Use of spies in war

Nick723

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I have a few questions for people who use spies for city revolts.

How many spies do you budget per city? Mine seem to get caught the whole time and or fail. At the same time, multiple spies per city is expensive.

Do you wait for the full 50% discount always?

If a spy fails or gets caught and you don’t have another, what do you do? Just continue to the next city?
 
I mainly use my great spies for espionage to steal techs. Normally one per city. Focus 2-3 cities.

You need to be careful not to stack spies. Or have them on adjacent tiles as probability of being caught is higher. Ai will spam espionage buildings later on. So unless you have thousands of saved EP on one AI it's not really worth it? If you have 5-6 in one city no wonder they are all getting caught. If you wait the full 5 turns many will be caught. Interestingly if you have closed borders chances of capture are even higher. As ever Kaitzilla has done a guide.

Make sure to scroll to mission fail part too. Stacked spies add 15% to mission fail chance.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-complete-guide-to-espionage.638613/
 
I'll keep additional spies 1 turn away from the key city in question, or in proximity cities for future revolts. What to do when a spy fails is really situational. Often with two movers I'll just go ahead and move onto the next city I have a spy building up the wait bonus for, and replace the failed spy in the meantime. But depending on espionage points available, defenses, the importance of the city, and the importance of speed I've done everything from attack the city with big losses, "cold" city revolt, wait 1 additional turn then city revolt with new spy, wait for full 5 turn wait bonus, or destroy walls instead.

Stacking spies will greatly increase the odds that they're discovered. As I understand the odds of discovery increase PER additional spy (@Kaitzilla can probably confirm). This makes it very difficult to accrue wait bonuses consistently. It's easy to fall into the trap of using more spies = get more caught = use even more spies next time = have even more get caught. If it's the end of the game tank war, sure, throw in a stack of 10 spies. Earlier than that I'm dealing with 1 spy per city, but I put a lot of effort into advancing them ahead of time and having backups ready to swoop in.

Another minor point is if you're able to attack a city turn 1 of the war, attempt the city revolt BEFORE declaring. It'll have less chance to be caught and if it is caught, can just delay the war a minute.

I will usually aim for building up a decent espionage surplus on the target ahead of time, essentially banking in 1-2 "fails" that result in me having to rush some revolts without the wait reduction. The benefit of this is that the extra espionage can give you full vision of the AI. This often allows me to pull away my emergency defenders instead of aggression, because I can see exactly what the AI can and can't do.

There is definitely a possibility of really bad spy luck derailing an attack that's dependent on them, that is the tradeoff. I would say with a traditional HA rush, I often just build 1 spy to utilize the free EPs on a city revolt or a few wall destroys. Can be hugely worth it, and if it's discovered you can just attack like usual. There are a lot of UUs that people think are underwhelming because siege does the heavy lifting, but if you use spies with them they are actually very good (chokonus, samurai and cataphracts come to mind). I've even had some success with praets, berserkers, gallics>maces and all the gunpowder UUs. The potential advantage you gain is from having to spend fewer hammers on spies than siege & potentially be faster, at the cost of your economy spending. This eco spending is mitigated somewhat by having some free EPs accrue, not needing to tech construction/engineering, spies being the 'best' gp to run when relevant, and being able to pay for that economy cost during the war while your troops are on the way.
 
Thanks both, great answers. I didn’t know about the stacking thing. Glad I asked the question as I was doing it completely wrong!

Is anyone aware of a YouTube video where this tactic is employed? Would be good to see it in action to get a proper feel for it!
 
Heh, I use quite a bit less finesse when using spies for revolts.

When I'm doing this in tank wars later I just send 4-5 per city and they only sit as long as it takes to get the option to try the revolt or the tanks to get into position...by this point it's perfectly fine to just run EP slider and focus the target, normally I would just be running 100% gold and buying tanks anyway at this stage of the game. After successful revolt the leftover spies move deeper in to stack with new spies coming down the pipeline and we keep on rolling forth.

about 4 spies is generally enough to succeed against bad odds getting caught while trying the revolt. 5 is just insurance against bad odds and losing multiple spies on the way to the city/on the single interturn.
 
Closed Borders is what usually kills spies in droves.


A stack of 5 in a city have almost a 7% chance to die each turn for each spy.
Whether it is 2 spies or 10 spies stacked together, each individual spy still faces a 7% chance of dying each turn.

A single spy in a city is 3% chance to die each turn, so to save on :hammers: most people will put one in each important city and run the :espionage: slider as needed.

A huge stack of spies is almost guaranteed to get the mission done in a city while a single spy only has one chance.
Definitely a conundrum. :lol:

I tend to have 1 spy follow the main AI army, 1 spy in a few of the fattest cities I want to capture, and 2 spies in the most important enemy city.
At 40:hammers: each, they cost almost as much as a Catapult!
So sometimes I don't build many spies unless there are Castles or the AI have stronger units than me.
 
Ai will spam espionage buildings later on. So unless you have thousands of saved EP on one AI it's not really worth it?
Spies as a method of bringing down walls with some reliability is an early-mid game play.

If you want to, you can use them for tech much longer by giving the AI a trojan horse trash can city that you culture flood. It won't be able to work tiles and will pretty much never get anti-espionage buildings. Bonus points if you can get the religious bonus too, but even the -50% and espionage spending is typically good enough to steal techs at a small fraction of their beaker cost (despite it costing more espionage by default).

Pointless if your tech situation is good, but useful if you've had successful conquests and are lagging in tech a bit.

There's also the weird CTE method.
 
Thanks both, great answers. I didn’t know about the stacking thing. Glad I asked the question as I was doing it completely wrong!

Is anyone aware of a YouTube video where this tactic is employed? Would be good to see it in action to get a proper feel for it!

I liked these two series:


 
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