM actually really enjoying the espionage in my latest game. Its allowed me to steal a few techs, i made a key city defenceless with a riot at one and i have such a large lead espionage wise with the zulus i can see every city of theirs. Its added an aspect war wise that i love.
Against me its rarely annoying, like others say the poison doesnt really have an effect other than slowing down city growth or killing a few points, the improvement destruction causes some problems when you are at war but if you have workers on auto they will usually rebuild the improvement. I would never say its micromanagement.
All this is with my slider never going above 0% so far aswell! Lol
Saying that i dont play on epic speed which seems to be broken since so many people have complained about it. Where is the patch for epic speed i wonder!!!
Against me its rarely annoying, like others say the poison doesnt really have an effect other than slowing down city growth or killing a few points, the improvement destruction causes some problems when you are at war but if you have workers on auto they will usually rebuild the improvement. I would never say its micromanagement.
All this is with my slider never going above 0% so far aswell! Lol
Saying that i dont play on epic speed which seems to be broken since so many people have complained about it. Where is the patch for epic speed i wonder!!!
jpinard
Martian
Those 3 settings - how do you know those just aren't AI spending levels?
Thanks!
VeteranLurker
Warlord
I'll add my $0.02 to say that I agree that espionage could use some tweaking along the lines of the counter-spy measures mentioned above. But my pet peeve is the destroy-improvements. I think spies should still be able to destroy improvements, but somehow limit this to the tradeable resources. Having to rebuild random farms and workshops does not add to my 'fun', but dealing with resource shortages would fall under strategy as long as there is also a way to counter it. I like the idea of connecting espionage to global politics in a more strategic way.
It seems to me that only one unit is needed, not a new agent, but add various counter-espionage promotions/missions so that you can develop specialized offensive and defensive spies (one-size-fits-all unpromoted generic spies should be easily caught/avoided by more experienced spies). Also, having some upper limit on the number of spies might be nice, perhaps modified by special buildings/wonders.
Sorry I'm not familiar enough with the nuances of all of the civics from memory, but shouldn't certain civics help one's own spies (e.g. more experience for police state?) and/or thwart enemy spies?
It seems to me that only one unit is needed, not a new agent, but add various counter-espionage promotions/missions so that you can develop specialized offensive and defensive spies (one-size-fits-all unpromoted generic spies should be easily caught/avoided by more experienced spies). Also, having some upper limit on the number of spies might be nice, perhaps modified by special buildings/wonders.
Sorry I'm not familiar enough with the nuances of all of the civics from memory, but shouldn't certain civics help one's own spies (e.g. more experience for police state?) and/or thwart enemy spies?
jpinard
Martian
Excellent ideas. Agree with them all!
weasel77066
Prince
ooops. Have you been spending espionage points against me? I think you need to gather more points.
I play marathon speed. I add 16, 18 civs. I play low sea level/huge maps I have no problems with managing the espionage system, should I want to.
I may be a different sort though. I dont mind the micro management. Im used to it. I actually wish there was more fine tuning in the game rather than less.
Thats just me though. The spy system seems to work. The AI plays it well enough. Its not so much an exploit as a game enhancer. Thats about it.
After reading through here though, then I could agree that maybe it should have a -no espionage- button for people who dont like it.
Thats alot to ask though, cause then whole buildings would be disabled (or useless)
SenhorDaGuerra
Prince
i still think it should be removed from the game. or at least have an option of not having it anymore. it sucks
Atwork
Immortal
With all due respect to people who want espionage removed completely removed from the game, provide specifics about why you want espionage removed from the game. Saying, "it sucks and I want it removed" does not provide any helpful feedback as to how espionage could be improved. Again, negating espionage isn't improving espionage. If the best you can offer this thread is the negation of espionage, post somewhere else.
SenhorDaGuerra
Prince
if you read back through the various pages of this thread, you will find my reasons. but fundamentally, its not a fun aspect of the game.
i think it should be just like in civ II where spies would do all the job, getting promotions etc etc.
this 'espionage points' is just silly. If i slide that doenst it mean im losing money? So shouldnt i just have to pay for the stupid missions anyway?
There you go. you should simply have to pay to get the missions done
end of story
this 'espionage points' is just silly. If i slide that doenst it mean im losing money? So shouldnt i just have to pay for the stupid missions anyway?
There you go. you should simply have to pay to get the missions done
end of story
KrikkitTwo
Immortal
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2004
- Messages
- 12,418
^ Yes, but then you have banks making for more effective spycraft..the change is good
It might be nice also if the path-finding routines for spies don't pick the best defensive cover because they never need to defend against anything. Rather than picking routes through enemy cities where they are more likely to get caught, there're often paths which are just as quick and stay out of cities.
Doesn't bother a great deal though... just a thought.
Doesn't bother a great deal though... just a thought.
The worst aspect of Spies for me is getting them to where they need to be. It's a major hassle. I wish you could Airlift them into enemy cities. That would be much more fun. Less fiddling with the subs and all that.
The pillage question is really more a question of pillaging than of spies. The AI does pillaging with spies better than it does pillaging with stacks, but that doesn't mean that you can't pillage with stacks - only that the AI doesn't do it. If the AI sent pillaging stacks against players, would it be just as annoying as Spy pillaging, I wonder?
The pillage question is really more a question of pillaging than of spies. The AI does pillaging with spies better than it does pillaging with stacks, but that doesn't mean that you can't pillage with stacks - only that the AI doesn't do it. If the AI sent pillaging stacks against players, would it be just as annoying as Spy pillaging, I wonder?
Atwork
Immortal
Sorry about the formatting.
Plenty of players want an option to remove espionage from the game completely. Modding espionage out of the game is possible and there are plenty of threads where you can find out how to do it. The most obvious downside is that many of the buildings will have little value without espionage although you can mod those too of course. The general thrust in this thread though has been to identify problems with espionage for the purpose of improving it. The following are some of the ideas that have been posted so far:
Noted positives of espionage:
1. Improvement with AI spy spamming and active missions in 3.13.
2. The Additional Game strategy
a. Able to know your what your rival is researching
b. The ability to investigate rival's city
c. ...
3. Spies are a Useful Tool
for:
a. Wreaking Havoc
b. Backing Foreign Policy
c. Proceeding and Supporting Military Action
d. Denying Strategic and Trade Resources
e. Winning Wonder and Space Race
4. Other
Posted critiques:
1. Micromanagement
a. Improve Destroy Tile Mission
The problem with the destroy improvement mission is the annoying chain of events that ensues:
i. Problem: consumption of time in locating tile, moving workers, rearranging resources and specialists.
ii. Proposed solution by Krikkitone: Sabotage results in tile's improvement being negated for X number of turns . After X number of turns the improvement will become available again.
iii. Outcome: Player does not need to move his workers to the tile in order to replace improvement. However, player will still need to locate the tile, possibly rethink his tile setup, and/or specialist situation.
iv. Alternatively, Krikkitone also suggested a function where you can select a tile for 'soonest available' worker to travel to and then build the desired improvement. This function should be available for any reason.
b. Spies Returning to Capital after Success
Many dislike that spies are required to return to the capital even after a successful mission. This rule has the effect of forcing a player to make repetitious movements, which means that wasted time is spent on spy movement. Some feel that this becomes tedious and annoying.
Suggestions:
i. Spies have a movement of two.
ii. Spies can be airdropped.
iii. Spies have at least a chance of remaining ‘embedded’ after successful missions; or
iv. Spies always remain embedded after a successful mission. The advantage to having spies always remain (if successful) is that the repetition is completely done away with. Otherwise, there is always a chance of having to repeat previous movements unnecessarily.
vi. Reason for not having spies remain embedded is for balance in preventing spies from running rampant over a rival’s countryside. However, the counter argument is that balance, ideally, should be achieved in ways that are not annoying, and that such ways are easily possible.
2. Dislike for Some Active missions:
a. Poison Water
LemonJello: “I was just playing a game where…for every spy I discovered…there would be two or three that poisoned a city….This was happening every 2 to three turns….”
b. Foment Unhappiness
i. Vilemerchant: “Foment unhappiness really annoys me….”
ii. Deathr0w: “What really annoys me is…when unrest is incited….”
c. Lack of limitations as to what can/cannot be sabotaged
Some feel that only tradable resources should be subject to being sabotaged, or only strategic resources, but not standard tiles. If Krikkitone’s suggestion that sabotage result in improvements being negated for X number of turns, then I wonder whether destroying strategic resources would not be too strategic to be considered tedious because rather than a resource being back online within a couple of turns due to worker stacks, the resource would be offline for a minimum number of turns.
3. Espionage overemphasized
A common general complaint seems to be that the growth of espionage has skewed the game toward a disproportional emphasis on espionage buildings, wonders, and spies. Many dislike the focus on espionage and seem to feel that it other aspects of the game have been overshadowed. Finding a better balance seems to be a common desire. It has been suggested that the emphasis in espionage should be on fewer overall spy units, but with more options, control, power, and strategy in utilizing the available units.
4. Lack of counter-unit and counter-espionage promotions
a. Balance amongst all other units in the game has been achieved by each unit having a counter. Yet, the spy unit has no counter unit. A better balance may be achieved if spies were countered by other specialized spies (or agents). The BTS Game Manual states that “spies are invisible except to other spies” (pg. 15) and spies can kill “all spies within your spy’s visibility” (pg. 16). Why these abilities were not provided to spies in Beyond the Sword is beyond me. A possible solution would be to allow spies to accrue XP’s based on their success, and to create promotions that could be assigned to spies, which would allow the player to specialize his spies to suit his needs in the espionage world.
b. Suggestions for possible Promotions and Missions:
Note: the following upgrades that are related to missions would take effective when a player spent the EP's to execute the related mission. Some of these missions would have to be very expensive.
i. Detection bonuses -- increases chance that spy sees another / successive upgrades
ii. Movement -- successive upgrades
iii. Vision -- increases distance that one spy can detect another / successive upgrades
iv. Saboteur -- increases chance that mission is successful and/ or length of time that resource is offline / successive upgrades
v. Theft I -- increases chance that spy successfully steals gold / Theft II: same but techs / Theft III: etc. / etc.
vi. Provacateur -- increases chance that spy successfully provokes unrest / Might increase the length of time / successive upgrades
vii. Propaghandist -- increases a rival city's favor of your rule; increasing desire to turn over to your rule.
viii. Interrogation -- increases chance that when enemy spy is detained, player will gain beakers, gold, or information at offending nation's expense.
ix. Assassin -- A successful assassination attempt will throw the victimized nation into anarchy.
x. Double Agent -- an idea from another post; I don't quite understand the mechanics.
xi. Demolition -- increase chance of successful building or ROAD/RR destruction. (Spies should be able to destroy roads and railroads!)
5. Spy anonymity
Many dislike that a player cannot “see” other spies. Further, many find it frustrating that the spies’ nationalities remain anonymous. If the proposed rule from the BTS Game Manual were implemented: that “spies are invisible except to other spies” (pg. 15), then it could be possible that a spy might detect the nationality of spies within his territory. This could have a very positive effect in allowing a player to better allocate his espionage resources and adjust his foreign policy. Again, this would keep players cautious in their use of spies. If XP’s were provided to spies with possible promotions, then the detection of the nationality of spies could be tied to experience and promotions, which may make the whole spy game more lively.
6. Spy spam with impunity.
Many think there are far too many spies produced. Suggestions have included:
a. Increasing the cost of spies
b. Increasing the cost of missions
c. Capping the possible number of spies, 1 per city, 1 per total number of civs at game start, or at some other limit.
7. Lack of Diplomatic Consequences
People have suggested that the lack of diplomatic consequences tied to espionage encourages spy spamming and the excessive use of spies. Suggestions:
a. When spies act and are caught, the consequences should be relate to the circumstances surrounding action.
b. Spies caught in the act of doing the more heinous missions, such as poisoning water or sabotaging buildings, would affect the reputation of the offending nation.
c. Different options or outcomes should be available if the detained spy is from a friendly nation versus an unfriendly nation.
d. Whether implementing the above AI would alter its behavior is a question.
8. Lack of Options After Spy Caught.
a. A popular desire if for players to have greater choice between different responses once they have detained a spy:
i. Releasing the spy go to gain the good graces of your rival
ii. Interrogation to gain information, EP’s, tech boost, or some other boon
iii. Hold the spy hostage for monetary or political gain
iv. Imprison the spy indefinitely, which effectively destroys the spy, but without affecting relations between the countries.
v. Option to declare war without negatively affecting foreign relations amongst friends
vi. A dastardly act upon the spy to try to provoke a war
vii. AP or UN sanctions against terroristic states.
b. Diverse options with broad implications: global politics, foreign policy, domestic, financial, technology, military, etc.
9. AI’s espionage behavior fails to reflect diplomatic relations.
A common criticism is that even a player’s friend is frequently the culprit behind adverse espionage.
a. It is suggested that the AI’s espionage behavior be more closely aligned to its foreign policy.
b. Another possible suggestion is that: if B is your friend, and you catch B’s spy acting against you, then B would have to give significant reparations to maintain his current relations with your common friends.
10. Unresolved Question: whether having stationary spies within your borders helps to catch spies.
Plenty of players want an option to remove espionage from the game completely. Modding espionage out of the game is possible and there are plenty of threads where you can find out how to do it. The most obvious downside is that many of the buildings will have little value without espionage although you can mod those too of course. The general thrust in this thread though has been to identify problems with espionage for the purpose of improving it. The following are some of the ideas that have been posted so far:
Noted positives of espionage:
1. Improvement with AI spy spamming and active missions in 3.13.
2. The Additional Game strategy
a. Able to know your what your rival is researching
b. The ability to investigate rival's city
c. ...
3. Spies are a Useful Tool
for:
a. Wreaking Havoc
b. Backing Foreign Policy
c. Proceeding and Supporting Military Action
d. Denying Strategic and Trade Resources
e. Winning Wonder and Space Race
4. Other
Posted critiques:
1. Micromanagement
a. Improve Destroy Tile Mission
The problem with the destroy improvement mission is the annoying chain of events that ensues:
i. Problem: consumption of time in locating tile, moving workers, rearranging resources and specialists.
ii. Proposed solution by Krikkitone: Sabotage results in tile's improvement being negated for X number of turns . After X number of turns the improvement will become available again.
iii. Outcome: Player does not need to move his workers to the tile in order to replace improvement. However, player will still need to locate the tile, possibly rethink his tile setup, and/or specialist situation.
iv. Alternatively, Krikkitone also suggested a function where you can select a tile for 'soonest available' worker to travel to and then build the desired improvement. This function should be available for any reason.
b. Spies Returning to Capital after Success
Many dislike that spies are required to return to the capital even after a successful mission. This rule has the effect of forcing a player to make repetitious movements, which means that wasted time is spent on spy movement. Some feel that this becomes tedious and annoying.
Suggestions:
i. Spies have a movement of two.
ii. Spies can be airdropped.
iii. Spies have at least a chance of remaining ‘embedded’ after successful missions; or
iv. Spies always remain embedded after a successful mission. The advantage to having spies always remain (if successful) is that the repetition is completely done away with. Otherwise, there is always a chance of having to repeat previous movements unnecessarily.
vi. Reason for not having spies remain embedded is for balance in preventing spies from running rampant over a rival’s countryside. However, the counter argument is that balance, ideally, should be achieved in ways that are not annoying, and that such ways are easily possible.
2. Dislike for Some Active missions:
a. Poison Water
LemonJello: “I was just playing a game where…for every spy I discovered…there would be two or three that poisoned a city….This was happening every 2 to three turns….”
b. Foment Unhappiness
i. Vilemerchant: “Foment unhappiness really annoys me….”
ii. Deathr0w: “What really annoys me is…when unrest is incited….”
c. Lack of limitations as to what can/cannot be sabotaged
Some feel that only tradable resources should be subject to being sabotaged, or only strategic resources, but not standard tiles. If Krikkitone’s suggestion that sabotage result in improvements being negated for X number of turns, then I wonder whether destroying strategic resources would not be too strategic to be considered tedious because rather than a resource being back online within a couple of turns due to worker stacks, the resource would be offline for a minimum number of turns.
3. Espionage overemphasized
A common general complaint seems to be that the growth of espionage has skewed the game toward a disproportional emphasis on espionage buildings, wonders, and spies. Many dislike the focus on espionage and seem to feel that it other aspects of the game have been overshadowed. Finding a better balance seems to be a common desire. It has been suggested that the emphasis in espionage should be on fewer overall spy units, but with more options, control, power, and strategy in utilizing the available units.
4. Lack of counter-unit and counter-espionage promotions
a. Balance amongst all other units in the game has been achieved by each unit having a counter. Yet, the spy unit has no counter unit. A better balance may be achieved if spies were countered by other specialized spies (or agents). The BTS Game Manual states that “spies are invisible except to other spies” (pg. 15) and spies can kill “all spies within your spy’s visibility” (pg. 16). Why these abilities were not provided to spies in Beyond the Sword is beyond me. A possible solution would be to allow spies to accrue XP’s based on their success, and to create promotions that could be assigned to spies, which would allow the player to specialize his spies to suit his needs in the espionage world.
b. Suggestions for possible Promotions and Missions:
Note: the following upgrades that are related to missions would take effective when a player spent the EP's to execute the related mission. Some of these missions would have to be very expensive.
i. Detection bonuses -- increases chance that spy sees another / successive upgrades
ii. Movement -- successive upgrades
iii. Vision -- increases distance that one spy can detect another / successive upgrades
iv. Saboteur -- increases chance that mission is successful and/ or length of time that resource is offline / successive upgrades
v. Theft I -- increases chance that spy successfully steals gold / Theft II: same but techs / Theft III: etc. / etc.
vi. Provacateur -- increases chance that spy successfully provokes unrest / Might increase the length of time / successive upgrades
vii. Propaghandist -- increases a rival city's favor of your rule; increasing desire to turn over to your rule.
viii. Interrogation -- increases chance that when enemy spy is detained, player will gain beakers, gold, or information at offending nation's expense.
ix. Assassin -- A successful assassination attempt will throw the victimized nation into anarchy.
x. Double Agent -- an idea from another post; I don't quite understand the mechanics.
xi. Demolition -- increase chance of successful building or ROAD/RR destruction. (Spies should be able to destroy roads and railroads!)
5. Spy anonymity
Many dislike that a player cannot “see” other spies. Further, many find it frustrating that the spies’ nationalities remain anonymous. If the proposed rule from the BTS Game Manual were implemented: that “spies are invisible except to other spies” (pg. 15), then it could be possible that a spy might detect the nationality of spies within his territory. This could have a very positive effect in allowing a player to better allocate his espionage resources and adjust his foreign policy. Again, this would keep players cautious in their use of spies. If XP’s were provided to spies with possible promotions, then the detection of the nationality of spies could be tied to experience and promotions, which may make the whole spy game more lively.
6. Spy spam with impunity.
Many think there are far too many spies produced. Suggestions have included:
a. Increasing the cost of spies
b. Increasing the cost of missions
c. Capping the possible number of spies, 1 per city, 1 per total number of civs at game start, or at some other limit.
7. Lack of Diplomatic Consequences
People have suggested that the lack of diplomatic consequences tied to espionage encourages spy spamming and the excessive use of spies. Suggestions:
a. When spies act and are caught, the consequences should be relate to the circumstances surrounding action.
b. Spies caught in the act of doing the more heinous missions, such as poisoning water or sabotaging buildings, would affect the reputation of the offending nation.
c. Different options or outcomes should be available if the detained spy is from a friendly nation versus an unfriendly nation.
d. Whether implementing the above AI would alter its behavior is a question.
8. Lack of Options After Spy Caught.
a. A popular desire if for players to have greater choice between different responses once they have detained a spy:
i. Releasing the spy go to gain the good graces of your rival
ii. Interrogation to gain information, EP’s, tech boost, or some other boon
iii. Hold the spy hostage for monetary or political gain
iv. Imprison the spy indefinitely, which effectively destroys the spy, but without affecting relations between the countries.
v. Option to declare war without negatively affecting foreign relations amongst friends
vi. A dastardly act upon the spy to try to provoke a war
vii. AP or UN sanctions against terroristic states.
b. Diverse options with broad implications: global politics, foreign policy, domestic, financial, technology, military, etc.
9. AI’s espionage behavior fails to reflect diplomatic relations.
A common criticism is that even a player’s friend is frequently the culprit behind adverse espionage.
a. It is suggested that the AI’s espionage behavior be more closely aligned to its foreign policy.
b. Another possible suggestion is that: if B is your friend, and you catch B’s spy acting against you, then B would have to give significant reparations to maintain his current relations with your common friends.
10. Unresolved Question: whether having stationary spies within your borders helps to catch spies.
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