New strats: Teching via espionage

[blitzkrieg1980]

I've heard talk here and there on the forums about killing the science slider and boosting the espionage slider to steal techs from the AI tech leader. Is this a good strategy (I'm playing on Noble)? In my current game, Pericles is the only civ with higher tech level than me, but he's blowing me away. We are friendly and he is a buffer between enemy civs and myself, so declaring war is not gonna work.

My question is: Is it worth losing beakers on techs that Pericles doesn't have to fund espionage to steal techs that Pericles does have? Is a hybrid the best way to go (i.e. half funding science / half funding espionage)?

Thanx all, the espionage system always befuddles me.

 

[eewallace]

Rather than using the tech slider to up the general espionage, it might be preferable to try to pop a great spy from a city by using spy specialists (and/or building a wonder that gives you great spy points). I've found that if you use a great spy to infiltrate a neighbor's city, you can usually send in a raft of regular spies in the wake of the great spy and pick off pretty much all of the techs. This way, you don't have to risk your own research in order to try to pull off the somewhat risky "steal tech."

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Awesome. Thnx infinitely eewallace. One more thing: What buildings allow for spy specialists? Is courthouse one?

 

[eewallace]

Yes, courthouse, jail, intelligence agency, security bureau, and a lot of the military wonders. But alot of those come late in the game. The best way I've found to get one really early is to build the great wall in a city that isn't producing a huge number of GPP for other types of great people, plus a spy specialist from a courthouse (I almost always beeline confucianism since I seldom prioritize getting one of the starting religions so courthouses come along soon).

 

[Legal_My_Deagle]

I have been toying around with a "spy economy" lately and in my failed experiment I am becoming convinced that the best strategy is to think of a spy economy as a breed of SE. I haven't tried it out yet, but I think the best thing to do most likely will end up being to run scientists early, and then just past when you get communism and democracy, around the same time the SE starts to become less effective, build the intelligence agencies, switch to nationhood, and replace your scientists with spies.

 

[eewallace]

I've never tried a full-scale spy economy, but rather run a spy city as an adjunct to what is pretty much a science specialist economy/financial leader. My best success along these lines, come to think of it, may have had alot to do with having established a state religion and built the shedwegan paya (sp?) and been able to run pacifism early, which helps greatly with producing great people. (Alternatively, this would be a pretty good strategy with a philosophical leader, I think. Is there one who is philosophical/financial? That might be the best trait combo for this type of experiment.)

 

[lilnev]

It can work under the right circumstances. You want to be spying on someone of the same religion, with trade routes, and not too far from your capital. Let each spy sit for five turns to get full discounts, and techs will cost you fewer EPs than they would beakers. When you consider that spy specialists, infiltrated Great Spies, and Scotland Yard are all better than their scientist counterparts (lightbulbing and academies), it can really make sense. You'll have to build a bunch of spies to account for the ones you lose and the transit time, and you'll slowly erode your relations ("your spy was caught causing trouble"). But it can work well at least for a while.

peace,
lilnev

 

[King of Town]

you know who is good for this? Fredrick. Philosophical and organized so he gets cheap courthouses. If you do the CoL sling then you are set for teching the rest of the way because you can just infiltrate spies and steal anyone who thinks they know more than you. Not to mention aking wars a lot easier because you can turn the tables on them and sabotage the ai every 5 turns. Nothing is more fun than shutting off ceaser's iron right before tey start building prats, and then rushing them yourself.

 

[Tarew]

I've actually been experimenting with building a civilization completely oriented around espionage (simply because it seemed like fun and I hadn't read about anyone trying it before). At first I tried it with Gilgamesh for the early courthouses only to find that it's really not that big a difference compared to CoL.
Then I tried it with Frederick a couple of times but facing early invasions each time and then a few days ago I finally got it going playing Suleiman first and then Asoka (turning the espionage slider all the way to 100% after researching communism).
This worked initially and I managed to steal quite a few techs that way but after that the AI adjusted and started focusing its espionage almost exclusively on me. It might also have been just bad luck but I repeatedly found my steal attempts (always at 60% or more) being thwarted.
So no, I can't say focusing on espionage rather than research is a particularly sound strategy (you'll always stay just one step behind in tech).

It IS on the other hand extremely helpful to stop an opponent close to a space race or cultural victory. A few days ago I managed to keep Sitting Bull's last needed culture city in revolt for 32 turns in a row, giving me enough time to win a space race victory.
Sabotaging cities producing SS parts also works very well. However you have to have a victory condition up your sleeve yourself. Focusing exclusively on espionage doesn't work (at least not when I tried it).

 

[L4zXX0r]

I play noble/marathon games, and if you get the great wall, a few early great spy's can help. Just one great spy in a city, gives you an espionage edge on your opponents early, and just using the great spy on an enemy gives you a huge edge. Especially if you want to go to war. As far as techs go, I've found that if you are a little bit behind, it's a great way to catch up. Later in the game it does not work as well, because the tech stealing cost really goes up. So, as an over all strategy, it's not the best to ditch to lose the science slider. That's just my thought.

 

[Bhruic]

I've actually been experimenting with building a civilization completely oriented around espionage (simply because it seemed like fun and I hadn't read about anyone trying it before).

It has been tried, actually. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=235474

So no, I can't say focusing on espionage rather than research is a particularly sound strategy (you'll always stay just one step behind in tech).

I don't think you've figured out how to pull it off successfully then. It's an incredibly powerful variant - one that is quite overpowering if you do it properly. If you read the above example, it'll illustrate that fact nicely.

Bh

 

[Tarew]

Nice thread, I hadn't read that yet.
However I very much wonder exactly how decisive the espionage was in that game.
It certainly worked nicely but let's be honest, if you can manage to conquer that big a landmass (which can just as easily be done focusing on tech rather than espionage), you can win the game in pretty much anyway you like and are no doubt able to regularly outtech your opponents as well.

So yes it certainly worked in that game but I daresay a regular teching apporach might have been equally if not more effective (in fact you'll no doubt have noticed the space race win was actually rather late).
So I'll stand by my original point that pure espionage is not as effective as regular teching. A hybrid version on the other hand could be very efficient.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

It can work, but to me, it and the whole spy business is such a pain in the ass, I really now wish it had been excluded completely from the game.

Its the most fiddly and annoying micromanagement issue in the whole game, and it well, just isn't any fun after a few games. Whereas the rest of the game almost always seems fresh and fun (if challenging), the whole espionage is a step backwards, and just annoying (to me and others).

Sorry for this rant, but Im comtemplating whether I have the time, patience(and skill actually) to completely remove espionage from BTS and bring back line of sight from holy cities.

I can't be the only one who now absolutely detests the espionage implementation..........

 

[L4zXX0r]

It can work, but to me, it and the whole spy business is such a pain in the ass, I really now wish it had been excluded completely from the game.

Its the most fiddly and annoying micromanagement issue in the whole game, and it well, just isn't any fun after a few games. Whereas the rest of the game almost always seems fresh and fun (if challenging), the whole espionage is a step backwards, and just annoying (to me and others).

Sorry for this rant, but Im comtemplating whether I have the time, patience(and skill actually) to completely remove espionage from BTS and bring back line of sight from holy cities.

I can't be the only one who now absolutely detests the espionage implementation..........

I do miss the line of sight from holy cities, but I think espionage is a good addition. The best thing from espionage, in my opinion, is putting them in an army, and then using them to get rid of any defensive percentages by sending a city into a revolt. It's nice to sabotage production as well. Especially on great wonders you want to build. What I like most about espionage, is that it's not a needed part of the game, and you can basically just never use it. Yet, if you want to, it can give you a distinct edge over your opponents. The way I use it, is really against my chief rival. I suppose I take some cold war cues here, but it's only really needed against whoever the super power of the day is. Hopefully you'll give it a try again. Sure it takes a litte more micro management, but if you're doing a specialist economy, it's really not much more effort.

 

[Bhruic]

It certainly worked nicely but let's be honest, if you can manage to conquer that big a landmass (which can just as easily be done focusing on tech rather than espionage)

I disagree there. The reason they were able to take the large landmass is because they didn't have to focus their commerce on research. If they had been trying to pull out with research at that point, it would have been much more difficult.

So I'll stand by my original point that pure espionage is not as effective as regular teching. A hybrid version on the other hand could be very efficient.

It depends on your difficulty level. On the lower levels, of course it'll be more effective to research because the AI is pretty slow about it. But on the higher levels, the AI can research faster than you can. But by using espionage, you can easily keep with them. That's because espionage costs are less than the research costs - yet you can generate more espionage points than research.

Bh

 

[vilemerchant]

IThe best thing from espionage, in my opinion, is putting them in an army, and then using them to get rid of any defensive percentages by sending a city into a revolt. It's nice to sabotage production as well. Especially on great wonders you want to build. What I like most about espionage, is that it's not a needed part of the game, and you can basically just never use it. Yet, if you want to, it can give you a distinct edge over your opponents.

What you describe about espionage are the worst things about it, not the best. The AI doesn't know to send a city into revolt as part of an attack, the AI doesn't know to go and sabotage my production of a wonder it wants to build. It's only giving you an edge over your opponent because your opponent was never taught how to play with it! This in my mind makes it an exploit, in addition to being tedious and annoying as Drew explained very well in his post.

It's just another half-arsed 'feature' like corporations IMO that has been included with very little actual thought about if it will even add anything worthwhile to the game.

 

[vilemerchant]

It can work, but to me, it and the whole spy business is such a pain in the ass, I really now wish it had been excluded completely from the game.

Its the most fiddly and annoying micromanagement issue in the whole game, and it well, just isn't any fun after a few games. Whereas the rest of the game almost always seems fresh and fun (if challenging), the whole espionage is a step backwards, and just annoying (to me and others).

Sorry for this rant, but Im comtemplating whether I have the time, patience(and skill actually) to completely remove espionage from BTS and bring back line of sight from holy cities.

I can't be the only one who now absolutely detests the espionage implementation..........

I'm certainly in complete agreement. I'm not sure i'd bother trying to reimplement religious LOS however, why not just completely remove the spy units and active missions and allow the EP points system to remain for the passive missions?

Gathering information is really what spying is afterall, and I think that's where the game is a little confused. Blowing up another county's copper mine or poisoining their lake is not 'spying' it's state-sponsored terrorism which would be condemned by the whole world if you were caught.

 

[Polycrates]

Using the slider for espionage point generation is monstrously inefficient, since if you have libraries and things, you're generating less commerce than you would through just running science.
So pre-Constitution, I'm not convinced that it really matches normal teching as a primary means of acquiring tech (though spy specialists and great spies make great auxiliary tech assistants). Once you can build jails and intelligence agencies though, running spy specialists (even without Representation) is a very efficient way of generating commerce. An SE in particular can get masses of tech through theft while also ruining the tech rate of others and chugging along with its own science.
I wrote a bunch more in a thread on it
here.

 

[Bhruic]

Using the slider for espionage point generation is monstrously inefficient, since if you have libraries and things, you're generating less commerce than you would through just running science.

To which I'd say "so what?". Under ideal conditions you can steal a tech for less than 1/3rd of the cost of the tech to research. Under less than ideal, you are still looking at a maximum of 2/3rds the cost. Since Libraries only give a 25% increase to research, that doesn't come close to matching the results for espionage spending. And that's not even taking into consideration the fringe benefits of having lots of EPs (passive missions, Wonder suppression, etc).

Not to mention the fact that while Great Scientists can build an Academy to increase research by 50%, Great Spies can build Scotland Yard to increase espionage by 100%. That's a pretty significant increase.

Bh

 

[KMadCandy]

It can work under the right circumstances. You want to be spying on someone of the same religion, with trade routes, and not too far from your capital. Let each spy sit for five turns to get full discounts, and techs will cost you fewer EPs than they would beakers.

the same religion? i read this the other day:

The main reason why I personally like Spiritual in BtS (and think it's gotten stronger in fact) is Espionage: There's a 15% bonus to the EP mission cost in a city that has your state religion but belongs to a civ which hasn't, and another 25% if you have the Holy City.

So, if you establish a small religion, say Taoism, that you spread to all of your cities and a few of other civs that you want to steal techs from, you can switch to that religion for a few turns, steal some techs, and switch back to your favorite one (or switch from Free Religion to Pacifism for a few turns). If prepared properly with overspending (i.e. pumping the EP slider up to 30 or 40 per cent to spend more than your opponents), this can give you techs like Education for roughly 1000 EP (a bit more than a third of the cost that you pay when you research it yourself) - and not only one but three or four of them at a time.
In addition, you can also go out of Mercantilism if you're in that era, to get the additional 20% trade route bonus.

and it worked for me last night. zara was hindu, i was jewish and had the holy city, and i used a city of his that had my religion in it. he was in theocracy, his favorite civic, but i gifted him two missionaries since i'm very generous ... no ulterior motive at all of course . i got 40% off for religion, and i also sat there the 5 turns since i'm cheap. i don't know how exactly the 50% and 40% discounts add/multiply/whatever. i think i paid more than 10% of what was listed for his non-jewish cities, but both discounts were listed when i picked which tech and it told me the price.

edit: okay, i just tested it. the religion discounts are:

40% if the city has your SR, you have the holy city, and it is not his state religion
25% if the city has your SR, you have the holy city, but it is his state religion
15% if the city has your SR, you do not have the holy city, and it is not his state religion
0% if you and the target have the same SR and you do not own the holy city, whether his city has your mutual SR or not.
0% if the city doesn't have your SR. in that case, the other factors don't matter.

i don't know whether you pay a penalty if he has the holy city of your mutual SR.

Sorry for this rant, but Im comtemplating whether I have the time, patience(and skill actually) to completely remove espionage from BTS and bring back line of sight from holy cities.

i mostly like the espionage but i preferred holy vision in one aspect. at a certain point i end up with city visibility for most of my rivals, which means there's very little fog of war on my map. that slows the game down for me even without "show friendly moves" enabled. just a little bit, but it's noticeable.