Isn't the Siphon Funds mission massively OP?

[ZarkinFardwarks]

I just played my first full game of Civ 6, so bear with me if I don't understand some mechanic here, but at the very end of the game I was hit with the Siphon Funds mission by my neighbor, and that mission just seems stupidly OP. I had a spy in the city where the siphoning happenend, but I guess he didn't catch the enemy spy in time, so I lost the gold in my treasury. That alone would've been fine, since I still had positive income, but despite the positive income I was hit with an insane -10 Amenities penalty for supposedly being bankrupt. And even though I still had positive income, the game started automatically disbanding my spies, the one unit I would need to protect myself from this mission. So apparently this one mission can completely ruin you, and all you can do is to rely on luck and hope that your spy catches the enemy spy? Since I was five turns away from winning anyway, it didn't really matter, but seriously, how is this in any way balanced?

 

[Rosty K]

In my opinion, everything 'spy' in Civ 6 is out of balance. The Industrial Zone mission will pillage every building and the zone itself (hell, even the openly hostile army with tanks and stuff needs to spend a few turns doing that, but one little spy just blows everything up and goes away!), resulting in a gazillion turns of repairs, etc.

 

[Magil]

I've heard about the mission causing Bankruptcy despite positive gold flow--if true, that seems really broken, because bankruptcy is absolutely brutal and punishing and very difficult to recover from (negative amenities reducing your income, etc.).

 

[TomKQT]

In my opinion, everything 'spy' in Civ 6 is out of balance. The Industrial Zone mission will pillage every building and the zone itself (hell, even the openly hostile army with tanks and stuff needs to spend a few turns doing that, but one little spy just blows everything up and goes away!), resulting in a gazillion turns of repairs, etc.

Are you sure that also the industrial zone itself is pillaged by a spy on this mission? This must be the most common spy attack the AI has been doing to me and I don't remember a single time when it would also destroy the zone itself. And, if I'm not wrong, the description of this action says "all buildings in the industrial zone".

Oh and the repairing usually took me around 10 turns (complete repair of all buildings), so nothing dramatic.

 

[unpossible251]

Mmmm. Theyre staggeringly expensive units that either do incredibly well or die easily. Maybe if they were half as powerful and cost half as many hammers?

 

[Photi]

I think the siphon funds comes out of the commercial hub, and if that wasn't adjacent to city center (you said spy was in the city) then your spy wouldn't have caught it.

About industrial zones the next person mentioned, only the buildings are burned, not the district. Just had it happened to me tonight several times until I was finally able to place a counterspy. Repair times were reasonable.

 

[Victoria]

It seems they concentrate on what you have the most of but that is just a feeling. When I have high science and lots of campuses they target those, high commercial and they target those, high industry and they target those but quite fine to be wrong, just floating a discussion point and consideration.

Spies are not cheap and if you do not have them you do suffer. If I know of siphoning I will certainly place a spy there because it will very likely mean a capture and promotion of my spy plus the possibility of diplomatic ramifications. Many games the spies do not bother me much but every now and then a spy will start stealing great works continuously or blowing up lots of industry and that's when I pull my spies off being aggressive to being defensive.
Having your districts clumped for adjacency is always good for spy defense also so I tend to play this way now.

I have never seen bankruptcy via spies though... I guess if you have less in your treasury than what they are taking it could be nasty but i always have a bit of a buffer in there which is maybe why I have not seen it?

 

[Rosty K]

Are you sure that also the industrial zone itself is pillaged by a spy on this mission? This must be the most common spy attack the AI has been doing to me and I don't remember a single time when it would also destroy the zone itself. And, if I'm not wrong, the description of this action says "all buildings in the industrial zone".

Oh and the repairing usually took me around 10 turns (complete repair of all buildings), so nothing dramatic.

Not sure. Probably it doesn't indeed pillage the district itself. Still it's too much I think. I'd rather make those missions shorter, but take buildings one by one, giving the target a chance to react or something.

10 turns on what speed? I like marathon, and it doesn't look pretty. Sometimes I could build a wonder (not the current era one though) for the duration of repairs.

Maybe it's just my personal holy cow though. I'm like 'steal my tech, take my money, but don't you dare touch my production!'

 

[ZarkinFardwarks]

I think the siphon funds comes out of the commercial hub, and if that wasn't adjacent to city center (you said spy was in the city) then your spy wouldn't have caught it.

I did catch the spy, but the Siphon Funds mission still succeeded and bankrupted me.

I've heard about the mission causing Bankruptcy despite positive gold flow--if true, that seems really broken, because bankruptcy is absolutely brutal and punishing and very difficult to recover from (negative amenities reducing your income, etc.).

Since it was my first game and I was only playing on Prince difficulty, I eventually managed to recover from it, but it was indeed very brutal and I wouldn't want to experience on any of the higher difficulties.


And I can also confirm that the Sabotage mission does not pillage the Industrial district itself, since that is another spy mission that my neighbor used on me. And while it is annoying to have all buildings pillaged, it's nothing compared to being bankrupted, so I wouldn't say that the Sabotage mission is too problematic balance-wise. I think it took me 4-5 turns (Standard Speed) to repair all the buildings in the Industrial Zone, so that's not too bad.

 

[Victoria]

I agree sabotage missions are damaging, I just do not think they are OP.

 

[ZarkinFardwarks]

I have never seen bankruptcy via spies though... I guess if you have less in your treasury than what they are taking it could be nasty but i always have a bit of a buffer in there which is maybe why I have not seen it?

The spy took 1000 Gold out of my treasury and I don't think I had that much, but I don't even understand how that's supposed to make sense. If the spy is siphoning funds from the Commercial district, he should just reduce the income you receive from the district each turn that he's doing the mission, and not suddenly take a huge sum of money out of your treasury.

 

[Victoria]

Agreed, weird. Spies take a % anyway so unless you are using most of your treasury every turn you woukd not go broke by this method

 

[Pietato]

Spies are supposed to siphon what gold that city is producing each turn. The 1000 gold at the end is the total they took over howevee many turns. Unless something changed or is bugged.

 

[ZarkinFardwarks]

Spies are supposed to siphon what gold that city is producing each turn. The 1000 gold at the end is the total they took over howevee many turns. Unless something changed or is bugged.

There's no way to view a graph of things like amount of gold over time, is there? Something like InfoAddict in Civ 5? Because my treasury did drop down to zero suddenly without me having negative gold income.

 

[Victoria]

There should be a .csv in the log directory, there is for most other things including diplomacy
have a look there

 

[Bridgeboy69]

After seven (7) Failed spy missions in a row, despite having 73%+ success rate each time (after gaining sources), I finally was successful (I guess) in siphoning funds from an AI city. Although at first I thought it was another failure because it started off that I had to choose an escape route. I chose one and then it said "Success!" I siphoned off 660 gold and my spy will return to my capital in 3-turns, and the message said he will be promoted one level.

Well, he just got back to my capital 3-turns later and he is not available for promotion after all.

I think some new bugs have entered the spy system in a recent patch. I should not have had to escape if I was successful. I should have been able to stay in the city for another run on something with my twelve (12) remaining turns left from gaining sources. Now those 12 turns are wasted and I didn't even get a promotion after the on-screen message said I would.

 

[Magil]

I think some new bugs have entered the spy system in a recent patch. I should not have had to escape if I was successful. I should have been able to stay in the city for another run on something with my twelve (12) remaining turns left from gaining sources. Now those 12 turns are wasted and I didn't even get a promotion after the on-screen message said I would.

Part of that is intentional, it's definitely possible to succeed on the mission but be detected in the process, which prompts the escape.

The part that seems to be a bug is that it seems to always say your spy can be promoted after successfully completing a mission, even if this is not the case (my max-rank spy with 4 promotions continued to generate this message every time it succeeded).

 

[Bridgeboy69]

Part of that is intentional, it's definitely possible to succeed on the mission but be detected in the process, which prompts the escape.

The part that seems to be a bug is that it seems to always say your spy can be promoted after successfully completing a mission, even if this is not the case (my max-rank spy with 4 promotions continued to generate this message every time it succeeded).

The difference is that all of my (now 4) spies, including this one are still recruits, and have no promotions at all. I have played games where I have had spies recruited to the max of 3-levels, but in this (deity) game, every spy has failed (8-times in a row now), even though in each and every time the eight (8) spy attempts have had a greater than 70% chance of success (all with "gain sources" boosting their success rate first).

This particular spy had a 73% success rate and still apparently "failed," yet was reported to succeed (after escape), and when accessible again when he returned to the capital, he still had no option to promote, and he is still a recruit. So, yeah...

 

[Victoria]

I think I did about 30 missions last night, mostly siphoning. I would say at about half failed but only 1 captured and none killed. I think I agree with @Magil on the promo message but was not looking in particular, just notices occasionally that there was no chance to upgrade. What I definitely did notice was I never had a siphoning option offered. Maybe because the first promo I took was quartermaster.

 

[Depravo]

The spy took 1000 Gold out of my treasury and I don't think I had that much, but I don't even understand how that's supposed to make sense. If the spy is siphoning funds from the Commercial district, he should just reduce the income you receive from the district each turn that he's doing the mission, and not suddenly take a huge sum of money out of your treasury.

Yeah, I mean the mission is called 'siphon funds' not 'storm Fort Knox'. It implies a more gradual, less spectacular process.