Ideas how to improve the Espionage System

[Stalker0]

It is always unpleasant if someone's spy is conducting his operations in your city and you want to kill him. But a guaranteed 100% kill is too much punishment.

If the spy is discovered, then it takes him an average of 5 turns to re-arrive in the city - some cities are further away, others are closer. And the target city for the spy can be chosen by someone else if the priorities of the enemy empire have changed.
Or the spy can be sent as a diplomat. By the way, I don’t know if the number of votes available for purchase depends on the level of the diplomat. It would be nice if a top-level diplomat could buy more votes or get a significant discount - let's say 5% for each level above beginner. Also, a diplomat could increase the value of a caravan to this city - the bonus is not too significant, since only one caravan can be sent to any city, but for long-term friendly relations between empires, it's quite good. Peace-loving empires will receive passive bonuses, which in the end can be more valuable than the aggressive capture of enemy cities when trying to dominate or try to steal.

In addition, the mass extermination of spies will destroy the very mechanics of espionage. The most profitable action would be to send your spies to city-states or leave them in your cities for some bonuses, instead of risking spending 5 turns on a trip, 20-30 turns on a mission, making some profit (which will not greatly affect the income of our empire on the entire game distance), lose a spy and wait for a new one for another 20 utrns with 0 experience level. Instead, a spy can sit in our city and at least stabilize happiness, which will ensure non-stop growth in population and production.

A diplomat buys 1 vote per spy level.

 

[azum4roll]

In addition, the mass extermination of spies will destroy the very mechanics of espionage.

This is pretty much what the current basic counterspy does (+50% kill chance on top of the base amount). Kill chance varies between 55% and 100% depending on mission, and yet nobody ever uses counterspies because they never stop the spy events. Any odds close to 50% is also bad for a strategy game (which is why I changed the coup formula so you can get 100% if you want to).

 

[Stalker0]

and yet nobody ever uses counterspies because they never stop the spy events.

I do in the late game if I start to get ahead as now the spies will turn towards my capital more aggressively. This is especially true if your playing tradition

 

[alchx]

I don't see much of a problem that we lose something from the actions of enemy spies. Yes, we are being harmed. But we also harm other empires with our spies.

Two equal empires will steal approximately the same amount of science, gold, culture, technology, art from each other at a great distance, At some points, one empire will gain an advantage over the other due to increased luck or the timing of thefts (+500 gold will allow you to buy a unit or a building ), but this is the variance.

In addition, the game has many mechanics for trying to weaken an empire that is becoming too strong - military alliances, defensive pacts, scientific treaties, congressional votes. Killing spies is just an attempt to destroy one of the game mechanics, when in the late game literally everyone climbs to visit the most technologically advanced.

 

[Tekamthi]

in some fantasy, advanced implementation of this spy system, I'd like to see the spies captured when they fail mission -- requiring player to either send more spies or use military to free him, or maybe an envoy can be expended to that city to get him released -- if player wants new spy then old can be "disavowed" or sumthin, and only then deleted from spy system. I'm thinking too far ahead for current state but I do yearn for more interactivity in VP's espionage

 

[Stalker0]

Spy vs Counterspy: I understand people's desire to make counterspies cooler, but at the end of the day they cannot invalidate spying, its just too important and precious.

Losing a high leveled spy is already bad enough, but if you just spent 25 turns or even 30 turns trying to do a mission....and got nothing for it....that is extremely "feels bad man".

Now if spy missions were 10 turns on average, there was no timeloss to losing a spy (aka the next turn you get a new spy), and spies leveled very quickly.... then I am more comfortable with spy death. Otherwise they are too precious a resource to just get ganked all the time.


I think the answer is what is already happening, counterspying gives anti-spy benefits AND helps your city as well. The main change here would be drop the level requirements for the +X yield to specialist mission....I mean if you are embedding your spy to get that bonus your not out there stealing yields....so I have no issue with that being a baseline counterspy mission.

 

[axatin]

This is pretty much what the current basic counterspy does (+50% kill chance on top of the base amount). Kill chance varies between 55% and 100% depending on mission, and yet nobody ever uses counterspies because they never stop the spy events. Any odds close to 50% is also bad for a strategy game (which is why I changed the coup formula so you can get 100% if you want to).

It's already part of the OP to make the counterspies stop the spy events if the spy is killed, which would make them stronger than they are now. I must agree that if counterspies would immediately end all active missions or kill all active spies after their missions, then the whole espionage system would become somehow pointless and everyone would just resort to placing spies in city-states. Counterspies must be balanced against normal spy missions, and if you could put a counterspy in one of your strong cities and he had a 100% chance to stop the maybe 3 or 4 spy missions that are being conducted against you, than this wouldn't be balanced against the option of conducting just one of those missions with the spy yourself.

I also don't really see the need for counter-spies to be that much stronger. Sure, there are more owned cities than there are spies, but with tech stealing now only possible in the capital, most of the cities are not very significant and there's not that much need to protect them with a counter-spy.

 

[axatin]

The main change here would be drop the level requirements for the +X yield to specialist mission....I mean if you are embedding your spy to get that bonus your not out there stealing yields....so I have no issue with that being a baseline counterspy mission.

I agree, this would be a good baseline mission, and the one with 50% kill chance can be moved up one level, it's not really needed anyway until later in the game when there are many spies around.

How would such a counterspy get experience? I think currently XP is given to counterspies only when catching spies. This is a problem, because the specialists mission has a low ID/kill chance, and the XP gains would also be very random. Maybe we give counterspies a fixed 1 or 2 XP per turn while on the mission and reduce XP for catching enemy spies? Same for diplomats, also uncovering intrigue is very random. XP gains for counterspies/diplomats should in general be lower than for normal spies as they don't have the risk to be killed.

 

[Stalker0]

I agree, this would be a good baseline mission, and the one with 50% kill chance can be moved up one level, it's not really needed anyway until later in the game when there are many spies around.

How would such a counterspy get experience? I think currently XP is given to counterspies only when catching spies. This is a problem, because the specialists mission has a low ID/kill chance, and the XP gains would also be very random. Maybe we give counterspies a fixed 1 or 2 XP per turn while on the mission and reduce XP for catching enemy spies? Same for diplomats, also uncovering intrigue is very random. XP gains for counterspies/diplomats should in general be lower than for normal spies as they don't have the risk to be killed.

I don't see any reason that counterspies need to have levels to do any of the missions. Let that always be an option for spies.

I agree XP wise they should just get XP each turn they are counterspying.

 

[Anarcomu]

What about the counterspy mission giving the choice to every spies to either delay mission or having increased chance of being catch/killed etc... ?

 

[azum4roll]

If spy death is so impactful having it work on a chance is just horrible.

 

[nekokon]

Again, just like most other discussions, we chose to focus on the minor but easy to change implement instead of forging out a solid design to suggest to congress.
I hate to repeat myself so much but no point discussing minor changes where ppl can just adjust some numbers to fit their taste. The same happened to so many proposals already, ppl suggesting minor changes that only makes things feel "just about right" or "balanced" but do nothing to gameplay, aka you're still doing roughly the same thing, but with more or less benefits.

 

[axatin]

Major redesigns are difficult for several reasons, starting with the fact that we have to agree on a common design, and the discussions usually show how difficult that is. But sure, we can try. Referring to your comment above

It's a tool of (hidden) aggression, not a tool for "catching up" by being used solely on strongest players even if that's your best ally and you want to keep peace permanently

and also to these quesions

Should espionage be a catchup mechanic? Should the leading civ have a way of counteracting enemy spies? As some have brought up, it's no fun playing well, get ahead and then deal with spies every turn.

I think some form of catch-up mechanic beyond the ones we currently have is definitely necessary. As it is now, a game is often decided long before it's finished, and that's not how it should be, because it makes the late game boring. Of course, catch-up mechanics shouldn't be so strong that there's no reward for a good early game at all, but I think currently we're very far away from that. Espionage is in some way a good candidate for such a catch-up mechanic because it starts in Renaissance and reaches it's full strength in the later eras, and also because mission duration/success chance modifiers make it easily configurable based on how far ahead the other player is. On the other hand, espionage is quite obtrusive, and catch-up mechanics could also be made more passive, for example by having slightly modified production/science costs based on the performance compared to other players (I think for science it's already the case that tech costs are reduced based on how many other players have researched a technology).

About the aggression issue: There is a diplomatic penalty for spying on others. It's value could be adjusted depending on the relation between the players (spying on friends gives a higher penalty than spying on enemies). A more drastic measure would be that a declaration of friendship prevents espionage at all, but for me that would be too strict. I'd prefer it if spying on friends were possible, but came with a higher risk of losing the friendship.

Also, espionage as an aggression tool and espionage as a catch-up mechanic are not mutually exclusive: Players that are far ahead tend to have hostile relationships with others anyway.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Major redesigns are difficult for several reasons, starting with the fact that we have to agree on a common design, and the discussions usually show how difficult that is. But sure, we can try. Referring to your comment above

I want to clarify that I wasn't asking for major redesigns. I was merely asking for better definitions as to what espionage should do and that's why I laid out those questions.

If we say that espionage should achieve (as an example) 5 goals, then we can better gauge proposals. First, we can say if the proposals get us closer to those 5 goals. Secondly, we can, through player feedback, determine if the proposals actually achieve what they intend on doing and, if not, what can be changed. At the moment, it feels like we have no real way of determining if changes are successful or not. There's a lot of subjectivity when it comes to whether the change "feels" right.

As to whether we can all agree on something, I agree that's difficult. This is where modmods come in as long as there's sufficient support in making as many options accessible as possible. If we have definitions most can agree on, then that can be used for VP. Modmods can fill the other gap since there's no way VP can make everyone happy with every mechanic.

 

[nekokon]

The bigger point I was trying to make isn't if espionage should be an aggression tool or catching up mechanic, but how player should interact with it. Anything affecting other players should be a lot more interactive (like military) rather than setting up one thing for another 20 turns and forget until it's done. Espionage is all about stealth and never about long term, that's just a by product of counter espionage making things harder to done stealthily quickly.

That's why I suggested having a system where you can pay/invest resources to get things done short term, and the receiving player can also have multiple methods to counteract quickly. Because of the short term nature espionage is better as an aggression tool with stronger effect but lower performance/cost than long term options like tech/policy. Same logic, catching up mechanic is best done as long term solution since it costs less and pay more (thus better for weak civ to come back) thus shouldn't be within the scope of espionage.

Implementing-wise you can keep all the frills like spy level or city's counter espionage value to adjust the performance/cost ratio, but the system would still work even if you remove them all and still able to have better gameplay/decision making. Certainly this kind of changes would need to be sponsored by a main dev or two, but if we're to invest the time to discuss changes to a whole system that's how it has to be, not 5-10 pages of back and forth just to have some small number adjustments.

 

[Stalker0]

One of the big problems with tech stealing right now is that it requires a level 3 spy. This means if you go into modern era having been safe or lucky with your spies, you can immediate start grabbing techs. If you have been unlucky and most of your spies are low levels, you fall much further behind because tech steals >>>>>>>>> everything else.

 

[Slyceth]

I think that an ideal system would look like this:

Actions should be percentage based on what the spy finds when they get there (if the city has scientist-citizens then tech stealing should have a higher chance of being successful, etc...)

Show the player what the odds are and then have the player make the choice of what action to persue.

An example would be:

Our adversity has discovered the secret of Rifling, what action should I take?

A) Attempt to Eavesdrop on the secret (50% to steal tech, 25% of failure, 25% of being killed)

B) Bribe the scientists who discovered it (Costs 100 gold, 80% steal tech, 20% of being killed)

C) Remain Undercover (No risk, attempt to find other technologies they have researched)

An example on the defensive side would be:

I have found an enemy spy in our city, what should I do?

A) Kill the enemy spy immediately (70% of eliminating the spy, 10% chance of finding their origin, 20% they escape)

B) Track the enemy spy (50% of finding their origin, 50% they escape)

C) Bribe them, costs gold (80% of finding their origin, 20% they escape)

I don't like having RNG involved whatsoever. Others are too, mostly, considering the change to be able to have a 100% chance of coup being well-received.

Some coups, some spy actions, can be game determinant, especially on higher difficulties, were if you fail to eliminate an enemy spy despite having the best level, training and resources dedicated to it, still fails and means you are better off reloading or starting a new game.

It's better if spy success rates were based on how much resources you have, and will dedicate to them. For example, in your example, 70% of killing the spy would mean the defensive party would have to pay the equivalent 30% remaining in food, production or just gold, but it would be guaranteed to happen.
If the chance was 30%, having to pay up 70% might just not be worth it.

Civ 5 and especially vox populi is built upon making strategic decisions and weighing options based on what you're presented with. You might spawn on a horrible location but you can always choose to go full war mode and take someone else's capital early, but if you had a good start you might make other choices.

There are no other RNG heavy things in civ, so let's not add one, especially considering the AI will make dumb decisions too often. Because a bad opponent is just as boring as an unfair advantage.

 

[axatin]

I've now made some congress proposals based on the OP and some suggestions here. The proposals are not intended to change the system in general, just optimize it a bit and fix some issues. I'm not opposed to a larger rework at a later stage; let's see how the proposals are received now, this will hopefully help gauge community opinions on the topic and lay the ground for further discussions.

We couldn't reach an agreement on all topics (for example counterspies and RNG), please feel free to make counter-proposals and suggest your own ideas. I will try to sponsor counter-proposals within a reasonable scope.