I love great spies

[xifeng]

Built the Great Wall in an Emperor game and got a great spy. Invested it on the tech leader and selectively stole techs from him. A great spy can give you 9,000 points or so. I am able to steal from him at 59% of cost, so that the great spy is as good as 4-5 techs. I got COL, Currency already and still have 6000 points left against his measly 300 points.

I feel that at least in the early game period, a great spy is far more powerful than other GPs. That makes the Great wall a great wonder, even greater than the Oracle.

 

[Empiremaker]

True. In many games I build the GW just for the Great Spy points. I consider Great Spies the best GP now.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Yeah it is pretty powerful, I've taken to settling them in my capital, it will let you pretty quickly be able to see everyones research assuming they don't go crazy and up their slider too much. My current game saw me get 2 Great spies quite early so I settled them, now I can see into every city in the world. Mwahahaha.

 

[anonymous4402]

I found out that in the late game, you can't even get a tech after using up two great spies. It seems their value goes down later in the game as well.

 

[Croup]

I found out that in the late game, you can't even get a tech after using up two great spies. It seems their value goes down later in the game as well.

This has been my experience as well. As other people said, Great Spies are very strong early on and can really create an advantage for you, or balance things out as you're behind.

Later in the game though, they don't do nearly as much. You usually have your espionage all set up, if you're doing well, you've got leads on all your enemies, and at that point, Great Spies just seem superfluous.

 

[axident]

This has been my experience as well. As other people said, Great Spies are very strong early on and can really create an advantage for you, or balance things out as you're behind.

Later in the game though, they don't do nearly as much. You usually have your espionage all set up, if you're doing well, you've got leads on all your enemies, and at that point, Great Spies just seem superfluous.

After popping one and MAYBE two, all other Gspies are Golden Age fodder.

 

[jackdog]

Why settle the spies, get the early one from the GW and you can steal tech right upto and including macemen. By the time you are that far ahead, having teched all the stuff you didn't want to steal and no-one else has, who cares what the others are researching, kill them with your superior troops.

 

[anonymous4402]

If only I had the choice between settling a Great Spy early and Infiltrating to steal half a dozen early techs. Guess what it feels to have THREE Great Spies pop up AFTER Communism? Not including the Great Spy I got from Communism, of course!

I was going to use the Communism-Spy for a second GA as soon as my next GP popped up, but that one turned out to be a Spy too! And the one after that! At that point I had three Great Spies running around at once, and the opportunity to find out for myself that two Great Spies aren't nearly enough to steal a late-Industrial tech. It wasn't like I had any Great-Spy Wonders or more than one Spy specialist in any of my cities, either.

The third Great Spy I used with the next GP for a second GA, and after that I popped a Great Scientist that I was going to save for either a third GA or founding Aluminum Co. if I turned out to need it. And I had just gotten Corporation (about a century after everyone else because nobody at all would trade it, not even the civs that were an entire Age behind) so I was hoping for my latest GP to be an Engineer or Merchant, so I could found Creative Constructions or Sid's Sushi. In my capital and GPP city the chance for a Merchant was around 40%, Engineer around 20%, and Scientist and Priest around 20% total. So guess what I ended up getting?

 

[Ethric]

Obvious answer seems to be a Great Prophet?

 

[Empiremaker]

I don't understand why people complain about Gspies not providing enough EP's to steal. Other GP's can't bulb techs by themselves at that point.

 

[MrTomothy]

What are the rules for stealing techs? I don't remember all the details, but one time I was pretty far ahead of the Khmer in the tech race, but I skipped over economics and astronomy, so I sent spies to get them. I got economics, but when I sent it back it wouldn't let my try for Astronomy.

 

[^alon^]

i dont realy get them.......
why would i use them?
isnt the great eng is better?

 

[xifeng]

A Great Engineer is only good for 3000 beakers or so under the marathon mode. For example, you can use it to lightbulb 98% of the Machiney. However, a Great Spy, when using with spies, can provide you 5 techs at that level.