Scoutdog

Join Date 07/2008

+195

Esbionage system and victory condition.....

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A few days ago, I came up with an Esbionage Victory condition for GC3 (link @ top of post, for those who are interested). GWSwicord saw it, and apparently took a liking to it, as he thinks it would look good in Elemental. Of course, we know so very little about the esbionage system in Elemental and whether there will even BE one, but assuming that it works like the one in GC2, all you would need to do is achieve the highest possible esbionage level on every surviving empire. Now, if the system worked EXACTLY like GC2's, this would create a large spend+wait-fest, so I have come up with an Elemental esbionage system:

Spies are a special type of unit that you can train in your cities. They take a set amount of money to train that increases with each consecutive spy, but that money can be cut by techs and buildings. When you have trained a spy, you can keep training him and adding gear to him just like a regular unit, or give him extra esbionage training that increases his effectiveness. You can then send him out onto the map to get to another city.
When the spy is on the map, he can do one of two things. He can strike out over land, at which point he becomes just like a regular unit of yours (no way for the other guy to tell that he's a spy) and behaves the same way, too, but he needs to be trained like a regular soldier to do so. He can also join a caravan, but only if he is carrying no other gear. If the caravan is interrupted and destroyed, you lose the spy.
When the caravan reaches the city, the spy enters that city. If the spy comes in overland, he can enter a city covertly, but has a % chance of failing and getting caught. You can decrease this chance the longer you train the spy. When the spy has entered the city, you can assign him to any of the buildings.
When you assign a spy to a building, he goes to work in that building. Each type of building has an esbionage type, minimum value, maximum value, and some have a discovery value.

Type is the type of info you get from the building: research buildings give you info on whatever they are researching, forges give you info on what they are making, et cetera. Buildings like capitals or taverns give you info on everything, as well as stuff you can't get from the others like race stats.
Minimum value is the amount of info "points" the spy CAN collect. The actual amount can be higher or lower depending on how oong you trained him. The number also grows slowly the longer he is on the building (exactly how quickly is dependant upon training, again) until it reaches
the max value. This is as high as you CAN go for that particular building. Now, of course, something like a stable would have a very low value, while a town hall or an empire capital would have a very high value.
The juicier bouildings (tavenrs, garrisons, castles, etc.) also have an increased risk of capture, as giverned by the capture value.

5. The spy stores information until you tell him to dump it to you, as opposed to instantly revealing it. If he gets captured, whatever info he had is no longer accessible, unless you resue him by sending another spy into the city.

6. Every time you tell your spy to do something (switch buildings, dump info, leave the city, and so on), he runs the risk of being captured. This risk is increased by the building's natural risk level (see above). A spy could sit for an infinate amount of time on a building with no internal risk and never be caught, but there is a constant, low-level threat of capture if the risk level is above 0.

7. If a spy is captured, you will get a hefty diplo penalty with that empire, but it decreases over time. If you let the spy sit there for X number of turns, he will be executed, and you will (obviously) lose him forever. Except for a "resurrect dead spy" spell.... In any case, before that time, you can send another spy in to resue the one in jail. This carries a bit of risk, as there is a fair chance that one or the other will be killed or (re)captured, or that both will. However, such a resure will dramatically boost your morale.

8. There are human and fallen spies. A human spy can only go to human-contr cities, and vice virsa. Spies of the opposite race are much, much (I was thinking of 2X more) expensive.

9. The info you have from a spy won't go away if you make him leave the city, but it will not update, and your esbionage level will decrease.

10. Lastly, you can build improvements in a city to increase the risk of detection in all of the buildings, or fund police efforts. If you put in too much policing, however, your citizens will start to get ticked.

11. I will probably add some kind of "sabotage" mechanic, but not right now.

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I have mixed feelings on espionage, sabotage, and spies. I don't always like having to worry about countering espionage and such the way you do in Civ 4 Warlords or some total war games (though in total war its so hard to actually do much with your spies that once you actually get something that isn't caught most of the time, you deserve it).

Personally I'd rather it be replaced with a more magical "scrying" mechanic to gain information, and linked would be something that uses magic to create minor disturbances, whispers in people's ears, and other things of that sort. rather than mundane factors like spies and sabotage

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I’ll try to reduce your spy concept to a much less wordly one, with minor modification:
1.    A Spy unit has an ability called Spying.
2.    The Spying ability provide the following benefits:
a.    Able to travel to other players, regardless of diplomatic relation
b.    Invisible to all other players, but there is a variable % chance per turn of getting caught within rival players’ border. The spy is killed when this % chance roll is failed.
c.    When the spy returns to his owners’ town, SOME info on the all rival towns the spy has previously visited will be shown. The gamer can click on the rival towns visited & see what the spy has last seen at the turn it left. The longer the spy stays at the town, the more info is revealed.
d.    When the spy visit a rival’s Jail, it has an option to carry a "mission" that grants a specific unit the “Spying” ability.
e.    When any mission fails, the spy is caught
3.    When your spy is caught, you suffer diplomatic penalty, but its effect decreases with time.

I’ll say spying is interesting. But it should be of lesser priority than many other features.

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Yeah, but I do think sdome sort of esbionage system is needed. With a check-box, of course, for those of us who don't like to fight dirty. I think the problem in GC2 was that the spies were actually underpowered, and while they could get annoying, they were not that big of a deal. I want spies in Elemental to be a true victory path.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I'm hoping for an interesting set of scrying/clairvoyance spells, but I'd like them to be a complement or alternative to building a spy network. Spying might be nearly as old as the oldest profession and has been an important element in many fantasy stories.

As for spies as units on the map, I'd be a little surprised if something like that isn't already in the works given the Elemental engine's intended role as the starting point for the eventual GC3 engine. I really like the latest spy mechanics in GC2, but the transport abstraction has always been a bit unsatisfying. If we get to train spies just like other units in Elemental, we should probably also be able to build spy ships in GC3 and not have to constantly wonder how the spies can teleport such incredible distances when no other unit in the game can do anything similar.

Having spies (and couriers) as info buckets that need to connect before you get the info sounds like a really swell idea. It's even a neat place where some magic could make things different--you could learn to Speak Through Fire and get an info dump without the spy needing to leave the duty post or risk connecting with a courier.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Spycraft

3 types of spying techniques:

Human/Fallen as they are plus normal training.
Human/Fallen as they are plus normal training plus magic support from the Channeler (and/or Heroes/Champions?).
Magic by the Channelers (and Heroes/Champions?)

Spies are normal units: you take them from the normal population, give them a compulsory training, some optional equipment and s/he is ready to go out there to unmask whichever secrets are to discover. They are not cheap but their cost doesn't increase according to how many you have, and their training cost is higher than usual. Maybe if they are lucky, they may get equipment that can help them in their tasks.

Once out of the school, a spy can stay in any friendly city as hidden police, making sure that no enemy spies enter the city unnoticed (if they are in the same city square) or run more specialiced missions like protecting the warehouse from sabotaging, gaining a bonus to it becuase of the focus in the task.

Another option for them is to go to enemy cities to "explore". They are invisible to any non-spy unit (or hunter/spy/detector Heroe/Champion) so they can travel safely (random monsters appart). Once there, and if the zone is still unknown, it will need some turns before it can be used again. After those turns you get a report of that city square with lesser information and can give more concrete commands to the spy to perform. He could try to destroy the local forge, plant the seeds of rebellion or maybe try to lower the prices of iron of that market in your favor. In any case, since day one there is a chance of the spy being caught based on different things like the number of spies you have in that square of the city, the number of enemy spies trying to catch you, the activity of the spy and the complexity of that activity. Plus any magic involved. Also, they are not limited to cities but they can act also in other structures in the map like mines.

Spies can gain experience and level up as well as get new and (hopefully) improved equipment. With more experience, they can become specialized in one area (saboteur, assassin,...) getting great advantages in those areas and also some extra skills for those roles. A spy could try to assassin an enemy Hero/Champion in the city but if he has become an assassin, he would have more chances of success and being able to try assassination attempts in the wild, for example.

A normal spy should be able to help you in military efforts, economy protection/disruption or social manipulation. Maybe even steals those sweet secrets that your enemy doesn't want to share, including magic.

An enhanced spy is one with the touch of the Channeler (or maybe by one of the Heroes/Champions?). This touch may be a boost of any kind, usually to one area of expertise (maybe stealth to avoid better detectors, maybe more social charm, maybe they gain experience faster,...). They cost the same as a normal spy but require extra time in the sense of the magic used for them (or maybe not but I don't know how "enchanting" people works in Elemental). After that, you get a super spy ready to do whatever you want. Any normal spy could be enhanced by the Channeler at any time, even those who were recruited as normal spies.

As an alternative or as a support method, the Channeler has his own ways of discovering that he wants. Through a variety of spells, the Channeler could mimic some uses of a spy. Low "level" spells would do some lesser work and the most advanced ones would take some (usualyl minimal) essence from the Channeler. I'll give details of the types of spells when Stardock lets us know about how magic works.

With this 3 ways, one player can spy his enemies in the way he prefers and/or he has to. Hopefully, if a good spying system could be done, it should serve one main purpose: control. Control your enemy by knowing all about him, being able to disrupt supply lines or by simply turning his populacy against him (to the point of being overthrown?).

Then we could talk about racial issues, magic options, types of ops...

I liked Gal Civ II's spy system (the last one specially) but it would be nice to get something more interactive and powerfull/usefull. And unless you have a mode that has combat as optional, or economy as optional, or magic... I don't want to see spies as optional neither. To have mega-events as optionals in Elemental (if there were) would be one thing. To have a whole system as optional... no.

(I'm conscious that I haven't said anything new but I missed to post a wall of text related to the game)

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Looks good so far. Keep the ideas flowing. One thing I thought of is the idea of sabotage and other "advanced" activities being limited to specific training regimens: spy needs to learn a little Runic Language to be able to steal magic research, and so on.

Sabotage Stuff

Depending on the tpye of building, you can tell the spy to steal a portion of its production/research output, destroy it outright, or "poison" any resources it produces, making them worthless or worse, actively dangerous. Of course, this has a risk of capture.
Some buildings have special bailities assosciated with them: stirring up rebellions for taverns, poisoning the water in a well, assasinating the general in a barracks, etc.
Two spies in a city share info. If one gives an info dump, the other does as well with reduced risk.
A spy in an "administrative" type building decreases the capture risk for other spies in the city.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting Wintersong,

reply 5

... With this 3 ways, one player can spy his enemies in the way he prefers and/or he has to. Hopefully, if a good spying system could be done, it should serve one main purpose: control. Control your enemy by knowing all about him, being able to disrupt supply lines or by simply turning his populacy against him (to the point of being overthrown?). ...

I think your three-mode breakdown is a very good general idea, especially because it maps to a clean Venn diagram of two overlapping sets: all mundane, mixed mundane and magic, and all magic.

Gotta quibble on the "Control" claim though. I've never gone on a long spy-focused reading binge in fiction or nonfiction, but I've ready plenty of both types of story. Some spies can have large *influence* on an enemy, but mostly it is either "actionable information" or outright sabotage that they provide. Even when spies manage to topple a regime, the new regime tends to get "out of control" (Pinochet in Chile) or can't quite stand up on its own and yields a worse mess than the 'problem' the spies were trying to work in the first place (Shah of Iran).

Champion spies--that would be soooo sweet. The mundane regulars might be able to gum up the works in an enemy weapon shop, but a Champion, at least a very experienced one with awesome gear, should be able to destroy the thing outright and have a decent chance of escaping after the deed.

Which reminds me that the Venn diagram might need to get a bit messy--your 3-part list does not mention counterspies nor double agents. (I can hear the "oh no, more micro" whining even now...)

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Yeah, controlling the enemy government puts a bit TOO much power into the hands of the player. Now, toppling regimes, that miight work: just don't expect it to work the way you intend.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

About control, I don't mean to take it from the enemy. But obviously knowledge is power. How you use that power (if you can) is a different whole story.

"Rogue/Spy" Champions would be sweet. As well as merchants, warriors... I don't want them to be just "generals".

In any case, I forgot to add the layer 0 to it. To be complete, it needs to have a system like Gal Civ II's TotA in which you have some sliders to decide how much to spend in general spying on your enemies. So even if you didn't buy any spies, you could still get some information from them. After all, you could get information about your enemy from rumours, travelers, merchants... Wouldn't be so fast (the use of magic would be the fastest) and focused like using real spies but you could still get some iformation and even some protection without the need of using the other systems.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting Wintersong,

reply 9

...In any case, I forgot to add the layer 0 to it. To be complete, it needs to have a system like Gal Civ II's TotA in which you have some sliders to decide how much to spend in general spying on your enemies. So even if you didn't buy any spies, you could still get some information from them. ...

Nice. Nicer still if we can separate spy unit production from the ongoing espionage budget. In addition to the basic business of buying info from travelers & other 'casual' contacts, I'd like to see the units have a range of support costs rather than a flat number. Underfund your units in the field and you increase the chances of their being captured or turning on you. Fund well above 'normal,' and you increase their chances of success.

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Yeah: maybe an esbionage budget that governs everything (that you can change the size of, of course), and you take spy training out of that. Whatever's left over goes to general esbionage.

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Quoting Wintersong,

reply 5

Spycraft

3 types of spying techniques:

Human/Fallen as they are plus normal training.
Human/Fallen as they are plus normal training plus magic support from the Channeler (and/or Heroes/Champions?).
Magic by the Channelers (and Heroes/Champions?)

Spies are normal units: you take them from the normal population, give them a compulsory training, some optional equipment and s/he is ready to go out there to unmask whichever secrets are to discover. They are not cheap but their cost doesn't increase according to how many you have, and their training cost is higher than usual. Maybe if they are lucky, they may get equipment that can help them in their tasks.

Once out of the school, a spy can stay in any friendly city as hidden police, making sure that no enemy spies enter the city unnoticed (if they are in the same city square) or run more specialiced missions like protecting the warehouse from sabotaging, gaining a bonus to it becuase of the focus in the task.

Another option for them is to go to enemy cities to "explore". They are invisible to any non-spy unit (or hunter/spy/detector Heroe/Champion) so they can travel safely (random monsters appart). Once there, and if the zone is still unknown, it will need some turns before it can be used again. After those turns you get a report of that city square with lesser information and can give more concrete commands to the spy to perform. He could try to destroy the local forge, plant the seeds of rebellion or maybe try to lower the prices of iron of that market in your favor. In any case, since day one there is a chance of the spy being caught based on different things like the number of spies you have in that square of the city, the number of enemy spies trying to catch you, the activity of the spy and the complexity of that activity. Plus any magic involved. Also, they are not limited to cities but they can act also in other structures in the map like mines.

Spies can gain experience and level up as well as get new and (hopefully) improved equipment. With more experience, they can become specialized in one area (saboteur, assassin,...) getting great advantages in those areas and also some extra skills for those roles. A spy could try to assassin an enemy Hero/Champion in the city but if he has become an assassin, he would have more chances of success and being able to try assassination attempts in the wild, for example.

A normal spy should be able to help you in military efforts, economy protection/disruption or social manipulation. Maybe even steals those sweet secrets that your enemy doesn't want to share, including magic.

An enhanced spy is one with the touch of the Channeler (or maybe by one of the Heroes/Champions?). This touch may be a boost of any kind, usually to one area of expertise (maybe stealth to avoid better detectors, maybe more social charm, maybe they gain experience faster,...). They cost the same as a normal spy but require extra time in the sense of the magic used for them (or maybe not but I don't know how "enchanting" people works in Elemental). After that, you get a super spy ready to do whatever you want. Any normal spy could be enhanced by the Channeler at any time, even those who were recruited as normal spies.

As an alternative or as a support method, the Channeler has his own ways of discovering that he wants. Through a variety of spells, the Channeler could mimic some uses of a spy. Low "level" spells would do some lesser work and the most advanced ones would take some (usualyl minimal) essence from the Channeler. I'll give details of the types of spells when Stardock lets us know about how magic works.

With this 3 ways, one player can spy his enemies in the way he prefers and/or he has to. Hopefully, if a good spying system could be done, it should serve one main purpose: control. Control your enemy by knowing all about him, being able to disrupt supply lines or by simply turning his populacy against him (to the point of being overthrown?).

Then we could talk about racial issues, magic options, types of ops...

I liked Gal Civ II's spy system (the last one specially) but it would be nice to get something more interactive and powerfull/usefull. And unless you have a mode that has combat as optional, or economy as optional, or magic... I don't want to see spies as optional neither. To have mega-events as optionals in Elemental (if there were) would be one thing. To have a whole system as optional... no.

(I'm conscious that I haven't said anything new but I missed to post a wall of text related to the game)

I really like, no I LOVE, this idea for spies in Elemental. IMPOV, spies are a really important element to make the game more varied so that you can play many different strategies. Ok to have them as optional of course though.

It should be said that I found that the spy system in GC2 did not really live up to the expectations for that superb game (hmmm, an understatement ...) This for a couple of reasons. It was not interactive enough (just passive, so not very engaging and exciting). And the spies were not important enough either.

In Elemental, spies should start as little more than scouts, but as pointed out above, could be made into extremely deadly adversaries in the end. One thing I really would like to see is the possibility to specialise spies into assassins. Another key point would be to let them have abilities such as propaganda, sabotage etc. Maybe also stealing technologies. And info gathering of course.

A last point I strongly support would be for spies to have a risk of getting caught when in an enemy city (at least while actively doing a special mission). When this happens the DIPLOMACY should be negatively affected for a short time. This would be an important addition to the game, because diplomacy tends to get either too predictable (strong good guy attacking weak evil) or too erratic (when random events just decide that a war has started). With spies, you could never be really sure that a war could not break out or at least ruin your chances for a good trade deal ... These uncertainties, that you actually can control to some extent as player and use as part of a strategy, are what makes strategy game so fun to play.

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No, bad espionage people.

It's inevitable, every time someone implements an espionage system into a 4X game, it sucks. We have heroes, we hopefully have some sort of system for hiding your presence from the enemy. We don't really need an espionage system, or an espionage unit. Just sneak real units in and raid caravans, keep tabs on enemy movements. It can be a simple ability, called scouting, to allow a unit/hero to see more information about targets in their view. You could have spyglass or disguise equipment. It's very simple to build surveilance and counter surveilance into the standard unit design.

An actual espionage system, where you do homotastic things like blow up buildings and piss each other off with an annoying, but utterly boring construct... hell no. Real units with real combat capabilities, hiding from the enemy the same way any other units would, that's the only way to fly.

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It's inevitable, every time someone implements an espionage system into a 4X game, it sucks.

Well, there's a first time for everything, and in my judgement spy systems almost always fail becuase they're not complex enough: the simple tasks and techniques available do not allow the polayer to make "spymaster" a viable gameplay strategy, and thus people find them boring, routine, and useless. An entirely hero-based system would possibly work, but that again skews the game's balance towards going Gandalf: remember, heores take essence to grow. Thus, we are forced into three options:

No espionage system at all: we will still have a good game, but some people would feel as though something is missing and Stardock would have made no progress in the game world.
A sucky espionage system, which would, well, suck.
A complex and srategically viable espionage system, which would probably take a few rounds of betaing to iron the kinks out of, but would be enjoyable and would break new ground in the game world.

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Quoting psychoak,

reply 13

No, bad espionage people.

It's inevitable, every time someone implements an espionage system into a 4X game, it sucks. We have heroes, we hopefully have some sort of system for hiding your presence from the enemy. We don't really need an espionage system, or an espionage unit. Just sneak real units in and raid caravans, keep tabs on enemy movements. It can be a simple ability, called scouting, to allow a unit/hero to see more information about targets in their view. You could have spyglass or disguise equipment. It's very simple to build surveilance and counter surveilance into the standard unit design.

An actual espionage system, where you do homotastic things like blow up buildings and piss each other off with an annoying, but utterly boring construct... hell no. Real units with real combat capabilities, hiding from the enemy the same way any other units would, that's the only way to fly.

If you build espionage, surveillance etc into unit design you HAVE an espionage system in the game, just that you opt for one that is closely integrated with the building of any unit. I think that's a bad idea. A berserker elephant rider is hardly fitting for such abilities. So then we're back at only using "fitting units" like proposed above.

And without a special ability for espionage you will probably not be able to sneak into enemy territory at all - like in GC2 where entering means all out war ... Not very subtle.

And "blowing up buildings"? Sabotage in a fantasy setting is probably not exactly that... Could we please stick to fair arguments...

"Real units" only: a spy unit would be as real as a boring skirmisher.

If you want to see a good espionage system/approach - take Hegemonia Solon Heritage - it has almost all the points asked for above. The game is real time but since you can pause it at will and give instructions, it would be very easy to use a similar system in a turn-based game like Elemental.

Saying that because it is difficult to get it right means that Stardock shouldn't try is a bit like saying they shouldn't try Elemental in the first place. It will be complex, it's a challenge, but that's how you get the best reward.

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Espionage mechanics aren't replaceable by 'real units' because the information they collect (eg. production, overall statistics, etc.) isn't available to units. Centralizing and separating espionage out from the rest of the game also eliminates the tedium of having to manage an army of units spread out across an entire empire.

Also, is there a reason people keep spelling 'espionage' with a 'b' instead of a 'p'?

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How you can play something that sucks so bad and use it as an example is beyond me.

Magically invisible units that can only be seen by other magically invisible units, completely breaking whatever realism is involved in the normal detection system. You then spend an unreasonable amount of time engaging in and defending against over powered, high risk operations who's effects suck the fun out of the game by adding large amounts of needless management repairing all the one click damage. Loads of fun.

It's not difficult to implement, it's not a problem of being too simplistic. You're taking a perfectly fun war, and adding a security detail to the local super market. Then you can rob the place instead of burn it to the ground with a commando raid!

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You then spend an unreasonable amount of time engaging in and defending against over powered, high risk operations who's effects suck the fun out of the game by adding large amounts of needless management repairing all the one click damage.

Well, if you personally don't like it, then you can always disable it..... however, 75% of the people who posted on this thread agree that they want more complexity, and that is what decides the optimal level.......

It's not difficult to implement,

Why do you think it's not difficult to impliment? Can we get an explanation here?

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Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

First, thanks for starting to spell Espionage with a 'p'. I am not a spelling Nazi, because I type so terribly, but that one was seriously causing bad chemicals to flow in my veins.

I'm really on the fence about spycraft - it has been done so boringly and so stupidly in so many games, and I really haven't seen it implemented well EVER that I can think of. But if SD could think of a new innovative way to put it in, why not? But seriously, GC2 that was really the only negative in the game was the espionage system. It just didn't add any fun to the game imo.

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Complexity doesn't require an annoying, superficial addition that behaves in a contrarian manner. Complex espionage is sneaking a small scouting party through enemy lines to check up on the interior domain. Annoying and superficial is the magically invisible spy that walks past all the other units, except other magically invisible spies, all for the sake of clicking a button to initiate a dice roll. Complex is having evasion and detection be part of the general system.

Spy evades detection by other spies, clicks button, burns down building or gets caught on a fagtastic dice roll. Raiding party evades detection by normal units, attacks building, and either succeeds or fails based on whether or not you get the shit kicked out of you by those normal units defending the area.

Want to interrupt training at a barracks? Attack it. Steal resources from a store house? Attack it. Assassinate an enemy hero? Attack it. You'd need a whopping three options when attacking a site, raze, pillage, conquer.

I know, it's an amazing concept, actually doing guerilla warfare by doing guerilla warfare...

Why do you think it's not difficult to impliment? Can we get an explanation here?

Espionage systems are a short cut, not something to be obtained. They're a crutch for not having a decent system in place for evasion and detection in general. You can come up with as complex and contrived a machination as you want to, it still wont equal the simplicity and complexity of doing it the right way to begin with.

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Complexity doesn't require an annoying, superficial addition that behaves in a contrarian manner.

I would agree with you, except that there is no annoying, superficial addition that behaves in a contrarian manner open for discussion in this thread.

Raiding party evades detection by normal units, attacks building, and either succeeds or fails based on whether or not you get the shit kicked out of you by those normal units defending the area.

As several people have said before, there are severe technical, balance, and UI issues with a normal-unit-based system, plus the fact that it would keep espionage stuck as some sort of mutant extention of military power. That is not what we are trying to achieve here: being a spymaster should be a valid method of play, seperate from being a sneaky but otherwise unremarkable military conquorer.

As I said before, the point of a spy system is to deal with things that you can't "just attack".

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How you can play something that sucks so bad and use it as an example is beyond me.

Ok, I think it's time to stop throwing pearls to the swines.

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I'm also on the fence about espionage, for mostly the same reasons as others have already given. I've just never played a game where espionage was fun. A game with horrible, absolutely horrible espionage in my opinion was M2:TW. It was just such a crap shoot... With crappy spies you failed almost all the time, but to get good spies your crappy spies need to be successful dozens of times without ever really getting caught... Also, there weren't really many ways of protecting your own people from assassinations. There were some traits - but intentionally getting them isn't easy, and the only other way would be to have your own assassins around your generals/cities and hope that yours can take out theirs instead of the other way around. That system always just made me really frustrated and I did more save/loading in that game than I've ever done before. Pissed me off when a maxxed out spy or assassin died doing some menial task.

That said, if espionage does make it in, then I'd like to see it tied into the training system. Other than fantastical creatures, Elemental isn't planned to have any pre-made units and I'd like that to carry over to espionage. I don't see anything wrong with training my berserker elephant rider to be a good scout if I have the time and resources to do so. Stealth, scouting, infiltration - those things, if espionage makes it in, should just be part of the training process.

I'm not sure I'd want that in the game, either, though. I mean, espionage is almost by definition an annoying pain in the ass when it happens to you. I don't want to have to micromanage some convoluted spy network to keep enemy spies out, repair and rebuild all the time when spies burn down my buildings, or hunt them down when my cities riot or my taxes plummet or my production is halved... It's just little thing after little thing after little thing that you have to deal with; and constantly dealing with little things is draining and frustrating.

It's why I hate that TEC ability in SoaSE that causes rebels to constantly attack everyone's planets. And it's the reason why the space age in the disaster called Spore wasn't just boring, but frustrating. Those damn enemy UFOs constantly attacking all your planets - with no recourse but to let them wreak havoc or turn around and fight them off.

Long story short - I'm really not sure espionage can be done well - it might just be fundamentally unfun. The only exception is scouting (as opposed to assassination/sabotage). Being able to scout enemy territory or cities with specially trained units would be fun and informative - and it wouldn't drive you nuts when it happens to you every few turns, partly because you'd never know and you wouldn't constantly have to divert your attention to deal with some small annoyance.

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Goodmorning all,

I for one see two espionage systems. being discussed,

One unit based system where a unit walks around, doing stuff, being seen or not being seen, attacking stuff with or without being caught, possibly with or without special equipment/training. And for this system psychoak is in part correct, Most of the 'spy funcitons' in many games could be reproduced by regulare units with guerrilla tactics and training; poisoning water, stealing gold, stealing tech, malatove cotailing a farm/factory/research center, assasinating somebody, and to a lesser extent raising civic revolts, seeding unrest, supplying arms... All of these 'classic' spy actions are things that could be done with 'stealthyness' funtionality and a few more combat options.

The other suggested system is the deeper more complex world of spygames. one which very few games ever really touch on: Double agents, mis-information, plan stealing, diplomatic upsets, betrayals. Sure this people could also steal spells, bomb buildings, poison water... but that's not their primary or even important skill set. Deception, personability, observation, situation awarness, political savey; These are the primary skill set. Rather then not being seen, the spygame spy needs to be seen, but not be known.

I would suggest that the two be kept seperate, for the most part, unlike Civ 4 with the attempt to merge the two (a greater or lesser failour depending who you ask).

One system, more or less like psychoak suggested, on map units, hard to see/detect. Armed to unleash harm in a large variety of ways; trained in a city, releaced and dirrectly controled.

For the other system I see no nessissity for an on-map unit. Instead they are faction made units, drawn from the best of the most inteleigent and charasimatic of your followers. These units would be trained for specific jobs, have levels and be individual, perhaps even equiped with communication scrolles and the like. But you would only have a certain, small ish, number of them at any time, and thier ranks would grow slowly (and depent on how much you spent on spying). Then by looking at the traits of your spy you assign them a task, a civ to infiltrate, a role to play. This system would be somewhat closer to what scoutdog was originally suggesting. the spy would try to infitrate the job in question, with risk, and slowly accumulate trust, and information, which you could then exploit to invoke an desired effect.

Consider that the game with have heroes, some heroes will have non combat abilities, (+% to reseach in this town/overall, +% to diplomatic events, whatever). What i am suggesting amoungst other things would allow you to train a unit to be a hero, and then have that hero 'sell' his/her service to the enemy. The opposion may accept this unit, and you wouldn't control it, They would, but you could still contact it and ask for reports, stolen info, whatever, running the risk of being caught.

It also behoves me to point out that with this system, catching a spy dosent' nessisaraly mean you should automatically kill, imprisson the spy. Feeding spys false information is a wonderful way to reverse the power of a spy, until the spyer learns that the spyee has discovered the spy.

A Good espionage system should induse mild fealings of paranoia in players. if all units experiance grow at slightly differnt rates, and one is growing quicker then usual. . . are they just an exceptional unit that you should concider giving essence to... are they a spy who was assigned to offer thier serveses in your army as a concript? Every unit you have was accepted by the rescruting officers of your army . . . any of those nobodies could have been an agent. Your sleeper agent informs you that your great enemy is ammasing his/her army on a far border to begine a war with a differnt faction, leaving the iron and gold mines on your borders less garded. . . . Is it legit, has your agent been detected and doesn't know it, Could you take the mines and turn the tide... or is it an ambush waiting for you to step into the trap.

Low grage spys would be restricted to jobs like working in a tavern or workshop, reporting on gosip / manufacturing demands, higher grade spys could be called on to 'serve' the opposing army, building up respect and admiration of troops they are stationed wtih, converting loyalty (so when they leave they take some of the troops they are with with them, depending on thier success/ as well as report on larger area's of the factions millitary mashine). The highest level spys would function as diplomatic / domestic/ military advisors with broad scale ablilties to lie and misdirect or even intentionally make bad choices, undermining successes.

Any role, any level, could be targetted for subversion.

Thoughts, Anybody?

Take care all
Robbie Price

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Denryu

Join Date 07/2006

+93

Also, seeing as how this is a War of Magic game, wouldn't it be a lot more fun to obtain all your secret spy info thru magical means? I mean what spy could be better than an air elemental?

Anything to abstracted just turns into "Pour money in to get info, and pour more money in to keep other guys from getting your info.

Somehting that might be kind of fun would be to have a unit that, while not invisible, would only be seen by a unit in a non adjacent non-city tile (but that could see for several tiles distance) and if said unit tried to enter a city there would be a die roll chance of success. If he got in he could either do nothing and just allow you to see what was being produced, and other "city info" data, or he could try to do any of the standard spy things like try to destroy a building, or interrupt research or steal research, any of which there would be set chance of success...it COULD be done I just know I haven't enjoyed anything I have seen implemented in any other game. It does seem like master of Orion had some race that were outstanding at stealing tech and that was about the best implementation I have seen.

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