Is the AI doing espionage?

[Aldor]

In the base game, you could usually see that a lot of espionage was going on (lots of AI cities with multiple levels of influence when you picked a city for a covert agent). Sometimes you had to send an agent home to your capital to prevent influence there from rising higher.

In BERT however, there seems to be almost no espionage activity. I've only seen activity in my capital in one game so far. Other AIs cities also don't seem to be affected much (very rare to see higher levels of influence).

This is at Vostok level. Is the AI just not doing much espionage? Or are the effects less visible due to agreements or traits?

 

[Olodune]

It does seem to be much rarer. The AI is always complimenting me on my espionage force too -- also suggesting a lack of agents on their part.

 

[Alkyon]

I think part of it is the fact that the game is shorter means the AI is less likely to build a spy agency simply because they have less time to drunkenly stumble towards that goal.

 

[Silmarillion]

I can absolutely confirm that the AI does basically no espionage anymore. In my three Soyuz-Marathon-games so far, I've only had to send an agent to one of my cities to do counter-espionage once, and all AI cities were completely empty of Intrigue from each other even on Turn 500 or more.

 

[The_Cebador]

In my Soyuz-Epic game, one of my cities reached half a point of Intrigue, but just ONCE in the game. Really, AI espionage is pretty much a joke.

 

[Alkaid]

Most I've seen is my own city or one of the other sponsor's cities that I had no agent in hit 1-1.5 levels of intrigue. Huge drop from how much base BE had going on.

 

[aguliondew]

With the espionage nerf(15turn to 25turns) you should not notice anyone spying much at all. Unless you are focused on spying they will have minimum impact on the game. With all of the spy buff in RT you can reduce 20turn steal science/tech to 5turns.

 

[The_Cebador]

Wait, they nerfed espionage? Well, that explains the lack of it in the game, like its practically missing as a deciding factor.

 

[SteamCiv]

With the espionage nerf(15turn to 25turns) you should not notice anyone spying much at all. Unless you are focused on spying they will have minimum impact on the game. With all of the spy buff in RT you can reduce 20turn steal science/tech to 5turns.

Thanks for the info. I found the changed files in gamplay>xml>covert ops and will experiment to putting them back at pre RT levels.

BTW late affinity related missions such as the worm attack (now called thumper ) is reduced from 11 to 10 affinity.

 

[bruntfca]

No wonder I got bored trying to find a level 3 or more city! Shame, espionage was really fun in Civ 5.

 

[Karmah]

I ve seen zero espionage from the AI. I don't even bother to build the spy agency; Last game I did only to get some health bonus. My agents stayed in the HQ playing some poker and that was apparently a very healthy thing for my civilization.

What is alarming is that the american girl and the korean boy were both in my games. I guess the AI so good , it needs to play without any sponsor special ability for the challenge ?

(all of my games are played in Soyuz)

 

[Callonia]

I've had someone spy on me once. Just once.

 

[Aldor]

So I'm not alone in noticing this

I'm just wondering if what we see is the effect the increased time for operations, or if the AI really just isn't doing any operations anymore. IMO there should be SOME effect on intrigue visible if there was any action..

 

[Halcyon 7]

Yeah I have been noticing this as well, haven't had to pull an agent out of the field to lower intrigue in my cities since RT.
I think it may have alot to do with all the bonuses to health we are getting keeping us way in the green and thus in the range for -intrigue bonuses.

 

[Callonia]

American reclamation corp sent a spy into my capital just now. The spy got killed by one of my counter agents on turn 220ish.

 

[Greasy Dave]

Playing ARC in my 1st game I got the spying times of gold and beaker stealing down to 6 turns - and got intrigue up to 3 on a couple fo the cities I was spying in - and I wasn't trying.

This doesn't mean that the AI is doing it. Just that it's possible for ARC and the Chinese/Koreans to make mischief if they want to.

 

[Galgus]

Generally it feels like the early operations are too strong and that the late ones are probably too easily shut down.

 

[DWilson]

It would be OP for humans to have pre-RT times (I rapidly got science down to 4 turns as ARC), but I think the AI should automatically start at that level (they aren't capable enough to recreate these results).

 

[NukeAJS]

I've seen the AI use counter-spies. But even then, it seemed quite rare -- even if they start getting lots of intrigue ... they just sit there and say: "Meh, I don't really care about my capital anyways, just coup it already! I'm going to continue to not build the spy agency or just have my agents twiddle their thumbs at head quarters."

 

[Amrunril]

It seems to me like the designers made the expansion's espionage bonuses to strong (especially the time reductions) and then felt they had to nerf the base rates to compensate. This seems to have worked out badly on both ends, though. 25 turn missions are too slow to ever accomplish anything offensive, even against a player who makes no attempt at defense, while having spies steal science every 5 turns seems highly imbalanced (This issue is compounded by the fact that science stolen is based on the cost of the tech you are researching. If you have half a dozen spies each stealing 25% (not positive that number's right) of your current tech cost every 5 five turns, you really don't even need your own science. Science stolen should scale with the target city's output but even a flat rate based on turn number would be a major improvement balance-wise).

Focusing on espionage with faction and trait should allow you to be far more successful, but it shouldn't allow you to accomplish 4-5 times as much as a player who makes other choices (that's 4-5 times as many completed missions-the differences in intrigue accumulation are even larger). A future patch should scale back the discounts to mission time (or convert them to other forms of espionage bonuses) and at least partially revert the changes to the base rate.