Questions on Spies

Placing a spy on an improvement nullifies the positive effects that improvement provides. The improvement is not permanently harmed, and if you remove the spy or the AI kills it, it will resume normal function.



Spies will occasionally steal techs randomly over time as they remain deployed.

Did we get an option to place spies on tiles they could not harm so we could do "passive intelligence gathering?"

I'll have to try that, GW- didn't think of that.

I admit I'm a *wee* bit disappointed with the expansion of the spy game- it isn't much in the scheme of things. And the revelation of being able to see EVERY AI's planet by cycling through them at any point with just ONE spy in your arsenal is a little... well, I cna't believe that was completely intentional... I don't mean jsut seeing that they have a oplanet but the entire LAYOUT of it. That's a bit much.

The game designer in me would have:
made placing a spy on an alien planet have a chance to succeed/fail/fail badly/cause a disaster. fail means nothing happens and you used your spy that turn... he got away... fail badly = the AI knows your efforts and gets a little upset, fail disaster =... well, something spectacular like one of YOUR tile improvements blows up because you spy went turncoat. AND you lose the spy to the enemy AI. Obviously success is most common, failure less so, fail bad less so, and disasters are RARE (like 1% of the time).

This would mean that once you have a spy placed you tend to LEAVE him/her and not go cycling through enemy AI planets to take a whirlwind tour of everything the AI owns... I'd also simply disable the cycling buttons when placing a spy- you get to place him on the ONE planet you jsut got access to due to the success of placing him.

My basic design philosophy on risk reward in games is: reward is common and even keeled- it adds up over the long haul and you gain success, failure is rare but spectacular; negative effects are rarer but stronger, positives are more common but less spectacular. Overall balance is in favor of success.

Brad? Any input on how spies are working in DA or am I missing the point of your design decisions?

Oh, Sir, I beg to differ. Your cadre of spies can be the single most powerful weapon in your arsenal. I'll give you an example from one of my games. Late in a large, common game, there were three civs left. The Terrans (me), the Iconians, and the Korath. The Iconians owned over 2/3 of the galaxy, and I owned the remainder, with the exception of the two Korath worlds. The Korath and Iconians were at war. I had been feeding the Korath bc and ships to keep them alive and keep them the focus of the Iconian's attention. I had started the game with max civs and minors, but now just the three of us remained. The Korath would be gone very soon, and then I was next. I just didn't have the resources that they had. What I did have, were my spies. The Iconians had been in a state of constant war for quite some time, thanks to me. That meant that they needed a constant supply of ships. Each world that they conquered they industrialized. They became very efficient at producing ships, but also had a huge budget. This is where the spies came in. I looked around, and found six economic capitals that they had taken from other civs. Off went my spies. They neutralized two, but as I had built up a stockpile, they were immediately replaced. Three turns later they were bankrupt. Everything ground to a halt. Now it was my game. My fleets chose their targets carefully, and started chewing up their military. It didn't matter if I lost a ship or two- I could replace mine and they couldn't. I completely cleared the galaxy of their military, and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it. Then came the transports. I invaded planets that made money, and avoided those that were bleeding bc. This was getting ridiculous, so I made a spore fleet (tech stolen from the Korath by one of my SPIES), and put them out of their misery. In short, six spies, three turns, game over. THAT is what spies can do.

Totally amazed by the story.

And I totally agree with your assessment based upon my experience so far. And I'm happy to say that the AI isn't so bad at using spies itself. Of course, as in every other case, an intelligent person who uses them wisely will always outdo the AI.

It's good to be human.

Ok, that's a nice use of them. But being able to find EVERY placed building in an AI's worlds using only ONE spy!? I don't like that game mechanic. It should be more difficult than merely clicking on your spy, clicking on a planet, and then using the arrow buttons to inspect every single planet an enemy owns.

Curious, though, what stopped the Ai from neutralizing your other spies? Does neutralizing a spy require the sacrifice of one of your own?

Yes.

Simple. I had more spies stockpiled than it did. Remember, spies cost bc to train. When I nuked the AI's economy, it had no money to train new spies, and couldn't do anything to nullify mine.

Running through the campaign right now, the Dread Lords seem to be utterly incapable of dealing with spies. My tactic for the missions where I've had to deal with them so far has involved, finding their home planet and dropping spies on each of their industrial bases. Suddenly they are unable to produce units and cease being a worry.

I didn't like spies at first until I started learning how to use them. As others have said, the best things to target are economic resources especially if they are close to the line.

I like the spy units from the start, but I remain unhappy that we no longer have a way to just gather intelligence without harming the AI we target.

I'm trying to adapt, though. I'm in the early mid-game on a huge map, I have a dozen spies on deck, and I've given up on trying to finesse the DL-style intel out of the new DA system without harming friends and/or losing those pricy units.

Mistralok's story about crippling the enemy economy points out that we have a neat new toy even if the devs took away an old one that I really miss.

I enjoy the new spy system, but I think it could be expanded to be even better. For example, I'd love to be able to use a spy to destroy or temporarily disable an enemy ship, or to steal money from a trade route. Or use spies to cause political dissent, making my enemy lose control of his senate.

Spy's need to be nerfed somewhat , I don't think the AI is clever enougth to use them to the extent we do. And having them use them to the extent we do would'nt be fun.

I do like the Idea of a chance your spy can fail , along with a espionage tech tree that increases the chance of a successfull operation.

in the current game I'm playing, most of my money comes from tourism, I have also stockpiled a ton of money, that I just like to have sit around.....spies really wouldn't be much of a concern for me since 1) I can nullify them quickly 2) if I let them sit on tiles wouldn't affect me much since I don't really use huge economics systems as much as spreading out my off-setting costs by putting trade centers ( highest upgrade atm) on most if not every system, at least 1 or two tiles, how can you really hurt a person with spies with 50 K in the bank for emergencies, mostly tourism from influence(half my economy is tourism), and spread out infrastructure of tiles? Computer couldn't be programmed to really affect me with just a few spies....

Of course, I'm playing on a normal difficulty game, which is probably one of the reasons why I'm owning everything so easily......

reading this article makes me realize I probably wasn't using spies as well as I should, and should stockpile spies more......and actually look thru various systems more also to see which systems are more juicy.......

As an aside, how is it possible to make half your money from tourism? I've seen remarks about this before, and how supposedly tiny the benefits from trade are compared to tourism, but for me it's quite the opposite, and I've always had high influence.

I assume this must require playing with settings like hugest galaxy possible, with, like, 15 habitable planets per star system or something?

spies are really powerful especially on smaller galaxies with few planets. There's nothing like dropping 25 spies on the enemy on the same turn (took me some 15 years to accomplish this number at 1% investment). The most powerful thing i've discovered is that putting spies on farms cripple the population and add even more hurt. The thing is that you only need the spy on the farm for 1 turn make the population evaporate and lose 10s of billions of population. the next turn you can put the spies on a production tile while your opponent in financial shock from the loss of population and tax revenue. It makes it that much harder to recover from the spies

Great Story! Yes, you surely used spies at their fullest there, but beefing up the espionage-system so that they could sabotage certain buildings/structures as well, would bring the Superspy superpower next to the others.

I think Spies should be left alone in Galciv2. Wait till some other game to try out a new system. However, Super Spy ability is useless right now, and needs some help.

spies are also good for propaganda invasions, especially with the evil no-mercy-invasion-centre. drop a couple of spies on morale buildings and increase your invasion force by billions. not only do you weaken the opposing troops but you now have more population to start with on your new planet.

I mostly agree with you. I would, however, like to see some kind of 'soft' espionage in the game; a way of gathering intelligence on other races without doing them harm.

I think that a 'super' ability should be something that no other race can achieve. The Krynn, the Korx, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Drath, have abilities that can be emulated by any other race.

Very nice, Dude. Especially helpful on worlds that I don't want to damage.

So I don't quite understand how the slider to build spies works, is it based off how many you have already build, how many you have in your inventory, or how big your economy is?

I think some combination of the spies you have AND your economy.

The more money I make the more spies seem to cost, and the same with the more spies I've had during the game.

The slider allows you to choose the percentage of your economy that you are willing to spend toward the next spy. You can designate up to 25%. Each spy you train will be more expensive than the last. This shouldn't be a problem, if you are growing your economy as well. I have had as many as 26, in preparation for a blitz, without a noticeable hit to my economy. The number of spies in your inventory is not a factor.

Edit: Removed double post.