The Espionage Victory for Enthusiasts

[Sun Tzu Wu]

This thread is intended for players that are enthusiastic about the new Espionage Victory.

This is the place to share new ideas about achieving the Espionage Victory.

It is for both players experienced in this new victory category and those who have yet to fully experience it (that includes players struggling to win Espionage Victories).

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Espionage Victory References:

The first HoF Epionage Victory game played (older than the EV category itself) is detailed in the G-Major 116 Discussion thread. it starts with a hint in post #13. However, it really starts with post #17 (you must reveal the spoiler).

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The latest Gauntlet is an Espionage game with Elizabeth. Hope to see a good participation.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The basic idea is to found a city, seed it with some culture, gift it to an AI then run lots of "spread culture" missions until it becomes legendary then either capture it or have it flip back to you.

The new Mod categorises any Culture Victory where a "Spread Culture" mission has been executed. (Spread culture missions are unlikely to ever be undertaken in a traditional Cultural victory). Please note BTS itself will still flag the game as a Culture win but the submission system will pick it up as Espionage.

I'm hoping we get more than the 2 entries we had for G-Minor 205!

 

[WastinTime]

In your case, you have to capture it, cus it will never flip back to you peacefully.

You don't necessarily need to found a city specifically for this purpose either, but that is a good way to get one really close. You would, however, need the city to be within your borders, otherwise the culture mission is not available.

You also don't need seed culture, but it might make things easier/faster, however it might not be the fastest way to victory. The seed culture can be AI culture.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

In your case, you have to capture it, cus it will never flip back to you peacefully.

That's not correct - see this example.

172 1735 AD LC3 has revolted and joined the English Empire!
LC3 has achieved Legendary Culture!

The key is to select the "City flipping after Conquest" option.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

City Flipping after Conquest is the correct option as I understand it for cities to flip back to their true owner. Just make sure the AI is unable to get many military units in the LC to reduce the probability of revolting too much. Also, you will want to regain control of all three LC on the turn the last one goes legendary to end the game on the earliest turn possible. So be prepared to use the military take-over method, if necessary.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

You also don't need seed culture, but it might make things easier/faster, however it might not be the fastest way to victory. The seed culture can be AI culture.

Are you sure about this? My understanding was that in the absence of your own culture the "Spread Culture" mission will put just 1 into the city - that will take a long time to bear fruit.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

The problem with using AI culture for seed culture is your City Culture espionage modifier percentage will start at 0% rather than the 50% CC modifier one gets for seeding with a Great Work via one Great Aritist per LC. Note that this is a minor issue as long as the AI culture does not get very big, since the cost in Espionage Points of the Inject Culture Mission is proportional to the Culture being injected and that will remain small until your own culture greatly exceeds (begins to pass radius 4-5 culture) the AIs' (plural & possessive) culture. The AI that owns the city should not have more than radius 3-4 culture or that may adversely affect the City Culture Espionage modifier.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Are you sure about this? My understanding was that in the absence of your own culture the "Spread Culture" mission will put just 1 into the city - that will take a long time to bear fruit.

No, it will not necessarily be a 1 Culture injection. The game adds the Culture of all Nations in the city; 5% of that total will be the amount of your Culture the Culture Injection Mission will add. if that amount is less than 1, I assume it will always be rounded up to 1 (an inject culture mission that adds 0 culture would make no sense at all). It is also understood that the Inject Culture Mission is available only when the target city tile has at least some of your Culture emanating from one of your nearby cities; in other words, the Target City must be in a cultural ring (tile culture as opposed to city culture) of one of your nearby cities for the Inject Culture Mission to be available.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

No, it will not necessarily be a 1 Culture injection. The game adds the Culture of all Nations in the city; 5% of that total will be the amount of your Culture the Culture Injection Mission will add. if that amount is less than 1, I assume it will always be rounded up to 1

I see, thanks.

 

[Seraiel]

I search for a thread that I made about a month ago. I tried to coordinate the HoF-players so that every Espionage-slot gets at least one entry so that it isn't empty. Did that thread got deleted? I can't imagine that it's forbidden to coordinate something like that, it was everybody's free decision to announce the slot that he's going for and it ofc. would have also been totally ok if someone would go for the same slot without announcing it, because someone i. e. wanted to pay back someone else for whatever. Or am I just too tired already and cannot see properly anymore?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

It wasn't a thread - think it was a post in the Hall of Players, I saw it over the weekend.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I search for a thread that I made about a month ago. I tried to coordinate the HoF-players so that every Espionage-slot gets at least one entry so that it isn't empty. Did that thread got deleted? I can't imagine that it's forbidden to coordinate something like that, it was everybody's free decision to announce the slot that he's going for and it ofc. would have also been totally ok if someone would go for the same slot without announcing it, because someone i. e. wanted to pay back someone else for whatever. Or am I just too tired already and cannot see properly anymore?

As the OP of this thread, I'm open to using this thread for the purpose of announcing planned Espionage Victory games here with the goal of one game per slot to fill this new victory category in the HoF main table as soon as possible.

The main focus will still be learning how to play the new Espionage Victory and ultimately doing so with the earliest date possible. We will also compare different Espionage Assisted Cultural Victory (Espionage Victory or EACV) strategies here in this thread.

 

[elitetroops]

As the espionage victories now count for all categories except Machiavelli towards EQM, this is a great opportunity to raise your score in categories that otherwise can be harder to maximize. How would EV games play out with later starts? Is there any particular era that would especially well suited for espionage victory? (With this I don't mean the earliest victory, ancient is most likely best for that, but an era where you get interesting options at the start to beeline the victory condition.)

Also, there's not much data yet on how well this works on quick speed. Do you think it will still be clearly superior to the traditional approach on quick speed?

 

[Seraiel]

I think Quick-level-espionage is on par with traditional culture.

Regarding later era, Idk. but having Constitution (Jails! ) would probably be advantegous. Not that you could win against ancient, but I believe that would be the best era of the advanced starts.

 

[elitetroops]

With "on par", you mean about equal? If that's the case, then you can also play competitive espionage games on quick speed by doing traditional culture and one spread culture mission in any random city before winning to have it counted as an espionage victory...

How about hybrid approaches on quick/standard speed, where you get 1-2 cities to legendary status the traditional way and the remaining 1-2 through espionage?

Or some hybrid where you play like traditional culture until lib (lib->constitution?), then go 100% EP slider while running as many spies as you can, the rest artists, for max GP production, while building spies. Then when you have enough GAs/GSpies, you do culture bombs, infiltrate AI, gift cities and grab the remaining culture with espionage missions. I think this should be slightly faster than a traditional cultural victory, regardless of speed.

 

[Seraiel]

Yes, with "on par" I meant "about equal" . I heard that expression several times already, don't know if it's uncommon for the english language.

 

[Pangaea]

Yes, at a guess I think the expression comes from golf, where "par" is the normal 'score' for each hole.

 

[WastinTime]

With "on par", you mean about equal? If that's the case, then you can also play competitive espionage games on quick speed by doing traditional culture and one spread culture mission in any random city before winning to have it counted as an espionage victory...

You've nailed exactly why EV 100% always has the potential to be faster than traditional Culture on any game speed.
Every game has free, passive EPs. Even if you only produce 1000 culture from your EPs, you can still shave 1 turn off the fastest possible Culture game.