New Spy System Feedback

Stalker0

Baller Magnus
Joined
Dec 31, 2005
Messages
10,596
So in this thread I am going to collect my various postings from the last few games and try to provide a more concise and detailed feedback on the new spy concept. Others are welcome to post their own thoughts in this thread as well.

UI Notes
Spoiler :

  • I think the Security details (Cities security threshold with bonus/penalty breakdown) should be moved to the "Star Area" of the Spy screen. Aka I should see the security 1 number at brief glance, and when I mouse over the stars I should get the detailed breakdown. I need that info before I want to commit a spy.
  • The Spy event screen's information is pretty good, and a button to go back to the city is already being worked on, for the most part I am happy with this screen.
  • Notifications seems a bit hit or miss. I am seeing some of them and not others. I would request a notification a few turns before the Target City Defenses mission goes into place, as I need to ensure I am timing my actions properly.
  • There doesn't seem to be anything on the city itself that shows it can't heal from the Target City Defenses mission (aka like the surrounded flag).


A note on Turn Times
Spoiler :

Note that my turn times are not just mission times. When I give a number I mean Travel Time + Surveillance Time + Mission time....as that is the actual time to complete a mission.

To me there are two kinds of missions right now:

Timing Important Missions (Target City Defenses, Disrupt Local Production - aka for wonder killing)
For these two missions, there needs to be a good and quick feedback mechanism to allow a player to properly use these missions and time it with other actions they are doing.

I think the absolute maximum for these missions should be 8 turns on standard speed. 8 turns gives me a chance to disrupt a wonder in production, and allows me to use target defenses in an active siege. Any longer than this and the missions become unwieldy, especially disrupt production....the only reason I would ever use this is to delay wonders, and therefore there is no point in starting the mission if the wonder is going to finish before the mission completes.

Timing Independent Missions (Everything else)
Most missions I just do the thing and get the thing, or do a general screw on another player. I don't have to really time things too much to get the benefits of these.

I think a target of 20-30 turns is the right window (roughly in TR time ranges). This ensures some adjustments and flexibility in my missions without the spies becoming too onerous. I could see maybe as quick as 15 turns, but more than that just feels tedious.

General Variability
Right now turn times are heavily swingy based on security, and I think its much too varied. I don't mind that a high security city reduces my yields and slows down my missions a bit....but in the 20 turns goes to 23 turns kind of thing, not 20 to 30. Turns should be relatively consistent. Personally I would love if we removed turn time variance entirely (I made a post detailing that idea here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/spy-rework-suggestions-here.669495/page-6#post-16087603)


Spy Philosophy: Good for me vs Bad for You
Spoiler :

There is a reason thieves only work outside the capital (and people still complain about them), getting your stuff taken just feels really really bad. Its not fun, so the times we should let spies actually take from another player need to be:
  • Rare: True steals need to be a big deal, and appropriately rare. If I'm going to lose stuff, I want it to be a big deal, not a constant non-stop pile on.
  • Non-Stacking: If I'm getting hit than their needs to be protections that ensure I can't get hit over and over and over again. Knock me down is bad enough, but to keep kicking me down is even worse. We need to respect that their is lots of incentive in the game to have everyone dogpile the leader with nonstop disruptions if they can.



Quick Note on Era Scaling
Spoiler :

I will detail some thoughts in each post, but as a blanket statement: Era scaling by itself isn't going to work. In most cases, era scaled yields start out strong and get weaker over time. That's generally intentional and completely fine, as they are generated from sources that are supposed to be less relevant over time.

If we use era scaling only to adjust our yields, than spies will automatically become worse over time. So we would either need to let their missions run faster (which means they become more tedious over time), or they need additional scaling to stay relevant. I will post my thoughts below.


Spy Detection and Kill Chances
Spoiler :

Right now these number adjust by a few % points, and sometimes are so low that they don't factor into my decision making. Detection especially, the difference between a regular mission and a "involved" one should be minimum 25% spy detection chance, probably 50% to actually make it a factor in my decision making.

Now kill chances are much more important, but I'm not changing my missions due to a 1-4% kill difference, probably 10% is the lowest lever I would look at.


Disrupt Local Production
Spoiler :

As I mentioned before, I really see this as a Wonder delaying tactic. Conceptually I like that, the issue with Wonders right now is they are so Culture and Science dependent, that the actual hammer part of the wonder is not as much of a factor (except through a GE). If an opponent starts a wonder just 1 more turn ahead of me because of a culture advantage....the amount of hammers it takes to make up for that is actually quite high. So having another lever in the wonder race is interesting. As the wonder "race" is truly that, this is an area of high interest.

I think this mission is best served to be balanced and retooled around wonders. Instead of a general screw that can just be used to strip an enemy capital down to nothing, I think making it a noticeable but non-stackable hit on wonders gives it a solid and unique niche.

My recommendation: Rename to "Sabotage Large Project". Wonders and Projects in the city suffer a -10% production penalty for 10 turns. Prereq: City is working on a project, and is not already suffering from this mission. The mission times should be extremely quick, probably 1-2 turns from when I see the wonder and want to start the delay.

That last piece I think is important to prevent stacking, both from your own spies but also to prevent multiple civs from trying to hit the same person. This way if another civ is already disrupting wonder prod in a city, you don't do the same mission but "waste" your effort.


Raid Local Treasury
Spoiler :

I personally think this one can be removed. I spy for tech, I spy to hinder my opponent, just getting gold in comparison seems like a waste of time. If you do want to keep it its going to need a big scale up to be relevant. Also, it shouldn't take longer than other missions like it does now.

In terms of scaling, one interesting way to scale it is based on your own Great Merchants. Think of it as "the more financial experts my civ has, the better I am able to hack someone else's". So as the GM scales with towns (and whatever scales the GM mission if there is anything), so do the raid missions.


Poison Water Supply
Spoiler :

Honestly, this is just an unfun screw you to other civs. Its either minor enough to not matter, or it can cripple your growth at key times. And its honestly boring, after a few of these you'll just have this nigh permanent -10 to food all the time, nothing interesting about that.

I think this one really should just be removed. It doesn't provide anything of real value to the game.


Radicalize the Rural Citizenry
Spoiler :

Similar to Poison water, this just ensures a steady stream of pain in your civ, nothing you can do except just have an army of workers around to clean up the mess. Its not interesting, its just unfun.

I think there is a way to make this a more important hit...shifting it away from general mayhem and go for the jugular, the strategic resources.

Recommendation: Change to "Sabotage: 1 strategic resource near the city is pillaged. Prereq: A strategic resource is improved near the city, and the mission is not currently active"

Again I think that last clause is important, we don't want all of your strategic resources to be constantly pillaged, as that is not fun either. But a strategic and deliberate removal of strategic resources during war can be a very interesting moment


Infiltrate Local Science Facilities
Spoiler :

So my thought here....lets just go back to the tech steal. The mechanic does all the work for us, it only works if you have a tech I don't, it auto scales, and its a big "fun" moment to get a tech compared to just getting some yields every so often.

I am fine with reducing the strength compared to today's tech steal in favor of a smoother curve, the issue today is you can steal techs like crazy at first, then after a time you will never be able to steal again....and spy level creates a huge variance in how quickly you get techs. If that was smoothed out, I think you could put that mechanic back in.

If that is not popular, you could scale the science based on the GS scaler. As the GS scales so does the infiltrate's mission yields. Again simple era scale is not sufficient to do the job.


Kidnap Specialists / Forge Cultural Artifacts
Spoiler :

So first off, I think the -GPP has to go. Taking away a person GP that they worked on in a city for 30 turns and then it just goes up in smoke....sorry that is just not fun at all.

In terms of the specialist bonuses, on the one hand I do enjoy the timing aspect of these and getting to synergize my specialist yields. But on the other....as I look at my +50 culture musicians in my capital right now...ultimately I don't think stackable yields here is the right path. I think we will either leave it as too good, or its too easy to nerf into uselessness. I really like the concept...but I think we need to do something else with it.

So let me offer this idea:

Recommendation: Combine these into a single counterspy mission "Recruit Local Talent". The classic spy agency recruits university professors to help them kind of thing.

Recruit Local Talent: All specialists in city add +1 to their main yield.

As a counterspy, its set and forget, no stacking concerns. The player can now also beef up specialists in various cities. This gives a fun advantage for counterspying, you actually get a little something for your trouble now.


Target City Defenses
Spoiler :

This remains my favorite "screw" mission, as it feels strategic and it creates a giant moment of urgency when it goes off. It needs to be much quicker (see my notes above), and provide more visual feedback, but I can see the potential of this one.
 
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So just played through an American game until Turn 278 (5/5 HF1), when CTDs have ended me. So what do I think of the changes so far?

  • Kidnap / Forge Artifacts: As far as I can tell these don't stack anymore (as expected) but there is also no duration on these noted. So its hard to tell if I should do a kidnap or not. Overall I like the mission, I generally use it on a few Security 1 cities once my capital starts really working the specialists.
  • Gold / Science: So gold now can work with a level 1 spy, and science requires a level 2. I don't know if that's the right balance for science but it does give gold a niche as the most "basic default" mission.
  • Poison Well is my go to "screw" at the moment, as its lowish risk and quick to implement. The AI seems to agree, my capital and top 1-2 other cities are basically at -25% growth starting in Renaissance and never stops. So its not rage inducing like losing GPP would be, but this is the reality of screws in Civ 5....the AI will spam them, and you will simply suffer them all game long. Is that what we want?
  • The other thing about screws, they could be seen as a "rich get richer" mechanic. In theory a civ behind the ball needs to be stealing science and gold to "catch up". This means the top dogs can use their spies to just mess with people. But again on the other hand it allows lower civs to dogpile the top guy. So who ultimately "wins" in that scenario, I'm not sure yet.
  • Cities in general seem to go back to security 1 very quickly, usually within 10ish turns. They jump up but then come back down fast enough that I don't think the protection is really doing much.
  • I would like to see the travel time and settle times standardized. They can very from 1-2 turns to like 5-6. That was fine back when I would just leave my spy in the capital until the end of time, but now that missions are often 3-5 turns that variance is quite noticeable, and there is no UI to predict it. Honestly I say 1 turn travel time period (which makes as much sense as a Great Admiral teleporting around), and then the mission time...and that's it. Influence levels can just be an adjustment on security score like policies, tech.
  • The security UI is working for me. It gives me a reasonable understanding of what civs to target, aka ones that have significant culture and science gaps over me.
  • Target City Defenses is a lot of fun...but man I am really worried about it once the AI figures it out. The city is a key aspect of human defense against the endless horde, and if the AI can simply start gaining 20% more damage on my cities and I can't heal them....I fear that humans won't be able to hold their cities.
  • Overall the science steal rate still feels a lot less than tech steals were. I will see how I feel as I complete games, but I definitely see myself farther behind in tech in the Renaissance/Industrial area than before.
  • I found the restriction on the happiness mission for counterspy (aka that the city must first be unhappy) annoying. I just want to put my spy in a place I think will have happiness issues and leave him there, I don't want to micromanage that or wait until the city is unhappy and then pull him off another spy mission or have to wait until he finishes and then probably forget about my unhappy city...XYZ. I just want to drop the spy in and be done with it.
 
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So just played through an American game until Turn 278 (5/5 HF1), when CTDs have ended me. So what do I think of the changes so far?

  • Kidnap / Forge Artifacts: As far as I can tell these don't stack anymore (as expected) but there is also no duration on these noted. So its hard to tell if I should do a kidnap or not. Overall I like the mission, I generally use it on a few Security 1 cities once my capital starts really working the specialists.
  • Gold / Science: So gold now can work with a level 1 spy, and science requires a level 2. I don't know if that's the right balance for science but it does give gold a niche as the most "basic default" mission.
  • Poison Well is my go to "screw" at the moment, as its lowish risk and quick to implement. The AI seems to agree, my capital and top 1-2 other cities are basically at -25% growth starting in Renaissance and never stops. So its not rage inducing like losing GPP would be, but this is the reality of screws in Civ 5....the AI will spam them, and you will simply suffer them all game long. Is that what we want?
  • The other thing about screws, they could be seen as a "rich get richer" mechanic. In theory a civ behind the ball needs to be stealing science and gold to "catch up". This means the top dogs can use their spies to just mess with people. But again on the other hand it allows lower civs to dogpile the top guy. So who ultimately "wins" in that scenario, I'm not sure yet.
  • Cities in general seem to go back to security 1 very quickly, usually within 10ish turns. They jump up but then come back down fast enough that I don't think the protection is really doing much.
  • I would like to see the travel time and settle times standardized. They can very from 1-2 turns to like 5-6. That was fine back when I would just leave my spy in the capital until the end of time, but now that missions are often 3-5 turns that variance is quite noticeable, and there is no UI to predict it. Honestly I say 1 turn travel time period (which makes as much sense as a Great Admiral teleporting around), and then the mission time...and that's it. Influence levels can just be an adjustment on security score like policies, tech.
  • The security UI is working for me. It gives me a reasonable understanding of what civs to target, aka ones that have significant culture and science gaps over me.
  • Target City Defenses is a lot of fun...but man I am really worried about it once the AI figures it out. The city is a key aspect of human defense against the endless horde, and if the AI can simply start gaining 20% more damage on my cities and I can't heal them....I fear that humans won't be able to hold their cities.
  • Overall the science steal rate still feels a lot less than tech steals were. I will see how I feel as I complete games, but I definitely see myself farther behind in tech in the Renaissance/Industrial area than before.
  • I found the restriction on the happiness mission for counterspy (aka that the city must first be unhappy) annoying. I just want to put my spy in a place I think will have happiness issues and leave him there, I don't want to micromanage that or wait until the city is unhappy and then pull him off another spy mission or have to wait until he finishes and then probably forget about my unhappy city...XYZ. I just want to drop the spy in and be done with it.

how do you feel about the counterspy stuff?
Overall though it sounds like this pass is in a much better place than the first beta. Which is good! I’m excited to see how this progresses as we can ironing it out.
 
how do you feel about the counterspy stuff?

At this point in the game I never felt the desire to take counterspies over using my spies offensively. That may change as I get another spy and spy actions increase with frequency (or if I feel that spy missions aren't scaling well enough).

As I mentioned the few times I thought about putting a counterspy for unhappiness, I got the note that my city wasn't unhappy yet. I would like to preemptively put them on cities I know are going to grow and will hit unhappiness to help temper that.
 
I appreciate the intricacy of the new spy system but I think eliminating tech stealing pushes the game back about 50 turns. Also, the yields from the spies feel invisible and not very impactful. Overall, I miss being able to steal techs. It get impactful. But this is just my experience based on playing 2 games to the end - have other people noticed the game taking longer?
 
Trying out the specialist boost counterspy. Why not provide a bonus to diplomats as well? Its a lot less text to just say "+1 yield to all specialists", and the diplomat is not OP in the late game.

Also this feels like a bug, I don't think you meant for science steals to be non-stackable.

Spoiler :

upload_2021-5-10_14-16-6.png

 
Trying out the specialist boost counterspy. Why not provide a bonus to diplomats as well? Its a lot less text to just say "+1 yield to all specialists", and the diplomat is not OP in the late game.

Also this feels like a bug, I don't think you meant for science steals to be non-stackable.


Civil Servants you mean?

It isn't a bug, it's a cooldown control. The event is 'active' in the city until the cooldown ends. But if that doesn't have good feel I can remove it.
 
Civil Servants you mean?

It isn't a bug, it's a cooldown control. The event is 'active' in the city until the cooldown ends. But if that doesn't have good feel I can remove it.

Yes civil servants. And yeah not a great mouthfeel when I go to a city to steal science....and I can't steal science! It makes good sense for the negative events to ensure you can't get dogpiled, but not for the yield ones.

On notifications, the notification when I succeed and when the enemy suceeds looks to be identical, so at first glance I often can't tell which is which.

I'll get a notification that spy Bob got 1200 science and I'm like "sweet, good job bob". Then I realize that is the enemy spy Bob who got 1200 science for the other guy "no....boo, bad Bob"
 
Yes civil servants. And yeah not a great mouthfeel when I go to a city to steal science....and I can't steal science! It makes good sense for the negative events to ensure you can't get dogpiled, but not for the yield ones.

On notifications, the notification when I succeed and when the enemy suceeds looks to be identical, so at first glance I often can't tell which is which.

I'll get a notification that spy Bob got 1200 science and I'm like "sweet, good job bob". Then I realize that is the enemy spy Bob who got 1200 science for the other guy "no....boo, bad Bob"

Yeah, I know why. I'll fix the notification.
And I'll look at the other two things. Easy fixes.
 
I'm finding the new Spy stuff a bit underwhelming considering how few Spies we get. It was really powerful having the 1 Spy in Renaissance get some key tech steals to push us closer to the tech leader. Perhaps we should be getting more Spies.

Poison the Water should be a level 2 action. So it hopefully gets spammed less.
 
I don't know if you actually taught the AI how to use the system well or they just got lucky but it happened. They perfectly timed the city defense hit with their massive attack. My capital is doomed....

Spoiler :

upload_2021-5-11_2-36-27.png

 
I don't know if you actually taught the AI how to use the system well or they just got lucky but it happened. They perfectly timed the city defense hit with their massive attack. My capital is doomed....


Mwahaha. oh I definitely taught them.
 
It isn't a bug, it's a cooldown control. The event is 'active' in the city until the cooldown ends. But if that doesn't have good feel I can remove it.

So noting this has gone from an annoyance to a cripple in the late game. I just want to get science and gold steal, and I can't do it anywhere because its greyed out due to the cooldown. I just keep switching cities hoping to find one that will work. So this needs to go!
 
I do find the counterspy mission times quite annoying. When I'm considering a counterspy, I just want to drop the spy in my city and go to work, not wait like 5 turns to see any benefits. To me that's teh benefit of the counterspy, they are nimble (because its my home turf). I like the concept of dropping them in for a few turns to quell some unhappiness then move to the capital for specialist yields while I make a GP push....then I send them off on a mission. That gives them a unique niche compared to external spies that have to be set up.

But right now that that setup time really limits their usefulness imo.
 
I do find the counterspy mission times quite annoying. When I'm considering a counterspy, I just want to drop the spy in my city and go to work, not wait like 5 turns to see any benefits. To me that's teh benefit of the counterspy, they are nimble (because its my home turf). I like the concept of dropping them in for a few turns to quell some unhappiness then move to the capital for specialist yields while I make a GP push....then I send them off on a mission. That gives them a unique niche compared to external spies that have to be set up.

But right now that that setup time really limits their usefulness imo.

Counterpoint - if they were too fast, it'd be easy to abuse their mechanics. We can make them more beneficial if they have cost.

G
 
Counterpoint - if they were too fast, it'd be easy to abuse their mechanics. We can make them more beneficial if they have cost.G

So lets walk through that. How abusable would they be if they started working 1 turn after you deploy them?
  • Security Bonus: This is a per turn bonus, so dropping them in for 1 turn isn't going to do anything, they need to commit to their location to provide benefit.
  • Find / Kill Spy: This triggers when a spy goes to do a mission. Doesn't matter how long it takes my counterspy to get into a city, ultimately if I'm moving them that just means the last city is vulnerable now. There's no abuse where you can constantly move your counterspies to create an "invincible screen", you are just moving the vulnerabilities around.
  • Happiness Boost: I give myself happiness for 1 turn, and then just lose it the next if I move, I still need to leave the spy there to get any benefit.
  • Specialist Bonus: Similar to happiness, it just means I time my GP push immediatly with the counterspy, instead of waiting and having to remember in 5 turns to do it.
There is always a cost to a counterspy....not doing spy missions. Every use of counterspy costs me SPT or GPT or not rigging CS elections. I generally don't want to counterspy, I do it as a reaction to something going on in my civ. So if I'm willing to give up the value of those actions, at least let me get something immediate to give it some niche value.
 
So to show us somewhat of an upper bound datapoint.

Spoiler :

upload_2021-5-17_14-5-59.png



So in this game, Egypt is on a tear. He has 9 techs over me, and 5 policies. He is the clear runaway, so can I use my spies to help?

So I found a security 6 city that I could hit. After about 5 turns to establish itself, this is what I have. So 24 + 5 = 29 turns for 1440 science, or ~50 SPT. Contrast that with a tech steal, the weakest tech I could steal at the moment is 2,573 science... almost double the amount. And honestly within 29 turns I'll be at techs that give 3823 science, about 2.5 times as much science.
 
I like the new spy mission completion popup. Short to the point, gets the job done.

Question: Are my mission thresholds set the second I send the spy, or after the spy establishes surveillance?

For example, in a recent game, when I sent the spy to a city, the threshold was -30% (due to policy differences). by the time the spy established itself, it was down to 10%. Which value holds for the mission times?

I will state I would like it to be the first one....otherwise it again loosens the user's control of the system.
 
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