Locking out the spy-slots

[obsolete]

One thing I absolutely hate is how the game puts a priority on running spy specialists. This keeps messing up all my micromanagements every turn. I've even tried to turn on the city management (yeah, yeah, I know bad idea), and told it to emphasize commerce. But even STILL it fills up the spy slots before merchants.

I guess the only way to change the priorities is by manually editing the xml file(s)?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I COMPLETELY agree. WTH is up with this? I had a Prophet Farm that was pure... PURE!! I mean, WTH? Henge, Oracle, and Angkor Wat along with a Shrine, 2 temples and 7 priests... then I go back to the city a mess of turns later to find that my next GP has a 15% chance of being a Great Spy...!!! GRRRRR... That's more than enough for the game to say "hey, man, this guy's been popping Prophets all game, maybe we should give him a spy"... ... ... needless to say, I got the damn spy.

 

[Xellos-_^]

One thing I absolutely hate is how the game puts a priority on running spy specialists. This keeps messing up all my micromanagements every turn. I've even tried to turn on the city management (yeah, yeah, I know bad idea), and told it to emphasize commerce. But even STILL it fills up the spy slots before merchants.

I guess the only way to change the priorities is by manually editing the xml file(s)?

you can always reduce it yourself

 

[Ekmek]

i hate this too. i never got around to fixing it. What i was going to do was either:

1) remove from the buildings how many specialists go to spies

20 swap the xml to put scientists (or engineers) first instead of spies

 

[morchuflex]

Yes, this IS irritating.

 

[SirDrake]

Sorry, no answer, but I'm posting in case someone does eventually reveal the magic secret. This bugs the snot out of me, too.

Small suggestion in the meantime: Watch Spy Point production when hitting end-of-turn. If the slider is at zero, it can't change except for buildings or specialist assignment, so you'll have an alert that lets you avoid going into the city screens unnecessarily.

-J

 

[TheOgre]

spies and esp are good, learn to use them, and scotland yard in ONE city can help a lot later.

the real problem - spies cant bulb.

i hate to say this but maybe building markets instead of courthouses can help. or dont put a courthouse or great spy wonder in your city where you want 0% spy. sometimes, the auto-governer changes GP to spy because it is availible and no other reason.

edit the XML? think about it first, HOF and multiplayer games dont like that... you can just turn off espionage, and get blank GP points...

 

[obsolete]

Oh wonderful. So we are going to conquer a lot of land, and cities, and never build jails to counter our war-unhappiness? And we are never going to build a courthouse now to pay all that maintenance? LOL, I can see how this works on Settler mode, but the Immortal/Deity guys need a fix here.

 

[JujuLautre]

turn automation on; click on emphasize gpp; click on the + button near a priest. There, no more spy until there is no room for priests.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

...? I've never had this problem. Ever. o.O

 

[GooglyBoogly]

Spies cannot bulb, but you can use the espionage mission EP's to steal multiple techs.
Not better or worse, just different

 

[Lessa]

I have to admit to having to continually go in to cities to re-assign the spies to be scientists or merchants instead is really annoying. It would be really cool if you could set a preference for each different specialist, so it would assign them it that order.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

spies and esp are good, learn to use them, and scotland yard in ONE city can help a lot later.

the real problem - spies cant bulb.

i hate to say this but maybe building markets instead of courthouses can help. or dont put a courthouse or great spy wonder in your city where you want 0% spy. sometimes, the auto-governer changes GP to spy because it is availible and no other reason.

edit the XML? think about it first, HOF and multiplayer games dont like that... you can just turn off espionage, and get blank GP points...

I don't think obsolete or any other vet BTS players will argue that EPs and spies are not good. But that doesn't change the fact that cities auto-assigning ANY specialist isn't cool in my book ESPECIALLY a GPP polluting spy. Courthouses are an absolute necessity on levels higher than Noble, so not building them is right out of the question. On higher levels, jails are needed otherwise WW will cripple your economy quick.

Turning off espionage does not get blank points, it converts the points that would have gone to espionage to culture and essentially breaks the game with regards to cultural victories. I believe this was posted in another thread.

So, again, this does need to be fixed IMHO. Forcing players to go to each specialist city every turn to make sure the AI didn't sneak in a spy just plain sucks.

 

[Joshua368]

The best part is when you have a super GP farm running like eight or nine scientists for bulbing the liberalism race, the city grows and you miss it running a spy for a single turn before switching it back, and then you end up popping a spy at like 2% odds.

 

[noto2]

sometimes when you assign specialists, you get a pretty little yellow box around them...what does that mean? Isn't it a mechanism for locking in the specialists?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

sometimes when you assign specialists, you get a pretty little yellow box around them...what does that mean? Isn't it a mechanism for locking in the specialists?

Never seen the yellow box.

 

[Lessa]

I've seen the yollow box and it does 'lock' those specialists, but I have never been able to work out how to do it on purpose.

 

[Wodan]

First, you have to have citizen automation turned on. (In the city screen, just below the buttons to whip- and gold-rush, are the production automation and citizen automation buttons. Make sure the right one, citizen automation, has a gold border.)

Next, you can click + or - next to a specialist type. DON'T CLICK IT TOO MANY TIMES OR YOU'LL TURN CITIZEN AUTOMATION OFF. The game assumes if you click it too many times that you *really* meant what you just did, and it turns automation off to try and do what you wanted.

Bottom line you want the citizen automation to have a yellow box, and you also want a gold box around the first specialist type that you want to force.

Once you do this, the game will add ONLY that specialist type until it is full and it has citizens working ALL tiles in the city. Only then will it try to add another specialist type.

Once you get the hang of it, you can experiment and force 2 types, etc.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I've seen the yellow box before and I never have citizen automation turned on.

 

[Lessa]

First, you have to have citizen automation turned on. (In the city screen, just below the buttons to whip- and gold-rush, are the production automation and citizen automation buttons. Make sure the right one, citizen automation, has a gold border.)

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!

I rarely let the computer run my cities for me anymore, which would be why I never managed it again. I had assumed that I must have clicked it while accidentaly holding down some combination of keys that I couldn't replicate.