Agents - how is this a good addition?

ansury

Join Date 06/2008

Agents - how is this a good addition?

Agents suck.

Someone tell me if I'm seeing something that shouldn't happen or I'm doing something wrong. Or is there a bug here?

Still relatively early in the game, it's going fine, but all the sudden I get assaulted by about 5-6 enemy agents. I started taking them out of course, but every few turns or so I just get a few more. Meanwhile, up and up goes my cost of getting new agents. Even with spending maxed out, I still can't be rid of the infestation completely, and it's starting to kill my economy. I cannot see the logic in having the cost of each agent going higher and higher (even though I have none active).

This, on top of the fact that I liked the OLD way of doing espionage better (the sliders for each race), has me wondering what the hell people were thinking when they added this new "feature". I'll never get ahead of that curve unless I just start wiping out civilizations--and then I'd be guessing at which ones were sending agents. How is all this fun?

At first I figured, oh..agents, okay that's nice. I'll just ignore that part of the game and only send a few out when I need some intel. Nope. We can't ignore them can we?

At this point I might rather be playing the original version of the game, or maybe the 1st expansion. (Not sure if that's the one where this terrible idea was implemented.)

Before I totally regret buying the expansions (map editor was the reason and it's a huge letdown), is there any way to disable or negate the stupidity of agents? Or at least prevent the ridiculous unrealistic increase in their training cost?

Sorry for the stupid horizontal lines, for some reason the forum has decided to ignore my line breaks and that was the only way I could fix it.

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I will confess, now that I've realized how the other empires use their agents, it simplifies my own use of them - I just concentrate my own agents on whoevers ahead militarily, they're too busy to kill my agents off, then I steal their stuff - {G}.

Jonnan

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That's right LightVader. I'm not taking anything here personally.

I don't care about your defense of stupid agent strategies. Blah blah blah, agents suck. I'm bitter towards anyone defending crap features that don't deserve to be defended.Blah blah blah. Agents are stupid. Bring back the old sliders. End of discussion.You call that constructive criticism? I'm astonished it took them this long to ban you, and even more so to see they allowed you to have a second account.

Anyway, no that's not constructive (hehehe), but if you read the complete sentence I wrote I said "when I wasn't joking around". Who -seriously- debates something like that? Two year olds, that's about it, haha. I was basically saying "nonononononono I'm right and you're wrong!" as a counterpoint, I never expected to be taken seriously. It was just to see people get fired up over nothing, it's funny. lol

Yeah I was fine with letting this thread die a few pages back I think, my point was finished around when I said the annoying "End of discussion." line. Now I'm getting bored.

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I like the new spy placing system, but hate the spy pay system. Each spy is more expensive and takes longer to train than its precessor just doesn't make any sense.

Instead the training cost should be constant but an upkeep for existing spies should be added. This upkeep could use the exponential cost increase which the spy training is using now. Races with many spies in the field would have to pay high upkeep, races with a small number of spies would have low upkeep, but training one would cost each race the same. The Espionage ability could then be used to reduce the training cost, the training time or the upkeep expenses.

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If it was up to me I would just remove them completely. I rarely use them if at all. I only put resources into it in case I get spied. I understand the point of them but I like concentrating on other stuff.

Would it be hard to implement an option button for spies?

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The biggest problem with current espionage system is that it is "who has biggest economy" contest.

Especially, because spy costs increase over time forever.

In my late game, I don't even bother canceling enemy spies on my stock markets. Why would I waste 3000+ bc worth spy for canceling 30bc/turn profit. Waste of good money.

In late game, only real cost effective use of spies is in planetary invasions, where your super expensive spy is on planet for less then a turn, and thus can't be "canceled".

And in early game, I only use them to scout enemies early to get Low espionage rating (as quickly as possible, while AI has bad economy, so loses from counterespionage stay low).

Then have 3-4 of them in reserve and use them for defense, but only in case if actually canceling enemy spy pays of. And keep rest of the money for economy).

P.S.
I hate this system.

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Voqar

Join Date 03/2003

+21

I don't like the espionage system either. The old system was super basic so I dunno if it was enough - but at least you could gather intel and stuff without a ton of hassle. The new system is way too potentially involved. I guess some people like micromanaging agents. I guess espionage is an interesting wrinkle for the game but I could do without it entirely. Much like the 'no tech brokering' option, I could stand to see GC adopt Civ IV's 'no espoinage' option.

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I have to agree. The spies are better the new way. In the old method, all you got was information and tech, and there was NO way to defend yourself. You didn't even know how badly off you were. Now that you can know (for nothing), it's worse?

That said, I have some issues with it myself. I think generic information about planets and civs should be easier to come by, especially if you're on friendly or better terms with that civ. I don't want to have to shut off a friendly tile just so I can know which of my allies' planets are vital to their wellbeing.

For that matter, I also think that information spying on my enemies shouldn't necessarily shut down one of their buildings.

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The thing is, that to do spying right, you're going to have to create a 'game within a game' to capture all the possibilities of spying, espionage and sabotage. I didn’t buy the game for that. So, a few changes to the system will help and lets remember that it’s always your race against the rest of the AI’s. You will always be outnumbered by spies in that regard!!!

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Just to add my two cents. The espionage system is badly thought out, badly implemented. However in all the games I have played, it has never been a significant enough issue for me to worry over. However, as it stands at the moment, the system doesn't really make sense economically and the agent placing system, to me, isn't all that fun or useful since the agents get nullified so quickly.

It WOULD be really cool if Stardock could make some sort of meta-game out of it but I have no idea how that would work.

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