Some thoughts on espionage economy (EE)

[bobbyboy29]

Well it isn't exactly complicated.

1. Found dozens of cities next to floodplains/riverside grasslands/rivery jungles/anything green.
2. Build cottages.
3. Use food to grow city and work cottages.
4. ???
5. Profit!

I mean aside from the obvious civics (universial suffrage, free speech, emancipation) there's really no way to optimise them other than "make more cottages!"

Josh, I believe the mystery step 4 is "collect underpants" off topic but funny

 

[TheMeInTeam]

From his postings, Dave's strategy isn't limited to:

Cottages!

You must also include:

Catapults!

I know he whips, say, 15 of them from his globe city to overflow into the globe, but come on . Still, that would be just the kind of thing that would be helpful in a guide from him.

 

[futurehermit]

I also know that Dave doesn't have any problem with having a gpfarm and strong production cities for his military needs.

 

[royal62184]

One thing i'm falling short on is how you run got 4 GSpy early in the game, futurehermit. Only things I know off the top of my head that produces GSpy is the greatwall and courthouses (1 spy spealist) early on. Of course later in the tech tree you get a lot more but i'm just wondering? Do you run additional specialists like scientist and just hope the RNG gives you a great spy?

 

[madscientist]

My view of espionage via the slider is that you are usually playing from a point of weakness. In this particular game I think it was utilized well as you had a stronge, peaceful techer near you. You also had the games best leader for this, philosphical to get the Gspies and financial to abuse the cottage cities. Nothing wrong with this, but just putting it in perspective, it is Liz.

I view espionage as a way to get a weaker techer (such as the warlords) to stay competitive until the vast amounts of acquired land adds up to a tech and commerce superiority. Hence I prefer to settle them and tech as I normally would. Less eps, but when directed towards a single AI, enough to steal what you want/need.

With that said, I like you idea of directing the slider to eps to steal what you need then swap back to research when techs are exhausted.

Some question/comments for discussion.

1) How long did it take to get those 4 GSpies??? Between the great Wall and a courthouse specialist spy to pop 4 GSpies even from Philosophical Liz is a greta job!

2) How much did Korea and Russia mistrust you as I assume at elast a few spies were caught for negative diplomatic penalties (not that a few dozen redcoats could deal with)?

3) Once you swapped to science slider, you have essentially wasted the Great People to attain tech parity as you have no Great Scientists and thus academies for a Financial leader.

Speaking of point three, here's a question. Is it better to get a building giving 100% eps towards espionage for tech stealing or an academy at 50% beakers towards research.

A good thread and I don't mean to be listing complaints. I have never really been convinced/sold on the espionage slider and the fatc that you are playing from a position of tech weakness..

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My view of espionage via the slider is that you are usually playing from a point of weakness. In this particular game I think it was utilized well as you had a stronge, peaceful techer near you. You also had the games best leader for this, philosphical to get the Gspies and financial to abuse the cottage cities. Nothing wrong with this, but just putting it in perspective, it is Liz.

I view espionage as a way to get a weaker techer (such as the warlords) to stay competitive until the vast amounts of acquired land adds up to a tech and commerce superiority. Hence I prefer to settle them and tech as I normally would. Less eps, but when directed towards a single AI, enough to steal what you want/need.

With that said, I like you idea of directing the slider to eps to steal what you need then swap back to research when techs are exhausted.

Some question/comments for discussion.

1) How long did it take to get those 4 GSpies??? Between the great Wall and a courthouse specialist spy to pop 4 GSpies even from Philosophical Liz is a greta job!

2) How much did Korea and Russia mistrust you as I assume at elast a few spies were caught for negative diplomatic penalties (not that a few dozen redcoats could deal with)?

3) Once you swapped to science slider, you have essentially wasted the Great People to attain tech parity as you have no Great Scientists and thus academies for a Financial leader.

Speaking of point three, here's a question. Is it better to get a building giving 100% eps towards espionage for tech stealing or an academy at 50% beakers towards research.

A good thread and I don't mean to be listing complaints. I have never really been convinced/sold on the espionage slider and the fatc that you are playing from a position of tech weakness..

Well if you're big and have at least constitution, EP slider is a top notch option if you're backward. There's no faster way to catch up. You get a lot of base EP from the buildings that goes through the multipliers. Running the slider here with the ability to make one EP > 1 beaker means you can really close wide tech gaps quickly as long as you don't get dow'd.

I did this on immortal and went from keshiks/cuirsassers when a number of AIs were pushing infantry (some had it) to tech parity before the game ended (some idiot built the UN and the world voted me winner).

The EP buildings are pretty worthwhile to build in general, as the raw EP you get from them is enough to steal a number of techs even if you never get a single gspy. If you're backward though (and it's not unrealistic if you expand via war early), it's probably the best way to cover ground. With state religion, open borders, stationary spy, ep differential, and ep spending, you can get the cost well below what it would be in beakers. In one really extreme case I got it to less than half (IIRC, the EP cost is based on base tech cost for speed and doesn't scale with size properly, making it very abusive on larger maps...just where conquest might put you meaningfully behind!). Even without improper scaling, this is extremely powerful on standard maps though.

You don't always have the luxury of a tech lead, after all.

 

[Kesshi]

(IIRC, the EP cost is based on base tech cost for speed and doesn't scale with size properly, making it very abusive on larger maps...just where conquest might put you meaningfully behind!). Even without improper scaling, this is extremely powerful on standard maps though.

TheMeInTeam,

This is incorrect and I have to speak up here and apologize for introducing this erroneous fact to you. I misunderstood a post about the EE where they talked about the city revolt mission not scaling with size. Tech costs do scale with size, and the Espionage cost is 1.5 times the scaled Beaker cost.

That is: Optics base tech cost is 600, multiply it by 3.0 for Marathon speed multiplier, then multiply by 1.25 for Immortal difficulty multiplier, then multiply by 1.5 for Huge map size multplier and you end up with a 3375 Beaker cost to manually tech Optics. Take 3375 and multiply it by 1.5 to get 5062 Espionage points needed to theft it. (Numbers gratuitiously stolen from VirusMonster's thread)

But 5062 is greater than 3375. How can Espionage be superior to manual teching?

Disregarding buildings, if you simply take the base Espionage cost of 5062, and use ONLY the "5 turn Stationary Spy" reduction of 50%, and you see that 5062 is reduced to 2531. The 2531 Espionage is much less than 3375 Beakers needed. However there are also tons of other things that can influence the cost in your benefit, such as Trade Routes, same State Religion, and more which can reduce that 50% even further. IIRC the most it can be reduced is all the way down to 20%. And 20% of 5062 is 1012.

Anyways, sorry about that TheMeInTeam. That was my fault for introducing you to that erroneous fact.

 

[mirthadir]

Kesshi:

Because you are not taking into account the modifiers. Have open borders and trade routes with the target city, get a discount. Control the holy city of your state religion and have that religion be present in their city, get a HUGE discount. Wait 5 turns get a huge discount.

This, of course, ignores the fact that espionage has the highest possible modifiers in the game (barring 7 religion Korea and the like). Espionage is handily cheaper than self research in terms of /spec cost, it really only has trouble with early costs but at the time when TMIT is talking you can do marvels with strong espionage.

 

[Kesshi]

mirthadir,

Trust me, I'm well aware.

I've read VirusMonster's Guide to 500k+ scores through Huge map domination on Immortal difficulty probably a dozen times, and have used it as reference more times than I can count.