Exploit to get high Espionage Report - Level

Works as intended.  You still have to spend the money to have three agents in the first place, the cost of which is still being tweaked.  

Okay, I thought it would be somewhat difficult to get high espionage on all races. Not being able to do it in one turn as soon as the player has 3 agents.

I think it would be better if the the espionage level could both increase (if he has agents out) and decrease (if he hasn't), both which would take some time.
Example: the player puts one agent on an planet. After a couple of turns he gets low level. AI kills players agent. Some more turns go by and the espionage level goes back to very low level.
Otherwise, you might just as well give the player high espionage on all races automatically once he has 3 agents and save the player the time and all the clicking he will have to do.

Works as intended. You still have to spend the money to have three agents in the first place, the cost of which is still being tweaked.

Ack, I was hoping that you would need to maintain the Espionage by keeping agents on planets.

Also, with the current setup, you could potentially use the same three agents to gain High Espionage with all Major Races in the same turn. Regardless of whether or not you need to maintain the Espionage, that does seem far too cheap for the benefits High Espionage gives you.

Also, will we also finally be able to gain Espionage Levels on Minor Races?

Ack, I was hoping that you would need to maintain the Espionage by keeping agents on planets. Also, with the current setup, you could potentially use the same three agents to gain High Espionage with all Major Races in the same turn. Regardless of whether or not you need to maintain the Espionage, that does seem far too cheap for the benefits High Espionage gives you.

Exactly. A little too simplistic for my taste.

I like the idea of espionage level increasing and decreasing. Makes sense from the stand point that if you aren't actively spying then your intel would start to get out of date. I have no idea on the pacing of the gain and loss but I would certainly add something to the spies.

I hadn't realized that placing a spy is what increases your intel level. Guess I should read the new manual at some point .

now wait a second, decreasing level? maybe a little bit, but it would have to take a long long time, the way i read the spy reports is that you have infiltrated their network, from that i have inferred wire-taps, black mail, and buy-offs of their government officials, who would continue to work for you after you remove your spy


maybe the number of free agents (agents not active anywhere) should contribute to a degradation of other empires knowledge of your empire? so say an opponent has 4 agents not placed, well in about 10 turns, those 4 spies have knocked you intelligence level down one notch -- just an example, of course number would have to be played with and tweaked a lot, but if we were gonna have a intelligence level degradation i think there should be an active way to make it happen, not passive (active meaning you intentionally have agents free to decrease opponents knowledge of you)

Well, if you stop spending money on espionnage on a race (or agents), why would you be up to date with their buildings, techs and ships?

While I would like decreasing espionage levels to be in the game, I don't think it's really necessary and the expensive agents might make it too annoying. I hope though that the devs might consider changing the instantaneous level-increase so that it takes one or more turns instead.

For example, one spy on an AI:s planets and it would take 3 turns to go from very low to low, two and it would take 2 turn and with three it would take 1 turn. Now there is some risk involved, the AI has a chance to kill the agents. That means that the player has to choose if a higher espionage-level is worth the potential risk of losing his agents.

Yea its bit simplistic as it is for now. Better than the old one but still could be bit deepper. Check out in my mind a good discussion how SD could improve the system:



Espionage Discussion

Perhaps when agents increase your espionage level they should disappear, so they can't be re-used, that would seem to balance it a bit.

so say an opponent has 4 agents not placed, well in about 10 turns, those 4 spies have knocked you intelligence level down one notch

This seems a plausible way to add the "passive" layer discussed elsewhere w/o adding complication to the UI.

We have tweaked the way you level up in espionage on each race.  It will be in the next iteration of the build.  I think most of you will be happy with the results.

Thanks for all the thoughts and ideas, they have proved to be quite useful.  And thanks for playing!

Charles