The Game is Broken...(Spy System)

[LDiCesare]

On emperor, I had a tech lead but lacked in culture, so no spies yet. My industrial district in the capital got sabotaged 2 or 3 times before I managed to get a counterspy. At this point, I earned a few amenities and money selling the caputred spies back. It looks rather balanced to me.

 

[Lord_Azazel]

Not broken the game per say, but a spy can severely cripple a city and you have no chance in protecting all your districts from them. A spy managed to sabotage my industrial district in my capital. I had to spend 60 something turns to repair everything there (marathon speed). I feel this was way too powerful, but I never liked the espionage system from the earlier games other than stealing techs since I felt they had too little influence. Maybe it is a change for the better, but I'll be damned if my districts get demolished like this again.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I haven't done much with the espionage system yet but I love the flavour of it - choosing the escape route for the discovered spy, and then having to negotiate via diplomacy for their release is pretty neat.

The only spying that's been done to me is some sabotage in my industrial district, so I moved a counterspy there. However, the OP's experience is making me think that it'll be handy to have counterspies watching the commercial district as well. Another thing to think about when placing districts, too.

 

[Zantetsuken]

The only issue I've had so far is the AI occasionally offering weird deals to get their spies back, usually I get pretty good deals for them, but one time Greece asked for pretty much everything I had in addition to his spy and offered nothing in return

 

[Zantetsuken]

Cool system at any rate, I liked the little escape mechanic when my spy got caught trying to steal a great work

 

[criZp]

I dont like it. Before a spy mission it says chance of capture/kill is 9%, then when the spy is on the run the game gives me various options of how to get out. Apparently the option I choose will influence the chance of getting caught/killed, so it isn't actually 9% like the game said it was.

Further, it doesn't tell you the chance of escape in the various options, only that "escaping on foot is the safest". And I've had 3 spies do missions with 9% chance of capture or kill, but they all were killed.

 

[MadDjinn]

RNG ftw!


jokes aside, the amount stolen is directly related to how good of a gold yield you have. Cities with less gold output give less gold. But if you make a gold production/trade capital mecca... expect to protect it.


I think the spy system is a nice counter balance to 'must be at war to hurt opponent'. and yeah, protect the industrial districts if you're making a wonder or doing space race stuff.

the sad part is that the AI doesn't do well with placing great works in theatre districts, so it's much harder to steal GWs. The Palace, holy sites and wonders can't be stolen from.

 

[Tolero317]

The issue is if it drains you down to zero, the game doesn't indicate that you have to continue paying back the AI and it keeps your balance at zero. For example. I just got siphoned for 800 gold, I had 700 in my treasury. I had a positive income of 53 gold a turn. This action zeroed out my balance and started the disband loop. The same spy then siphoned a turn or two later, additional income (that I didn't have). My treasury indicates I am making 53 gold a turn, but the balance never increases from 0. Additional units disband. The gold reading on the UI still indicate I have 0 money but a positive rate.

It appears that a spy is allowed to siphon below 0 and then all of your gold production goes in to paying off the debt. The problem is with no money you are unable to make spies and you are basically locked out of creating units. I hope this makes sense. I've had this happen on 2 seperate games so far against the AI and it's pretty much game over.

Tolero

 

[GhostSalsa]

The problem is with no money you are unable to make spies and you are basically locked out of creating units. I hope this makes sense. I've had this happen on 2 seperate games so far against the AI and it's pretty much game over.

If you are on the verge of losing your whole army sell a city or two instead (then conquer it back)

But it should tell you if hitting next turn is going to cause more lost gold and disbanding, another bad UI issue

 

[Takfloyd]

Of all the ways this game is broken, the espionage system is not one of them. However, bankruptcy IS broken. I thought everyone knew this already - if you go below zero, you can't go back up to positive income again, ever, due to a bug. So it's best to maintain a constant buffer surplus in case something happens, and if you do get gold siphoned, then immediately trade for some more gold and get a counterspy.

 

[katanaD]

while i havent had such horrors yet, dealing with spys is annoying. evry 4-5 turns i have to reset my spys to counterspy, really.. every 4-5 turns?

 

[Brutus2]

The spy system is awesome (aside from having to reassign counterspies every 8 turns but already have mods to fix that). Once they get a couple promotions it's time for some fun. I had a spy with the promotion that boosts tech steal chance and selected that policy that gives you an extra tech boost when you steal one, that was awesome. I also love getting the Cat burglar promotion, along with the Gain Sources buff, 90% chance to steal a great work is too fun! I also had a space race game where I used spies to Sabotage Production and destroy Spaceports which is great because the city has to spend time repairing those (builders can't repair buildings or districts) and at that point I don't care if the AI gets mad when we're racing for the win.

You kind of have to be flexible and roll with whatever random promotion you happen to get. The tough part is getting the promotions. In the beginning you have at best a 74% chance to siphon funds and if you get caught, that AI will hold a grudge forever and you need a couple successes to get that first promotion but it is worth it when you do. I have seen a spy get a promotion from counterspy missions after catching a couple enemy spies but I think that is harder to do because you have to hope an AI sends a spy to the district and city you have your counterspy in and then hope your spy catches them and it has to happen a few times to get a promotion.

Also, sending multiple spies to the same enemy city is helpful because if one does the Gain Sources mission, every one of your spies in that city gets the buff.

 

[Lunchmoney]

The number of spies an empire can have is limited and captured spies still count towards that limit. Never give them back and they cant spy on you

 

[kaspergm]

can we put 2 spies to counterspy in 1 city?because there will be times where you will have districts on opposite end of your city due to getting good adjacency bonus

Yes, you can put two spies on counterspy in the same city (different districts).

Imo. the espionage system is not really a success yet. It improves on Civ5 in a lot of ways (pretty much all of it, actually), but the amount of resources you need to put into counterespionage is not really well balanced. The fact that you'll need to have multiple spies to protect all major districts in a city (unless they are super clustered) is a bit of a problem, because this means you simply won't have enough spies to fully protect your empire - and that's before even starting to send some of them into foreign lands. I do hope AI does not "cheat" and know where you've put your counterspies, because if that's the case, espionage is going to be an absolute pain in the *** on higher difficulties. And personally, I don't find game features that just boil down to being a pain in the *** as being well designed. Apart from what sounds like a simple bug in what OP describes, I'm seriously tired of how a spy will destroy not just one, but all buildings in your districts.

 

[Mahasona]

can we put 2 spies to counterspy in 1 city?because there will be times where you will have districts on opposite end of your city due to getting good adjacency bonus

I put two spies in the same industrial district by mistake. Really annoyed when I noticed it and couldn't move them until their turns were done.

 

[LDiCesare]

AI doesn't seem toknow where your counterspies are. It seems to always target the same districts all the time (usually production), so it's quite easy to foil.

 

[pietro1990]

Its a good system the only problem i have with this mechanic that there are no consequences for ignoring soemone request of spying.

If there was a causic belli wich allows you to declare war if someone brokes a promise for not spying like " cold war " causic belli. Then yes

Now if the AI ignores you request thee is nothing you can do about them. and same goes for them yeah they ask not to spy on us i say yes and do it anyway what are the consequences a random denouncement? because the Ai is to chicken to declare war on late game (modern era) because of warmonger penalty if there was a causic belli i would thinx twice before saying yes to his request

 

[VCrakeV]

It hasn't broken the game for me, but it has devalued it for me. By the the time you have spying going on, you should have quite a few cities. And we are expected to guard every single district? That is way too many spies. I'm tired of rebuilding my industrial buildings, and having techs/boosts stolen. Either consequences of failing to guard from spying should be drastically reduced, or we should need less spies. As it is now, espionage is way too centralizing.

 

[KingCheops]

Spying is amazing in Civ6. Of course it has the caveat that applies to all aspects of the game in that the AI is super dumb. It is not that difficult to protect yourself because they will only ever target 1-2 biggest cities. You can also game them pretty well since you can go level up in backwaters and then send your master spies into the important spots.

My biggest gripe is that like a few other sections of the game it seems like this is a section that is waiting for an expansion to get "filled out". I'd prefer if the promotions weren't quite so random and if there were promotion tracks similar to units. So instead of having your counterspy earn his first promotion and get the choice of Disguise, Driver, and Cat Burglar have the game understand that it earned the promotion in a friendly city and offer the Quartermaster or Seduction promotion instead. It kind of sucks to have to take a Master Spy off of defense because it was only ever offered offensive skills.

It would also be cool to have second level effects. What if Quartermaster had Skunkworks as a second level effect that earns you an amount of science depending on the level of foreign spy that your counterspies thwart. Maybe Seduction gives you Double Agent which automatically gives you the Gain Sources mission against a civilization who's spy you thwarted. You could do similar things with offensive spies by making a Saboteur, Thief, and Guerrilla promotion track. You could then move all the "support" promotions to separate tracks (Disguise versus Driver type stuff) or you could create Espionage Support units similar to ground units -- this could truly let you build your shadow government and play Cold War type games.

 

[kaspergm]

Spying is amazing in Civ6. Of course it has the caveat that applies to all aspects of the game in that the AI is super dumb. It is not that difficult to protect yourself because they will only ever target 1-2 biggest cities. You can also game them pretty well since you can go level up in backwaters and then send your master spies into the important spots.

My biggest gripe is that like a few other sections of the game it seems like this is a section that is waiting for an expansion to get "filled out". I'd prefer if the promotions weren't quite so random and if there were promotion tracks similar to units. So instead of having your counterspy earn his first promotion and get the choice of Disguise, Driver, and Cat Burglar have the game understand that it earned the promotion in a friendly city and offer the Quartermaster or Seduction promotion instead. It kind of sucks to have to take a Master Spy off of defense because it was only ever offered offensive skills.

It would also be cool to have second level effects. What if Quartermaster had Skunkworks as a second level effect that earns you an amount of science depending on the level of foreign spy that your counterspies thwart. Maybe Seduction gives you Double Agent which automatically gives you the Gain Sources mission against a civilization who's spy you thwarted. You could do similar things with offensive spies by making a Saboteur, Thief, and Guerrilla promotion track. You could then move all the "support" promotions to separate tracks (Disguise versus Driver type stuff) or you could create Espionage Support units similar to ground units -- this could truly let you build your shadow government and play Cold War type games.

Full support to all your ideas, and I agree, this will very likely be a target of an expansion. It also seems strange that there is no espionage district, no espionage wonders, no espionage city states ... We do have an espionage civ, but even that seems somewhat half-hearted.