What type of espionage works 4 you?

[Mad Bomber]

Not necesary but i helps...

Propoganda cost and success is based on Type of Governmet, The culture ratio between your civ and your targets civ and the amount of culture it has accrued (size has very little to do with it)
Propoganda works best on Cities with little culture (less than 100) and against civ's that you have a culture ratio of 3:1 against. The more advanced the Gov the harder (and more costly) the mission will be.

 

[Fanatica]

Yes, I agree with you that Government and culture ratios play a major role in a culture flip, but can you or anyone else explain what initiating propaganda does exactly to promote a flip?

 

[puglover]

Steal Techs works best for me. Initiate Propaganda second.

 

[NewbieHere]

Initiate Propaganda is not like planting a spy, failing at one try will not spoil it for the rest of the turn.

Initiating propaganda, if succeeded, will immediately flip a rival city, and won't decrease the relationship rating in any way, nor get you in a war. Very costly for cities with a lot of improvements.

 

[greek-anarchist]

For me steal plans is the most affective. If i'm about to go to war on regicide, ill want to steal plans so i can double check that the AI king is still in their capital.
Does anyone else have a lot of trouble planting spies? I can never successfully plant one!! what is the math behind success of spy planting??
Another spy Question: how do you get you status increased from reg to vet to elite? i had a game where i stole plans every turn throughout an entire war and never got an increase, so i'm pretty sure its not quantity. Does anyone no the math so i can get some sabitoge goin on?

 

[Roland Johansen]

Originally posted by greek-anarchist
For me steal plans is the most affective. If i'm about to go to war on regicide, ill want to steal plans so i can double check that the AI king is still in their capital.
Does anyone else have a lot of trouble planting spies? I can never successfully plant one!! what is the math behind success of spy planting??
Another spy Question: how do you get you status increased from reg to vet to elite? i had a game where i stole plans every turn throughout an entire war and never got an increase, so i'm pretty sure its not quantity. Does anyone no the math so i can get some sabitoge goin on?

Planting spies wil never work when you already failed at it that same turn with the same civilisation. What I read about it is that it will not succeed for 1-4 turns. So plant spy might work the next turn but never the same turn in which you failed.

Spy experience level only depends on government. Veteran for communism and facism, regular for the rest. One can edit the spy experience level of governments in the editor.

 

[Fanatica]

@ greek
It varies with government.

 

[Fanatica]

There seems to be a tendency for some civs like India to accept a spy rather than Rome where I personally have never been able to plant a spy. Has anyone else noticed this?

Keep those votes coming.

 

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Fanatica
There seems to be a tendency for some civs like India to accept a spy rather than Rome where I personally have never been able to plant a spy. Has anyone else noticed this?

Keep those votes coming.

I have been able to plant a spy with every civ in the game, but it does seem to be harder against civilizations with high aggressive ratings.

 

[Fanatica]

FYI - Here's a related thread.

Spies

 

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by binyo66
Steal plans, especially in naval war (in the beginning of war, to cripple AI's Navy). Initiate propaganda was almost never success. Stealing tech is sometimes.

Good idea, never thought of it for naval positions re: amphibious assaults. I sue espionage mostly for stealing techs, never tried sabotage.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'm practically always content to plant a spy, and then enjoy the military intelligence without risking my spy in trying to carry out any actual missions.

I sometimes investigate cities, tho.

 

[binyo66]

Originally posted by Fanatica
Are you saying that you initiated propaganda numerous times ... it this necessary?

If you got a lot of money, and your culture is >>> high, you could try to flip the city 6-8 times, you would get the city even its on the other continent. But, for note, at that time I was using CivIII 1.07f. Not sure, how it works with 1.27f of ptw.
@everybody
Do you ever get AI sabotage your production? I never have that experient, just curiousity

 

[Roland Johansen]

Originally posted by binyo66
Do you ever get AI sabotage your production? I never have that experient, just curiousity

In my last game it happened very often. It was a deity game with a difficult start position (small island, no horses, iron or luxury goods). One of the AI got incredibly rich (40000+ gold) in the modern age and I suspect they were responsible for sabotaging my production. One of my cities was their prime target. I think it got hit at least 5 times by sabotage actions. I don't know why the AI picked that city. But it was annoying; the city had almost build its factory when it would again get hit by sabotage and have to almost start over again.

Although it was annoying, it wasn't a very big deal in the end. They probably destroyed some 1000-2000 shields in total, but at that point that was about my production per turn.

The AI also stole my military plans, which is a very expensive spying action. As the AI already knows your troop locations at any given moment, I don't know why the AI did this. The AI also tried propaganda and steal worldmap actions. It was ahaed in technology, so I didn't catch them trying to steal my techs.

Bottom line, if the AI gets so rich that they don't know what to do with their money, then they'll try the espionage actions.

 

[Do_Sa_Nim]

one thing I do before espionage missions is save my game. Then

i do try to steal a tech using the least possible amount of money.

If I fail I load it up again and try again. Its cheap, but it saves a

lot of money.

 

[binyo66]

Originally posted by Roland Johansen


In my last game it happened very often. It was a deity game with a difficult start position (small island, no horses, iron or luxury goods). One of the AI got incredibly rich (40000+ gold) in the modern age and I suspect they were responsible for sabotaging my production.
Bottom line, if the AI gets so rich that they don't know what to do with their money, then they'll try the espionage actions.

If I were the AI, I would ally all civs to attack you, rather than sabotaging. BTW, do you win that game? How do u manage to get the lux? currently I'm playing monarch, ptw 1.27f, randomly I was assign as China, standard, 16civs and there were only me (China) and Japan (been destroyed by me) on the island. The problem was, there was only one lux. I wonder how to win the game. Peacefully or trying to invade other island (I got great light house wonder)?

Do_Sa_Nim : just information : some people define reloading was a cheat.

 

[Knowze Gungk]

The first time I tried propoganda, it was my second Warlord game, I'd wiped my continent clean of all the impure foreign blood & replaced them with the pure blood of whatever nation I was at the time. I had over $100k, wanted to purify the next continent but didn't want to wait 15-odd turns for my fleet to arrive, so I thought I'd try some propoganda tactics, to hurry things up a bit.

The most powerful of about Five nations, on the continent, was Germany. My target; Berlin. To my astonishment, it turned first go, and to my further, & greater, astonishment, so did every single other German city, that same turn.

I ended up with only a couple of grand, but I'd also gained 20+ sprawling cities in the middle of a new continent. And I didn't have to treat the cities with ethnic cleansing, 'cause Bismark was dead.

I've never been able to turn a city since.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Originally posted by binyo66
If I were the AI, I would ally all civs to attack you, rather than sabotaging.

Then I'm happy that the AI wasn't playing as good as you play.
(like everybody else, I would of course like a beter AI)

Originally posted by binyo66
BTW, do you win that game?

I'm in the process of winning it. It was a struggle though. I never caught up with technology before the end of the tech tree (two of the AI players had finished the tech tree before me). And the battles are gigantic (AI players have close to or over 1000 units on this huge archipelago map in the modern age).

Originally posted by binyo66
How do u manage to get the lux?

I conquered my neighbour on another island (who was twice as big and had a lux and horse and iron ). That was the most difficult war I ever fought in Civ3 and it was of course won by use of the artillery type unit of that era (the almighty catapult). Now that I've won that battle I'm going to mod artillery type units for my next game; it just makes the game to easy if you know how to use them.

I traded a lot for all the other luxurygoods in the game and am now conquering the AI players who own those luxurygoods. At the moment I own 4 different luxurygoods and trade for the rest.

Originally posted by binyo66
currently I'm playing monarch, ptw 1.27f, randomly I was assign as China, standard, 16civs and there were only me (China) and Japan (been destroyed by me) on the island. The problem was, there was only one lux. I wonder how to win the game. Peacefully or trying to invade other island (I got great light house wonder)?

China is militaristic, so how do you think you should solve your problems. There's really only one way
:rocket: :tank: :rocket2: :ripper:

Conquer your own island (buy an alliance so that it's two against one on your island), build up forces and then conquer someone weak who owns a luxurygood.

If you march on a city that military group should have at least 25 artillery type units of your current era (catapult, trebuchet, cannon, artillery, radar artillery) and preferably more (30-40 is probably all you need, except when it is the capital or a wonder city). That way you can redline every defender in one turn. Also bring at least 10 good offensive units to kill the redlined units and 5 defenders to defend your stack. Your losses will be very low because you're fighting seriously weakened units, so during the war your cities don't have to build military unist all the time. Later in the game you can also use bombers to do the redlining (or in C3C kill the enemy units completely), although bombers can be shot down.

At the start of the war, wait one or two turns until your enemy and your ally are busy fighting and then attack your enemy.

Go do some conquering.

edit: You could of course also trade for the luxurygoods, but where's the fun in that.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Originally posted by Knowze Gungk
The first time I tried propoganda, it was my second Warlord game, I'd wiped my continent clean of all the impure foreign blood & replaced them with the pure blood of whatever nation I was at the time. I had over $100k, wanted to purify the next continent but didn't want to wait 15-odd turns for my fleet to arrive, so I thought I'd try some propoganda tactics, to hurry things up a bit.

The most powerful of about Five nations, on the continent, was Germany. My target; Berlin. To my astonishment, it turned first go, and to my further, & greater, astonishment, so did every single other German city, that same turn.

I ended up with only a couple of grand, but I'd also gained 20+ sprawling cities in the middle of a new continent. And I didn't have to treat the cities with ethnic cleansing, 'cause Bismark was dead.

I've never been able to turn a city since.

You were probably a big guy in that world when you started using propaganda (how else did you get $100k), so probably your culture was strong compared to theirs. This will probably increase the probability of succesfull propaganda. Also if an enemy is in anarchy, their resistance vs propagande is severly lessened, while in a democracy the enemy is immune. So maybe the Germans were in anarchy and had a loosy culture compared to you?

 

[Tomoyo]

Steal technology for sure! I have only used sabotage production to sabotage the UN and propaganda to wipe out the big stack of tanks that was in the target city. It's too expensive.