Spys or Where's Waldo?

[IAM]

My spys keep being stumbled upon by the AI. Freindly and unfreindly. My espionage slider is higher than anyone elses. What gives? I move a spy into another civs cultural boundaries and by the second or third city I enter no more spy.?!

"When I come back no more Mr. Nice Guy." Adolf Hitler

 

[bonafide11]

Yeah I agree it is quite annoying how common spies are stumbled upon in rivals territory. I think they need to reduce the likelihood of being caught before actually performing any operations.

 

[largedarryl]

Spies always have a chance to be discovered in enemy territory (even friendly territory). This chance is increased if they have spies positioned close to yours.

The chance of a spy being discovered is seperate from the amount of EP points you have allocated towards that civ (unless someone can prove otherwise)

 

[Todd Hawks]

Be glad... otherwise you wouldn't stumble upon their spies either and that might prove... unfortunate.

 

[Proteus]

Yes, I am glad that, maybe with the help of the spies stationed in my border cities, no japanese (my next neighbor) spy was able to accomplish a mission till now despite obviously sending spy after spy into my territory

 

[agoodfella]

Can someone explain to me how to send a spy on a "kill spy" mission? Do you need a Super Spy?

If not, I can't seem to figure out how to do this....

 

[Todd Hawks]

You can't, there is no such thing as a "kill spy" mission. At least not that I'm aware of.

 

[Proteus]

What you can is station spies in your cities (preferably border cities) and keep them hungry so that they try to get every pie that crosses the border

 

[agoodfella]

You can't, there is no such thing as a "kill spy" mission. At least not that I'm aware of.

Really? I thought I remember reading that in the manual somewhere.

 

[Bongo-Bongo]

Really? I thought I remember reading that in the manual somewhere.

The manual is completley flawed. It mentions about the 'Kill Spy' mission briefley and that more info is in the mission section, but there is no 'Kill Spy' mission listed here. There is no mission, nor am I sure how it would realistically work if there was one.

 

[agoodfella]

Wow, that's FUBAR. I'm embarrassed for Firaxis.

 

[Unthinking Pain]

Wow, that's FUBAR. I'm embarrassed for Firaxis.

Well, most printed game manuals seem to be usually have out-of-date stuff nowadays.

I think it's good that Spies can't hang out forever with minimal chances of dying. In fact, my short-term impression is that overall Firaxis has done a nice job with Espionage, the only caveat being the nastiness of Foment Unhappiness/Poison the Water missions on Epic/Marathon.

 

[Proteus]

Sounds tome like normal practice.

The manual gets completed at one time during the developmental process (way before development is completed) and goes into print. Any changes on the game mechanics thereafter won´t be mentioned in the manual.

 

[Rayss523]

What you can is station spies in your cities (preferably border cities) and keep them hungry so that they try to get every pie that crosses the border

Lol I just noticed the pies slip on the manual yesterday.

 

[Bongo-Bongo]

Sounds tome like normal practice.

The manual gets completed at one time during the developmental process (way before development is completed) and goes into print. Any changes on the game mechanics thereafter won´t be mentioned in the manual.

So true. Just go back and look through the manual for the Vanilla Civ and many of the unit graphics used were changed by the time the game was released.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

They probably need to push spies back to the Medieval period. The AI wastes a lot of resources in the early game on espionage. I was finding one every 3 to 4 turns during the last game. Sabotaging a couple of tiles and poisoning a couple of cities cost the AIs a huge amount of commerce and production. The sabotage targets weren't even critical resources with a single source and they poisoned a mid-sized city with a large health surplus. Why would they destroy a sugar plantation when I'm about to invade?

Espionage provides the AI with another opportunity to do pointless things. I played with spies a bit but have been keeping the espionage slider at 0% in the last games. Spies kept getting discovered and usually faster research is better than sabotaging one AI city.

The AI needs to realize this as well and scale back their espionage.

Oh, my capitulated vassals shouldn't be allowed to sabotage me either.

 

[LlamaCat]

correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't a Great Spy have the ability to see regular spies? if so, is there an option to kill the spy that way or something like it? otherwise I'm not sure what the point is that he can see enemy spies

 

[Todd Hawks]

LlamaCat, are you sure the Great Spy can see regular spies? I never had one so I wouldn't know but it sounds like more false info from out of the manual. Like the passive "don't allow foreign spies within our borders" which also simply doesn't exist.
Edit: The reason I'm assuming the GS can't see an enemy spy is that it would be completely pointless since you can't do anything about the spy anyway.

(Sorry, but I have to say it: This manual was the worst I ever saw. And I'm not using that superlative lightly. Not only is the information mostly worthless, a lot of it is plain wrong and misleading. And even more simply is missing completely.)

 

[futurehermit]

I ignore espionage completely until after democracy and communism, when I built a dedicated super-espionage city.

Puts me miles ahead of the AI who wastes too many resources on espionage for way too little impact. They're like mosquitos buzzing around.

 

[AriochIV]

Luckily most people ignore the manual, but the Civiliopedia entries for BtS, especially on the confusing mechanisms for complex systems like Colonies, Corporations and Espionage, are terse, ambiguous, and woefully inadequate.

Because spies are so easily captured in enemy territory, and because spending espionage points on covert missions reduces your all-important espionage pool, I mainly use espionage defensively. I keep spies in friendly territory for defense (and so I'm constantly having to build new ones), and just stockpile espionage points, for maximum passive benefits and to force maximum cost for enemy espionage attempts. Being able to see nearly everything about your opponents from the comfort of home is a significant advantage, for practically no effort.

Which is probably broken. Collecting information should probably require that you place spies in enemy territory. Like Religions, Vassals and Corporations, the new Espionage system has flashes of brilliance but still feels very unfinished.