New Spy System Feedback

So running it in 5/17, my updated thoughts:
  • I need more missions on Level 1 spies. The production steal missions seems worthless to me, so all I have is gold. I think the science steal should be tier 1, that is main point of spying....otherwise we are in the similar boat as before where bad luck that kills my spies shuts off my ability to tech steal and get back in the science game. If that's too much, than maybe the kidnap missions.
  • I do like the kidnap missions, they are probably my favorite outside of just straight gold/science. Tell me, I know they don't stack anymore, but does the duration extend? One UI issue right now is I have no idea how longer my kidnap bonuses has remaining. They probably need a little bit of scaling to stay relevant later on, keep the -1 but maybe +3 yields, and then eventually 4 or something.
  • I use poison well on occasion. As a level 2 mission, its hard to first level up my spy and then go due a poison....I really want to start getting some yields at this point, but I do use it periodically.
  • The city hit remains the coolest new one to me, I think its the most interesting in terms of combining spycraft and warcraft.
  • I rarely use the pillage one, AIs can repair their damage pretty fast, so is it ever worth the spy turns?
  • The spawn rebel one I will use, but it does feel like a lottery. I never "go for it", I just look when I do my missions and see "oh I can cause rebellion, um....well ok then". Aka its this weird boost I just get periodically, not a core part of the spy plan.
  • I don't really need notifications that a mission is about to complete except for the city hit. That's the only missions I really need to "time" with my actions. Having it for the other missiosn just creates some notification bloat that I don't think is needed. The new mission complete screen is very solid.
So after playing several games with the new system....the million dollar question....do I like it?

So far....the answer is mostly no unfortunately. The yields are overall much weaker than when I was stealing techs, the missions just feel like a lot of busy work most of the time. Its cool the one time I time a city defense hit with my army in a game....but that's like once a game. Late game I'm just mindless assigning spies to cities for yields, with little consideration for the stats and such, its just busywork at that point.

This goes back to the original problem..... make spy missions really strong and I am going to be peeved when the AI dogpiles me with spies and ruins all my stuff. Make the missions too weak and then I feel like there is no point in doing the micromanagement of spies.

Out of the whole system, what would I want to take from it?

  • A Single Yield Steal mission (either science yield, tech steal....or I could see a science + gold yield steal as the mission). This is my default, I send the spy out it gets the thing.
  • City Hit missions (the one screw. Its cool, its important, and its very noticeable. Its something both sides have to deal with right then and there.)
  • Counterspies give +1 specialist yields, and +1 happiness or something (I like that there is now an actual reason to use counterspies beyond "I'm getting pounded by spies"). This also covers the main part I like about the kidnap missions.

Put more simple: I like a simple 3 choice concept..... send the spy to get the stuff, send the spy to do a solid and noticeable screw that both sides have to react to, and one leave the spy in a place and just sit and do its thing so I don't micromanage it.
 
Maybe when the spy buildings gain some unique effects (unlock new actions, block/slow certain actions) it'll be more interesting.
 
It would be great if when you get the popup that shows you your mission success, if you could look at the city area one more time before the spy leaves. If I put down rebels, I want to just see where the rebels are, so I can start cackling madly about how much damage they are going to do!

There's a real let down feeling to when the mission completes and you just want to know how it did! Not knowing greatly decreases the feeling of "satisfaction" for completing those missions
 
What is the logic to spy promotion? It would be great if it were standardized. Right now, sometimes my spies get promoted after one mission, other times, no. Also, I have no idea if spies level up on CS rigging. It’s a little frustrating because I want to level up my spies, so I send them to low security cities so that they’ll succeed and level up, but then they don’t level up.
 
What is the logic to spy promotion? It would be great if it were standardized. Right now, sometimes my spies get promoted after one mission, other times, no. Also, I have no idea if spies level up on CS rigging. It’s a little frustrating because I want to level up my spies, so I send them to low security cities so that they’ll succeed and level up, but then they don’t level up.

The higher the potential of a city, the higher the chance of leveling up.

G
 
5/24 Datapoint. So this is the earliest my spies can start stealing tech (aka I did 1 mission in a quick security 1 city, managed to get to level 2).

This is in Babylon's Security 1 capital. He is 10 techs ahead of me, so pretty sure this is the maximum bonus.

Spoiler :

upload_2021-5-26_14-1-25.png



7 turns + 5 setup + 1 travel = 13 turns or 13.8 SPT. My current SPT is +191 (base + instant), so that's a 7% boost. As a catchup mechanic, its pretty weak at the moment.
 
Higher risk of failure, higher chance to level up.

Can we get some definitive parameters please?

Is there a certain strength of a city where a spy will level up with a successful mission? How many successful CS riggings need to occur for a promotion (on recent patches, it doesn’t seem to happen).
 
So I don't have data or numbers to back up my feeling on spies, but I can talk about how they feel to me, at the moment. For reference: Emperor difficulty, Huge map, 16 civs.

Basically, it feels like spies take forever to do nothing much at all. It feels like they should be better when they level up, but they aren't levelling up. So overall I'm sending my spies out to high-star cities, all their chances to do anything are low, their chances to die are high, and even when they succeed I don't get any appreciable benefit, nor do the spies even level up.

I don't know what spies should do instead, but right now the feeling of a mechanic that's so frustratingly minor in its effect makes me feel like I'd rather not have spies at all. Maybe turn times should be a bit shorter, yields a bit more apparent, and the ability to level spies should be more controllable and available. I think death/failure chances feel about ok, for level 1 spies - I don't mind that it's a bit risky to get a spy going, as long as the risk is worth it and the higher level spies aren't dying as often.

I've had a couple of games go to the mid-Industrial so far, so I don't know if maybe they do get better after that but...considering that spies show up at the beginning of the Renaissance I'd expect them to do something before the Modern era.
 
(This is from 5-24 so it might have been fixed with 5-28)

The spying system while interesting now somewhat fails to act as the catch-up that it used to. It's also confusing and hard to grasp compared to the old system, but then that is probably mainly cause it's new.

One somewhat annoying thing tho is the double notification every single time an AI manages to pull a mission on you (so in a normal game this will more or less happen every few turns). There is also that little gem of a game called "name-that-spy" since it gives you the name of a spy that does something but apparently you are inept when it comes to note what country they are from so now you also on top of that other new goodness have to sit and learn what all the different civs name their spies ...

Example: The first notification says an "unknown foreign operative ..." and the second one starts with "Agent Quenti succeeded in ..." (in this case it's an Incan spy). The data for the mission is same duration, chance etc.

Also spy leveling seems super slow. There is also this weird thing that happens in cities from time to time cause you get locked out cause there are no available mission for your level group, or in general cause they are all already running. So you do the trip for nothing and have to go back to the hideout just to break out of that loop cause you apparently can't just sit there and wait.
 
I have no problems leveling up spies. Took me a while to figure out that i have to send my spies to 0.5 star cities instead of cities with many stars like in previous spy system. Lower stars = less defence = less risk = waaay faster. My biggest issue with the new system is that it is more micromanagement once you get into later stages of the game with more spies. But i need to test it much more to get a better view of the new system. :)
 
I have no problems leveling up spies. Took me a while to figure out that i have to send my spies to 0.5 star cities instead of cities with many stars like in previous spy system. Lower stars = less defence = less risk = waaay faster. My biggest issue with the new system is that it is more micromanagement once you get into later stages of the game with more spies. But i need to test it much more to get a better view of the new system. :)

Wait, so the UI for the new system completely flips around the information it used to show? That seems like a bad change
 
(5-28, marathon, deity .... etc, not running any mods that should have any impact on spying etc)

I think it's quite unclear what purpose or role spying is supposed to fill at the moment. It's not a catch-up and the rewards are just to minuscule to matter so it's just some weird little mini-game you assign and then it doesn't really matter. It's almost as tedious as seeing the AI move their units and back and fourth.

It's kind of sad then cause if one AI pulls at the start or mid game there is no stopping them or catching up to them besides war and that becomes less and less possible, or viable, the longer the game goes as the tech gap will remain and you'll be trying then to charge into multiple tech levels of more advanced troops. No matter if the human is better then the AI it's hard to fight units that practically one shot you if they touch you, and they will eventually.

Bletchley Park is now THE super wonder, it gives a free research lab, several extra spies, scientists produce more science, all spies level up and security is improved. Plus it's the only building that allow you to steal techs, like you need it then.

That you would need Bletchley Park to be able to steal techs sort of FORCES you go to Rationalism. Also only ONE civ per game is allowed to actually steal techs then since it's a policy-wonder and not a national wonder. Then there is the little catch of you also need to have a level 3 spy to run that mission. So it's never going to work as a catch-up, I don't even really know the purpose. If you get it you will more or less be the tech leader already and all it grants you is the possibility to steal techs from someone that is behind you tech-wise?! Or is it in case of that one super weird game where no AI picked rationalism and you somehow did just so you could steal a tech once or twice at best from the leader? Very unlikely.

I have over several games now not been able to catch up via Spying. It's basically almost pointless from a yields aspect in the late game, as a successful mission grants less then a turns worth of yields, no matter if it's science or gold or whatever.

As a yield/turn issue it's even less significant. But then it's a "free" resource that you don't pay for and don't have to build but that does detract from that it's basically worthless.

Lets say you run the easiest, or fastest, missions on a city that has a 0,5 star rating and doesn't have a staggering tech lead or an ideology policy that makes spying harder etc. Travel time is usually about 3-4 turns, Establishing is another 4-5 turns and then run you the mission that is from say 3-10 turns. So total run time lets say 10-15 turns in total from go to you getting either killed (the 10% kill chance do appear to be happening a lot more then 10% of the time) or sneaking back home again.

320 gold, 320 gold, 400 gold, 360 science, 480 science ...

So divide the yields by the time and you basically have one pathetic reward if it can even be called that. It's a lot less then a turns worth of gold, even with the massive nerfs to selling strategic resources.

At the start of the game getting a couple of hundred gold can be significant and nice. But at the middle and end getting similar yields is like a tiny little drop in a gigantic bucket.

The latest test game had me 10 techs behind Venice that have been the leader more or less all game. They have naturally built more wonders then all other civs combined, the closest other AI player is 7 techs behind them. They are an entire policy tree ahead of every one else, naturally. Yet they are the smallest empire, besides vassals. As the rest of us enter the industrial era, they are entering the modern era and there just isn't any catching up and spying on them is also somewhat pointless. The boost they get from being ahead in science makes spying on them a lot harder and they didn't even go rationalism, they did pick Order as their ideology tho so that was a nice 100% boost to their counterespionage or whatever.

Adding about 100 turns of game, nothing has changed. The gap is still there. Persia that was second on tech still 7-8 techs behind. Me still 10 behind. Spying doesn't help what so ever. It has done nothing. There is no catch-up. So in some regard you are more or less forced to go to wars to shut them down early or just take a bit out of the giant sh*t sandwich.

The only real upside to being behind the AI is that it's rare that someone even bothers to spy on you. So I don't get that swarm of notifications.
 
I see that most of the people think that spying supposed to be a catch-up mechanics. So if you are 10 techs behind - then spies should give you tech after tech. I don't agree with that, spies should give some science (and other) yields. We may consider adjustment to spying yields but not as being able to ignore all development and spies bringing most of techs.
If you fall so much behind and it's not possible to win - then I think you should go down in difficulty or may be we should consider change in AI bonuses.
 
I think, if tech steal is moved to an earlier building, say a national wonder, and I increase the scaling on the other yield abilities, I think that would sort out spies.

G
Just FYI, is your concern with tech stealing out of the gate England....or do you just not want tech stealing around Renaissance?

As far as National Wonders,

Printing Press seems reasonable. Makes sense flavorwise, it fits for when spies get going....often not the strongest tech so gives a little more incentive to go for it quickly.

Runner up would be the Hermitage. I don't think its as good a choice but if you want something a little later, but not MUCH later, it fits the bill.
 
I keep forgetting spies are a thing you need to assign now over and over again. In the old system you only had to do so in spare circumstances like a diplomat fleeing war, city swapping ownership and a spy dying.

It would really help me if assigning a spy would become one of the mandatory end turn actions like vote on world congress or move this unit. Otherwise, it would help me if a mission end would directly open the spy screen again or something. I keep catching myself that there is a (1) or a (2) in the top right indicating spies are not doing anything and it's a real feelsbad.

Also sidenote the dialogue menu has twice the option for poisoning well? Poisoning water supply might be a more futureproof description btw as this doesn't fit modern era for instance.
 
Top Bottom