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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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

I play on masochistic and above and never encounter a spy problem

As do I. I have the skill to be top dog, I just know it's not worth the price you pay for being there. And yes, larger maps make dealing with spies much easier, but smaller maps usually results in fewer spies being employed.

As far as I can tell, the AI does not strictly pile spies on the highest military, they distribute them based on relative military strength. If the two highest militaries are only a few percent apart, they will get roughly the same number of spies. If first is way ahead, they get the bulk of the spy population.

Did you even read what he wrote? Or are you always so militarily weak in every game that you just don't get it?

First, I'm fairly sure you meant she, and second, YES. That's what I've been telling you from day one. You don't have to stay that way forever, but the first three years or so are suicide if you're foolish enough to be in first. During that time the AIs will spend their first couple dozen agents fighting each other instead of you, so when you do come out and start kicking asses, you can't get dogpiled as easily. I assume you don't declare war on everyone as soon as you meet them, why would you paint a giant "stick spies here" sign on your ass?

Although no official announcement has been made, from early discussions about this you likely will be getting a mechanism to passively spy in 2.0 - but you'll still need to deal with spies as well. Just enough of a mix of the two systems to make sure neither of us is very happy; I liked the ability to deny others the ability to get info on my empire.

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First, I'm fairly sure you meant she, and second, YES. That's what I've been telling you from day one. You don't have to stay that way forever, but the first three years or so are suicide if you're foolish enough to be in first. During that time the AIs will spend their first couple dozen agents fighting each other instead of you, so when you do come out and start kicking asses, you can't get dogpiled as easily. I assume you don't declare war on everyone as soon as you meet them, why would you paint a giant "stick spies here" sign on your ass?

NONONONONONONONONO. I am not going to change the way I play the game because of this STUPID flawed and overpowered system. Stay weak for a few years, or have your economy crushed. You've got to be kidding me. Some people think that playing the game with the same strategy every time is boring, and I will not be doing this same stupidness every time because of some unrealistic 'agents' wearing plastic facemasks unplugging our entertainment centers.

I like the early game better than the late game. Since I often bail on a game after not too long, I would NEVER get to the point where the AI would have spy fatigue. The answer is not to play the game the way someone else prefers to avoid the problem.

There's an issue with that strategy anyway. The AI will take advantage of your weak military and declare war, or bug you asking for tributes all the time. Of course you'll probably say you have to keep your military rating "near middle of the pack". No--still lame and too restricting, and I don't feel like keeping that close a watch on it JUST so I avoid agent spam. OMG the system effects the entire way you play the game and you see nothing wrong with it, and nothing wrong with the fact it can't be turned off?

Agent system needs:
1) Passive espionage
2) A reasonable and REALISTIC way of calculating agent training costs
3) A TOGGLE to turn it off entirely, because it is boring. That's what they can name it. A checkbox that says "Agents are boring, disable them, because it is the most uncreative implementation of espionage possible."

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

I am not going to change the way I play the game because of this STUPID flawed and overpowered system.

Nor should the rest of us be forced to play your idea of what the game should be.

There's an issue with that strategy anyway. The AI will take advantage of your weak military and declare war, or bug you asking for tributes all the time. Of course you'll probably say you have to keep your military rating "near middle of the pack". No--still lame and too restricting, and I don't feel like keeping that close a watch on it JUST so I avoid agent spam. OMG the system effects the entire way you play the game and you see nothing wrong with it, and nothing wrong with the fact it can't be turned off?

That is indeed an issue. I won't pretend it isn't, but it beats the alternative - being spy spammed and gang jumped by multiple simultaneous declarations of war. If anything, I tend to keep my military too low - I occasionally have minor civs ranked higher than me because I spend more time building my economy than my fleet. Guess what? It's survivable, as spy spam is apparently not.

No matter what you do to the espionage system, it will efect the entire way I play - to think otherwise is idiotic. HOW it affects gameplay might be discussed, but that it will affect it is not questionable. Even turning it off would cause massive changes.

Agent system needs:
1) Passive espionage

As previously stated, you will be seeing this again in 2.0, unfortunately. Undefendable passive spying is a lame cop out.

2) A reasonable and REALISTIC way of calculating agent training costs

Would you please define what that might be for me? Remember, it must apply to everyone equally, so if you get hordes of dirt-cheap spies, so will all of the AIs. Otherwise it's just a hardcoded player advantage. Even if they took the silly "based on how many active spies you have" stance, your spies would STILL be outnumbered several times, because removing the AIs spies resets their costs as well.

3) A TOGGLE to turn it off entirely, because it is boring.

That would be a defendable option, as long as it turned off all espionage, period. I might even try a few games that way. It's unlikely to ever be implemented, though.

I think most of the problems you are facing with spy spam is that you are playing the exact wrong level. At lower levels the AI can't afford to make spies, and is too stupid to use them anyway. At higher levels, the AIs have more resources, making it much harder for you to get yourself into this situation in the first place. I've never tested it empirically, but that seems to be the case.

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Forced to play what my idea of the game is? Don't be a dummy. I'm asking for a TOGGLE so people aren't forced into anything. There's plenty of other people around here that liked the old espionage better. Like I've said before, using the sliders, intel should decay with time and there should be a counter-intel slider to make enemy intel decay faster (or even prevent them from getting it in the first place). Working upgrade for the old system, and you can 'defend' against it.

As for an agent training cost fix to your crappy precious agent system, I don't know. I know the training increase curve is far, far too fast since it seems to have the effect of 'disabling' agents as the game goes on. Maybe it should be based on the size of the race's economy. That might be a workable fix but it isn't much less stupid than the current situation. Whatever. I don't care to think about it enough to come up with a solid solution. Who cares? It's crap, just disable it! And if people who hate themselves want to inflict the pain of living with it on themsevles, that's fine with me as long as I can IGNORE it.

For 3) I don't just want it turned off, I want an improved slider system in it's place, or the old system. I don't want to lose all intelligence info, but it should only be an afterthought part of the game, not something that can cripple your economy and massively effect your playstyle!!!

The term "spy spam" shouldn't even exist, the whole concept is retarded. What the heck? How many strategy games have been created to date, and how many of them had this much difficulty implementing an espionage system? None others, that I know of. So something's wrong here.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Between this and the implementation of the UP- those are the big two issues I have with TA, but it just reduces an A+ game to a high A.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Getting rid of agents entirely is indeed forcing others to play the way you want. A toggle to switch between the systems just isn't going to happen, so stop dreaming. From what I understand of it, too much of it is hard coded into the game, otherwise you'd be seeing mods involving espionage changes. Putting two entirely separate systems in doesn't seem like it's worth the time, but maybe one of the devs will correct me on that.

Just my opinion and all, but your description of what you want in a slider system sounds FAR worse in terms of economy drain than the current system properly used. It also blatantly fails at the two major issues people had with the sliders - no way to use it offensively, and it's not at all integrated into the game. The slider system pretty much defined "afterthought", and most users (at least the ones who expressed an opinion about it) thought this was a bad thing. Sliders are simply too passive.

I haven't played too many TBS games, but I can name several RTS games that have a spy rush, or an engineer rush, or hyjacker rush, etc. All of these are units used more to disrupt enemy economy and production, just like a DA/TA spy spam. The effect is about the same, and it's a valuable and oft-used tactic. I can see why always being on the receiving end of it would make you grumpy, but being on the giving end of it is quite worthwhile.

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A toggle to switch between the systems just isn't going to happen. (...) From what I understand of it, too much of it is hard coded into the game, otherwise you'd be seeing mods involving espionage changes.

There is the option to disable certain victory conditions, so the AI is probably coded in such a way that enabling and disabling various game-options is possible while retaining a working AI.

So I would be surprised if espionage/agents would be that difficult to toggle off, especially since the agents only became available in the extensions. I don't know much about the programming history of GalCiv though.

By the way, I just started playing the game and haven't bumped into the spy-problem yet. Probably, version 2.0 will be out before I get spammed with spies...

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I think we should toggles for everything!

We already have them for victory conditions, mega events, minor races, Max CPU algorithms (whatever the hell that does), anomolies, asteroids, super abilities, etc.

Why not add a toggle for espionage? And...and...spaceships? What the hell! Why am I FORCED to play this game with spaceships? I want to turn those off. I build some early on, and they aren't too expensive, but then the AI throws more and more spaceships at me, and the ones I'm forced to build get more and more expensive. It's ridiculous! My economy gets ruined because of these stupid spaceships.

I want a toggle switch for moons around planets. And rings, too. Those things piss me off. They are broken anyhow. They don't work as intended.

I want a toggle switch for starbases. They cost way too much in constructors and upgrades to be of any use. And the AI spams the crap out of them. Especially the minor races. They build those damn influence starbases EVERYWHERE! In fact, I want a toggle switch that allows me to play with minor races but also to let me decide if they can even build starbases, and then a toggle switch to deactivate just influence bases.

Scratch that, I want a sub-toggle switch that pops up after I select the toggle switch that lets me enable starbases that pops up after I enable minor races that can use spaceships. And I want THAT sub-toggle switch to allow me to decide which starbases we can and can't build. That way, if economic starbases break up with me or piss me off in any way, I can turn those bastards off, like they deserve to be...dirty starbases.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

*golf clap*

Well done, sir. Well done.

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I think we should toggles for everything!We already have them for victory conditions, mega events, minor races, Max CPU algorithms (whatever the hell that does), anomolies, asteroids, super abilities, etc.Why not add a toggle for espionage? And...and...spaceships? What the hell! Why am I FORCED to play this game with spaceships? I want to turn those off. I build some early on, and they aren't too expensive, but then the AI throws more and more spaceships at me, and the ones I'm forced to build get more and more expensive. It's ridiculous! My economy gets ruined because of these stupid spaceships.I want a toggle switch for moons around planets. And rings, too. Those things piss me off. They are broken anyhow. They don't work as intended.I want a toggle switch for starbases. They cost way too much in constructors and upgrades to be of any use. And the AI spams the crap out of them. Especially the minor races. They build those damn influence starbases EVERYWHERE! In fact, I want a toggle switch that allows me to play with minor races but also to let me decide if they can even build starbases, and then a toggle switch to deactivate just influence bases.Scratch that, I want a sub-toggle switch that pops up after I select the toggle switch that lets me enable starbases that pops up after I enable minor races that can use spaceships. And I want THAT sub-toggle switch to allow me to decide which starbases we can and can't build. That way, if economic starbases break up with me or piss me off in any way, I can turn those bastards off, like they deserve to be...dirty starbases.

AHAHAHA! Awesome job, can't say I could have done better myself! LOL

But no seriously espionage needs a toggle. lol

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Getting rid of agents entirely is indeed forcing others to play the way you want. A toggle to switch between the systems just isn't going to happen, so stop dreaming. From what I understand of it, too much of it is hard coded into the game, otherwise you'd be seeing mods involving espionage changes. Putting two entirely separate systems in doesn't seem like it's worth the time, but maybe one of the devs will correct me on that.Just my opinion and all, but your description of what you want in a slider system sounds FAR worse in terms of economy drain than the current system properly used. It also blatantly fails at the two major issues people had with the sliders - no way to use it offensively, and it's not at all integrated into the game. The slider system pretty much defined "afterthought", and most users (at least the ones who expressed an opinion about it) thought this was a bad thing. Sliders are simply too passive.I haven't played too many TBS games, but I can name several RTS games that have a spy rush, or an engineer rush, or hyjacker rush, etc. All of these are units used more to disrupt enemy economy and production, just like a DA/TA spy spam. The effect is about the same, and it's a valuable and oft-used tactic. I can see why always being on the receiving end of it would make you grumpy, but being on the giving end of it is quite worthwhile.

Yeah we can go around in circles about forcing people to play the game certain ways forever. That's why it needs a toggle, it's too big of a deal not to have one. You don't understand anything about how hard it would be to toggle off, don't act like you do. It's a brand new crappy feature that they're slated to FIX, because it SUCKS as is. So the devs agree with me, and think you are wrong. I win. lol

The previous system was already implemented once. All they need to do is go fetch the old code and put it back in. I don't even CARE if they make improvements to it or not. I'd rather have a passive system that was designed as an afterthought than a system that screws over a number of your playstyle options.

Of course they could fix the broken agent system too, and I'd actually be okay with that, but I'm not 100% sure that it's fixable at all! I've yet to hear a perfect answer for fixing it. But I know the old version of the game worked fine, and didn't get in the way of the rest of the game. That's good enough for alot of people. It wasn't broken. It wasn't great, sure, but it definitely wasn't broken. And this functional part of the game was broken trying to fix it. Don't fix what isn't broken maybe?

I've never seen a game of this type (i.e. not designed around a spy theme?) be so embarrassingly effected by a simplistic, boring agent system like this. The only way the game is playable, if you use certain playstyles, is to build CE buildings everywhere. That's lame! Are you really going to group this game in the same category as fking Starcraft and other retarded click fests? Ugh. Let me just delete it from my hard drive right now if that's what it's supposed to take a lesson from.

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I don't want to get rid of agents, but I don't like how multiple civs ganging up on one civ ramps up that one civ's espionage costs.

And I think that taking the lead militarily within the first three years should be a viable strategy, not get you dropped into the espionage economic death spiral.

Also, Willy's correct, she is the proper pronoun.

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I don't want to get rid of agents, but I don't like how multiple civs ganging up on one civ ramps up that one civ's espionage costs.And I think that taking the lead militarily within the first three years should be a viable strategy, not get you dropped into the espionage economic death spiral.Also, Willy's correct, she is the proper pronoun.

Hehe, sorry about that one, blame it on all those midevil girly-man looking types with long hair, and very high desktop resolutions. lol

But you're right, I don't -really- care HOW it's fixed. Remove them, fix the system, whatever. Just don't screw over half the strategies that used to work in the previous versions in the process. No excuse for that. NO APOLOGISTS FOR FLAWED DESIGN ALLOWED! And just to be clear I'm not saying Stardock is retarded for making a bad design - everyone makes mistakes, just fix it and ADMIT that it is flawed. Which they seem to be doing I guess.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Nothing has been said about the 2.0 updates lately, but from previous discussions the only real change will be the ability to spy passively using agents. Most if not all offensive features will still be available. And I mean offensive in every way imaginable.

And I think that taking the lead militarily within the first three years should be a viable strategy, not get you dropped into the espionage economic death spiral.

It is a viable strategy, it's just much harder than the alternative. Certainly the million point game recently posted didn't wait that long, but then that game (500+ planets on a huge map) was effectively over in the first year.

Phaedyme - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your avatar River Tam from the Reaver fight in Serenity?

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I thought it was the little girl from The Ring...

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Looks like my girlfriend when she's angry. Haven't seen that look much at all thank god.

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Phaedyme - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your avatar River Tam from the Reaver fight in Serenity?

Yes, that is my avatar.

Here's where I got the image: http://whiteafrican.com/?page_id=78

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Unless I'm am already kicking the bejesus out of the AI, I save all my spies for defensive purposes. I usually start producing them pretty early so I have a stockpile when and if the AI decides to hit me. So far that has worked pretty well, but I haven't played a 1.96 game yet.

This is the best spy strat for the current 1.96 build. Put funding in early, keep putting it in, and use spies only for defense. The best defense against spies is really a huge economy. Every time I get one of those economy mega events, I put a lot towards espionage just in case. I can't remember a single game in which I have been stymied by spies.

Kind of off topic, but I really like the way spies work CivIV BTS. There, spies are units. I would love a module I could add to a ship that would allow me to cloak and spy in enemy territory. That plus the old slider system would be just fine.

Oh and if alliances AUTOMATICALLY gave ship/planet vision and advanced intel for both parties.

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People don't seem to understand. I don't WANT to dump half my income into spies, and waste my time countering 10 spies a turn. It's boring. It's a waste of time. It's stupid. Really it's as simple as that. But whatever - I'll probably just end up going back to the original version where, quite honestly, I won't be missing much. Unless they fix this system, which I doubt will happen.

Now: having spies as UNITS? Small cloaking vessels to deliver spies to enemy planets? Possibility for spies to sneak from planet to planet via hitch-hiking on trade vessels? Actually choosing the action the spy carries out, which (obviously) must be on the same planet? New ways to protect yourself (or attack others) with spies caused by the 'transporting' needs? Spy units you can assign to planets to conduct counter espionage? NORMAL* training and maintenance costs? (In line with approximately the cost of a ship or something.)

YES!!!! Now that is the correct way to implement agents in a game like this. I expect to see it patched in by the end of the week. lol.

BTW Stardock: You really need to lighten up. And fix some of your game's issues. Don't want bad press on your games? Fix the issues, don't waste time silencing those pointing them out. (Assuming that's what just happened here.) Deliver what you promised in your ads. I don't know why my other account can no longer create new threads or reply, but whatever!

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BTW Stardock: You really need to lighten up. And fix some of your game's issues. Don't want bad press on your games? Fix the issues, don't waste time silencing those pointing them out. (Assuming that's what just happened here.) Deliver what you promised in your ads. I don't know why my other account can no longer create new threads or reply, but whatever!

Stardock doesn't play that way. If someone trash talks their products, they will most likely get an angry/indignant reply, but won't get banned. A person has to get pretty abusive, or promote some illegal activity to get banned.

What happened? Do you get the generic 'this address has been...' splash? If so, then I *may* be able to help. This happens to me from time to time. I am on satellite, and have my modem set up for dynamic addressing. Once in awhile, it will choose an addy which has been banned here. When that happens, I just reboot the modem, which will give me a new address, and I'm good to go.

I don't ever have a problem with spies. I don't know if it's my style of gameplay, or just the fact that I prepare for them. I set my slider at a reasonable level very early in the game, and just forget it. I almost never see my first spy before late mid-game, and by that time I am stocked up and ready. I find spies to be very useful, overpowered, even.

I agree that the system could use a bit of tweaking, but I'll hold my comments until 2.0 comes out. 'Soft' espionage is a given at this point, I believe, but that won't be the only improvement. There will be added functionality as well. You will be able to destabilize diplomatic relations between other civs, as well as...darn. Can't remember, but there's something else. These were almost added during the beta, but presumably weren't ready yet. The checks for them were in the debug at one time.

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Ansury, if you got "silenced" then you must have deserved it. You've been doing nothing but insulting the game for weeks on all kinds of topics over and over and over. Sometimes you say, "Oh, I was trolling" other times you just keep berating the game. If they didn't silence you for that during this whole time, then I doubt this latest rant got you silenced.

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I've noticed the "Oh, I was just trolling" a lot too. Gets tiresome quick.

Jonnan

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That was like, twice, simultaneously. Yep lighten up a little. All the whining about my whining is getting tiresome quick too. lol

Believe it or not I actually feel bad about having to say that the expansion is contending for one of my least favorite game expansions of all time. I like Stardock overall. But since I won't be getting much use out of ToA, I think I have the right to at least voice what I don't like after buying it.

That other account was definitely blocked or something - everything works fine except there's no 'create post' or 'reply' 'quote' buttons visible anywhere. Deserved it? Maybe.

Not that I care... But when I wasn't joking around I was putting up constructive criticism and suggestions for improvements.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

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.

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Don't let this become a personal war. Although I too would prefer that spies be optional, let me remind you of the words of a wise man. You can't please all of the people all of the time... So put in a switch.

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