Offensive Spy mission penalties

[seanos08]

Currently there seems to be no penalty for failed offensive spy missions. If your spy is killed the AI will give you a bit of a telling off and you can gain 30 DF by promising not to spy on them again. If the spy is captured it costs around 15 gpt to buy them back.

This is not realistic. When French DGCE agents blew up the Greenpeace ship "Rainbow Warrior" in a New Zealand port (and killed someone) it was a huge scandal and France had to give serious compensation to New Zealand to get its captured agents back.

What really annoys me is when an ally conducts a destructive operation like sabotage production or breach dam you can't even cancel the alliance. You can only retaliate in kind,

It would be nice if you had a selection of responses:

1. Do nothing
2. Demand compensation (fixed gold amount). If the offender refuses the demand then - alliance or friendship is cancelled and relationship becomes unfriendly and you can denounce or DOW later. If unfriendly or denounced war is automatically declared.
3. Cancel friendship/alliance if spying nation has this relationship
4. Declare war if unfriendly or denounced.

Also AI will have the same set of responses so there will be serious risk in spying on an ally you want to keep or a close powerful neighbor.

Also you shouldn't be able to see spies of allies.

 

[darkace77450]

Regarding captured spies: the price paid to recover a spy should be a massive amount of Diplomatic Favor unless you're swapping one of theirs for one of yours in an even trade.

Regarding allies spying on you: I think allies should be limited to listening posts and theft (gold, tech, great works, etc). An ally blowing up your dam, unleashing a flood that kills thousands (abstracted) of your citizens or assassinating one of your governors is pretty absurd, especially when there's little recourse for such action.

Something tangentially related: I wish we had an Interrogation mission available if you've captured an enemy spy. It would be performed by a spy in one of your cities and would grant a bonus to Diplomatic Vision during its duration. They could add a counter mission, Rescue Operative, that could be used to spring a captured spy. Now that Diplomatic Vision grants combat bonuses, I think this would add a fun wrinkle to the espionage game. And to tie this idea back to the OP, the prospects of one of your spies being captured would raise the stakes on offensive missions.

 

[Medopu]

Personally, I'd rather see permanent reduction in chance of success after spy fails to complete the mission successfully. The percentages of success seem way too static in their current state.

I’m also not a fan of going to war if you catch an enemy spy of an unfriendly nation and not really because it’s unrealistic but because I would then be discouraged to counterspy in fear of catching a spy of a stronger opponent that happens to be unfriendly. Because if I decide to counterspy, I have no choice of NOT jailing/killing an enemy spy that gets caught. Seems like a silly mechanism.

 

[seanos08]

Personally, I'd rather see permanent reduction in chance of success after spy fails to complete the mission successfully. The percentages of success seem way too static in their current state.

I’m also not a fan of going to war if you catch an enemy spy of an unfriendly nation and not really because it’s unrealistic but because I would then be discouraged to counterspy in fear of catching a spy of a stronger opponent that happens to be unfriendly. Because if I decide to counterspy, I have no choice of NOT jailing/killing an enemy spy that gets caught. Seems like a silly mechanism.

As I said in the original post the options were

1. do nothing
2. demand compensation
3. cancel alliance or declare war immediately

So if you foil a powerful neighbor's spy mission you can opt to do nothing and trade their spy back.

Counterspying your best commercial district is a great way of getting promotions and not risky.