Stopping spy destruction

[MyOlde]

My neighbour to the north (I'm pretty sure) is destroying everything from farms to custom houses and so on in my civ. How do I stop this? I've placed a few spies on farms and in cities (put them to sleep or what?) but I can't cover every square with them. I also have the spy thingy in the upper left corner set to 30% and cannot afford to go any higher.

Looking forward to your help as soon as possible.

 

[nfw]

Run counterespionage missions, won't stop them, but at least it'll slow them down.

The only cure is to conquer them.

Why isn't there a stop spying diplomacy option?

 

[MyOlde]

Okay, thanks. I've just put a spy on every border square. I assume I can put them to sleep (so I don't have to check them off every turn!) and they'll alert me when someone's coming along? That's the impression I get from the civilopedia.

Right? Wrong?

 

[nfw]

Yes, that's right. But they only have a chance to catch enemy spies, not a guarantee.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Okay, thanks. I've just put a spy on every border square. I assume I can put them to sleep (so I don't have to check them off every turn!) and they'll alert me when someone's coming along? That's the impression I get from the civilopedia.

Right? Wrong?

Mostly wrong. Spies have a chance of stopping the espionage mission on the tile it will be performed. But they don't "see" the spies coming for the most part. Civilopedia is quite confusing. A good way to minimize the danger is to build the various Espionage buildings and put a spy on vital resources. There is no way to completely eliminate the danger - except by turning off espionage when you start the game.

The AI usually assigns some of it's slider to Espionage. For us humans, it usually isn't worth it (unless you go for an Espionage Economy). The buildings can help a lot. I think a few players even have a special Espionage city where they run Spy Specialists.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

You say you've put the espionage slider up to 30%, but have you made sure you are putting all those points (or a large proportion of them) just towards that one civ? By default your espionage points are spread evenly over all the civs you know, you have to go and manually adjust this on the espionage screen if you want to prioritise certain civs.

The next thing you can do to make a difference is to close borders with the civ in question. You'll lose some trade with them, and obviously lose right of passage through their lands, but it means their espionage missions in your land will have less chance of success (or be more expensive for them, I can't remember which). This also has an additional benefit - normally a spy will only be detected when it tries to complete a mission, but if you have closed borders they can also be discovered simply by moving through your lands before they even get to their targets.

Having a spy in a city or on an improvement tile will also help detect enemy spies, but it might only be when they try and complete a mission. It's still not guaranteed but it will boost the odds.

Build things like Jails and Intelligence agencies to boost your espionage points more, and also definitely build Security Bureaus in cities that get targetted the most as these give you a 50% boost towards catching enemy spies. Also use them to run spy specialists. And of course run the counter-espionage missions a lot.

All this is a bit of a pain and a drain on commerce and hammers etc when you're not really interested in spying, but other than switching it off entirely it's the only really solution.

Or just play Warlords

 

[Archon_Wing]

Courthourses give you a little EP; not much, but they're useful for other things too.

 

[MyOlde]

Thanks to all of you: good information to have. I'm not really into the spy game this time around, but I especially like the idea of closing the borders. I'll try that and make sure I'm concentrating my espionage points against the one civ. It could be any of a number, of course, but since he's right next door I figure it's got to be him. We've had our quarrels in the past and he's not my best friend.

And maybe I'll have to start sending my spies in to wreak a little havoc in his territory.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Thanks to all of you: good information to have. I'm not really into the spy game this time around, but I especially like the idea of closing the borders. I'll try that and make sure I'm concentrating my espionage points against the one civ. It could be any of a number, of course, but since he's right next door I figure it's got to be him. We've had our quarrels in the past and he's not my best friend.

And maybe I'll have to start sending my spies in to wreak a little havoc in his territory.

Who is this neighbor? Some AI's are more irritating with Espionage than others. Your neighbor's initials wouldn't be SB, would they?

 

[Bushface]

You can identify who it is that's sending the spies by keeping a close eye on the espionage point scores. Mostly, your opponents' points against you will go up each turn, but if one goes down then some points have been spent attacking you, and that indicates the villain.
Spies, yours or theirs, may be detected only when stationary - and not always then. So a line of spies at your border won't really help to stop incursions, which simply slip past in mid-move. Setting a spy to sleep on a valuable resource or in a city does increase the chance of catching a saboteur, as does a Security Bureau in a city (you don't need both spy and SB), but there is absolutely no way of completely preventing sabotage except by turning espionage off.

 

[s.bernbaum]

By using sleeping spies or Security Bureaus plus running counter espionage missions, I will mostly get messages that a spy was thwarted at such and such a city, although one does occasionally succeed despite all that.

 

[Peregrine]

Just an impression, but Sitting Bull seems to be the worst. Is he your nextdoor neighbor?

When I start getting hit too hard, I go over to the offense. Set a good production city somewhere near the border to building spies. Send 'em over every time. Start by running counter-espionage. Do it whenever it appears in the menu. Then poison the water supplies of every city. Then foment unhappiness when you can't poison. Then start hitting the vital resource tiles; coal, horses, copper, iron, oil. Then start hitting the food supplies; AH and agri resources--in addition to continued poisonings. If you run out of targets, start hitting the other resources--the things that keep their populations happy and healthy. If you're persistent, enemy cities' populations will start falling, trade will be screwed up, and your enemy will be too busy trying to fix what you've broken to bother much with you. It won't stop their attempts to sabotage etc., but you'll sure derive some pleasure from it.

They might declare on you if/when they catch enough of your spies to determine who is hitting them. It might be what you want, though. After a prolonged espionage campaign like this, my experience is that they are considerably weakened. And, as the poster above stated, taking them out will stop it for good.

 

[MyOlde]

My neighbour was (I lost to Elizabeth who won a cultural victory) Joao of Portugal. He's a snot at the best of times.

 

[Bushface]

I've had good results from spy rushes as a pre-invasion strategy. Build up a goodly bunch of spies and send them to attack, in this order, enemy luxuries (so that the enemy get Angry citizens who won't work), food resources (make 'em starve), strategic resources (stop them building good units), then do some fomenting in the cities you propose to attack first. Of course, you need an equally goodly pile of EPs to pay for all this, and it's a one-shot strategy unless your capital is very close to the border: successful spies are magically transported to your capital and might take too long to get back for a second rush before your target has rebuilt.
Poisoning water doesn't seem to cause serious problems: lack of food and luxuries does.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I've had good results from spy rushes as a pre-invasion strategy. Build up a goodly bunch of spies and send them to attack, in this order, enemy luxuries (so that the enemy get Angry citizens who won't work), food resources (make 'em starve), strategic resources (stop them building good units), then do some fomenting in the cities you propose to attack first. Of course, you need an equally goodly pile of EPs to pay for all this, and it's a one-shot strategy unless your capital is very close to the border: successful spies are magically transported to your capital and might take too long to get back for a second rush before your target has rebuilt.
Poisoning water doesn't seem to cause serious problems: lack of food and luxuries does.

The cost in EP's for this would be significant. I'd worry that I wouldn't have enough EP's for the one-turn civil disorder in a city I'm attacking. This actually eliminates the need for siege, as not only the cultural defenses go to zero for one turn, but the units are damaged. If you have the EP's or are running an EE, this sounds like a nice, fiendish strategy.

 

[Bushface]

Yes, it needs lots of EPs, the accumulation of which takes time but, unlike building a massive army, costs nothing but time. And spies can be turned out by cities whose production rate is quite low. Moreover, it's a strategy against which the AI's only defence is counterespionage, which often doesn't happen,

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Keep a spy in your cities (1, doesn't stack), and on strategic resources you have only 1 of.

Don't make a spy for each border tile or resource - it's a waste. Make another worker or two instead to fix things the spies kill.

Also, go conquer your neighbor. if you take them all, no one will be spying on you!

 

[cain3456]

Courthourses give you a little EP; not much, but they're useful for other things too.

Courthouses are far more useful in cutting maintence costs of your cities, the espionage points are a bonus.

Castles help too, but they're in such a small window of opportunity before gunpowder obsoletes them that I rarely build them.

 

[Archaic]

spy are the most annoying, if you suspect you neighbor explain to him at gun point that we dont want to be bothered by his spys, and as such to insure is mutral cooperation we will be taking all his land. how many mech could you have built rather than spys in those cities?