PsychoticSquid
Chieftain
I am in love with this game, and most of my gripes are more to do with quality of life than actual mechanics that I think demand an overhaul. However, I have been thinking about the way spies have been implemented and I would like to present some ideas about how the system might be made cleaner and give the player some more control.
I generally play aggressive, militant, and expansionist. This may be by design, but this playstyle is somewhat penalized when it comes to counter-spying because of the sheer number of possible targets for spying and counter-spying. This makes sense to some degree as you would expect it to be harder to keep an eye on the underground movements of a freshly captured city. You would expect a conqueror to have less control over the intricacies of forcibly taken cities. However, even if you focus specifically on your own cities, and can anticipate which single city will be targeted (which you likely can't if you have spread out on the map enough), your spy's counter-spying must be limited to a single type / district. This means you have to correctly guess both the city and the type of subterfuge that will affect it. Assuming you have, say, four cities with three districts each (quite achievable early on and in fact unlikely spies will even be in play that early, so you can expect these numbers to be higher), that's twelve possible targets you have to anticipate with a single spy. Again, the actual numbers are likely to be much higher.
Whilst this helps imbue a sense of value in keeping dedicated cities (eg. a dedicated science city, a dedicated military city), I don't think this works overall - because even if you aren't an aggressive militant, almost all playstyles benefit from early and prolific expansion, almost all playstyles benefit from having multiple cities contributing to multiple fronts (eg. both gold production and military production), and based on these statements you are likely to run into this same issue regardless of the victory you are aiming for. It just never feels worth it to play the counter-spy guessing game when the alternative is to spy for more immediate rewards, with the possible exception of specifically protecting the space port at the city that is launching modules when going for a science victory, etc. One example I can think of is that sending a spy to steal gold from another civilization is likely to feel more impactful and produce more tangible results than trying to correctly guess which of your cities will be targeted for a gold-stealing operation. Even if you do have gold stolen from you, you will help offset or even defeat that deficit by stealing more back. The alternative is guessing the wrong city and getting nothing out of your spy.
I'd like to propose some ideas for an overhaul or a tweaking of the spy system. Obviously they won't all be possible at the same time, as they would likely make spying or counter-spying too powerful. However, I'd like to see some discussion on the merits and potential disadvantages of each, or some suggestions for refinement of these ideas.
The ideas:
• Scrap the idea of having to choose between multiple districts to protect in the spy game and make the host-city the only target while a counter-spy protects every district within that city. Enemy spies will be able to make the same decisions that they can now based on what districts that city has, but this will limit counter-spy predictions to which city is likely to be targeted rather than which individual district. This will severely reduce the counter-spy guessing game.
• Alternatively, have any spy assigned to a city give some kind of blanket protection to all of its districts but have the focus of the protection be on the assigned district. I think I prefer this idea to the one above, although it will likely require some delicate balancing.
• Introduce a system to counter-spying where you have "agents". The longer a spy engages in counter-spying at a city, the more agents that city has to "spend" on its districts. An agent effectively acts as a spy with efficiency scaled to the level of its parent spy in that city. Should the spy leave the city, the number of agents gradually deteriorate at a rate faster than they are gained. It might even be possible to introduce the agents system to spying in enemy cities, although I feel this might be overpowered.
• Introduce some powerful level-up upgrades based on counter-spying, and have spies gradually gain experience whilst counter-spying even if they do not actively prevent an operation in the time they are doing so (they may already do this but I'm not sure). This encourages active counter-spying as opposed to simply offsetting losses from spying by spying yourself. A few ideas for such an upgrade: Enemy spies have their chance of success with operations more greatly lowered by the spy engaging in counter-spying, the upgraded spy generates agents faster (see above idea), the upgraded spy has better blanket protection of other districts (see two ideas above), or that any spy captured by the spy engaging in counter-spying produces severe diplomatic penalties with other civilizations they are not allied with or is killed instead of captured. Perhaps a spy that gains experience through counter-spying would be more likely to see these kinds of level-up boosts than one playing the field, although this might clutter the system somewhat by effectively having the game track two types of experience.
• Borrow from Beyond Earth's intrigue level system. Make particular operations achievable only if that city has an adequate level of intrigue, and have the level of intrigue raised when "Gain Sources" is complete. Perhaps also introduce another spy action that is dedicated purely to raising intrigue. Intrigue would be a global number for each city that is affected by each civilization actively performing operations on that city - by that I mean that the level of intrigue in any given city is not specific to one civilization spying there, it would be the same for all other civilizations. Since this system can effectively become a gate for spying, it will likely make spies less desirable. Counter this by introducing some more powerful spy options (albeit at high intrigue levels and with suitable success rates) - such as the ability to kill off population, reduce amenities / happiness, perhaps even at the top of the scale to capture the city as per Beyond Earth. If you capture an enemy city, have it start at a mid-to-high level of intrigue (perhaps scaled on other game systems) and gradually deteriorate.
[EDIT:] Following the idea above, new civic policies could be introduced that affect the rate of intrigue deterioration / generation, which could allow a Civilization to be more focused on espionage rather than provide essentially the same tools to everyone.
If I think of more, I'll add them later. I'd like to see some ideas and opinions from others in the meantime.
I generally play aggressive, militant, and expansionist. This may be by design, but this playstyle is somewhat penalized when it comes to counter-spying because of the sheer number of possible targets for spying and counter-spying. This makes sense to some degree as you would expect it to be harder to keep an eye on the underground movements of a freshly captured city. You would expect a conqueror to have less control over the intricacies of forcibly taken cities. However, even if you focus specifically on your own cities, and can anticipate which single city will be targeted (which you likely can't if you have spread out on the map enough), your spy's counter-spying must be limited to a single type / district. This means you have to correctly guess both the city and the type of subterfuge that will affect it. Assuming you have, say, four cities with three districts each (quite achievable early on and in fact unlikely spies will even be in play that early, so you can expect these numbers to be higher), that's twelve possible targets you have to anticipate with a single spy. Again, the actual numbers are likely to be much higher.
Whilst this helps imbue a sense of value in keeping dedicated cities (eg. a dedicated science city, a dedicated military city), I don't think this works overall - because even if you aren't an aggressive militant, almost all playstyles benefit from early and prolific expansion, almost all playstyles benefit from having multiple cities contributing to multiple fronts (eg. both gold production and military production), and based on these statements you are likely to run into this same issue regardless of the victory you are aiming for. It just never feels worth it to play the counter-spy guessing game when the alternative is to spy for more immediate rewards, with the possible exception of specifically protecting the space port at the city that is launching modules when going for a science victory, etc. One example I can think of is that sending a spy to steal gold from another civilization is likely to feel more impactful and produce more tangible results than trying to correctly guess which of your cities will be targeted for a gold-stealing operation. Even if you do have gold stolen from you, you will help offset or even defeat that deficit by stealing more back. The alternative is guessing the wrong city and getting nothing out of your spy.
I'd like to propose some ideas for an overhaul or a tweaking of the spy system. Obviously they won't all be possible at the same time, as they would likely make spying or counter-spying too powerful. However, I'd like to see some discussion on the merits and potential disadvantages of each, or some suggestions for refinement of these ideas.
The ideas:
• Scrap the idea of having to choose between multiple districts to protect in the spy game and make the host-city the only target while a counter-spy protects every district within that city. Enemy spies will be able to make the same decisions that they can now based on what districts that city has, but this will limit counter-spy predictions to which city is likely to be targeted rather than which individual district. This will severely reduce the counter-spy guessing game.
• Alternatively, have any spy assigned to a city give some kind of blanket protection to all of its districts but have the focus of the protection be on the assigned district. I think I prefer this idea to the one above, although it will likely require some delicate balancing.
• Introduce a system to counter-spying where you have "agents". The longer a spy engages in counter-spying at a city, the more agents that city has to "spend" on its districts. An agent effectively acts as a spy with efficiency scaled to the level of its parent spy in that city. Should the spy leave the city, the number of agents gradually deteriorate at a rate faster than they are gained. It might even be possible to introduce the agents system to spying in enemy cities, although I feel this might be overpowered.
• Introduce some powerful level-up upgrades based on counter-spying, and have spies gradually gain experience whilst counter-spying even if they do not actively prevent an operation in the time they are doing so (they may already do this but I'm not sure). This encourages active counter-spying as opposed to simply offsetting losses from spying by spying yourself. A few ideas for such an upgrade: Enemy spies have their chance of success with operations more greatly lowered by the spy engaging in counter-spying, the upgraded spy generates agents faster (see above idea), the upgraded spy has better blanket protection of other districts (see two ideas above), or that any spy captured by the spy engaging in counter-spying produces severe diplomatic penalties with other civilizations they are not allied with or is killed instead of captured. Perhaps a spy that gains experience through counter-spying would be more likely to see these kinds of level-up boosts than one playing the field, although this might clutter the system somewhat by effectively having the game track two types of experience.
• Borrow from Beyond Earth's intrigue level system. Make particular operations achievable only if that city has an adequate level of intrigue, and have the level of intrigue raised when "Gain Sources" is complete. Perhaps also introduce another spy action that is dedicated purely to raising intrigue. Intrigue would be a global number for each city that is affected by each civilization actively performing operations on that city - by that I mean that the level of intrigue in any given city is not specific to one civilization spying there, it would be the same for all other civilizations. Since this system can effectively become a gate for spying, it will likely make spies less desirable. Counter this by introducing some more powerful spy options (albeit at high intrigue levels and with suitable success rates) - such as the ability to kill off population, reduce amenities / happiness, perhaps even at the top of the scale to capture the city as per Beyond Earth. If you capture an enemy city, have it start at a mid-to-high level of intrigue (perhaps scaled on other game systems) and gradually deteriorate.
[EDIT:] Following the idea above, new civic policies could be introduced that affect the rate of intrigue deterioration / generation, which could allow a Civilization to be more focused on espionage rather than provide essentially the same tools to everyone.
If I think of more, I'll add them later. I'd like to see some ideas and opinions from others in the meantime.
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