What's your favorite thing to do with spies?

[Darth Fred]

Personally, I'm a big fan of sending them out to raise Hell. That is, as I'm setting up to take a given city I send them as far as possible behind the lines to stir up trouble and make people unhappy so that enemy troops will be diverted away from the city I'm fixin' to take.
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[duckstab]

I've never tried that.

I like to use them to throw my target cities into revolt and conserve my siege units.

Lately I've been trying the "spread culture" mission out more often. I've yet to see a city flip as a result, but the nice thing is that it seems to spread your culture to the entire cultural extent of the target city. And I figure it's giving the AI a happiness problem that takes a lot longer to overcome.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I've never tried that.

I like to use them to throw my target cities into revolt and conserve my siege units.

Same here. It doesn't seem to cost too may EP's. Works great with a mounted unit attack because siege slows you down.

I don't have very good luck with stealing technologies.

 

[Darth Fred]

I've never tried that.

I like to use them to throw my target cities into revolt and conserve my siege units.

Lately I've been trying the "spread culture" mission out more often. I've yet to see a city flip as a result, but the nice thing is that it seems to spread your culture to the entire cultural extent of the target city. And I figure it's giving the AI a happiness problem that takes a lot longer to overcome.

I always thought that would have the opposite effect. That is, draw IN troops to quell the population as thus make it a harder and longer siege.

I've never had much luck with the "Spread Culture" missions. Nor, as Ataxerxes mentioned, stealing tech.
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[ParadigmShifter]

I like to zoom in the camera to have a good perv at the ginger lady spies in the leather catsuits.

 

[Darth Fred]

I like to zoom in the camera to have a good perv at the ginger lady spies in the leather catsuits.

Yeah well... there's that too...

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[ywhtptgtfo]

The only mission I do is to get cities to revolt right before an attack. Otherwise, I generally prefer to conserve EP so that I can get as many enemy cities to show on map as possible.

 

[bestbrian]

As a former US Army Counterintelligence Agent, my favorite thing to do with spies is to hang them (the bad guys use spies; the good guys use agents).

To that end, I use my Agents to safeguard my cities, and defend my strategic resources from sabotage. I also use them for scouting. I tend to let the passive espionage points accumulate, and the only active missions I tend to use is the sabotage of my enemies strategic resources.

Btw, as much as the AI loves to poison wells and blow up pastures, they really suck at what should be obvious targets. Current game, I've got about 6 sources of Aluminum, but only one source of oil. I've parked an agent on the oil to deter sabotage, but I figure the AI will try anyway (obvious target, so I've pre-built a second well, just in case). What does the AI do? One aluminum mine, and one frickin' cow pasture, keep getting blown up every other turn; noone ever goes for the oil. And this is with BAI! Silly AI, civ is for kids.

 

[Bushface]

Fomenting unrest is good, and gets even better if you sabotage the enemy luxury resources as well. It's also fairly cheap, but you do need plenty of spies: do all the luxuries at the same time for maximum effect. If you can afford it, also sabotage "happiness" buildings with the overall object of giving your enemy lots of angry citizens.

 

[Tyrael]

Make cities revolt before I capture them to save hammers on siege or allow a mounted rush to go at full speed without waiting for siege. Late game, being able to pillage their only source of aluminum if they're building a spaceship or oil if I want to invade is nice.

 

[Pinstar]

I make sure to keep myself in a perma-counterintelligence buff (renewing it every time it expires) when I'm next to a spy happy neighbor.

I have had great success with the convert religion one. Get into a religious block, convert my next door neighbor's religion to a 'heathen' one. Call up all my religious buddies and have a good old fashioned crusade.

 

[Civiliz]

Not using it often, but the sabotage production mission has its uses, for example when you come across a city and it shows a somewhat high number of hammers, I'm quit happy to click the button and watch several turns of production reduced to zero .

Edit: The one I use the most is the counterespionnage one, just to make sure I don't get annoyed as hell with poisoned water and destroyed pastures everywhere -.-.

 

[*Svart*]

In MP I LOVE to poison and make cities of the other players unhappy (both of them togheter)

In Single player (and in MP too) my serious uses are:
1 Incite revolt
2 Sabotage resource
3 Sabotage production
4 Culture
5 Tech

In this order.

 

[jmas]

I like to zoom in the camera to have a good perv at the ginger lady spies in the leather catsuits.

I'm pretty sure the catsuits are latex. Pretty hawt in any case, tho. And a witty post by you.

 

[Darth Fred]

Good suggestions all.

Ironically though, in the time since I started this thread, I've had to place a pair of spies on a pair of plantations that keep disappearing (I'm looking at you China).

Not my favorite thing to do, but necessary.

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[7 Up]

I use them to forment unhappiness.

 

[smackthewise]

Get into a religious block, convert my next door neighbor's religion to a 'heathen' one. Call up all my religious buddies and have a good old fashioned crusade.

This used to be my favourite use of spies too.

I currently play Legends of Revolution mod a lot, where spread culture is very effective. Because each city can go into revolt/revolution because of certain factors such as nationality, I send spies to spread culture to cities the AI has placed right on my borders. Eventually it will captured by revolutionaries, then myself.

 

[Anemos]

I use my Agents to safeguard my cities, and defend my strategic resources from sabotage. I also use them for scouting.

I also use them defensively nearly all the time. I like Security Bureaus, too. Seeing three green "spy caught..." messages in a turn makes me smile.

 

[Civiliz]

I also use them defensively nearly all the time. I like Security Bureaus, too. Seeing three green "spy caught..." messages in a turn makes me smile.

Three? I never get more than one every few decades... Maybe I should build more spies and/or Security bureaus .

 

[Darth Fred]

Three? I never get more than one every few decades... Maybe I should build more spies and/or Security bureaus .

Decades?

Yeah... you might want to look into that.

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