How do you find out where (in which city) some AI is spying on you?

Planktonic

Warlord
Joined
Feb 8, 2021
Messages
263
In my current game, I focused on generating a good deal of gold. But for the last 15 - 20 turns, I noticed that my accumulated gold at the end of the turn comes short of the expected total by 90 -100 gold every time.

I assume this is because there is an AI civ spying on me with a siphon gold operation. I built a spy and set it to counterspy in my cap city on the commercial hub in hopes of countering this operation, but it didn't stop. I assume this means that the spy doing the siphoning is in some other city.

Is there any way I can discover where such a spy is hiding? That way I could direct my counterspy to the right place. I have commercial hubs in about 8 cities, so can't possibly cover them all.

Or is there some other explanation for what I'm seeing?
 
There isn't. But you will get a notice when the enemy's spy is done stating X amount of gold is taken from city Y. Generally speaking it will be the city with highest gold revenue (that has a commercial hub), they are very predictable that way. You can take advantage of that and make a spytrap. If you have all the expansions that would be a coastal city with Reyna as governor, a city centre-harbor-commercial hub triangle with your first spy. Bonus if you place the diplomatic quarter next to the hub.
But don't be tempted to let all your traders go from this city, or any one city, a spy always has a chance to succeed.
 
I'm not entirely sure, but I believe high enough Espionage Level will actually reveal the location of spies, although that might've applied to allies spies which is no longer the case in the game.
 
There is but it’s a bit messy.
There is an espionage log that tells you when each spy in the game moves, not sure it’s on by default of if you need to up your options. The trouble is the log only gives you city coordinates so you need to turn on an upturn so mouse over tile gives co-ordinates
Let me know if you need to fine that file, it’s in the directory above your logs I think.
 
Thanks to all of you for your responses- I think I understand this a little better, but I don't have the time or savvy to go so far as to examine logs to find this out. As it happens, the siphoning of funds stopped of its own in my game, but I do not recall seeing any notification as to its location or provenance. Oh well.

You can take advantage of that and make a spytrap. If you have all the expansions that would be a coastal city with Reyna as governor, a city centre-harbor-commercial hub triangle with your first spy. Bonus if you place the diplomatic quarter next to the hub.

This is clever, but I'm thinking that it may be simpler for me to simply dedicate the spy that I would've used for counterspying to siphoning funds myself. It may not be an even exchange, and it kinda feels like giving up on the problem, but it just seems easier and allows me to focus a little more on other parts of the game which are more enjoyable.

Thanks again.
 
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