Spies!

[Estebanium]

My whole point behind the statement that civ5 is not beyond earth is because you're punished way more for getting behind in techs in civ5. The current techstealing-system is pretty much required because of how harsh getting behind actually is. I'm sure other catchup-mechanics could be added, but it feels like you're trying to do a full rework on a system that, in its core actually isn't broken. It feels like making things more complicated just for the sake of being complicated.

You are right by saying that the system is working in CIV V, but how and with what result or influence on the actual game. I mean, I will visit the menu only after a message that it can nothing be stolen from a Civ or because someone was killed. In my opinion the spy system is so simple and not complete that it would not be necessary to have it. Everything in Civ has a function and a meaning for being in the game, but the spy system feels bit weak. I don't want to make it complex just to be complex. If you compare the system of Civ V with the system of BE, having Civ V and you look at the changes of BE, there are not many new features or ideas but it feels a bit more complex, which might be not too bad.

It is not very easy to rework the spy system by avoiding complexity and having still a feature that is not a one-click-menu.

 

[Funak]

You are right by saying that the system is working in CIV V, but how and with what result or influence on the actual game. I mean, I will visit the menu only after a message that it can nothing be stolen from a Civ or because someone was killed. In my opinion the spy system is so simple and not complete that it would not be necessary to have it. Everything in Civ has a function and a meaning for being in the game, but the spy system feels bit weak. I don't want to make it complex just to be complex. If you compare the system of Civ V with the system of BE, having Civ V and you look at the changes of BE, there are not many new features or ideas but it feels a bit more complex, which might be not too bad.

It is not very easy to rework the spy system by avoiding complexity and having still a feature that is not a one-click-menu.

There is always room for improvement in everything, but if you want to change something that works, to make it more complicated, you'd better make sure that the changes actually improves the system. For example, splitting the spy into 3 would give people better control, but if control increases then the power have to decrease, meaning the catchup mechanic on the spysystem would be affected. Also 3 passive spyroles is just as boring as one passive spyrole in terms if interaction.

And once again I don't think the BE system would fit into civ5, the games are just too different.

 

[WileyNg]

So this is a bit of a necro, sorry about that.

One thing that I thought of as I was looking at my Great Works is that the only way to get other civs GW's was to either conquer the city that had them or swap one for another. What I think would be interesting is if, as Aussie Lurker thought about, spies could steal a GW. Since it's such an important thing I believe if it could be done it would be at Special Agent level only and a rare event. If not than it's a very rare event that increases the likelihood of it happening if you level up your spy.

You are right by saying that the system is working in CIV V, but how and with what result or influence on the actual game. I mean, I will visit the menu only after a message that it can nothing be stolen from a Civ or because someone was killed. In my opinion the spy system is so simple and not complete that it would not be necessary to have it. Everything in Civ has a function and a meaning for being in the game, but the spy system feels bit weak. I don't want to make it complex just to be complex. If you compare the system of Civ V with the system of BE, having Civ V and you look at the changes of BE, there are not many new features or ideas but it feels a bit more complex, which might be not too bad.

It is not very easy to rework the spy system by avoiding complexity and having still a feature that is not a one-click-menu.

Well I think what Estebanium is suggesting is to make the spy menu more interactive, which is essentially a good thing. And Gazebo already said we could make the spy stuff more controllable. Next step is to find someone who has the knowledge of LUA and we can discuss the details later.

 

[MorpheusAk]

I love the original spy system. It's simple, but it has some character, and it's a rubber band mechanic, which I love in this game.

What I like about the spy changes: There is more interaction, and spies feel more like spies.

1) When I get a message that a spy has damaged me, I want to move a spy to the city where the attack took place, to catch the enemy spy before anything else bad happens, and potentially prevent a tech steal. However, I also want to keep my spies in enemy cities and city-states, to take advantages. It's a good decision.

2) When I see the message that a spy has done something, a little Mission Impossible scene plays out in my head. Moving these guy around, I feel like M from the Bond movies.

What I don't like about the spy changes: Spies are no longer hidden in enemy cities, and spies lose epicness.

1) No matter your agenda, your spies automatically blow stuff up, and then the enemy knows you're there. If the AI is like me, they're gonna send someone to kill you. This makes me want to move on, and so I'm not going to get any techs. It takes away from the rubber-band a little bit.

2) Spies level up really fast, and they die constantly. Level 1 spies don't feel like they have potential anymore. They just feel like weaklings. Level 3 spies don't feel like bada$$es. They just feel like they've grown up finally. Furthermore, counter-agents are really good at killing spies (at least they seem to be on the marathon games I play), and since spies are easy to find, your best best for tackling an enemy or catching up to them with espionage is to send as many spies into as many high-star cities as you can, and hope that their counter-agents are too busy or unlucky to kill you.

I haven't taken the time to think about how I'd work it, but I do know that I don't really want espionage to be super-complicated, but I do want it to involve stealth and mind-games, and I would like to be able to SPY on an ally without assassinating their people and blowing up their buildings.

 

[WileyNg]

I love the original spy system. It's simple, but it has some character, and it's a rubber band mechanic, which I love in this game.

What I like about the spy changes: There is more interaction, and spies feel more like spies.

1) When I get a message that a spy has damaged me, I want to move a spy to the city where the attack took place, to catch the enemy spy before anything else bad happens, and potentially prevent a tech steal. However, I also want to keep my spies in enemy cities and city-states, to take advantages. It's a good decision.

2) When I see the message that a spy has done something, a little Mission Impossible scene plays out in my head. Moving these guy around, I feel like M from the Bond movies.

What I don't like about the spy changes: Spies are no longer hidden in enemy cities, and spies lose epicness.

1) No matter your agenda, your spies automatically blow stuff up, and then the enemy knows you're there. If the AI is like me, they're gonna send someone to kill you. This makes me want to move on, and so I'm not going to get any techs. It takes away from the rubber-band a little bit.

2) Spies level up really fast, and they die constantly. Level 1 spies don't feel like they have potential anymore. They just feel like weaklings. Level 3 spies don't feel like bada$$es. They just feel like they've grown up finally. Furthermore, counter-agents are really good at killing spies (at least they seem to be on the marathon games I play), and since spies are easy to find, your best best for tackling an enemy or catching up to them with espionage is to send as many spies into as many high-star cities as you can, and hope that their counter-agents are too busy or unlucky to kill you.

I haven't taken the time to think about how I'd work it, but I do know that I don't really want espionage to be super-complicated, but I do want it to involve stealth and mind-games, and I would like to be able to SPY on an ally without assassinating their people and blowing up their buildings.

Yup.

Right now we cannot control what action a spy takes. The interface is too uninteractive for a cool feature like spies. As for the gameplay aspect, I agree it should stay as neat as possible.

 

[Estebanium]

From what I read here, you might would like my following idea of a more event driven system for the spies. Has somebody played the game Hearts of Iron III? Especially the Mod Black ICE. The game is full of events in which you can choose to apply different decisions which grant bonuses for units or policies. It is something like the Events & Decisions Mod on steroids.



The Spy Menu:
Leave it unchanged like it is at the moment..

Events & Decisions:
Gazebo implemented some events in which your spy was able to delay the production of a city or he was able to steal some gold. Why won't we take the random events and put them into a window where you can decide what he should do:



On the screeshot above, you can see a typical window which sometimes appear and where you have to make a decision. So there for example, you could get a message, that your spy made some investigations and some preparations in order to steal a technology. He says that he would need 40 production of one of your cities, or 100 Gold, or 20 science, or whatever in order to conduct the coup. So the system could be based on paying something in order to conduct the event. It would then happen or not. The possibilities for those events could be taken from what Gazebo calculated or by new considerations. Because the system is about taking decisions you will also have a second option like refusing the coup, or a third option in which you say "Ok, I pay x amount of x in order to make a more successful coup. This could be like a Tier system.

The Tier-System:
The events come from a event pool, so once the general system is inbound it would be easy to introduce new events like it is actually in the Event & Decision Mod.

There could be, for example three Tiers of decisions. They are sorted by a theme, for example the Tech theme. The next tier will be unlocked by investing a specific effort into the decision, so the next tier will be more powerful and maybe more successful that the tier before.

Example (Tech Theme), your spy reports his status:

• Tier 1: "I found a way to enter their research lab, I am now employed as a scientist. Maybe I could make some trouble by being awkward, or if you would give me some Gold I could try to get an employment in their research department. Then I could have access to their latest research project and I could boost our research with their insights."
  
  Possible answer:
  

  • Ok this is enough for the moment, let some bottles fall or let their lab go up in flames. Science is a dangerous activity. [The nation of this City will loose a specific amount of science]
  • Take that Gold for your further education and try to enter their research department. [Pay 100 Gold for this spy]
  • Don't do anything dangerous, we have to wait for an opportune moment. [Your spy will do nothing]
• Tier 2: "I made this course for advanced employees in science with the Gold you gave me. I got the promotion for being able to work in their heart of the research department. They are developing really crazy stuff, I could try my best to steal some parts of their research. It is still too dangerous for stealing their whole technology, I would need some further aids."
  
  Possible answer:
  

  • Try to make some notes. Maybe they will help us at our research. [You will get 100 Science which will boost your current research project.]
  • Here are some tools of our latest research. They will make your plans easier for sure. [Pay 200 Production of your capital for this spy]
  • Don't do anything dangerous, we have to wait for an opportune moment. [Your spy will do nothing]
• Tier 3: "With the tools you gave me recently, I am now able to unlock their safe where they store their latest technologies. With some Gold I could bribe the local guards and then I could enter the safe."
  
  Possible answer:
  

  • Steal their technology and do anything necessary [Pay 300 Gold, you could be able to choose one of their technologies]
  • Don't do anything dangerous, we have to wait for an opportune moment. [Your spy will do nothing]

Summary
I hope you got an idea of the tear system. For each decision there could be more or fewer possible answers. You could make different themes like the population theme: So tier one could be that you have to pay one population of your city to send some rebels in order to raise their unhappiness up to tier three where you could poison their water to kill one population of this city. There could be a Gold theme, where you could steal some Gold at tier on, up to tier three where you could channel off some Gold each round as long as the spy is in this city.

It is not necessary to have always three tiers, but this is only an example how it could work. With such system you would be more connected to what your spy is doing and you can influence him and his result. By unlocking the next tier you could get a higher reward by paying different things. There are so many possibilities like Gold, Production, Science, Population, Happiness, Food etc.. By refusing a decision their could occur a different theme. So by refusing the tech theme, you could get a population theme next..

Every decision and all themes will rest upon the permanent danger of getting caught and maybe getting killed. By taking a decision it will not mean that this event or the next event will be successful. By paying for your decision or for the next tier, you have to do something in order to profit from your spy and his result. The written prices are only an example how it could work.

What do you think? Maybe it could be easily implemented by using the already existing system of the Events & Decision Mod.

 

[Funak]

One problem with constantly giving a spy orders is that it feels weird. Is the spy sneaking out to meet me every 10 turns? Is the spy sending messages? All those feel like stupid reasons to get caught. With the original system you kinda just told your spy to go to Berlin and steal a tech, after that the spy worked on his own and got you the tech or got killed, detected or undetected.
With the current system you kinda send a spy to Berlin telling him to steal a tech and if he sees any opportunities to sabotage, just go for it. That by itself feels kinda silly, why would you risk your spy getting caught just to do some sabotage? But it kinda works anyways, since the spy have a objective and doesn't need any interaction with you.

With the system I suggested before (city-state style) you send your spy to Berlin with the intention of sabotaging and building a powerbase, once the powerbase is established you can send a messenger to your spy and tell him to strike, resulting in a stolen tech and the powerbase being lost (coveridenties blown, most possibly dumping existing contacts to stay safe. At this point you can start building your powerbase in that city again or move the spy to another city, personally not sure if you should get a bonus for staying in the same city, as you do with city-states, or not.

Just to clear a few things out, a spy stationed in a city on standby will have a chance to cause one of the existing negative events every X turns, successchance depends on spy level, enemy spy present(and level), anti-spy buildings and chance(possibly policies/wonders/beliefs/tenents aswell). A success would trigger the negative event, a failure would trigger a "mission failed" popup. A failed mission wouldn't result in a dead spy, just nothing happening. Any time after the first event you'd have the option to order your spy to steal a tech (Kinda like the coup-button) a success would mean stealing a tech, a failure would mean death.
Chance to succeed would scale with number of events performed (successes could count for more than failures), enemy counterspies, enemy counterbuildings, spy levels and so on. After attempted techsteal your progress in the city would reset (possibly) and if you failed to steal a tech, the city owner would get mad at you (probably a bit more severe than in the current patch)

Extra events could be added, like stealing maps, stealing unitlocations and so on. Intrigue would be earned from events, not from actual techstealings.

 

[Estebanium]

One problem with constantly giving a spy orders is that it feels weird. Is the spy sneaking out to meet me every 10 turns? Is the spy sending messages? All those feel like stupid reasons to get caught. With the original system you kinda just told your spy to go to Berlin and steal a tech, after that the spy worked on his own and got you the tech or got killed, detected or undetected.
With the current system you kinda send a spy to Berlin telling him to steal a tech and if he sees any opportunities to sabotage, just go for it. That by itself feels kinda silly, why would you risk your spy getting caught just to do some sabotage? But it kinda works anyways, since the spy have a objective and doesn't need any interaction with you.

No he is not sneaking out every 10th turn. Just imagine he would send letter pigeons in the ancient era or he is using a cryptic radio in the modern era.

The minimum time for new information from the spy could be 30 turns. Maybe we could orientate us at the calculation of the basic game. So there are also differences in how fast a tech can be stolen.

You said that you send your spy to a city like Berlin and you do not have to tell him what he should do. Yes the same will happen in my system, so he is doing his stuff, which will lead to an event like my example of the tech theme. So you would only get the chance to take the decision for the spy, of what he should do in his situation. This situation was achieved by the spy, so he came to the city and found a job at the research lab for instance. So far there is no difference to the current system. The new part is the decision which has been placed between the situation of the spy (e.g. he could sabotage a cities production) and his result (e.g. he was successful with delaying the cities production). For now the situation and the result are on the same stage, so you will get the result and the information that he must have had the opportunity to delay the production.

When you decide to sabotage the research on Tier I and you are successful, your spy will find a new situation and a new event theme will happen in the future. In my opinion the theme of an event should only change if you decide not to unlock the next Tier. It would be then like the spy is looking for a new job to make some trouble..

For the problem with the "getting caught". Maybe it should be the best that the trigger of an event (so you take a decision) will not result in a "getting caught", because the counter-intelligence is looking for hostile spies anyway, no matter what the spy is doing or what you say to him.. So to get to Tier III you have to hope that for 90 turns for example (if the spy would report every 30th turn), your spy is not captures by your enemy.. And this is a long time. Btw. 30 rounds cap is not final

With the system I suggested before (city-state style) you send your spy to Berlin with the intention of sabotaging and building a powerbase, once the powerbase is established you can send a messenger to your spy and tell him to strike, resulting in a stolen tech and the powerbase being lost (coveridenties blown, most possibly dumping existing contacts to stay safe. At this point you can start building your powerbase in that city again or move the spy to another city, personally not sure if you should get a bonus for staying in the same city, as you do with city-states, or not.

Just to clear a few things out, a spy stationed in a city on standby will have a chance to cause one of the existing negative events every X turns, successchance depends on spy level, enemy spy present(and level), anti-spy buildings and chance(possibly policies/wonders/beliefs/tenents aswell). A success would trigger the negative event, a failure would trigger a "mission failed" popup. A failed mission wouldn't result in a dead spy, just nothing happening. Any time after the first event you'd have the option to order your spy to steal a tech (Kinda like the coup-button) a success would mean stealing a tech, a failure would mean death.
Chance to succeed would scale with number of events performed (successes could count for more than failures), enemy counterspies, enemy counterbuildings, spy levels and so on. After attempted techsteal your progress in the city would reset (possibly) and if you failed to steal a tech, the city owner would get mad at you (probably a bit more severe than in the current patch)

Extra events could be added, like stealing maps, stealing unitlocations and so on. Intrigue would be earned from events, not from actual techstealings.

Am I seeing it wrong or is the only function of the powerbase, that this base is destoyed instead of the spy (if successful or not)? I mean the other actions are still avaliable for the spy, but he will be killed if he is doing the action on his own instead of having a powerbase..

 

[Gazebo]

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but the elephant in the room here is, of course, the AI. The existing espionage AI system is fairly obtuse - I'm not terribly interested in completely overhauling that. Furthermore, when it comes to micromanagement, are you sure you want to give each spy the ability to message the player? On a large map, you are talking about 12+ spies by the end game with the potential to alert the player every turn. That's going to get really old, especially if it is the same five events over and over again.

If you are wanting to 'spy' on someone without getting caught/killed, send them as a diplomat. Diplomats can still collect intrigue and give you a view of their city (they can level up from giving intrigue as well, thanks to the CBP), and they are immune to being killed. If, however, you send a spy to an enemy city, allowing them to autonomously assassinate/sabotage/steal/etc. feels like an acceptable level of micromanagement. You already have so much to consider as a player - why add a bunch of minor decisions to the spy system, especially when it is already fairly robust compared to other game systems?

Now, that said, I'm more than happy to add additional advanced actions to the game, but I'd strongly prefer if they remained within the current randomized system. The code for spies in major civ cities is completely different from the code for city-states - it isn't just a matter of 'changing a few variables, it'd be a complete re-write.

G

 

[Funak]

No he is not sneaking out every 10th turn. Just imagine he would send letter pigeons in the ancient era or he is using a cryptic radio in the modern era.

Those can be interupted, stolen, shot down, intercepted, I'm just saying it would be more realistic to have a system where a spy is sent away with one order and could possibly be made to fulfill one other order from a possible deaddrop or a messenger, once, the once is important because that is what counteracts the chance of interception, one guy doing one thing once is not suspicious, one guy doing the same thing multiple times however is.

You said that you send your spy to a city like Berlin and you do not have to tell him what he should do. Yes the same will happen in my system, so he is doing his stuff, which will lead to an event like my example of the tech theme. So you would only get the chance to take the decision for the spy, of what he should do in his situation. This situation was achieved by the spy, so he came to the city and found a job at the research lab for instance. So far there is no difference to the current system. The new part is the decision which has been placed between the situation of the spy (e.g. he could sabotage a cities production) and his result (e.g. he was successful with delaying the cities production). For now the situation and the result are on the same stage, so you will get the result and the information that he must have had the opportunity to delay the production.

As I said before you'd send one spy to one city with the objective to build a powerbase, avoid detection and sabotage when possible. Possibilty of techtheft would be you sending a messanger to the spy who instantly performs the action and then leaves, hopefully happening too quickly for anyone to catch up with him.

Am I seeing it wrong or is the only function of the powerbase, that this base is destoyed instead of the spy (if successful or not)? I mean the other actions are still avaliable for the spy, but he will be killed if he is doing the action on his own instead of having a powerbase..

The idea is that you're building up power, kinda like a spy sitting in a citystate rigging elections, the better your networks, your contacts and the longer you've stayed there the bigger your chance to actually steal a tech will be, possibly up to a cap, just like the longer you stay in a citystate the better your chance to coup will be.

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but the elephant in the room here is, of course, the AI. The existing espionage AI system is fairly obtuse - I'm not terribly interested in completely overhauling that. Furthermore, when it comes to micromanagement, are you sure you want to give each spy the ability to message the player? On a large map, you are talking about 12+ spies by the end game with the potential to alert the player every turn. That's going to get really old, especially if it is the same five events over and over again.

That was my idea aswell, which is why I suggested a easy systed that is kinda like how spies in citystates already work. And since the AI seems to be able to handle spies in citystates they should be able to make calculated decisions on when to try and steal aswell.

If you are wanting to 'spy' on someone without getting caught/killed, send them as a diplomat. Diplomats can still collect intrigue and give you a view of their city (they can level up from giving intrigue as well, thanks to the CBP), and they are immune to being killed. If, however, you send a spy to an enemy city, allowing them to autonomously assassinate/sabotage/steal/etc. feels like an acceptable level of micromanagement.

Diplomats can only be sent to capital afaik. And like I said the actual chance to succeed when performing the random spy events would be way lower than they currently are, seriously if you're the techleader, or atleast close to you're going to see 5 killed spy messages every turn, and that gets old really quickly.
The idea to have the spy unkillable while charging up for a techsteal is just to reduce the number of dead spies, reduce the number of times you have to say "I forgive you" each turn and to make the events actually feel important when they happen.

This system would also mean that you can increase the respawntime for spies to more than 5 turns or whatever it is now. And actually add a respawntimer for the AI.

Now, that said, I'm more than happy to add additional advanced actions to the game, but I'd strongly prefer if they remained within the current randomized system. The code for spies in major civ cities is completely different from the code for city-states - it isn't just a matter of 'changing a few variables, it'd be a complete re-write

I'm fine with the current system, I just gave my suggestion for a better one, one that addresses all the issues I see with the current system without making things too complicated.

 

[Gazebo]

If the central issue here is that the advance actions make stealing techs difficult (as you are more likely to get caught), what if we added an advanced action that siphoned off research points?

G

 

[Funak]

If the central issue here is that the advance actions make stealing techs difficult (as you are more likely to get caught), what if we added an advanced action that siphoned off research points?

G

I mostly don't like all the spam, spies dying left and right multiple times every turn, makes the whole spy-system feel kinda weird.
I rarely put myself in a situation where I need to steal to get back in the game, but quite often there are run-away AIs and being able to spy on them would be nice.

Main problem with siphoning off research points is that it only makes sense if they are actually researching the same tech you're researching.

However, stealing a map or citylocations or something like that would be nice.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I like getting research points through spies (though it should not cause the originating civilization to lose research).

In general, I'm not a big fan of expanding espionage much from what we have now, because I still think the "getting randomly whacked by a spy action" is not very fun and that's an area where I give Civ:BE a lot of credit:

All the higher tier actions which cause actual damage need high intrigue, which is clearly visible and communicated (including notifications about rising intrigue levels), meaning you will never be hit by a big spy action out of nowhere (the exact implementation is a bit of a mess, though).

I still like the concept of "positive" spies that don't cause (much) harm to the target, though, because it mitigates the "random whacking" further. I think spies work much better as... well, spies, for espionage and intelligence than as saboteurs.

 

[Gazebo]

I like getting research points through spies (though it should not cause the originating civilization to lose research).

In general, I'm not a big fan of expanding espionage much from what we have now, because I still think the "getting randomly whacked by a spy action" is not very fun and that's an area where I give Civ:BE a lot of credit:

All the higher tier actions which cause actual damage need high intrigue, which is clearly visible and communicated (including notifications about rising intrigue levels), meaning you will never be hit by a big spy action out of nowhere (the exact implementation is a bit of a mess, though).

I still like the concept of "positive" spies that don't cause (much) harm to the target, though, because it mitigates the "random whacking" further. I think spies work much better as... well, spies, for espionage and intelligence than as saboteurs.

Agreed. I've already been planning on cleaning up the advanced actions a bit and making them a bit more clear in terms of 'why' they happen, and also alerting players to potential actions before they happen. All in good time.

G

 

[Funak]

Agreed. I've already been planning on cleaning up the advanced actions a bit and making them a bit more clear in terms of 'why' they happen, and also alerting players to potential actions before they happen. All in good time

Let's just wait for some master coder nerd to make a full spying overhaul and then just steal it?

Personally still think my suggested system would be a huge improvement over the current one but I can't code it and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do that for free, if at all

 

[Gazebo]

Let's just wait for some master coder nerd to make a full spying overhaul and then just steal it?

Personally still think my suggested system would be a huge improvement over the current one but I can't code it and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do that for free, if at all

I'll reiterate that, regardless of how any system sounds on paper, the methods through which the existing system are hard-coded limits any changes that can be made.

It is not surprising that you feel that your system would be an improvement as, well, it is your idea, however I fear that trying to graft the CS system onto major cities would be an exercise in micro-mangement with little gain.

G

 

[Lord Tirian]

In the meanwhile, what about adding some "improvements" to the random actions as they are, namely taking advantage of the spies/diplomat divide?

Leave spies as they are with their detrimental random actions and add the following random actions to diplomats:

• Gain a free units near your capital ("rebels" or "mercenaries")
• Gain free lump gold ("foreign investment")
• Gain free lump beakers ("hired researchers")
• Gain free culture points ("cultural exchange")

I think I proposed something like that before, but I think it wasn't split between diplomats and spies. That way, you would gain some additional control over your spies and give them some extra use depending on whether you want to hurt your enemy (spies) or just gain some extra benefit for yourself (diplomats).

 

[Funak]

It is not surprising that you feel that your system would be an improvement as, well, it is your idea, however I fear that trying to graft the CS system onto major cities would be an exercise in micro-mangement with little gain.

Funny how that works isn't it?

Ok new idea, or old idea even as I mentioned it a few pages back.

How about increasing the chance of random-spy-events to fail? Not fail as in death, but fail as in nothing happens. The current really leaves no option for passive play, either your spy cripples your enemy or he gets killed. The chance of getting to the actual techsteal in a city with an enemy spy is close to non-existant.

If the current system gives you a 70% chance to succeed and a 30% chance to die with every randomevent instead change it to 20% chance to succeed, 10% chance to die and 70% chance that nothing happens, if you get my drift. I personally think that would make spies feel less all over the place.

Also please add a respawntime to the AI spies, sure it can be shorter than it is for human players, but atleast something.

 

[WileyNg]

In the meanwhile, what about adding some "improvements" to the random actions as they are, namely taking advantage of the spies/diplomat divide?

Leave spies as they are with their detrimental random actions and add the following random actions to diplomats:

• Gain a free units near your capital ("rebels" or "mercenaries")
• Gain free lump gold ("foreign investment")
• Gain free lump beakers ("hired researchers")
• Gain free culture points ("cultural exchange")

I think I proposed something like that before, but I think it wasn't split between diplomats and spies. That way, you would gain some additional control over your spies and give them some extra use depending on whether you want to hurt your enemy (spies) or just gain some extra benefit for yourself (diplomats).

I disagree.
There are too many boost in resource already.

 

[Gazebo]

Funny how that works isn't it?

Ok new idea, or old idea even as I mentioned it a few pages back.

How about increasing the chance of random-spy-events to fail? Not fail as in death, but fail as in nothing happens. The current really leaves no option for passive play, either your spy cripples your enemy or he gets killed. The chance of getting to the actual techsteal in a city with an enemy spy is close to non-existant.

If the current system gives you a 70% chance to succeed and a 30% chance to die with every randomevent instead change it to 20% chance to succeed, 10% chance to die and 70% chance that nothing happens, if you get my drift. I personally think that would make spies feel less all over the place.

Also please add a respawntime to the AI spies, sure it can be shorter than it is for human players, but atleast something.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that AI spies don't have a respawn. They do, just like human spies. The current system is heavily weighted towards 'nothing happening,' though I am making a few adjustments to the system to make it a bit more responsive. We'll see how it works.

G

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