I Want to Assassinate My Own Spy Specialists

[TheMeInTeam]

Prolly no solution other than watching growth notifications?
I'm just glad automation can be turned off..doing that first in every city

If you don't turn it off, having any other type of specialist gold-highlighted by running one will prevent that city assigning other types. Not 100% useful, but if OP is seriously considering never building a courthouse as an alternative...

 

[dankok8]

This has annoyed me as well in the past. I guess you've got to check those cities every time they grow. After the midgame, micro like this becomes less important though and running a Spy isn't a big deal.

But I will say, building Courthouses isn't worth it much of the time especially if not Org. In some cases, you may invest 120 hammers into a building that saves a measly 2-3 per turn.

 

[Plains-Cow]

If you don't turn it off, having any other type of specialist gold-highlighted by running one will prevent that city assigning other types. Not 100% useful, but if OP is seriously considering never building a courthouse as an alternative...

I plan to just turn off automation and trying to carefully watch as the city grows so I can best assign tiles/specialists accordingly. I tried the gold highlight thing before, but it seems to turn itself off at times? Am I missing something about the interface or the mechanics?

Also, I don't always build courthouses anyway because unless my empire is super expansive, I usually find I can get away with waiting until switching into State Property and not need to waste time or hammers in courthouses. Good idea/bad idea?

This has annoyed me as well in the past. I guess you've got to check those cities every time they grow. After the midgame, micro like this becomes less important though and running a Spy isn't a big deal.

But I will say, building Courthouses isn't worth it much of the time especially if not Org. In some cases, you may invest 120 hammers into a building that saves a measly 2-3 per turn.

Sure, but it kills inside to have a spy running when you're trying to optimize for a specific strat, especially when you end up getting a Great Spy on a low chance like 10% or so when you so clearly didn't want to run spies in the first place.

I agree with your courthouse take. I generally find myself not building them. The spies make me even less inclined.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Courthouses certainly are not auto-build. Whether you want them depends on trait and how much maintenance you're paying on the city. The maintenance itself varies wildly too. Toroidal maps have the most distance modifier, colonial maintenance can get insane (but is capped at 2x distance, so forbidden palace can be massive before state property in some scenarios). If you're in position to pick up a lot of cities before state property, they certainly have enough of a place that avoiding them just to prevent spy specialist is an extreme measure.

That said, I'm not as down on spy specialists, espionage, or great spy as others seem to be here. It's a small pain to micro it, but espionage can amount to a fair haul in techs stolen. Early great spy that overwhelms AI generation in particular. If you really stack modifiers for it (open borders, stationary spy, possibly religious), tech stealing can be much less expensive than researching, with the caveat that you can only match the AI this way. There is also the abusive trick of gifting a complete trash city enveloped in your culture to tech leader, who won't be able to make a security bureau in it any time in the next 100+ turns, and thus you can continue stealing into late game w/o significant distance penalty. The mid game espionage buildings generate passive espionage too, which scales with having recently conquered a bunch of stuff.

Admittedly, it's at its best when you're catching up in tech from a bad position, you're not getting nearly so much value if you're at the front of tech curve and selling techs to bankroll deficit research. That said, you can still leverage such a tech lead by using rando great spy + possibly slider to take away city defenses and capture cities with cuirassers/cavalry/etc. Can also make a medieval timing push less painful, as you ignore the issue of walls/castles hurting bombardment speed.

Basically, if you want to piece together a functional empire after rushing down the AI like a belligerent ape, espionage is one the tools to make it easier.

 

[sampsa]

Courthouses certainly are not auto-build. Whether you want them depends on trait and how much maintenance you're paying on the city.

And most importantly: when are you planning to win the game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

true, it's not very easy to put courthouses in the plan when pushing for marathon quecha rush conquest records

 

[sampsa]

true, it's not very easy to put courthouses in the plan when pushing for marathon quecha rush conquest records

Or even if aiming for conquest with say cuirassiers. I rarely build a courthouse in military oriented games. Yes they would "pay back", but building units pay back much better.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's a similar concept, you're trying to end the game with the thing you're using or soon enough after, and before you started making it you didn't have enough cities to merit courthouses.