What spy missions are we still missing?

[darkace77450]

I'm really enjoying the new espionage missions. Knocking out enemy envoys in particular is incredibly useful, but the others have their uses as well. I find myself wondering what more they could add in this area, and the only two I can come up with are jail breaks and dirty bombs.

A jail break could be a way to rescue captured spies - not that this happens often, and not that the price to buy them back is ever prohibitively high.

A dirty bomb could be a way to detonate a nuclear device in a city without declaring war. Such a mission would need to have a low chance of success without being discovered, and it would obviously be a suicide mission.

As to promotions, I'd love to see double agent promotion that has a chance of flipping any captured spy to your side, increasing your spy capacity by one.

Is there anything else our spies could do? Or have they already covered everything that needs to be covered.

 

[clapyourhands]

I like the jailbreak idea. A late-game population-lowering mechanic could be cool, like a "poison water supply" sort of mission for the Aqueduct. Could be quite disruptive to be a few turns away from being able to build a new district only to lose a Citizen.

Some sort of mission to increase Tourism and/or Loyalty to your civ could help--there's a mission to lower Loyalty to the target civ, but there isn't one to increase Foreign Tourism or Loyalty to your own civ. It'd likely have to do with advertising of some sort.

 

[clapyourhands]

This one might be a bit too meta/gamey, but a commenter on Reddit had some ideas about Gossip that could be tied to spies. Specifically, using spies to obfuscate or alter Gossip information. This would probably only be useful if Gossip itself became more useful, but you could have things like a Spaceport that's about to launch a project being displayed as inactive due to a Spy mission, or a competitive Wonder someone is building being hidden or shown as a different Wonder. Essentially, if Gossip were to become a more reliable source of useful information, a spy mission to undermine the validity of this information would be useful.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Along the lines of gossiping and dealing with loyalty could be this: Spread Fake Information- Used to lower the loyalty of a city.
Is there still a mission in the neighborhood to recruit partisans because it could be tied in with that since I'm not sure if rebels pop up around a city anymore now with the new loyalty system?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I would like the Sabotage Mission-currently limited to Space Ports & Industrial Zones-to be expanded to all Districts-including Aqueducts & Neighbourhoods.

I would love to see a return of some version of "Poison Water Supply" (requires Aqueduct) or Plant Nuclear Device.....though these should be horrendously difficult to pull off.

I agree that Spreading Fake Info & possibly Fake Gossip would also be great.

I would also love to use Spies again as a means of learning what AI Civs are up to (info that you can trade to the Civilisation it pertains to).

On the City-State Front, I'd like to see the return of Rigging Elections and/or Coups. Like Fabricating a Scandal, only it gives you +1/+2 Envoys, respectively, at the same time as the enemy Civ's is removed. Perhaps with the limitation that it can only be done in City-States where you have sufficient presence (maybe 3+ Envoys).

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

This one might be a bit too meta/gamey, but a commenter on Reddit had some ideas about Gossip that could be tied to spies. Specifically, using spies to obfuscate or alter Gossip information. This would probably only be useful if Gossip itself became more useful, but you could have things like a Spaceport that's about to launch a project being displayed as inactive due to a Spy mission, or a competitive Wonder someone is building being hidden or shown as a different Wonder. Essentially, if Gossip were to become a more reliable source of useful information, a spy mission to undermine the validity of this information would be useful.

Using Fake Gossip could be used as a means to undermine AI Civ Relations. Another possibility is that, if your spy commits an action without being caught, you may be given the option of implicating another Civilization in the deed. If the latter were to be introduced, then players should also get random suggestions as to what spy may have committed certain acts against you.....if that makes sense?

 

[Corozivu]

Regarding the jail break mission I would rather you had the option to give missions to the imprisoned spy while Gathering Sources. Like trying to kill himself or to act as a double agent and if succesful it would decrease the enemy,s level of acces against you during wars. If not, the enemy gets permanent vision of the city the spy was built in. This would make offensive play more rewarding instead of being cautious and keeping all of your spies on defense because „they seem to get caught anyway” or not building/training them at all. Also keeping an enemy imprisoned agent to prevent them from recruiting a new agent would be dangerous in the long term.

Another option i would like is to have the option to retire a master spy(3rd rank/promotion) to take the role of a diplomat that decreases any future warmongering penalties you may get.

 

[Bechhold]

Subs i.e. tapping communications.

 

[Morningcalm]

In Civ IV you could sabotage individual improvements, which in some cases was devastating since cottages "levelled up" into better improvements the longer they were worked, for example. In Civ VI improvements are generally not as potent, but sabotaging seaside resorts might help stop a cultural victory for example. Civ IV also had a Poison Water mission where you could spoil an entire city's water supply and destroy the city's growth...trying to rescue a captured spy might be an interesting mission too.

 

[dunkleosteus]

How about a way to influence government policy? Would let you switch out one of their policy cards without them knowing. They could of course buy open their policy slots and change it back but that would only be if they noticed it. maybe the AI would notice the next time they finished a civic.

Could also have propaganda campaigns to increase tourism for your cities, to try to flip the city.

There's a foment loyalty campaign to reduce loyalty in the city but it would also be interesting to increase loyalty towards your own cities.

You can sabotage districts to get buildings destroyed, but it would be interesting if you could do sabotage more subtly: reduce the great person points produced by the district.

Could have a mission to increase war weariness.

It would be cool if you could place spies in city states to try to remove an envoy from an opponent.

It would be cool if you could increase religious pressure from your cities to theirs with a spy. Maybe by starting a secret cult in the upper echelons of the city.

It would be cool if you could plant sleeper agents into their cities and if they ever went to war with you, you could instantly activate them to damage their cities.

 

[zhivik]

Steal a strategic resource mission
I believe this may be very interesting, particularly in the late game, and especially if the map doesn't have a lot of oil, aluminium or uranium. Success in such mission would give temporary access to that resource (for instance, 20 turns on Normal speed), so that you could build the units you want. At the same time, the civ which originally developed the resource would lose access for the same number of turns. This could be roleplayed as the time they need to find more of the resource. The mission could also be used strategically, like denying an opponent access to a resource before you start a war, so they cannot replenish their latest units.

Other than that, I like the Jailbreak mission, it is really needed because diplomacy is still pretty cumbersome, if not outright broken.

 

[dunkleosteus]

Steal a strategic resource mission
I believe this may be very interesting, particularly in the late game, and especially if the map doesn't have a lot of oil, aluminium or uranium. Success in such mission would give temporary access to that resource (for instance, 20 turns on Normal speed), so that you could build the units you want. At the same time, the civ which originally developed the resource would lose access for the same number of turns. This could be roleplayed as the time they need to find more of the resource. The mission could also be used strategically, like denying an opponent access to a resource before you start a war, so they cannot replenish their latest units.

Other than that, I like the Jailbreak mission, it is really needed because diplomacy is still pretty cumbersome, if not outright broken.

Stealing a resource doesn't make as much sense to me... Civ games imply that resources are a supply, not a quantity that you have. You need access to a resource in order to repair units that require that resource. Strategic resources aren't something you could hide in your coat... I can't see a spy stuffing an oil tanker in his pocket either.

However, if it were more like a siphon strategic resource mission, I might be able to see that. For example, during the duration of the mission, you could get access to the strategic resource if you had an active trade route with the city. You'd be embezzling or otherwise fudging the books so that no one noticed them being loaded onto your shipping containers and out of the country. This would imply that you couldn't do this while at peace.

During war, you might be able to sabotage strategic resources though.

 

[zhivik]

Stealing a resource doesn't make as much sense to me... Civ games imply that resources are a supply, not a quantity that you have. You need access to a resource in order to repair units that require that resource. Strategic resources aren't something you could hide in your coat... I can't see a spy stuffing an oil tanker in his pocket either.

Yet a spy can divert an oil tanker to another location, either by bribing port officials and/or the tanker crew, or by hacking the electronic system that handles delivery contracts, if we are going to get hypothetical. The rest is purely game mechanics - my idea was to prevent a player temporarily from having access to a resource, in a similar fashion that the Neutralize Governor mission works. You can argue that 20 turns is a lot, of course, but I believe such missions can provide additional strategic depth and make spies even more useful.

 

[dunkleosteus]

Yet a spy can divert an oil tanker to another location, either by bribing port officials and/or the tanker crew, or by hacking the electronic system that handles delivery contracts, if we are going to get hypothetical. The rest is purely game mechanics - my idea was to prevent a player temporarily from having access to a resource, in a similar fashion that the Neutralize Governor mission works. You can argue that 20 turns is a lot, of course, but I believe such missions can provide additional strategic depth and make spies even more useful.

See the update I made to my response.

 

[darkace77450]

I don't know how I missed it when I created this thread a few months ago, but it occurs to me that there's no spy mission for Holy Sites. A mission that boosts your religious pressure and/or erodes other religions' pressure seems fitting enough. A corresponding promotion could update Civ5's Underground Sect, allowing spies to conduct this new mission at two levels higher than normal.

 

[Jarms48]

I'd like to see the return of spies having the option to be delegates, giving increased tourism modifiers and/or passive religious pressure (similar to a trade route), to the civilization they're attached too.

 

[acluewithout]

I’m not sure what more missions are needed really.

I actually wish the missions were thinned out a bit. Spies should just have some basic missions they can run (eg listening post, siphon gold, whatever), and maybe then some ‘advanced’ missions they can only run with an appropriate promotion (eg steal great work).

Alternatively, or in addition, I'd maybe introduce two new spy units too. These, along with the original spy, would count against your spy capacity, forcing you to decide how best to allocate your spy capacity.

These two new units would be: (1) a Counterspy. They would get the benefit of the Quartermaster promotion (or something like it), and would be a better counter-spy than a standard spy. Standard spies would not longer be able to get the Quartermaster Promotion; (2) a Sabotuer. They would be able to Disrupt Rocketry and destroy Industrial Zones rather than the standard spy.

Separately, I think they should also get rid of the Partisans missions. Is just daft, and there are already enough reasons to not build Neighbourhoods. The mission that reduces loyalty covers this area sufficiently, so losing Partisans would be fine.