making spies different

[Ahriman]

So it is *zero* work. Well, a couple of seconds to add the promotion, I guess.

Sorry, I was unclear, what I meant was that it would be a lot of work to code up and get the AI to understand a bunch of new spy missions.
Understood that then having different missions for different units (based on promotion) would be zero work.

Although the AI may not make perfect decisions about the different espionage missions, it does make *some* decisions

It makes some decisions, but only based on a narrow range of effects that it understands. It will be hard to make it use many other abilities.

To compare espionage missions across types:

Infiltrator (default)
Add unhappiness.
Steal tech.
Steal gold.
Plant atomic device. (Requires Atomics tech and House Atomics project).
Counter-espionage.

Saboteur (Ordos)
Slowl automatic XP gain.
Promotions sabotage 1, 2, 3, starts with sabotage 1.
Abilities:
1. Destroy building. Normal building destroy, but higher prob success/cheaper from promotions.
2. Sabotage improvement. Lower EP cost than for normal spy, and EP cost decreases further with higher promotion levels.
3. Sabotage units. Does collateral damage to all units in the tile. Hard to code AI for; consider making this an airstrike.
4. Foster Resistance movement. Sacrifice the saboteur, add a permanent building in a city that gives -10% hammers.

Reverend Mother (BG)
No automatic XP gain, gains XP only through missions.
Promotions Truthsayer 1, 2, 3, starts with Truthsayer 1 promotion.
Abilities:
1. Truthsayer advisors. Sacrifices the RM in enemy city to gain permanent diplomacy modifiers.
2. Intrigue. Adds BG culture on a particular tile. Does not send RM back to the city.
3. Influence. Adds BG culture to an enemy city.
4. Foster dissidents. Adds permanent building in the city that gives -20% culture.
5. Cause revolt. Very expensive in EP. Sends the city into revolt. Requires promotion level 3.

Facedancer (Tleilaxu)
No automatic xp gain; gains xp only from missions.
Facedancer 1, 2, 3 promotions. Facedancer starts with level 1 promotion. Level 2 promotion requires ?? tech, level 3 promotion requires genetic manipulation tech.
Abilities:
1. Assassinate settled great person. Success change depends on promotions.
2. Introduce biotoxin. A variant on "poison water supply"; adds a large amount of unhealth to the city, for many turns, with the amount of unhealth and duration affected by the promotions.
3. Poison water supply. Sacrifices FD. Adds a permanent building in the city that adds -5% water production.
4. Release engineered plague. Very expensive in EPs. Triggers a plague "event" in the city, like the Black Death plague from the Charlemagne mod; it kills 1 pop per turn, has a chance each turn of ending (depending on city health and FD promotion level) and a small chance each turn of spreading (depending on FD promotion level and city health of other cities).
Requires promotion level 3.

And then remove the normal tleilaxu plague (from being at war) from cities; have it only spread through units in direct contact with each other, so it can't start spreading through your empire.

 

[Slvynn]

One possibility is to give all spies this promotion by default, or something similar to worker movement that unlocks the desert terrains with tech.

I think this is just fine for start. I saw ocassional spys sent by ordos once to my landmass. I think it will work, otherwise it will be not worse than it is now, so its worth testing/trying.

Another semi-solution is replace logistics and ST - making ST 1st in queue

 

[Ahriman]

I saw ocassional spys sent by ordos once to my landmass

Separated by desert? That's good to know! Thanks for noticing. This suggests desert mobility unlocked by tech or starting promotion will work, without further AI adjustment.

 

[Slvynn]

Separated by desert? That's good to know! Thanks for noticing. This suggests desert mobility unlocked by tech or starting promotion will work.

Yes, it is, once Ordos had XP increase and i played on close landmass and they sent to kill my culture buildings because i was pressing them with culture - i was amazed, i didnt knew that there is Susp promo and though that they transporting spies to other tiles
but yes, they did ,they killed my culture buildings in city which was culture heavy and was on complete separate landmass, but few tiles from their "desert edge" city.

 

[Slvynn]

Tell me if you need new promo series for those, so everybody with this plan Ahriman composed?
Lets build it with exact numbers and throw in.
Also i think there hsould be another chapter in Dune Wars Concepts explaining that Espionage is much more potent and important than in BTS (same as in Books Series) .

 

[Ahriman]

so everybody with this plan Ahriman composed?

This is just a brainstorm proposal; I'm happy to discuss/change it.

 

[davidlallen]

Saboteur (Ordos)
3. Sabotage units. Does collateral damage to all units in the tile. Hard to code AI for; consider making this an airstrike.
4. Foster Resistance movement. Sacrifice the saboteur, add a permanent building in a city that gives -10% hammers.

Would it be OK if the sabotage units ability only works when the unit is in a city? I haven't looked into the existing spy *movement* AI, but I am sure it focuses on moving to enemy cities. Adding the ability to follow enemy stacks would be hard. Without adding that to the AI, the human player would be able to use this much more effectively than the AI.

How can a player get rid of these buildings? I don't think they should be permanent, unremoveable buildings. I am not sure the AI uses it well, but we could add a new effect to the existing counter-espionage: if you succeed with a standard counter-espionage, then it also removes all these such buildings.

Reverend Mother (BG)
1. Truthsayer advisors. Sacrifices the RM in enemy city to gain permanent diplomacy modifiers.

There is some previous discussion about this in the RM thread. I am currently thinking of a mission which gives a +1 permanent diplomacy modifier from the target to me. This seems weak enough that it wouldn't require sacrificing the unit. If we did sacrifice the unit, would the enemy player see the unit, perhaps as a new building?

Should there any way for the enemy to remove the effect? I was thinking no, same as the Faux Pas random event. If there is a building or unit visible afterwards, I can see the player might want to destroy it to remove the effect.

2. Intrigue. Adds BG culture on a particular tile. Does not send RM back to the city.

I really don't see too much value in this. Is the goal to give temporary access to an enemy improvement on the border? Seems like a lot more effort to implement, than the benefit it would ever have in play. This would also be the only mission that didn't send the spy back; is there a specific reason for this?

3. Influence. Adds BG culture to an enemy city.

I came across this interesting thread on how this existing ability is supposed to be used. Has anybody ever heard of this before? You have to send the spy in before you conquer, and the city comes out of revolt with a bunch of culture already.

5. Cause revolt. Very expensive in EP. Sends the city into revolt. Requires promotion level 3.

This is a standard spy mission. Making it only available to BG is fine; but requiring level 3 seems too restrictive. I suggest it should be available to any RM, but the cost would come down *significantly* with levels of the promotion.

Also, one of the missions I want to add is the one where you pick a third civ, and the target civ gets a permanent -1 diplo modifier against that civ. What do you think?

Facedancer (Tleilaxu)
2. Introduce biotoxin. A variant on "poison water supply"; adds a large amount of unhealth to the city, for many turns, with the amount of unhealth and duration affected by the promotions.

Is this the existing poison water supply mission, and the existing Fish Speaker promotion line? Or something different?

And then remove the normal tleilaxu plague (from being at war) from cities; have it only spread through units in direct contact with each other, so it can't start spreading through your empire.

If we add the spy mission then I agree we could remove the existing plague spread; but FYI, it does only spread through units in direct contact with each other. The plague building only appears in a city once a unit with the plague has gone there.

 

[Ahriman]

Would it be OK if the sabotage units ability only works when the unit is in a city?

Ideally, no... but obviously this would be much harder to design AI code for. The thematic idea would be having the unit sabotaging vehicles, destroying supply dumps and ambushing supply convoys, so that it can be used against units in the field.

What if we added a range ~4 naval bombard ability to the unit, and made it so that the unit could bombard *and* move (like naval units)? So it could bombard and then still move?
And higher levels of the saboteur promotion could increase the collateral damage done by the bombardment.

How can a player get rid of these buildings? I don't think they should be permanent, unremoveable buildings.

Well, the idea was that they would be permanent, hence why their effects were very low - and you can only have one copy of a building in a city, so they don't stack. I worry that if they aren't permanent, then the effects would be too weak.
Is it really so bad to have a permanent -5% water income or -10% hammers?
Part of what I dislike about the current espionage is that its effects are trivial. I would rather have espionage effects that actually mattered.

IIRC counter espionage is something that you normally do in enemy cities, not your own cities, so it would need to be a separate ability, if you really thought this was necessary.
If it could be removed by espionage, maybe the power could be larger?

I am currently thinking of a mission which gives a +1 permanent diplomacy modifier from the target to me. This seems weak enough that it wouldn't require sacrificing the unit. If we did sacrifice the unit, would the enemy player see the unit, perhaps as a new building?

Well, the idea behind the sacrifice was that this represented Truthsayer Advisors who stayed with the other faction and assisted them - but still made sure to tweak influence towards the BGs.
So the unit is sacrificed because it isn't availalbe to you anymore.
Potentially I guess it could just require EPs rather than sacrifice, the sacrifice was to to try to prevent exploitation.
Other possibilities: tweak it up to a +2 bonus and require sacrifice, cap the total bonus you can have from this type of effect at +4 (or +6??) with a particular faction.

I really don't see too much value in this. Is the goal to give temporary access to an enemy improvement on the border? Seems like a lot more effort to implement, than the benefit it would ever have in play. This would also be the only mission that didn't send the spy back; is there a specific reason for this?

The goal is to function like a pillage from influence-given war, shifting tile onwnership away from the owner and towards the BG - maybe its easier just to destroy enemy culture on the tile than to increase your own. So you are spending EPs to increase your territory coverage. The purpose is to basically have an extra mechanism for advancing your culture into enemy territory, without war. Basically, BGs should be insidious, expanding their influence/culture against you, forcing you to go to war in order to hold them off.
The reason for the no-return is that otherwise it would take to long to actually make any advance, since you might have to use the ability a couple of times to gain a single tile.
The AI should use the ability only on tiles with enemy culture and BG culture.
Again, very hard to code though I'm guessing.

This is a standard spy mission.

Doesn't the standard spy mission just cause unhappiness? I am talknig about literally throwing the city into revolt for a turn, where its production shuts down and its cultural borders are removed. This is incredibly powerful, because it instantly removes all cultural *and* fortification city defenses.
So if you use it when your army is in an adjacent stack....

Also, one of the missions I want to add is the one where you pick a third civ, and the target civ gets a permanent -1 diplo modifier against that civ. What do you think?

I'm not wild about it. How would you pick the other civ? A popup dialogue?
But it seems reasonably harmless to me.

Is this the existing poison water supply mission

Basically yes, except potentially larger amount/longer duration from promtoions.

and the existing Fish Speaker promotion line?

I don't know what this is.

If we add the spy mission then I agree we could remove the existing plague spread; but FYI, it does only spread through units in direct contact with each other. The plague building only appears in a city once a unit with the plague has gone there.

It doesnt' spread through cities by trade-routes? It certainly seems to spread incredibly widely.

Any thoughts on the Harkonnen traitor idea?

create a unit buildable with hammers (national limit 2?), call it a "Traitor" unit, and give it siege unit AI. Have the Traitor have a city bombardment ability that knocks down 100% city walls, but using the ability kills it. I can see the AI using this; bring it up to the city with an invading stack, bombard the walls killing the traitor, then invade.

 

[Slvynn]

I dont like Fish Speaker name for unhealthy promotion sems to be unconnected

Also i like very much Harkonnen Traitor idea exactly as it described.

 

[Deliverator]

Also i like very much Harkonnen Traitor idea exactly as it described.

I like this too. Ahriman's point about doing more to make the Harkonnen seem like classy and scheming villains rather than just brainless thugs was a very good one.

 

[davidlallen]

Would it be OK if the sabotage units ability only works when the unit is in a city?

What if we added a range ~4 naval bombard ability to the unit, and made it so that the unit could bombard *and* move (like naval units)? So it could bombard and then still move?

That is even harder to write AI for. I will put the idea of sabotage in a city onto the list, and after that, ""we"" can try to write custom movement AI.

Well, the idea was that they would be permanent, hence why their effects were very low

If I had proposed a permanent building in your city which you could not get rid of, I bet you would complain.

IIRC counter espionage is something that you normally do in enemy cities, not your own cities, so it would need to be a separate ability, if you really thought this was necessary.

Please do read the threads I quoted with documentation on vanilla espionage. This ability is used in your own city to make it more difficult for enemy spies to succeed in this city.

If it could be removed by espionage, maybe the power could be larger?

I would be OK with that.

This seems weak enough that it wouldn't require sacrificing the unit. If we did sacrifice the unit, would the enemy player see the unit, perhaps as a new building?

Well, the idea behind the sacrifice was that this represented Truthsayer Advisors who stayed with the other faction and assisted them - but still made sure to tweak influence towards the BGs. So the unit is sacrificed because it isn't availalbe to you anymore.

Let's try to figure out the mechanic. If it is sacrificed and removed from the game, then it doesn't count against your national cap anymore, and there is no limit to the total benefit. If there is a visible building, the player will want to destroy it to remove the effect. The Faux Pas random event is permanent and cannot be undone; that is what I was aiming for. Another possibility is to make some different graphic, somewhere in the city screen, to show this. That would be a lot of work and I am not sure what it should look like.

The goal is to function like a pillage from influence-given war, shifting tile onwnership away from the owner and towards the BG ... The reason for the no-return is that otherwise it would take to long to actually make any advance, since you might have to use the ability a couple of times to gain a single tile.

Does it seem like fun to click multiple times on one RM in order to gain a single tile? Perhaps we can meet this design goal with some different mechanic.

Doesn't the standard spy mission just cause unhappiness? I am talknig about literally throwing the city into revolt for a turn

See above on vanilla espionage.

one of the missions I want to add is the one where you pick a third civ, and the target civ gets a permanent -1 diplo modifier against that civ.

How would you pick the other civ? A popup dialogue?

Yes. I thought you had suggested this in the long-ago thread related to this post. Anyway, I like it and you think it is harmless, so I will add it to the list.

and the existing Fish Speaker promotion line?

I don't know what this is.

Please see the in-game description of the promotion. It gives bonus unhealth to the poison water action.

Any thoughts on the Harkonnen traitor idea?

Sounds interesting. It is unrelated to super spies. It requires only an xml change, using the bSuicide flag, so anybody could try it out. I will put it on the list.

 

[Ahriman]

That is even harder to write AI for. I will put the idea of sabotage in a city onto the list, and after that, ""we"" can try to write custom movement AI.

Sounds ok.
The problem is: damaging units in a city is useless unless you are about to invade that city, because otherwise the unts just immediately heal at no cost.
An alternative: how about the ability has a low chance of success, but if it does succeed, it destroys a vehicle, thopter, suspensor or hornet entirely?

If I had proposed a permanent building in your city which you could not get rid of, I bet you would complain.

Maybe. We'll never know
I have no strong objection to making them removeable with another mission if they are sufficiently powerful, AND if the AI does a decent job of removing them.

It seems to me that the gap between human/AI use would be be smaller if the ability make a small permanent penalty than a large temporary one that the human knows how to undo.

Please do read the threads I quoted with documentation on vanilla espionage

Ok, my memories are foggy since I never really use espionage. I will educate myself.

If it is sacrificed and removed from the game, then it doesn't count against your national cap anymore, and there is no limit to the total benefit

Can't you hardcode a cap on the benefit separately from the national limit on units?
Have the bonus only function if #truthsayers_ij<3, and have the providetruthsayer ability only be useable in j's city if #truthsayers_ij<3, where i is the BG player and j is the particular enemy faction.

It gives bonus unhealth to the poison water action.

Why should Fish Speakers (Quizarate-Fedaykin, basically) give a bonus to poison water??

Sounds interesting. It is unrelated to super spies

Yes, this was my point; some espionage-ish abilities are better handled outside the espionage system.

 

[Slvynn]

Why should Fish Speakers (Quizarate-Fedaykin, basically) give a bonus to poison water??.

Agree, that not sit well in my mind too

 

[davidlallen]

An alternative: how about the ability has a low chance of success, but if it does succeed, it destroys a vehicle, thopter, suspensor or hornet entirely?

That seems like a good idea. I take it you feel this should never apply to melee or guardsman unitcombats, because they are less about equipment and more about units?

Can't you hardcode a cap on the benefit separately from the national limit on units?

I suppose it is possible. But this is special purpose code unrelated to anything else, so I would prefer to avoid it.

Why should Fish Speakers (Quizarate-Fedaykin, basically) give a bonus to poison water??

I did not say it was the best name, I was only helping you to understand what it does. What is a better name for this promotion?

 

[Ahriman]

That seems like a good idea. I take it you feel this should never apply to melee or guardsman unitcombats, because they are less about equipment and more about units?

That's the idea. The stack damage idea seemed like it should effect anything, but its probably more flavorful for a saboteur to just blow up machines.

What is a better name for this promotion?

Well, my design takes the poison water away from the normal infiltrator, and gives it only to the Facedancer, so they'd just depend on the Facedancer promotions.
These could be Biotoxin 1,2,3 for example.

 

[Slvynn]

I did not say it was the best name, I was only helping you to understand what it does. What is a better name for this promotion?

poison mastery?

 

[Deliverator]

poison mastery?

Maybe keep it simple and just call it Poisoner I, II, III.

 

[Slvynn]

Chokemist Alchemy?

 

[davidlallen]

I have studied the existing vanilla "insert culture" spy mission and I finally understand it. The information is given by the thread I mentioned earlier, but even so it took some experimentation.

Basically, you use this mission just before you conquer a city to make it recover faster. I can't see anyplace where the cumulative result of the missions are visible. The place you would think to look for it shows something else; you can see your *tile* culture but not *your city culture when somebody else owns the city*.

Try this experiment with any any midgame save.

1. Find somebody else's city where you have some tile cultural influence, for example, you have a strong city and the enemy has a weak city near your border. This is the target city.

2. Using WB, build a stack just outside the target city. The stack should have enough devastators that you can take the city in one turn. Add one spymaster and five infiltrators.

3. Move the spymaster into the city, and spybomb. (Use the action button on the spymaster which gives you +3000 EP and destroys the spy.)

4. Save the game. We will reload from this point later.

5. Attack the city with the devastators. Note, you did not use the spies. Go to the next turn and look in the city window at your culture, the scale bar at the lower left. It is zero, and the increase rate is also zero.

6. Advance the turns until the city comes out of revolt and look again at the city window at your culture. It shows zero, fledgeling, and presumably you are getting +0 culture per turn. Maybe there was some culture building or something but probably you have zero culture and you are getting zero culture. As you know, you can build a monument, or pop a great artist, or use specialists, or whatever in order to get the culture up and start the cultural borders expanding.

7. Now reload the save game from step 4.

8. Move all the spies into the city, go to the next turn so they can be used, and select the spy mission "spread culture".

9. Look at the hover help for the mission in the popup; this is the key point. Depending on the details of your game, the hover help for the mision will show you some amount of culture which will be added. In my example, each mission was adding 9-10 culture. It is 5% of the city's culture rate; my target city was increasing culture at 200 per turn, so the mission will add 10 culture.

10. Pop all the spies and keep track in your head of how much culture you added. I popped five spies at 9-10 culture each, totalling 49 culture added.

11. Now bring in the devastators, conquer the city, and look in the city screen at the culture rate as in step 5. See? You have 49 culture already there. It doesn't do you any good because the city is still in revolt.

12. Advance a few turns till you come out of revolt. Now, depending on the other cities around, your cultural borders may be large.

To summarize, you pop several spies in an enemy border city before you capture it, and the city comes out of revolt in better shape. You may be able to immediately work the entire BFC, instead of being stuck on just the city plot. This means your city population won't starve and it will not shrink.

This is not a super-strong effect. We could magnify it with the Reverend Mother promotions. One benefit of using this mission is that it is already implemented; no additional work is needed in the spy movement AI or mission selection AI. The cost per culture point and the percentage of the city's culture to be added, are both xml parameters.

I still haven't actually *done* anything with the RM +1 diplomacy bonus, but at least now I feel I understand the existing vanilla culture mission.

 

[Ahriman]

Good work David.

It is 5% of the city's culture rate;

So, lets just increase this parameter? To say, 100% of the city's per turn culture rate? Or 300% of the city's culture rate?

I agree that at 5%, the ability is pathetic. If the city gets 20 culture per turn (which is a cultural powerhouse), you get 1 culture per mission? Laughable.

Also; I know sometimes that if you recapture a city of yours, it does not go into revolt. Is this based on culture, or on who founded the city? In other words, can you add enough of your own culture to a city such that it won't revolt when you capture it.