Espionage

a tad bit expensive, don't you think?

from GalCiv2 Forums
So I'm tooling along in a sandbox game.  Just me in my custom race against seven other races and eight minor races in an immense galaxy.  Now, I understand that the underlying premise of the campaign is that the Dread Lords are lurking in the background, working towards destabilizing all of the sentient races.  But along about turn 100, WHAM! _25_ enemy spies turn up on 25 of my planets.  How do you eradicate them?  You expend one of your Spies to Nullify one of their embedded Spies.

The thing is, your first Spy will cost about 100 BILLION credits.  Each subsequent Spy costs more.  By the time you get to Spy 004, the pricetag is about 800 BILLION credits.

I shudder to think what the pricetag for Spy 025 will be.  And since you can create Spies at the rate of one per turn **at best**, that means enemy Spy 025 has had 25 turns of damage inflicted on your economy.  And enemy Spy 024 had 24 turns of havoc.  Etc. 

If I did nothing but invest in Espionage, I still would not have been able to buy enough Spies to Nullify the incursion.

Just ran the progression of escalating costs and it looks like Spy 010 costs 51.2 TRILLION credits all by himself.  The nine before cost about 51.1 TRILLION credits.  And I'd still have another 15 Spies to pay for.

Would there ever have been a James Bond 007 if he came with 6.4 TRILLION British pounds price tag?

I almost get the feeling that the idea is to NOT Nullify the enemy Spies.  It actually might be cheaper to simply take the losses involved from their sabotage than to invest in the domestic Spies needed to eradicate the incursion.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I read somewhere here on the forums that the Espionage was going to be updated/changed (?) in 2.x version. No idea if it is true or not but I would really like some tweaks for it.

Can you scrap all the buildings/improvements they infiltrated and then rebuild them?
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Something definately needs to be done about the spy system with TA the AI uses them much more aggresively it seems. I havent found any way to really combat it, it just costs way to much money and generally as soon s I have nullified one it gets put back in the next few turns. (tough setting)

maybe I'm missing something here?
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The most effective thing I think you can do right now is just have everyone go to war with each other; the sooner, the better. At a minimum, make sure every AI is at war with at least one other AI and you'll find they're too busy to spend money on spies (for you at least). It might cost you a bit initially, but when everyone in the galaxy hates everyone else but you, life is good :D
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't any of the AI opponents that dumped 25 Spies on me. It most likely was the Dread Lords doing their thing, and more than likely, they dumped 25 Spies on each of the other 7 sentient major races at the same time.

100 turns into the game, it would be unlikely that any of the major races had all that many Spies stockpiled. Furthermore, any _sane_ AI player would retain at least half of his stockpile in order to Nullify any Spies sent after him. For me to have no Spies in my territory one turn, and then 25 the next, for it to be AI player Spies, it would mean they ALL ganged up on me at the same exact moment. That would be waaaayyyyyy too perverse. Either it's that, or else it's the Dread Lords -- and if they're doing it to me, they're doing it to everyone.

8 x 25 = 200 Spies. That would be something on the order of 100 x integral 1-200.
That's 100 + 200 + 400 + 800 + 1600 + 3200 + just keep going until you've doubled 200 times.

Unlimited resources. Think the game was stacked heavy enough in the Dread Lords' favor?

If you didn't lose your Spy when you Nullified an infiltrator the situation would be more or less manageable. But as it stands, _you_ certainly don't get enough bang for your buck -- but the AI does.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't like the way the espionage works. I do hope it will be changed in the future. If you need an info about some race, you have to harm it even if it is our ally. And the number of agents is stupid too. States on the earth with only few millions of inhabitants have much more agents than agents in the game, where the population is bilions of souls. The way in DL was good.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And the number of agents is stupid too. States on the earth with only few millions of inhabitants have much more agents than agents in the game, where the population is billions of souls.
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I suppose it helps if you view a "Spy" not as a single individual, but rather as all the personnel involved in operating an in-depth intelligence gathering individual. That is, behind 007 is MI6 with hordes of handlers, researchers, field tech, analysts, and administrators, along with all of their hardware requirements like computers, spysats, communication bugs, surveillance cameras, etc. And the more planets you have to cover, the more expensive coordination becomes as a layer admin and analysis grows to tie everything together. Still, your most extensive network would never get to the point where it costs TRILLIONS of credits to set up one more sub-network.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ohh I almost had that problem. That mission was a Pain in the *ss. Luckly I was able to keep the spy count to 13 and traded tech with my allies to float my econ... That was a scary mission. Also I build some anti spy buildings on my planets. That helped out alot. Also when I took out the Yor and the spys seemed to stop coming like crazy. But ya I have never seen the AI use the spys so aggressivly. I mean that was crazy, some times 2-3 turns in a row 1-3 spys a turn... ouch.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Personally, I like espionage. I am playing a gigantic galaxy with 9 oppponents on Tough AI and haven't had any real problems so far. There is a give-and-take of espionage with certain opponents and I always try to have 3-5 agents in reserve ready to nullify theirs. If I run into a race that specializes, I should get hammered. It is their "military" .... so far, as my games have gone, so good.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It would be nice if there was an option to disable Espionage, just like Tech Trading.

For me, it's mainly annoying and slows research/development, but it's not really that effective at stopping me. The AI just wastes tons of credits on it and wastes both of our times, when they'd be better off researching and building more ships, and gameplay would be funner if they did this too.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sounds like you got the Mega Event. No civ on it's own could possibly generate 200 spies. When something like this happens, reload a previous auto-save, and chances are that the game will not spawn this event twice in a row.