Spy's are too limited.

[turingmachine]

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

Please, everyone likes to bring up spies poisoning your cities in Civ IV, but a) they tend to exaggerate how often it really happened, and b) IT WAS VERY EASY TO DEFEND AGAINST). All you literally had to do was build a spy and keep it in the city. People just didn't want to be bothered with that. They wanted to ignore the system completely, and then got upset when the system affected their games and they didn't do anything to counter the system. If you wanted to be even more defensive you could run a counter-espionage mission, which was incredibly cheap.

Spies in Civ V should be beefed up. I wouldn't even mind an espionage yield similar to IV that could then be spend on specific missions, to limit everything and more closely tie in the espionage mechanic to the base game. Civ IV actually had a really good system. You needed to invest in it to do anything truly significant. It offered several options to defend against it. It had great variety. It had a naturally limiting factor in that it was tied to yield so you couldn't just do whatever you wanted to anyone, you needed to choose your targets. I also don't like the passive always steal tech of Civ V's spies, this should be a specific mission, with a specific cost, not some passive thing that accelerates completing the tech tree across the board. Research is already too fast.

 

[player1 fanatic]

For that you just need to hope that someone will steal from you.

In one of my games I had one spy from renesance till the end of the game in my capitol, while being tech lead. And Inever killed a single spy. Total waste of spy.

 

[VainoValkea]

Please, everyone likes to bring up spies poisoning your cities in Civ IV, but a) they tend to exaggerate how often it really happened, and b) IT WAS VERY EASY TO DEFEND AGAINST). All you literally had to do was build a spy and keep it in the city. People just didn't want to be bothered with that. They wanted to ignore the system completely, and then got upset when the system affected their games and they didn't do anything to counter the system.

It happened very often. Some leaders LOVED to do it, even if they had lots of positive diplomacy modifiers.

Also, it was easy to defend against, yes, but also very boring. Having one spy in each city felt stupid, and was far from complete - you also had to grind counterintelligence missions in enemy terrain, so practically meaningless empty clicking to protect your wells from Sioux poisonings. I don't think having to send a spy in enemy territory every 20 turns in order to not get poisoned made the game better at all. It was just boring and stupid. Mindless grinding of the same mission over and over again just to retain unpoisoned wells.

And then, one spy gets through regardless, getting that amazing roll. A small chance, not very meaningful, but very annoying.

 

[Rob5000]

I think overall, the system of spying is the best yet seen throughout the entire civ franchise. However, I voted yes for one and perhaps only one more option - I would like the ability to have a spy instigate a city state into war. (Think Serbia/WW1). I would only want this option for city states, not for civs, as that could lead to problems. A city state declaring war on another player wouldn't be so terrible, perhaps a minor inconvenience, but it could certainly lead to some diplomatic problems if its under the protection of a power Civ.

Other than that, I don't think any other options are really needed - destroying buildings a la terrorism is interesting in theory and makes sense from a real world perspective, but gamewise its pretty unimportant, by the time you have spies, most buildings can be finished in about 5 or so turns. Same thing with causing unhappiness, etc.

 

[turingmachine]

It happened very often. Some leaders LOVED to do it, even if they had lots of positive diplomacy modifiers.

Also, it was easy to defend against, yes, but also very boring. Having one spy in each city felt stupid, and was far from complete - you also had to grind counterintelligence missions in enemy terrain, so practically meaningless empty clicking to protect your wells from Sioux poisonings. I don't think having to send a spy in enemy territory every 20 turns in order to not get poisoned made the game better at all. It was just boring and stupid. Mindless grinding of the same mission over and over again just to retain unpoisoned wells.

And then, one spy gets through regardless, getting that amazing roll. A small chance, not very meaningful, but very annoying.

You didn't have to grind the counter-missions, which only increased the mission cost not the chance of success. And you're exaggerating, yes some leaders did it a lot, but most didn't, and having just played several Civ IV games, it does not happen as much as people claim to remember it. You also only really needed a spy in your border cities (and you didn't even need that late game once you could build the anti-spy buildings). I don't know how that felt stupid. Defense in Civ IV was primarily accomplished by garrisoning a unit in a city, the spy system was using the standard game mechanic.

And, yes it was a small chance after all that, for poisoning watering, which had little to no impact on your actual game.

And to respond to:

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.

It's not the systems fault if you never tried to actually actively use the system. Being able to force a civ wide anarchy to prevent a civ from finishing a wonder so you can beat them to a race, or using spies to cause a revolt in a city so you can more easily conquer, or to spread culture to better culture-flip a city and peacefully take over land, or force a change in civics or religion to get more diplo modifiers and make peace more likely, or even go a full spy game and ignore research and just survive by stealing every tech. All was possible and viable.

Its not the system that was boring in earlier games, it was your use of it, and my original point how most players just seemed to want to ignore and not learn the system instead of actually using it (and then they complain about it). Guess what, if you wanted to ignore the espionage system, entirely, there was a "No Espionage" option. But of course complaining about a system being in a game that you don't want to use makes more sense then turning it off with the provided option.

 

[dexters]

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.

I've noted this in several threads around GnK release.

Would be nice to make it such that they gain EXP incrementally from interactions.

If they find out intrigue, they gain some EXP
steal teach could still grand the biggest block of EXP

But I also want them to gain EXP from rigging elections and coups

 

[VainoValkea]

You didn't have to grind the counter-missions, which only increased the mission cost not the chance of success. And you're exaggerating, yes some leaders did it a lot, but most didn't, and having just played several Civ IV games, it does not happen as much as people claim to remember it. You also only really needed a spy in your border cities (and you didn't even need that late game once you could build the anti-spy buildings). I don't know how that felt stupid. Defense in Civ IV was primarily accomplished by garrisoning a unit in a city, the spy system was using the standard game mechanic.

And, yes it was a small chance after all that, for poisoning watering, which had little to no impact on your actual game.

Yes, the counterespionage does increase the chance of failure. At least that's the way I recall it working. You even get a special message about it causing the enemy spy being caught.

The bolded part is very important. You admit there's little actual point in it happening. Yet it happens. It's just annoying, nothing more - what the heck is the point then?

It's not the systems fault if you never tried to actually actively use the system. Being able to force a civ wide anarchy to prevent a civ from finishing a wonder so you can beat them to a race, or using spies to cause a revolt in a city so you can more easily conquer, or to spread culture to better culture-flip a city and peacefully take over land, or even go a full spy game and ignore research and just survive by stealing every tech. All was possible and viable.

Its not the system that was boring in earlier games, it was your use of it, and my original point how most players just seemed to want to ignore and not learn the system instead of actually using it (and then they complain about it).

Using the espionage system effectively means investing away from science, money and culture. That's why most people wouldn't do it - the reward, having spy actions that may or may not be useful and may or may not work, wasn't substantial.

 

[kaspergm]

I've noted this in several threads around GnK release.

Would be nice to make it such that they gain EXP incrementally from interactions.

If they find out intrigue, they gain some EXP
steal teach could still grand the biggest block of EXP

But I also want them to gain EXP from rigging elections and coups

YES, and please give us actual promotions from the spy: Want him to specialize in Tech stealing? Promote him in that way. Want him to specialize in gathering intrigue? Another promotion path there. City state swaying? Also an option. Etc.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Exactly. This alone would improve the system a lot!

 

[R0gue]

What would be ok, and could be implemented.

Why not give the spy a purpose. Give them a advancement tree.

The spy starts as a recruit and once advances to another level.

You choose his promotion just like a unit. The promotions could be like.

2nd level spy
Sabatage expert
Terrorist

3rd level spy
Assassination

And so on.

 

[Rob5000]

I think overall, the system of spying is the best yet seen throughout the entire civ franchise. However, I voted yes for one and perhaps only one more option - I would like the ability to have a spy instigate a city state into war. (Think Serbia/WW1). I would only want this option for city states, not for civs, as that could lead to problems. A city state declaring war on another player wouldn't be so terrible, perhaps a minor inconvenience, but it could certainly lead to some diplomatic problems if its under the protection of a power Civ.

Other than that, I don't think any other options are really needed - destroying buildings a la terrorism is interesting in theory and makes sense from a real world perspective, but gamewise its pretty unimportant, by the time you have spies, most buildings can be finished in about 5 or so turns. Same thing with causing unhappiness, etc.

I'm surprised no one commented on this, I think this would be a cool system and a nice way to have proxy wars...

 

[eewallace]

I definitely prefer the new spy system. I hated having to move little spies all over the map in previous versions. Also, I like the new "diplomat" option--at the end game, I'm using that alot more than the "spy" option.

 

[PFSIKH]

I went with Yes.

I would like the Spys to do more like sabotage or assassination.

My reason for this is when other Civs steal techs, bully a CS or spread religion. A DOW is an answer, but might not be feasible or practical.

 

[OmniPotent42]

I made a post a while back suggesting a leveling tree for spies like normal units have - you could balance it however you want but add another level to espionage so it isn't just simply level 1, 2, and 3. Some sample promotions would be:
Overnight watch - chance of capturing enemy spies increased by 50%.
Double Agent - tech steal rate reduced by 25%.
Family Ties - rigging election increases your influence by another 50%.

Diplomats would lose the promotions, so you'd have to be careful in diplomat assignment.

 

[dexters]

Ah no, lol, no point promoting your spies if you can't switch them to diplomats then switch them back again.

Diplomats are very important in BNW but there's no particular advantage in picking a diplomat over a spy that would necessitate loss of promotions.

 

[Rohili]

Yes, I am rather disappointed at the espionage system. I have very little use for my spies apart from counter-espionage, since I'm usually the tech leader by the time spies appear.

Some options I would like to see are:

1) Sabotage production
2) Steal military plans (LOS to all of that civ's military units)
3) Destroy building
4) Foment unhappiness

Some posters mentioned how irritating it was having to defend against enemy spies in Civ IV. I think that criticism is less valid given how spying is implemented in Civ V. It takes very little micromanagement now given that you have far fewer spies and can control all of them from a convenient panel.

 

[danieladler]

I dont think the spy should be anymore powerful than it is. I can just imagine already the highly bonused AI in immortal and deity ruining my capital with a dozen spies, one from each civ. Brrrr....no thanks.

 

[spellsteal]

I agree spies in civ 5 needs to be a bit more beef up but not as far as it was in civ 4 *shudders*

I think we could start by giving them small buffs and see how it goes from there.

-maybe make a new type of spy that is invisible to every other unit except for its own kind. It's only purpose is to infiltrate enemy unit and give it some kind of debuff.

Everytime the infiltrated unit dies or the spy catches another spies they get exp for upgrades like;

-infiltrated units lost the battle maps, reduced vision
-infiltrated units lost their hiking shoes, loses half of the terrain bonus modifier they get from hills
-infiltrated units have broken shields, takes extra damage from ranged attacks
-infiltrated units lost the blue prints of the fort, fort provides half the bonus modifier

 

[Rohili]

I dont think the spy should be anymore powerful than it is. I can just imagine already the highly bonused AI in immortal and deity ruining my capital with a dozen spies, one from each civ. Brrrr....no thanks.

You just need one spy to counter their dozens of spies, though. I don't see how it breaks the game. Anyway, if it really makes higher difficulty levels harder, then drop a difficulty level. That a change makes the game more challenging is a good thing.

 

[kaspergm]

I dont think the spy should be anymore powerful than it is. I can just imagine already the highly bonused AI in immortal and deity ruining my capital with a dozen spies, one from each civ. Brrrr....no thanks.

You just need one spy to counter their dozens of spies, though. I don't see how it breaks the game. Anyway, if it really makes higher difficulty levels harder, then drop a difficulty level. That a change makes the game more challenging is a good thing.

It changes the game - and in a bad way - because even if you have a spy for counterintelligence, it still comes down to a dice roll whether you will succeed in catching the spy, and odds are not even that great for you. To make things worse, if you fail on the first die roll, a downward spiral will start to make things get worse, because an initial fail will mean enemy spy will level up, which means LOWER chance for you to succeed on the second roll, and if you fail that one also, he will level up again ...

That is in itself not a very good game design, but this could be forgiven if you could at least do something to increase your odds, but you can't. Building Espionage buildings will slow down the spy, but will not increase your success rate. Having Espionage buildings will also not allow you to recruit Spies starting on higher levels, contrary what would make sense seeing how things work for other units. What this boils down to is that there is nothing you can actively do to improve your odds, which is *really* bad game design.

I completely agree with DanielAdler, we don't need the spies to be more powerful than they are now (quite on the contrary, I think they need to be less powerful - i.e. rework the Tech Steal mechanism, and remove the Coup feature), but they need to be more versatile and more customizable to make the system more engaging and less about random rolls.

About the spy promotions, I would want something like:

• Counterespionage I/II/III - increase chances to catch enemy spies.
• Propaganda I/II/II - increase chance and effectivity in rigging City State elections.
• Intelligence I/II/III - better at gathering intrigue and more information when stationed in foreign civ city.
• Undercover I/II/III - lower chance at getting caught by enemy spies.
• Golden Tongue I/II/III - diplomat promotion, increases effect of having a diplomat
• ...
• Possibly some advanced promotions opening up for new missions?

We also need a much more flexible XP-system for spies, and not only a level-1-2-3 flat system as we have now.