Espionage and the Super Hive Ability

from GalCiv2 Forums

I've been playing GalCiv on and off for about a year now, and I'm pretty comfortable with most of the play mechanics, but there are a couple of things I'm not totally sure about yet:

- the espionage ability: you can spend customization points to raise your espionage at the beginning, and can research techs/find anomalies that raise it. My question is: what exactly do the bonuses do? Do they decrease the amount of money needed to train a spy, or does it raise the rate at which your spy is able to get higher intel levels of another civ?

- Super hive. According to the description, super hivers build factories faster, but what buildings fall under 'factories'? I ask this because the Thalans don't have any factories in their tech tree (unless you're counting their manufacturing matrices). So would a super hive ability just increase your speed in building any kind of improvement with an industrial output, or is there a more specific type of building this bonus applies to?

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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

i don't usually use espionage tech much but i think the bonuses allow you to spend more money on spies so you can have more spies quicker and possibly speed up intel levels but im uncertain about the last bit!

for the the super hive abiltty it works with base thalan production buildings ( the manufacturing matrices) but not super or galactic project

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Super Hive doesn't "increase your speed", per the description, of building a building-rather, it decreases the cost of any buildings that add base mp (Hyperion Matrix is counted, too)-which includes any factories they'll get via tech trading as well as their manufacturing matrices.  However, as zoggy has pointed out, since power planets, et al, do not increase base mp but simply add a modifier to it, they are not affected.

If you're curious (and haven't looked at it yet), it reduces the build cost of the improvements to 25% of their original value-but only after they've been added to the build queue.  This will reduce the rush buy cost as well, provided you rush buy it after placing it in the build queue-rush buying a relevant improvement from the build list directly will not result in any cost savings from Super Hive.

My understanding of the Espionage ability is that it increases the amount of your economy you're able to invest into training spies (default is 25%, IIRC).  I'm not clear whether you're charged for this increase, if half of it is free, as is the case with most if not all other bonii in the game, or if you have to pay all the extra.  It does not decrease your spy training cost, but the net effect is (theoretically; see Loupdinour's post on the espionage mechanics around here somewhere-if I find it, I'll link it) that you do get spies faster.

Intel levels are not sped up; they're contingent on the number of spies placed, and how long they've been there (something we might call spy-weeks, and I think Loupdinour does so as well).

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