Spy's are too limited.

[R0gue]

Spys are to limited.

CS - Influence (Yawn)

Other Civilizations

Steal Tech, Thats all - as far as I know


I think they should introduce more options for the spy's.

Blow up a building - This would be fun, could cause massive unhappyness
Sabatage - a wonder in the building queue - so it takes them longer to complete and gives you a change to build it before them.
Assassination - of Great Artist, Musicians, etc
Cause Unrest - Chance of a city flipping
Framing a civ, could cause unhappiness, start a war, break an alliance.
Steel Gold
Steel Artifacts

I'm sure there are many more things the spy can do.

 

[VainoValkea]

In earlier Civs, spies could do all of that. Believe me, it wasn't really fun at all.

 

[dexters]

Blow up a building - This would be fun, could cause massive unhappyness
Sabatage - a wonder in the building queue - so it takes them longer to complete and gives you a change to build it before them.
Assassination - of Great Artist, Musicians, etc
Cause Unrest - Chance of a city flipping
Framing a civ, could cause unhappiness, start a war, break an alliance.
Steel Gold
Steel Artifacts

Some of those could work but I think with spies now also doubling as diplomats, we don't want to be expanding what a spy can do unless we can get more of them.

And 'framing civs' being a nice to intrigue, a lot of the other things in your list look like they will be completely open to abuse by human players and not benefit the AI. And or cause people to rage quit if the AI manages to do it.

Espionage has always been tricky in that the AI is just not very great at it and when they get programmed to spam spy missions human players complain about how annoying it is (I'm recalling the original Civ4 espionage system).

I would suggest you flesh some of these out, think about balance and gameplay mechanics. You'll realize the alot of them either severely unbalance the game in its original conception or will require lots of rules/subsystems to do.

The 'frame civ' thing I like though and should be something spies can do when not stealing tech.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

I voted spies are fine. I would not even like to imagine what adding more options would do to the AI.

 

[steveg700]

OK, let's take a looky-loo...

Broken, way broken, unfeasible, I can see where you were going with that but it won't work, nope, negative, and uh-uh.

Spies are limited because they exist outside of Civ's system of inputs and outputs. You get them for free, use them for free, and when they fail the only penalty is a small time-out before getting another one for free.

It is a limited and boring system, no argument there, but to add beefed-up outputs would necessitate revamping the system to have some actual inputs.

The other big problem is, if you have a lot of civ's in game, it would be easy to find oneself overwhelmed with enemy spy attacks and wind up boxed into a defensive mode. By making the effects of spies mild on non-destructive, you are more incentivized to use them for something other than counter-intelligence.

Btw, spies can also be diplomats when sent to another civ's capital.

Also, wrong forum. This should be in Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[VainoValkea]

Spies are boring, that's true. However, I don't think they were really exciting in the earlier establishments either. My standard Civ IV spy pattern was churning out one every 20 turns to perform a counterespionage job in the Sioux (who always kept sabotaging me) and having one in each city to make sure nothing bad happened. Randomness is randomness - sometimes the Sioux succeeded anyway, never impacting anything much but annoying the heck out of me.

You should also think of missionary spam. Even that is often considered horribly annoying, and the spy actions you present are far larger by impact and depend solely on random rolls to defend against. So, nope.

 

[dexters]

Btw, spies can also be diplomats when sent to another civ's capital.

Also, wrong forum. This should be in Ideas & Suggestions.

One of my peeves on CF. Ideas and Suggestion threads show up in main discussions (probably because there's more activity and more people see/post it)

And when people bother to post theirs in Ideas & Suggestions, either no one reads it/provides feedback or they wait a little bit for the thread to get bumped down and post their own suggesting the same things.


I also understand why people would prefer to post their ideas here.Look at this thread and how quickly it is moving,.

 

[bonafide11]

Spies are very limited, but as others have said, they weren't that fun when they had more options available in previous Civ games. The espionage system in Civ IV: BTS was atrocious.

 

[kaspergm]

Yes, spies are too limited, but it's a very loud NO to all the things you suggest spies should be able to do from my side.

I made a discussion about Espionage on the 2k Forum not too long ago, the whole thing can be found here, but some suggestions for new Spy missions:

- Get information on foreign civs technological advance.
- Make gather intrigue an active action rather than a passive one (ask the spy to try to find intrigue, and he'll be occupied for one or two turns and come back with something).
- Find information about location of other unmet civs, unmet city states, unfound natural wonders, etc. known by this civ.
- Locate a foreign spy in your city (active action, can also happen passively if Espionage buildings are built).
- Locate a third party spy in a foreign city (give possibility to share information with city owner).
- Assassinate a foreign spy (with possible serious diplomatic consequences).
- Diplomatic missions: Improve or decrease relationship with target civ and third party civ (propaganda), has a chance to fail and backfire if you want to decrease relationship.
- Improve relationship between civ and yourself (could be nicely linked to tourism <-- we already have this now with the new Diplomat - yay!).
- Gain influence with city state - instead of the passive rig election, make this an active diplomatic mission.
- Form the national intelligence agence (would consume a high-level spy).
- Warfare propaganda: Use the spy to infliltrate a city before you capture it, reducing the amount of resistance.
- Sabotage buildings? Perhaps, but need to be high risk/cost (see below).

A pet peeve of mine is the current Tech Steel method, which is just horrible. Instead, we should have a steady science flow from foreign civ when you research a tech which they have discovered, similar to how it works for Caravans (but obviously higher returns).

 

[goodolarchie]

I have to agree with above poster, micromanagement on this level throughout the game can be inane. The AI does well to min/max, so having your water poisoned every 20 turns was annoying.

I recently turned espionage back on since I loathed it in Civ4: BTS and I'm actually quite pleased with its current state. I agree it is limited and mostly hands-off, but that's a very good thing. In the Immortal and Deity games I've played, I've used it for four five main purposes:

• Keep tech parity in lines I don't often pursue through renn-modern
• See what the resident wonder-whore is building (i.e. if I have a chance at building X wonder)
• See who is plotting against whom via intrigue
• tourism boost in modern-digital era against culture giants
• Rig elections against a city state allied with future DoW civ that i) poses a nearby threat ii) can be used as a buffer between your cities and theirs.

The last one I've met with limited success, my coup seems to stay at 0% a lot of the time even after completing the bar.

I am still trying to work out the diplo hits, namely just how bad it is to sit a spy in a Friendly rival capital. They seem to go neutral after stealing a tech even you comply with their "I won't spy." My current strategy is to just rotate spies from most to least advanced AIs until I'm back to tech parity, then use them for bullets 3-5 above.

Anyway, I appreciate the general straightforwardness and hands-off espionage, and it accomplishes its goal - spying on rivals

 

[VainoValkea]

The last one I've met with limited success, my coup seems to stay at 0% a lot of the time even after completing the bar.

Rigging elections is not a very big boost: it gives you some influence (20 or so) and reduces the other civs' influence. If the other civ is way ahead of you, you won't ever get the City-State that way. Coup success is determined by your influence against the current ally's, so giving a CS a gold gift can be a good way to get underway and the coup can "seal the deal".

 

[Staal]

A pet peeve of mine is the current Tech Steel method, which is just horrible. Instead, we should have a steady science flow from foreign civ when you research a tech which they have discovered, similar to how it works for Caravans (but obviously higher returns).

Oooh, good suggestion.

And yes spies having a hundred micro-management options like in Civ 4 was horrible. Nothing is more annoying than unknown spies are repeatedly bombing my iron. It is not going to change the game, it is just creating management tasks for me to no purpose.

 

[kaspergm]

And yes spies having a hundred micro-management options like in Civ 4 was horrible. Nothing is more annoying than unknown spies are repeatedly bombing my iron. It is not going to change the game, it is just creating management tasks for me to no purpose.

Well I don't necessarily agree, I think current spy system is TOO passive. I would want somewhere in between, where you can assign your spies for some passive missions if you want (Diplomat/Spying in foreign city, or counterdefense in friendly city) but where you would ALSO have more active options to choose from, to make the system more flexible and more engaging.

I just had a fun(?) thought that's probably not very politically correct: If one really wanted the thing about destroying buildings back, one could make the option to turn the Spy into a Terrorist (like he can be turned into a Diplomat). Once a Terrorist, he'll have to work in the city for a while before he performs his mission (longer time possibly = larger succes rate, but larger chance of getting caught). When he performs the mission, he'll destroy a building, but will die in the process.

 

[ahawk]

I think spies/diplomats should have maybe another option or two.

As of now, they are used for:

1) Stealing techs
2) Stopping an enemy from stealing your techs
3) Rigging CS elections
4) Propaganda tourism bonus
5) Trading WC votes
6) Seeing what's in or adjacent to the target city

That's a reasonable list, in my opinion, but not quite fully fleshed out. While I think Civ 4 might have given to many abilities to spies, I think Civ 5 has given maybe one too few. I'd like to let spies/diplomats have just a little more versatility than they currently do, and all it would take is an extra minor ability or two, hopefully something a little less passive.

That said, BNW has made spies/diplomats a bit more fun than before, at least.

 

[steveg700]

One of my peeves on CF. Ideas and Suggestion threads show up in main discussions (probably because there's more activity and more people see/post it)

And when people bother to post theirs in Ideas & Suggestions, either no one reads it/provides feedback or they wait a little bit for the thread to get bumped down and post their own suggesting the same things.

As someone who routinely contributes to the Civs/Leaders Wanted thread, and counts himself lucky to get responses from a whopping two or three people for his efforts, I certainly see your point. I have no idea why it's so shunned by the majority of the CFC community.

But that isn't ameliorated by people posting idea & suggestions outside of that forum. It's only addressed by people actually going there.

So, we can say the problem is with the forum structure, or the problem with the audience being hidebound about which forums they'll patronize. Probably a mix of both.

 

[VainoValkea]

ahawk, you forgot

7) Intrigue
8) Seeing how the opponent will vote

However, I personally dislike those because the computer can't read minds - the player is effectively exempt from the system. I would change it to something that can be determined objectively - wonder building, researched techs, troop possession, spies in cities / City-State allies... William can't possibly know that I'm plotting against Alexander when playing the game, but he could know if I was building the Leaning Tower or spying on Alexander.

 

[SnowKomodo]

I fear the game would be overcluttered with mechanics it the Spies were given more options.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Spy system is acually the weakest system in Civ.

My main issue is that only way to gain experoence for spies is to steal or defend from tech steal.



If you dont need to steal tech you end up with bunch of recruit spies for whole game.

Thats just plain boring.

 

[blkbltchemie]

There are a couple of threads right now over in the Ideas&Suggestions Forum on this topic. One by me (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504429) and one by ShadowWarrior (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504510). We've actually got a pretty good discussion going just between the two of us and it would be great to have some more input as well. As steveg700 and dexters both mentioned, it is often kind of quiet over there.

Personally, I would like to see an increase in both the amount and type of intrigue and also more active/risky options for spies. Having more diplomatic trade options for sharing intrigue would be welcome as well.

 

[VainoValkea]

If you don't need to steal tech the spies get experience by killing enemy spies.