What do you use your spies for? Especially as England

[Terpzikhore]

So I really enjoy playing England, usually on the 2nd highest difficulty which makes it hard to actually win games but it's an interesting challenge to stay alive and do well enough.
I almost exclusively use spies to gain City State alliances. Especially in the early game you can gain multiple allies this way, but later on this tempers off when other civilizations also start getting large amounts of city state loyalty points. Using a spy on a civilization seems to take a very, very long time to pay off compared to putting them in a city state.

England is the strongest spy country, but what to best use spies for? Is there a point when you decide to focus on spying on civilizations vs city states? Do you ever use spies as diplomates? Because you have higher city security for free it seems fairly low priority to use a spy defensively, except if you are leading in the charts.

Btw, England is supposed to have a bonus that spies travel to any city in 1 turn but that is a lie as I've had them be travelling for 2-3 turns many times. Maybe they travel 1 turn quicker than normal?

 

[Alpakinator]

I almost always use spies as... spies in capitals of the strongest civs, no matter if friends of enemies.
As England I accumulate points to steal techs from all civs, or steal faith if a capital has unusually large faith/turn. If somehow I'm not in a tech disadvantage, then use them to steal great person points with all spies at the same time. With 5 spies it almost triples you great person point gain, so I fill all specialist slots in London.

Also, blockading enemy capital with a spy is very nice when laying siege with ships of the line.

 

[Terpzikhore]

I almost always use spies as... spies in capitals of the strongest civs, no matter if friends of enemies.
As England I accumulate points to steal techs from all civs, or steal faith if a capital has unusually large faith/turn. If somehow I'm not in a tech disadvantage, then use them to steal great person points with all spies at the same time. With 5 spies it almost triples you great person point gain, so I fill all specialist slots in London.

Also, blockading enemy capital with a spy is very nice when laying siege with ships of the line.

That surprises me a bit. Do you not feel like you are missing out on all the city state alliances? Perhaps I am underestimating the benefits of spying on civilizations. It just seems to take a looong time to pay off while you can quickly flip city states.

 

[Alpakinator]

That surprises me a bit. Do you not feel like you are missing out on all the city state alliances? Perhaps I am underestimating the benefits of spying on civilizations. It just seems to take a looong time to pay off while you can quickly flip city states.

For a long time i haven't been flipping CS with spies, so I might be wrong on that: I remember doing that, and diplomatic civs overwhelming some of these cs with tons of diplomats anyway, so it discouraged me. But that wasn't too common.
In general i value spy stealing cause eg. stealing one tech every 50-100 turns is stronger than allying a single CS. Also, science/turn generated from spies in major civs cities (statecraft policy) is pretty strong. Also, I'm usually playing on immortal or deity so domination victory is pretty much the only viable choice, and using spies in capitals works better for this goal.

 

[andersw]

Flipping cs and/or protecting my capital, I've not been able to get any reasonable tech stealing times on emperor diff.

 

[chicorbeef]

I like to put one spy in the capital of the leading AI and devote the rest to CS'es.

In the late game I might stick a spy in my capital.