intelligence actions cost are too expensive

Investigate City, Expose Mole, and Military burgalizring are the only missions I'll use. Investigating city is indispensible - I must know how my rivals are getting along in their Wonders so I can beat them.

Exposing Mole is important so those thieving civs don't get too much out of me. But what's weird is that while I expose all of their moles they don't do that vice versa. Nor do they sabotage production. The other civs were France, Iriquois, England, and America.

Do I love burgirlizing the miliary plans. It's so cool to see all the units and discover how many units they have and where they are.

 

I use "expose mole" the most too. It is often quite cheap, only a couple hundred gp. I just wish there were an extra extra safe mode because even when I go with a "safe" mission I seem to get caught at least half the time. Even though the AI doesn't always declare war over this (well at least not the fist time) it certainly puts them in a sour mood. It also seems strange that they do declare war over this at all. I mean its my city, I should be able to try to expose spys if I want to.

 

They get annoyed or furious? International Incident is something I always prevent because I reload when a mission fails (unless I intentionally get caught to incite war). Exposing spies always works unless I try to get too hasty. One thing I hate is that it fails and "Queen Cleopatra is threatening retailiation" and that sucks.

 

I swear exposing spies only works about half the time for me. I only do it if I can handle going to war with that civ.

If I get the "threatening retaliation" message, I don't know how much of a rep hit I take. I assume it is just one leve (e.g. annoyed to furious).

The only time I reload is early in the game if one of my cities goes into revolt that I should have MM'ed. I don't always feel like checking every city before ending every turn so I just resign myself to reload if that happens. I don't really think this is cheating, I wish the game had some way of letting you know that your city is about to go into revolt (what are those advisors for anyway?); and I never use goveners.

 

I miss the spy unit from Civ2 -- the chick in the little black dress + sunglasses.

I haven't stolen any techs yet, but I think I will start soon.

Most of the time, I plant spies in the top 3 enemy capitols at the end of the game so I will know where their development is at during the space race.

I've used the expose spy option a few times, mostly when it occurs to me late in the game that gee, the Zulus/Russians/Germans are awfully big .. I bet they have a spy in my capitol. And I've been right every time.

Once, regent level matt's world map, I got a pop up message from an advisor saying that my war plans had been stolen, but it didn't name the culprit (so I decided to blame the Russians). As a game feature, I thought that was pretty cool -- I like the fact that the AI actually used the espionage in that way - sizing up my military (as if they didn't know already).

 

I think it's stupid that the AI declares war if I expose an AI mole, they should be making up excuses while I should be given the option to declare war. After all, they are spying on me...

 

it is okay

civ3 has made a good attempt to portray espionage action as both costly and risky, HOWEVER i feel that certain civs should excel at spying and espionage. Like america should be # 1

let me know what you think guys

 

dayfax, me too

i guess i'll start trying to steal technologies more. but the consequences are someting to consider---like possible war with that civ

so many choices haha

 

I think that the government you are in does effect your espionage abilities. However, I think communism is actually better than democracy.

Does anyone know for certain who takes the rep hit if war is declared over a spy incident? I am pretty sure that it is the civ that declared war, but I am not positive. Due to the effects of who declared war on war weariness, this could actually be useful.

 

On the topic of spying by the AI:
Most of the advantages that the AI could be doing are more likely the result of the AI getting its special "advantages" of knowing resource and unit locations as programmed by the developers. In previous Civ3 builds, quick technology advances could easily be explained by one civ rampantly trading with other civs after they found the next great thing. This allows for the civs to spreadout their efforts. I heard the rampant trading behavior of techs was toned down but I doubt this is completely changed.

On the topic of civ3, civ2 and espionage costs:
I'm sorry, espionage costs too much. How often during the game do you have that much money to get troop movements or subvert a city? It might make it "realistic" but it also makes the feature uncommon to access and impractical in terms of making it fun to play. Subverting a city should cost less, so that we can know whether or not it truly works. It's never works for me right now because I can't use it enough and spending thousands of dollars is never worth just rolling out 50 units and taking some border cities and signing a treaty.

In Civ2, you're all right, you could turn out a lot of spies and a lot of gold to subvert cities, but you are also missing a lot of the things that went into that strategy. First you had Commerce which gave you gold out the wazoo (fixed by using "wealth" now which gives you far less in gold). Then you had spies as units which had to travel across the borders to get to the city and could be easily ejected by a defensive unit before they got to a city (zones of control and the AI from SMAC fix that, it was not that easy to rage a war of conquest in SMAC because you could never get units close enough). And finally, you have in Civ3 where democracies are immune to propoganda.

Should the cost be higher than in Civ2? Absolutely. Should it be lower in Civ3? Absolutely. Its simply not an option used very much at all in Civ3. The army doesn't buy unusable weapons. Programmers should not program unusable features in their games.

On the topic of Panda's Signature:
I sincerely apologize for the childish nature of my country and hope to vote the fool leading it out in 2 years.

 

While I've never seen the spy unit (newbie Civ3 player) I'd have to say it's a good thing they removed that. It portrayed an unrealistic view of spies. Spies aren't sneaking around dressed in black and in sunglasses. They're like you or me, like FBI agent Robert Hansan. He was normal but spying for the Russians + nobody could even think that he'd do such a thing.

 

The fool huh? want to take this outside punk? &^%& Democrats.

 

I'm officially retracting my statements about intelligence costs. The cost to steal technology is NOT too high, and I now really enjoy using it.

Last night I finally won the 3 city spaceship victory that I've been working on for some time. To win, it was imperative that I keep up with the larger Civ's in the modern tech race.

To buy any of the Modern Age techs from the AI would have cost over $10,000. To steal with high chance of success was just over $3k. Even if I failed, I could try again and almost certainly get it.

I entered the Modern Era with almost $20k in gold and finished with almost the same amount....through stealing a tech and selling it to the other AIs before the original owner had a chance to.

With 3 cities, I managed to launch my ship when my closest opponent was only halfway through (Regent level). Without spying, I don't think I could have done it.

 

I used to think Espionage was useless. Then i started using "detect enemy spy" and every damn time i use it i ALWAYS detect a spy of almost every Civ

 

Re Hellfire: If we are talking about sig's then here is a comment about yours...

Next time try playing as the Iroquois and maybe you'll find dominating the Americans happily ironic instead. This is a game afterall.

Or even better, don't dominate anyone and win by deplomacy.

 

Re SirJethro: Sounds like a game well played. A 3 city spaceship victory is an accomplishment indeed. What level were you playing at?

 

Regent. I'm going to give it another go at Monarch. Or maybe a 5CC spaceship at Diety. Scary.

 

Both parties are right wing. You should be friends.

And before you slag off Tony Blair, he's right wing too, I already know it.

But at least we _can_ vote for someone else...

Back on topic, I am going to re-evaluate my attititude towards Espionage. I have shunned it, but now have food for thought.