So running it in 5/17, my updated thoughts:
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?
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.
- 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 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.