JonSarik

Join Date 01/2006

Spy Invasion Cheese

I think the following is a cheese tactic and want to bring it to the devs' attention if it wasn't already. Basically, I've been using my spies on the farms of planets I'm invading the next turn. In essence, in a single turn/"week" I'm able to bring planets with a population of 12 or so billion down to 6 billion. I can easily conquer these worlds with a transport with 3 advanced troop modules or less. Easily! Not sure how my fellow gamers feel about this. I personally love it, though I think it's an exploit and deep inside know it should go away. You guys might want to consider making farms immune to spies.

It just seems highly unlikely that half or more of a world's population can die out in a week/turn due to a single spy wreaking havoc.

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Mistralok1

Join Date 05/2006

+22

Good catch, JonSarik. The population of a planet should never be decreased in so short a time as this. In humans, there is the rule of threes: three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and three weeks without food will generally result in death. The population should not begin to decrease until after three weeks have passed. Of course, these rules apply to the human race only. Reptiles can go without food for much longer, and what about the machine or insectoid races? This could become quite complicated. A possible resolution would be: If an agent is placed on a farming tile, then the population growth allowed by that tile will be halted until the agent is negated. If this does not happen within a set number of turns, then the population will decrease at a set percentage until such time as the agent is negated.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Second exploit regarding invasion and spies caught today

NOt to mention the long term pop damage from going from 12 to 6 mil pop in a turn

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I'd personally like farms to be immune to spies.

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I think they shouldn't be immune, but the effects should not be this instantaneous. Maybe just a gradual decline, like a couple hundred million at the high end.

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I like that idea of having a percentage decrease. If not after a set amount of time, but the spy could reverse the percentage of population growth. Remember, the general rule of thumb is that it's an average of going 3 weeks without food. Some people will go sooner, and some will go later. Existing farms will ration out their food supplies as much as they can, stretching the remaining resources very thin, but eventually, people would begin to succumb to starvation. The spy could also be working to taint the food supplies, poisoning people which would also account for a more rapid population drop.

Whatever the case, it should work that the spy takes the bonus and turns it into a negative...so, a farm that provides a 10% population growth would give a -10% population decline.

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I concur. There should be a gradual, but fairly quickly, population decline - but from the the turn after the spy is added to the farm. This gives to the idea that the spy is tainting the food supply or energy source (for machines) as well as general sabotage until it drops down to whatever the planet will support without a farm(s). Question is, how quickly should this happen?

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i really just hope spies can be optionally disabled without disabling all the other DA content... i love espionage, and to be sure i'm reserving final judgement, but i don't think i'm keen on the way espionage is being done here. it seems like a lot of micromanagement if you're on a larger galaxy.

Question is, how quickly should this happen?

i thought i'd respond so i'm not just complaining. without making up a new racial stat, i'd say using population growth rate would also be a good way to determine population decline when food (or morale) change, so that populations that grow faster also shrink faster.

the second alternative would be to make it take time for spies to achieve thier full effect (on any structure). so they drop one research, food or production every two weeks, or 5% of the total bonus granted by improvements like stock exchanges and virtual reality centers.

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I brought up this same feature in an earlier thread, here. I got a dev response to the effect that this is how it is supposed to be.

It still troubles me that I can use one spy, who doesn't have to move on the board at all, to instantaneously eradicate billions of people on a planet, making it far easier to invade on the next turn - or at the very least dealing a serious blow to another faction's economy without their being able to do anything about it.

I just don't do it; the AI has not done it to me so far, though I think I will be extremely disappointed if and when it does happen.

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Couldn't it be explained as the spy isn't DESTROYING food, they are actively POISONING the food/water supply? If it was some sort of sci-fi super poison and it got into the food/water supply its possible that there would be mass death rates, no?

Dano

PS - Yeah, I still think its a cheesy tactic since it makes planetary defense nearly impossible, but it could be realistic as well.

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