UNGY-01 Another spy attempt

[Rusten]

I like the idea of picking Victoria, Liz is so overplayed. Always preferred playing the "underdog" leader and financial itself is rated pretty high. I have been loving imperialistic lately, so trying to squeeze in some usage of that too would be fun.
Look at the image below for one of many beneficial situations of imperialistic, taken from a recent random leader immortal game of mine.

Spoiler :

This happened after whipping an almost complete worker the turn before. Those extra hammers are really good so early in the game, and as we're planning on avoiding rushing the imperialistic boost could be put to use and make for a fun change of play at the opening stage before we get to proper espionage.

I don't think the restriction based on number of great spies will work as we won't get that many (and 6-8 cities is pretty low imo), unless we're using spy specialists of course, but the problem is that they provide 1 science each. I assumed that's why ungy picked financial, we're going to have to use slider and cottages ( ). If spy specialists were an option it would be reasonable.

 

[shyuhe]

You can't hire large numbers of spy specialists until pretty late in the game though. If it weren't for that, I'd say we should run a FE with spies.

Vicky is fine with me for a leader. Otherwise, I'd prefer a non-financial organized leader. Maybe Fred for organized/philosophical? I think Darius will make this game too easy...

 

[Rusten]

I guess we should all agree on that first of all then - whether we're allowed to use spy specialists later in the game. It's only 1 science, so as long as we stay away from representation it shouldn't matter or finish any research late in the game. I would also like aiming for a FE with Frederick if the former is allowed, getting a lot of great spies should be with the theme of our game shouldn't it?

 

[pigswill]

If we research a tech (at 1 beaker per spy specialist) and then steal that tech from another civ do the beakers we'd put into the tech disappear or do they accumulate and get added to the next tech we research?

Edit: I've only just won my first game on emperor so from my point of view any leader on immortal is not going to be 'too easy'.

 

[Morganknight]

I think we should run the spy specialists. The small amount of research they generate is irrelevent...and I agree with Fred as a leader.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

lurker's comment: IMHO, if you're going to run a spy game, you need to prioritize the GW. settle the first GSpy and build Scotland Yard with the second.

Check out Gil as a leader. Cheap CH's, which let you run the spy specialists earlier. vulture UU helps early game too.

 

[Rusten]

Disregard my previous post about the FE, that won't work well. Even late game there won't be enough room for spy specialists to do anything as caste system is just for scientists and merchants, and running merchants early on would mean less great spies later in the game. There is no real option but cottages early in the game, but I guess we could farm up some leftover+overlap cities late in the game with biology with the sole task of running spy specialists, mostly ignoring production. Also, even if we run a CE we can use mercantilism for a free spy specialist, we won't have the option of more than 1 anyway until way into the game. The AI also prioritizes that tech path usually, which would mean we could steal our way there quite fast.

Gilgamesh is interesting, but I don't think the courthouse UU is cheaper, it's just available earlier. Also, we were looking to weaken our early game units, not make it stronger!

Edit: I looked it up and it turns out the ziggurat actually is cheaper than a standard courthouse (90 vs 120 ), silly me. Organized means half-price though, which is even better, but on the other hand we'll get them later in the game.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

lurker's comment:

Also, we were looking to weaken our early game units, not make it stronger!

Thought you might need some help at immortal...

Here's something else to throw into the debate - early use of the spybomb. I can't recall a game where someone has spybombed with the first Gspy. What could you do with that?

anyway, this will be fun to lurk. Looking forward to it when you finally get the game going.

 

[Rusten]

For those wanting to do some research ahead of the game, here's an article I found in the strategy forum - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252496, maybe it will be of help somehow. Here's a small part of it comparing espionage multipliers to science, it was much better for espionage than I thought by default actually, and also Nationalism isn't added there for some reason, so that's another +25%. Some of the buildings are limited or goes obsolete though, so keep that in mind (Oxford, S. Yard, Castle, Academy and the useless late game laboratories for instance).

Spoiler :

1.Comparison of multplier buildings

Summary: Science Wins

Science:

• Academy (+50%) - Can only be built by a Great Scientist
• Monasteries (+10% each) (Meditation) - Requires religion, so I'll count only one per city
• Laboratory (+25%) (Superconductors)
• Library (+25%) (Writing)
• Observatory (+25%) (Astronomy)
• University (+25%) (Education)
• Oxford University (+100%) (Education) - Requires 3 Universities, National Wonder

Sums up to 260%, but with all religions can be made 300%, 2.6 per 1 is not bad.



Espionage:

• Castle (25%) (Engineering)
• Intelligence Agency (+50%) (Communism)
• Scotland Yard (+100%) - Can only be built by a great spy
• Jail (+50%) (Constitution)

Sums up to 225%, still not so bad even when compared to science's 260%.

Another plus for picking mercantilism is that we want to postpone economics for as long as possible in order to keep the +25% from castles, hence our trade routes won't be the best either way.

 

[shyuhe]

Well I know at least 3 on the roster play at immortal+ regularly so I don't think the difficulty should be that much of a problem... And as they say, you generally play SG's a level or two above your normal level

FE with spies is not very efficient as you need the late game spy buildings to get more than 1 spy. I think CE with EP slider is the way to go (although a few farm cities for getting Gspies + production won't hurt).

Ziggarauts will probably be available significantly earlier than courthouses since the AI takes forever to tech CoL (except for the one civ that goes for it for the religion). Priesthood is a lot higher on the AI tech priority list than CoL... But we shouldn't really need the GSpies that early. I would still prefer Fred over Gilgamesh because I love organized Philo will be nearly useless given our variant though. Cheap universities? Bah.

 

[mystyfly]

I don't really mind any of the leaders mentioned above, but I'd like play a game as Victoria as Fin + Imp is a strong and a weaker trait. I don't think SE/FE will work that good. That +1 beaker a spy specialist provides doesn't pose any problem. Before a certain tech is finished, we can change the tech we're currently researching, so we can avoid selfresearching. It also doesn't make any difference whether we already know 90% of the tech we're stealing: success rate and esp mission cost is the same as if we knew no bit of the tech.

 

[ungy]

How about we settle on Vic at immortal?
I think we definately should allow spy specs.
I think we should be able to run other specs to generate GP--just not use the GP for lightbulbing. I don't think we should eliminate corps from the game and also allow trade missions.
Not sure what (if anything) we should say formally to restrict our warmongering.

 

[ungy]

Here's something else to throw into the debate - early use of the spybomb. I can't recall a game where someone has spybombed with the first Gspy. What could you do with that?

We played an espionage game RBTS1-b I think where we did that. Really pretty overpowering actually. Compared to the early GS where you can't lightbulb to the full potential, or the early GM, where you can't get a big trade mission, you get the full #of spy points.

 

[Rusten]

What map type are we going for? Would prefer Continents/Pangea/Fractal personally. It would suck if we end up isolated with fractal though. If we choose fractal someone not playing should check the WB. I usually play them out in my offline games, but for an espionage game not so much.

And yes, it seems noone objects to Vicky. (except the organized addict up there of course )

 

[Morganknight]

So, why are we not chosing a philosophical leader? It seems like 100% great spy growth would not be a bad thing...

 

[mystyfly]

So, why are we not chosing a philosophical leader? It seems like 100% great spy growth would not be a bad thing...

Because we can't really use this for the Great Spies, as Caste System doesn't allow us to run spy specialists. Only Courthouses allow 1 specialists. For more we need to wait until Jails... We would have to generate other GPs like GMs for trade mission and that isn't our objective - to generate GPs.

 

[ungy]

What map type are we going for? Would prefer Continents/Pangea/Fractal personally. It would suck if we end up isolated with fractal though. If we choose fractal someone not playing should check the WB.

I think either continents or fractal--if we're isolated we can just reload--we won't be very far in.

 

[mystyfly]

I prefer fractal.
Ungy, can you roll a start so we can discuss our strategy and somebody can check if we're isolated...

 

[shyuhe]

And yes, it seems noone objects to Vicky. (except the organized addict up there of course )

Am I the organized addict? I guess I changed my spiritual addiction to an organized addiction

Any of the three map types discussed is fine with me. Pangaea without early rushing is the hardest diplomatically but fractal always gives interesting maps too.

 

[Rusten]

Am I the organized addict? I guess I changed my spiritual addiction to an organized addiction

Well you did suggest Fred even after putting philosophical as useless for this variant.

Speaking of addictions; man - I got it bad for the Khmer. Separately his traits are so-so, but running a food economy with half-price granaries, free border pop , half-price library and a +1 food building is just beyond awesome, you get that infrastructure whipped out faster than you can say <spiritual>. I've been trying to kick my spiritual addiction for months, and I think I finally might've made some progress. Unfortunately now I'm stuck with 1 leader only instead of several with the same trait. This one might be even harder to get rid of.
Not that this has ANYTHING to do with our game, but it just blew me away, recommended for everyone wanting to do something new in single player. Go all farm+mines and whip out everything. Hope my new addiction won't take over completely, otherwise I might "accidentally" farm over all of Victoria's cottages.

I vote for fractal too. Continents is always the same, can get a little dull. Fractal on the other hand should be refreshing, always something different.