What type of espionage works 4 you?

Which espionage is most useful to you?

  • Steal Plans

    Votes: 30 57.7%
  • Initiate Propaganda

    Votes: 9 17.3%
  • Sabotage

    Votes: 9 17.3%
  • expose enemy spy

    Votes: 4 7.7%

  • Total voters
    52
  • Poll closed .

Fanatica

Strategic Mapmaker
Joined
Mar 18, 2004
Messages
314
Location
In The Moment at Waters Edge
I'd like to hear some feed back as to your usage and preferences of espionage in your game play.
I haven't found stealing techs much use, because I usually have more than my enemies or else I'm at war however, initiate propaganda has been helping. Let's hear it...
 
Initiate Propaganda is a great way of getting cities without going to war..

But you must have gold, and it does not always work the first time.
 
Originally posted by DoubleT
Initiate Propaganda is a great way of getting cities without going to war..

But you must have gold, and it does not always work the first time.

Propaganda without war ??
If you want to have a little chance when using propaganda the AI should not be in Democratie (Cities are immune from propaganda)
nor in Republic (Chance are much too low) but rather in Communism; So how do you expect to have the AI under communism without war?
Then city must be at size 1 population. You can try on size 2 but your chance will be much lower.
So in order to get the city on size 1 you must put the city on Diet by placing defensive units on every (20) squares. So population of the city won't be able to work any square and population will die.
I have tried that once it is a bit tedious and will cost you a huge amount of Gold.
 
Steal Techs-late in the game is cheaper then researching them.

Sabotage Production- can be key to winning in certain games. Has helped me numerous times win the space race or get the UN.
 
The problem is:

Espionage is only worthwhile after you built the Intelligence Agency - rather late in the game.

Steal Techs and Steal Military Plans work best, Investigate City is hardly worth it if you can steal Military Plans, too.

Only if you want to make sure that you get a certain wonder earlier, but in modern times there are hardly must-have wonders, the best wonders are middle ages wonders (IMO).
 
Originally posted by Gengis Khan
Sabotage Production- can be key to winning in certain games. Has helped me numerous times win the space race or get the UN.

I've never tried sabotage that way. Just curious to know how much Gold it would cost to sabotage the U.N.
 
It depends on how many shields the AI has accumulated already. If the wonder is almost complete, it will cost a fortune.
 
Steal plans, so that I can see where the AI has placed it's nave, before I send out transports and carriers and such.
 
I use investigate city quite regularly. Particularly before a war or during a wonder race. Of the real "espionage" options, the only one I use at all is steal plans. The others seem prohibitively costly, until the late game when many of games are already decided anyhow.
 
Stealing technology isn't listed however especially in the modern ages this is the most important espionage mission... I know that ST isn't really an espionage mission in the game, but in the real world... :)
The plans are very expensive but very useful...
Propaganda isn't so weak... A militarious Civ often has very little culture, and if I have more it could work.
 
Sorry I missed stealing a technology in the poll.
There is a good thread by Aggie that goes into depth about stealing techs at:
Civilization Fanatics' Forums > CIVILIZATION III > Civ3 - Strategy & Tips > Rate of success of technology stealing, results of a basic test
 
As a cost ratio, I have to say Expose Enemy Spy - cheap and it resolves a situation that you don't know how much is costing you. The enemy spy could be stealing techs every other turn for all you know!
 
Steal plans.
 
Sabotage is definately my favorite. The best part is finding out which city the AI is building their Missle Defense in and with a couple turns left making them start over.
 
The first day of war just try expose the mole. Nothing to lose except a little money, and then we could steal plants.

JMK : I did several times to initiate propaganda on other continent and city size was bigger than 3 (I forgot the city actual size, it was civ3 1.07, roman, standard, warlord). At that time I was cheating (money wise, by offering 9999x, and I was much and much higher culture points) so money was not a problem. After around 6-8x, I successfully flipped the city.
 
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