Spies-R-US

[Game-God]

Hello

I have been playing a Huge map, Marathon with normal settings in the options menu, and have made it towards the end of the game and have a few questions about playing BTS for you folks.

1) I have noticed that in the later game when I have built a Security Bureau and Intelligence Agency in all cities and placed a single Spy in each also that the AI is still able to get through this defence every so often. I have the rating slider at 10-20% throughout most of the game ever since I could adjust it anyways. Is there something else I can do to keep the pesky critters from poinsoning water (minor anoyance at best) and stealing money about every 10-20 turns? I have only had 1 Great Spy and that was quite some time ago since I developed the Greast Wall early on and I used him to build his special building in one of my cities. On that note:

2) Is there anyway to see a list of all buildings in the cities other than in each window of each city? I remember from an earlier civ game can't remember which (civ 2-3) I could look at something akin to this in a seperate screen but so far the manual and my searching is not getting me anything.

3) What would be the best method of keeping these civs at bay who are constantly fighing for no reason (without fighting them if possible)? I have Ragnar and Gilgamesh who have joined forces several times with 1 stack each or maybe 2 in the later years, then they do not followup with anything else and I go take a couple cities, then stop the war with them paying out the arse for it with money and other things.

Hope this is not to many questions in one thread but they have al been related to the single game experience with settings mentioned above.

Thanks ahead of time!

GD

 

[Spearthrower]

1) Yes, I find this frustrating. There is no level of defence high enough to guarantee that your cities wont be poisoned every turn. I had one game where every city had 2 spies, I had spies littering tiles from border to border, much higher EP's and I was still getting poisoned every couple of turns - admittedly finding 4 or 5 spies per turn.... but it's just over the top.

2) You can hover your mouse over the city bar in the main game screen.

3) Have a big, modern military - that will stop them from targeting you most of the time.

 

[Game-God]

Welp I just finished that game and it took 15+ hours total, I guess not bad for a Marathon type map... I built the big military and even jumped the slider for Espionage up to 30% and still got some spies let through. I guess there will always be awesome spies in the game that can just get by. I would like to know what the numbers are in the files. Has anyone here seen how it is caulculated?

I will go looksy at the city bar for a list, but wouldn't that just be each city by itself? I was hoping to be able to have a screen open that I could look at all the cities at one time. I would only have to do that a couple of time per game just for kicks.

GD

 

[GenocideBringer]

1) Spies wont do anything just sitting on a tile. You need to use them to perform counterespionage.

2) get solver's patch to stop a

a) the AI from focusing too much on espionage, and

b) To stop poison from being too powerful on Marathon.

Also, make sure you allocate your espionage points towards specific civs.

 

[Game-God]

1) Spies wont do anything just sitting on a tile. You need to use them to perform counterespionage.

2) get solver's patch to stop a

a) the AI from focusing too much on espionage, and

b) To stop poison from being too powerful on Marathon.

Also, make sure you allocate your espionage points towards specific civs.

Got the patch, this should help some.

Soooo.. allocating the points for only a few civs makes me stronger against them yes? Then what about the other civs? I still have a lot of points (just checked the screen) and it shows I have something like 10,000-14,000 -vs- all the other civs, them having no more than 4500 points for the 2 who tried to keep up. Remember I set the slider to 10-20% for the most of the game then upped it to 30% for the last 200 years or so. This seems like I would have more than enough points because the game was like that(me way ahead) all the way through it.

I did use the spies for counter E. but you have to do that in each city don't you? or does one spy last for the desired # of turns for "all cities" with just one spy? This is unclear to me.

This is more than I used to put on normal map sizes with standard length of play. For those games I was only occasionally putting the slider on 10% rarely on 20% and had good results. (perhaps the patch will take care of this discrepensy.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Counter espionage works for the whole civ. But because you never lose EPs for a failed mission they just come back a have another go. Unless they lose the spy, but of course they'll just build another.

 

[Game-God]

Counter espionage works for the whole civ. But because you never lose EPs for a failed mission they just come back a have another go. Unless they lose the spy, but of course they'll just build another.

So with this in mind is there a way of telling by name which civ leaders are going to be using the big E on me before the game gets going to far so I can plan on putting points towards them from the begining? Has someone here created a thread about this already?

 

[50_dollar_bag]

So with this in mind is there a way of telling by name which civ leaders are going to be using the big E on me before the game gets going to far so I can plan on putting points towards them from the begining? Has someone here created a thread about this already?

There could possibly be something in the Leaderhead XML

 

[Game-God]

There could possibly be something in the Leaderhead XML

I'm not a programer so excuse if this Q is stupid , but is that the name of the file? and where would I find it to look at it?

 

[Game-God]

Counter espionage works for the whole civ. But because you never lose EPs for a failed mission they just come back a have another go. Unless they lose the spy, but of course they'll just build another.

Just tried the Counter Esp. with a spy then sent another spy to another city and the list included guess what.. Counter Espionage so if the first spy took care of that civ all together then why oh why does it have the CE in the list for another city?

This seems like it needs to be unlisted if that civ has it involved allready. or am I missing something?

 

[50_dollar_bag]

I'm not a programer so excuse if this Q is stupid , but is that the name of the file? and where would I find it to look at it?

personality matrix
check this link out, I think it's for vanilla only but if you goto the beyond the sword directory it should be the same

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Just tried the Counter Esp. with a spy then sent another spy to another city and the list included guess what.. Counter Espionage so if the first spy took care of that civ all together then why oh why does it have the CE in the list for another city?

This seems like it needs to be unlisted if that civ has it involved allready. or am I missing something?

The only thing I can think is that the counter espionage mission has expired

 

[Dan Quale]

They really cant do much damage if you have a very large empire. I'm currently playing a large/marathon/emporer with the mayas, and my courthouses alone are out espionaging everyone. When they do get through, if you have enough health resources and gigantic cities, even the poison supply doesnt harm you, unless the city just grew.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

They really cant do much damage if you have a very large empire. I'm currently playing a large/marathon/emporer with the mayas, and my courthouses alone are out espionaging everyone. When they do get through, if you have enough health resources and gigantic cities, even the poison supply doesnt harm you, unless the city just grew.

depends if you've got Solver's patch or not. I haven't and have just had 4 water supplies posioned 24 unhealth for 24 turns. It's AGG AI and I've got a bit of a world war going on at the moment, so no trading for resources here

 

[Game-God]

depends if you've got Solver's patch or not. I haven't and have just had 4 water supplies posioned 24 unhealth for 24 turns. It's AGG AI and I've got a bit of a world war going on at the moment, so no trading for resources here

Welp, last night I played a shorty game with only 4 civs just to try something new (to me). I played picking the leaders who are:
Myself = Roosevelt
AI = Ghandi, Ganghis Khan, Pacal II.

I used 2 GSpies On Pacal, and 1 @ Ghandi, and Khan. Pacal kept trying to do stuff to my border cities but he just did not have the Points to do that so he went to hammering my Improvments (losing each time).

Throughout the entire game I heard not once that anything had happened to me with sound or text so I assume ALL his and both other leaders could not do anything to me. I had never used GS's that way before. I had always just made the great buildings or re-entered the GS into my cities, but now with this happening I think I might just keep doing this if I play Spy heavy games again. All I ever did was to counter espionage all leaders occasionally like maybe ten times throughout the entire game so my points remained fairly high. I now think that Pacal is the weasliest little back stabber there is since all he did was attack me with spies all the while trying to befriend me with gestures of trade. I ignored those trades then said give me your money please (about 20 times throughout the game) and each and every time he just did so if I waited quite a few turns between asking.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Welp, last night I played a shorty game with only 4 civs just to try something new (to me). I played picking the leaders who are:
Myself = Roosevelt
AI = Ghandi, Ganghis Khan, Pacal II.

I used 2 GSpies On Pacal, and 1 @ Ghandi, and Khan. Pacal kept trying to do stuff to my border cities but he just did not have the Points to do that so he went to hammering my Improvments (losing each time).

Throughout the entire game I heard not once that anything had happened to me with sound or text so I assume ALL his and both other leaders could not do anything to me. I had never used GS's that way before. I had always just made the great buildings or re-entered the GS into my cities, but now with this happening I think I might just keep doing this if I play Spy heavy games again. All I ever did was to counter espionage all leaders occasionally like maybe ten times throughout the entire game so my points remained fairly high. I now think that Pacal is the weasliest little back stabber there is since all he did was attack me with spies all the while trying to befriend me with gestures of trade. I ignored those trades then said give me your money please (about 20 times throughout the game) and each and every time he just did so if I waited quite a few turns between asking.

In my current game, Monarch/Marathon/Huge Terra/Agg AI/Random personalites/unrestricted leaders/No tech trading/ nobody got Alphabet until about 1200AD, hence no spies, it was bliss