Requesting Ideas for Spy Missions

[Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry about that, Impaler, I confess that I didn't really explain my idea clearly enough-my bad . Obviously an ability to place these units 'ad-infinitum' would be poor for game balance-so there would need to be some kind of limitations in place-both in terms of low success rate and/or good chance of removal of said 'anti-specialists' from a city.
However, I think you are underestimating the potential benefits of such anti-specialists. They can be a good way for players to undermine their opponents in a way which does not necessarily require constant supervision. The Saboteur and Criminal slowly drains a city of its hammers-thus slowing down that civs pursuit of a goal like The Manhatten Project, UN or Spaceship. The Racketeer/Smuggler slowly drains the city of cash which would otherwise go towards research, troop/city maintainance or rushing buildings/units/wonders. Think of it like the slow loss of air from a tyre. Sure it doesn't do much at first-but eventually it will bring the whole car to a halt!

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Colin]

Hmmm, I always liked the way in SMAC that once you 'infiltrated' another city you got full access to its city screen for the rest of the game. Maybe some sort of 'establish spy network' action which consumed the spy could be used to give you a permanent presence in a particular city.

I think some way of disrupting relations between 2 civs would be a fantastic addition, and open up another level of strategy. Should probably only be performed in a civs capital and have fairly short term effects to avoid abuse.

Obviously some way of adding unhappy citizens to a city, and disrupting research progress, would enhance the usefulness of spies. I also think, but this might be wildly ambitious, that it would be fantastic to have some sort of indication of an AI's future plans. Some sort of calculations must go on to determine who an AI is planning to attack, and to build up their forces. I wonder if there's any way to 'tap into' these calculations as a read out for the player e.g. 'Our spy reports Montezuma is planning an offensive against Greece. He plans to strike against Athens.'

 

[Splinter13]

Yeah, I definitly would love to see these ideas go into a mod. Spys play big roles in all conflicts. I believe the spys in Civ4 weren't as good as they could be.

G'luck

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Yeah, and they should definitely be present much earlier as has been said... of course though, their true potential should take much longer to be revealed.. their functionality should increase over time and more and more missions (and promotions?) should become available through technological developments.

But the first spies should come around even back in the Classical Era although they'd have not much more ability than maybe assassination and spying itself. The acts of sabotage and destruction of buildings should come later.

 

[GRM7584]

I could see 3 spy "eras", the first with Monarchy giving access to a simple invisible unit, perhaps with 1 or 2 non-aggressive missions, the second with Nationalism, allowing more unit actions but still maintaining an "espionage and subterfuge" mission theme, with a third at Communism, where things start to heat up with acts of sabotage and assassination. Later techs would unlock the additional unit actions (like planting nuclear devices).

I think for any action where a "permanent" effect is created from a spy (anti-specialists, moles, city moles, etc) should either have a maintenance cost, or a very high initial cost in gold (and very cheap or free for a counter-spy to remove once discovered).

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, assassination is a very old tactic, but much more common within a court or society as a byproduct of internal power struggles... Obviously when it goes international, it becomes much more difficult to pull off since you have to find an assassin who can blend in seamlessly with the people who surround the target as well as gain access to them (it's a lot easier obviously if you're planning your own palace coup since you're already inside).

And specialists, while important as a whole, are not THAT important individually... and a dead specialist can at least be replaced... so I'm a bit torn here both in terms of game balance and history whether or not assassination should be possible relatively early on.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Perhaps Assassinations should apply only to Great People-either as Units or as Great Specialists. Then you could get a situation where you recieve a message like "Thespis has been murdered by agents of Empires Unknown"
As for fitting others up to take the blame for your espionage activities-perhaps this can act as a 'false flag' promotion. So, if you either catch a spy in the act OR bring in a unit which can see/thwart spy actions, then you will see the flag of another nation (but only one you are actually in contact with).

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

As I stated earlier Assasinations as I'm coding them now will just kill super-specialists (which i'm going to define at the code level as any specialist which has a values of 0 for the <iGreatPeopleRateChange> tag in XML). Theirs no point in "killing" regular specialists like priests and engineers as thats just equivilent to the "poison well" mission that reduces the cities population by 1.

Colin: good idea on Disrupt Research, I'll add that to the candidate list, I'll also look into the military planning thing, I think the AI dose make "How" type plans but dose not plan for specific cities (thouse desisions are made by the units at the time they move, part of the reason their so incompetent). I think this knowlage should be revealed by the StealPlans mission probably as a little message displayed on the screen when your sucessfull.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Here is another consideration, Impaler. Do you think that the amount of info freely available about your opponents should be curtailed? At the moment I feel like too much information is readily available-at the click of a button. For instance: city sizes, resource availability, diplomatic relations and military strength. Up-to-date info regarding a city should be solely the province of having a trade route with the city and/or having the Holy City of a religion inside that city-even then such info should be greatly limited. Foreign Diplomatic Relations, Resource and Tech access and Military Strength should-at best-require an embassy in the capital, and even then you should not get specific details (i.e. you know the Spanish have contact with France, but do not know how cozy a relationship it is). This automatically makes spies more valuable, as they can have missions like 'Reveal Trade Network', 'Reveal Tech Base', 'Reveal Military Strength' and 'Reveal Trade Relations'. All such missions would be restricted to the Capital city, and would also serve as necessary precursors to sabotaging any-or all-of the above.
What do you think, Impaler? Do any of those ideas interest you?
Oh, O/T, just wanted to say a big THANKYOU for your help regarding the StateReligionYieldRateModifier code-it is now working like a charm. You are a LEGEND !

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Yes, it absolutely should be just limited to Great Specialists... killing regular specialists would just be pointless.

 

[Chode]

I have a few that I think would be cool.

2) Sabotage Production - This would not allow anything to be built in the effected city that turn. Other then that, you could lose the hammers gotten that turn or they could be carried over to the next turn. Or if you want to be a little more realistic they could lose some of the hammers already put into the thing being built.

3) Steal Plans - Again, this is from a previous Civ. It shows you the location of all the target civ's units. Alternitively, it could only show the units within a certain range of the targeted city.

Looking forward to see what you come up with, spys have needed some tweaking.

DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN PLAY THIS GAME

 

[Jeckel]

DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN PLAY THIS GAME

Yea, I've played a game or two.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think the fact that many of us aren't aware of a Spies current full range of abilities owes less to how often we have played the game, and more to how pathetic the espionage side of the game actually is at present (which, in turn, is tied to the Modern Age Malaise which has been previously identified).

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I actually only use Spies to fail missions and goad the AI into declaring war on me so I don't take that hit to my diplomatic stats with their friends... Of course, even with -12 diplomatic standing, the AI has trouble declaring war on a civ that's twice its size, with three times as large a military that's several generations ahead of them technologically.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I was just thinking, actually, that it might be good to have both a 'passive' and 'active' form of 'Spark Incident'. The passive form would be the changed flag mission I mentioned above-which would largely only work if you got 'caught in the act'. The active form, though, might work as an adjunct to an existing mission, wherby you deliberately leave 'trace evidence' of an attack, which will implicate another nation in your crime-even if you get off scot-free. What do you think?

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

That reminds me a bit of Master of Orion, when you rolled a perfect 100 or something on your spy missions you would get a "framing oportunity" which would give you a list of who to frame. Is this along the lines of what you were thinking?

Personaly I find this random bonus to be clunky, its also a bit silly. In RL you set out to frame someone from the begining and it takes a LOT of planning, infact the whole mission would be to do JUST the framing and nothing else, its not just some kind of oportunity that suddenly presents itself. Also I think that if its an explicit framing mission it gives the player more strategic choices. And once you have the explicity framing mission then random bonuses become unessary and a waste of time, the player cant PLAN for them and probly wont even want it when it happens.

Aussie: You have some good points but I think you underestimate the ability of anchient people to estimate these things to the point that the abstractions used in Civilization are meaningfull. Armies are big hard to hide things and information on such basic things as the size of a city and the avalibility of strategic resorces was readily avalible by word of mouth for thousands of years. Admitedly reducing this free information might make spies more interesting but I dont feel that the current level of free information is excessive or unrealistic. A more interesting option would in my opinion would be the ability to plant FALSE information ala Churchills bodyguard of lies. Unfortunatly this is beyond the scope of my current plans and would probably screw the AI very badly.

Dom: You can also make lots of unreasonable demands, I ALWAY demand all their money before declaring war, most of the time they actualy give it to me too. Its makes it a lot easier to crush their un-upgraded units.

 

[Jeckel]

I ALWAY demand all their money before declaring war, most of the time they actualy give it to me too.

You mean you can declare war without demanding all their gold and maybe a tech!?!

But seriously, I like the Unit Turning idea and the Frame Civ mission the best. The turn unit bribe cost should take the number of promotions the bribey has, more promotions = it wants more money. Just something that popped to mind that would be simple get and use as a modifier, thought I would mention it.

 

[Ket]

Ahhh how I miss Moo2..... Moo3 was a joke...
Moo2 now that was a game!

 

[Ket]

Dont forget counter spy experience...
and im all for early spy's...

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Impaler, yes, I do that as well... but I also get to use the Spies then

Wasn't there a way in Civ2 (I think it was Civ2) that allowed you to implicate another civ when doing a spy operation? Or maybe I just made that up...