Why can't I perform espionage missions?

[RedWolf]

Hi everybody - I'm playing CivIII vanilla and I have two questions regarding espionage.

1) I have the Intelligence Agency but when I click on the "E" on the menu and choose Espionage I can only choose from "Investigate City" and "Steal Technology"? Where are the rest? I'm a democracy.

2) Further to the above question - if i go to war with a civilization I'm no longer able to choose them from the list at all? Why is this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Spoonwood]

Do you have an embassy with the tribe?

 

[RedWolf]

Do you have an embassy with the tribe?

Yes... I have embassies with everybody in the game.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Hi everybody - I'm playing CivIII vanilla and I have two questions regarding espionage.

1) I have the Intelligence Agency but when I click on the "E" on the menu and choose Espionage I can only choose from "Investigate City" and "Steal Technology"? Where are the rest? I'm a democracy.

2) Further to the above question - if i go to war with a civilization I'm no longer able to choose them from the list at all? Why is this?

Thanks in advance.

You first need to build the Intelligence Agency. And then you still need to - what's it called? - plant spies before you can use them. That works similar to establishing an embassy, only that you don't double-click on the star in your capital's name, but instead double-click on the pentagon in your Intelligence Agency city.

If you have done all that, then you can use Spies to conduct espionage (Click the "E" for example; you get to select whether to use spies or embassy now). Until you have done so, you can only use diplomats (via the embassy) to conduct espionage. Diplomats generally have lower chances of success, can only perform a few acts of espionage, and cannot be used at war (because the embassy is closed). Spies OTOH can perform a few more actions, such as propaganda, troop positions, space ship progress etc, and can be used at war. If you attempt to plant a spy and are caught you may well find yourself at war for this though.

 

[Jokeslayer]

2) Further to the above question - if i go to war with a civilization I'm no longer able to choose them from the list at all? Why is this?

To address this specifically, the reason is that you only have a diplomat with the country and he gets kicked out when the war starts. if you had a spy, you'd still be able to use him for espionage.

 

[Aabraxan]

Do you have enough gold to perform the missions?

 

[RedWolf]

You first need to build the Intelligence Agency. And then you still need to - what's it called? - plant spies before you can use them. That works similar to establishing an embassy, only that you don't double-click on the star in your capital's name, but instead double-click on the pentagon in your Intelligence Agency city.

Thanks to all that replied - this is exactly my problem as I hadn't planted a spy (didn't even realize I had to despite reading the manual last week sometime)

Not sure if its just the learning curve or what but CivIII seems less intuitive than CivII in a lot of ways in the sense that you seem to have to KNOW where to click to do certain things. In CivII you could always find stuff on the menus with a little bit of effort.

 

[vmxa]

Page 148 of the manual tells you that you have to plant a spy.

 

[RedWolf]

Page 148 of the manual tells you that you have to plant a spy.

Yeah I know... my comment about the manual was actually me denigrating my memory rather than the quality of the manual.

It gets worse the closer I get to 30.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

Yeah I know... my comment about the manual was actually me denigrating my memory rather than the quality of the manual.

It gets worse the closer I get to 30.

I should be in great shape as I'm moving rapidly away from 30

 

[dementedseabass]

Don't even bother. Espionage is too expensive in Civ 3. Not even worth it, in my opinion.