Spies and waging the "cold" war

[WuphonsReach]

I must say that I'm greatly enjoying spies more now then ever before. Last winter, I was definitely too attached to each of the units, not wanting to risk them in sabotage against my target civs. And the 200gp for each action was a bit off-putting.

Now I've learned that they make an excellent way to wage war without declaring war. If I'm already down to annoyed/cautious with a long-time rival, but that rival isn't ready to go to war with me, there's a good chance I can cripple his economy without active conflict. It's "War through other means" for the times when I'm not ready to go to war either.

My goals are typically:

- Build up a cash reserve of 4000+ gold. That allows me a lot of sabotage within a short period. As least for as long as my gals don't get caught.

- Forget strategic improvements, go after the civ's population centers during a cold war. Destroy farms (especially ones that irrigate others) or food resources first. These are typically unguarded and you can destroy 10+ tiles before getting caught. Then you can slip into each city and look at the city screen and laugh evilly at the "starvation" message. With 4 spies, you can often cut their food production to 1/2 of what it was within 10 turns.

- Go after their mines/workshops. Once the population has started starving, go after the unguarded productivity tiles. You can see this effect on the productivity graph. Only attempt an unguarded strategic resource (to heighten your chance of success). Once the AI starts losing lots of farms and production, they'll sometimes move guard units off of the strategic resources in an attempt to respond elsewhere. Which gives your gals the opening to sabotage the resource while it's unguarded.

- Go after the towns/cottages last. Especially if it's a city that you plan on annexing at some point. Otherwise, knock them down with sabotage.

...

Against a weaker opponent who isn't strong enough to wage war, and who already hates you, spies are a very powerful tactic. You get the effects of warfare on their turf without taking the diplomatic hit with their friends.

Sure, it's an expensive method of war, but you don't risk units with promotions. (Of course, you'll end up with an enemy civ that will always hate your guts... but they hated you in the first place.)

I've even seen an enemy AI civ suddenly get attacked by their worst enemy because I weakened their economy and production enough.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

- Forget strategic improvements, go after the civ's population centers during a cold war. Destroy farms (especially ones that irrigate others) or food resources first. These are typically unguarded and you can destroy 10+ tiles before getting caught. Then you can slip into each city and look at the city screen and laugh evilly at the "starvation" message. With 4 spies, you can often cut their food production to 1/2 of what it was within 10 turns.

This is the main thing that really changed my use of spies. I never found it very effective to sabotage resources like aluminum or oil. They're usually guarded, which lowers your success rate quite a bit. There are also often multiple instances that you need to sabotage before they're truly out of the resources. By the time you've made enough attempts to work around both of these issues, the workers have restored one of the resources anyway. At best, I'd usually get one or two turns of resourceless play for about 1000 gold and 2 dead spies. Not very cost effective.

You mention food resources. I go after both food and luxury resources. Both are unguarded, and both will quickly crash an economy if they start disappearing. The biggest advantage of targetting resources specifically is that they affect every city. Destroy one farm and you hurt one city. Destroy a gold mine and every city in the empire has 2 (with forge) fewer happy faces. Obviously you should look in the city screen and prioritize resources where they only have one or two of them.

One thing you don't mention is taking trade into account. You can sabotage one civilization and crash another's economy. In one of my recent games, Stalin was the only serious threat to a space race victory. He was a little behind on technology but only a little, and his army was enormous. I sabotaged a few of his resources but after being caught a few times I started to worry about aggravating him into a war I didn't want. Instead, I started sabotaging all his trading partners. I took out Montezuma's pigs, silver, and gold. Sorry, Stalin. No more pig, silver, or gold trades for you. His economy quickly tanked, and there was little he could do about it, since he couldn't repair Montezuma's mines, and he didn't really even know why his trades were vanishing.

 

[weasel77066]

Ack! Idont have alot of experience with spies in civ4.. Just casual history while playing. However, after reading this Im starting to see the other side of spy games.
Several epics ago, I capitulated russia in an early war. She could never break my minimal "hold" over her all through the game, and even though she fought side-by-side with me in several wars. she hated my guts.
When the game came down to space racing, an AI kept sabotaging my aluminum. I raced spies around trying to hunt the bastards out and finally caught it. Yep, it was a Russian spy. Caught two of them. I couldnt declare war. I couldnt reprimand her in any way. (headache) Instead I made a line of detection across our land border with a few spies.
That ding-bat hit me again. Mustve submarined a spy in and went straight for the aluminum. I ended up having to keep spies sitting on my Alum. and copper.
I lost the space race cause of her...
Spies seem to be a bit more usefull and powerfull than I suspected, as long as money is not an issue.

 

[Andorim]

I like Dr Elmer's idea of going for the luxury resources -- can't wait to try it out.

 

[Phrederick]

I've used spies to successfully win the space race, by sabotaging the competitor's aluminum. Going after happy/health resources is good too.

 

[LittlePick]

Funny, I have done the same thing in order to win a space race... in another game, India was doing it to me and after I catch him the second time, a crashed is economy in an air war.

 

[voek]

Yes, sabotaging food and luxury sources is very good. It cost not that much in the late game. It can hold them back in the space race (less production) but also for a diplo win (starve their top pop. city's). It's simply great and not a damn thing they can do about it! A tactic from the finer warfare.

 

[cabert]

I lost the space race cause of her...
Spies seem to be a bit more usefull and powerfull than I suspected, as long as money is not an issue.

what were your workers doing?
stack 6 of those near the aluminium, and rebuild it in the same turn

 

[WuphonsReach]

Aye, in late-game, after railroads are all built, my workers are typically idle. So I simply bundle 4-6 workers together along with a small stack-of-death to defend and then tell the entire stack to "A" (automate). They'll race around the empire doing small repairs until the end of the game. And they're protected by enough units that travel with them to defeat any opportunistic worker pinching by the AI.

Great idea on going after the trading partners.

 

[Mama Lazarou]

I've reduced a size 18 Berlin to size 7 by destroying all of its farms. Great fun.

 

[Lord Kid]

I used this last night to soften up Asoka before invading and taking his cities. 3 spies were used to destroy farms and such, and he even left a gold mine, oil well, and an iron mine unguarded, so I couldn't help myself.

 

[weasel77066]

what were your workers doing?
stack 6 of those near the aluminium, and rebuild it in the same turn

Yea thats a good idea. I had workers working- but like you say, I shouldve ran a group together and that wouldve cut down rebuild time.
Also, another blooper I caught on myself- I thought spies could "see" other spies (like in C3C Medieval scenario). Thats not true in C4. Spies dont automatically detect other spies, but instead drastically increase the chance of failure if they attempt a sabotage.
So in other words, Catherine didnt cost me the game. I cost me the game. She just took advantage of my ignorance. (I notice that chics tend to do that to me all the time)

 

[automator]

This is all very interesting. I've never used spies for anything other than checking out a potential mark (along with recon by planes). Usually, by that time in the game, my production cities are building either space ships or military units, so I've ignored spy production.

But I've had the AI create some serious headaches for me, and have noticed the trickle down effect also mentioned above (destroy trades by destroying resources).

 

[wioneo]

If you sabotage an irrigating farm before biology, do all of the non-irrigated/non-resource farms die out? That would be extremely useful...

 

[Welnic]

I built a long string of irrigated farms, then replaced a farm with a cottage early in the chain. The cut off farms were still there, but they weren't doing anything to increase the food output. Even after biology it would decrease the output of the cut off farms by 1. So it would be a good tactic.

 

[wioneo]

I built a long string of irrigated farms, then replaced a farm with a cottage early in the chain. The cut off farms were still there, but they weren't doing anything to increase the food output. Even after biology it would decrease the output of the cut off farms by 1. So it would be a good tactic.

Starving my enemies seems like a good plan... That would mean targeting riverside cities first.

 

[aelf]

I had a game where I lost a close space race because my spies kept failing to sabotage the parts and the aluminium sources. I reloaded to see if there was any possible way I could win and tried sabotaging the mines and windmills around the few cities producing expensive parts. I won with more than a few turns to spare.

I haven't tried this on farms, but I'd say that it's more effective than trying to sabotage construction or heavily guarded strategic resources. It's much cheaper, less risky and quickly becomes effective with a few spies.

 

[Bast]

The problem is it's too expensive. Sabotage should be free imo, and spies should have more capabilities like inciting riots or planting nuclear bombs like in Civ II.

But that makes it like terrorism?

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

The problem is it's too expensive.

As aelf's example illustrates, it's only too expensive if you fail. By that point in the game, any space race capable empire can probably generate 1000 gold in one turn if you dial the sliders back. That's enough for 5 sabotage operations, which if you concentrate on unguarded resources is 4 or 5 successful sabotage operations, which is curtains for any economy (-5 happiness anyone? (*)).

(*) I'm assuming 3 happy resources eliminated and a couple bonus happiness from buildings.

Of course, raising that cash slows down your research by one turn, but research isn't usually the determining factor on space race timing. Also, if you completely destroy the AI's economy, then that's a pretty worthwhile turn.