Espionage

from GalCiv2 Forums
What will be options and advantages of espionage? List benefits with each level of espionage if you have some ideas, and also sabotage options. I also don't know how may 'levels' of infiltration there will be.
Espionage:
low levels: View every pact and treaty with other empires, view balance budget and intenal politics, view basic info (how many ships they have, how many planets, no. of techs researched, trade routes etc.)
Mid levels: See all their technologies, gain vision on all of their trade routes, can see exactly what ships do they have and how many of each, more information (currently researching tech, best trade route, best planet etc.)
High levels: Steals their world map, can see exact location of their ships, can see basic info for every planet

Sabotage options:
Steal technology- no explanation needed, except that you could also steal tech that you don't have prerequisites for, but then you gain buleprint and as soon as you research prerequisites for that tech, you gain it. Or maybe you still have to research it, but at high speed.

Deploy spy sattelite (Requires spy satelite tech) Gain info on specific planet: Population, social improvements, buildings, etc. Remains deployed for some time. High chance of succes.

Sabotage planet- destroyes currently building planetary improvement or one you choose.

Terrorist strike- reduces morale, kills lots of people and destroyes some infrastrusture. Nasty if you get caught.

Plant disease- Very contagious virus epidemics. Not lethal, but lowers productivity. Since it's difficult to infect entire planet, effect should be lowering production by 30-75%, and this varies every month (Spreading or fading of disease). Also, epidemic should last for some time, and if planet has trade route, disease could spread on other planets.

Propaganda- Lowers happines and increases chances that planet will defect to you. You are always detected, of course

Foster war- Scenes incident which provokes war with 3rd party. But most of the times it won't end in war, of course, but it may result in breaking alliance, ending trading partnership, imposing sanctions or embargo, and all-over decrease of relationship. Bad if you get detected, because you get nailed by BOTH sides.

Disable defences- Disables planetary defences on selected planet. No need to say how useful if you are invading that planet.

Send pirate attack- Very expensive, but enemy get tons of ships harrasing his economy, disrupting trade routes and looting undefended colonies. Easy and almost risk-free, as pirates rarely talk.

Maybe you should be able to negotiate with pirates other than this way. Maybe to have them as minor nation with specific choices, like hire merchenaries, pay tribute for leaving you alone, send them to opponent as mentioned above, even selling contraband to your planets and some black-market trade with civs on which you have embargo...

You should also be able to get some events if you have high espionage level, for example "Our spyes have found security failure in Human ships, and group of their ships located at /coordinates/ are now easy target for our spec-ops" You can use this special opportunity and steal ships, although this reduces relations and costs some money, or pass it.
diplomacy
18,685 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
All sounds really cool, although their has to be some cost and a fairly large chance of failure or worse exposure.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
And if sabotage fails, that should give them reason for war
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmm, I dont really know about this...
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I think there will be enough work to do without selecting specific missions. I think a better idea would be broad categories of destablization: military, political, economic, cultural. This would modify the event pool for the affected player in the even of success/failure. The event would refer to a mission along the lines outlined in the first post in the thread. Thus. the game would take into account the amounts being spent in each category and modify the likelihood of destabilization events occuring (staring at a zero chance) for each category. Some events could be normal games events that have been facilited with destabilization points (how about setting up a Space Shark bait pod in an enemy sector!) These "normal events" should be more expensive since they are by their nature more covert. Cheaper and more obvious espionage events (such as sabatoge) should be included in the event pool. The applying player should receive more feedback than is the case in GalCiv 1 of how effective their detabilization is. Also you could have a covertness slider which raise the cost of destabilization but make it more difficult to attribute to you if there is a spectacular failure (such as the shuttle with the space shark bait being intercepted by a patrol). I can even suggest a interface for this. Make a box with 4 quadrants. Each quadrant represents a mission category (military, politcal, economic, and social). You would drag a marker within the box to indicate what mission allocation you wanted. The covertness slider would apply a price multiplier to your destabilization campaign.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
That is one of the best concepts Ive ever heard but adjusting it into the good/evil system would be detracting from it.

If a Good Civilization decides to act what others would consider macilious because a terrorist act happened upon planet A and you initated a choice that outweighed the negatives, it shouldnt affect you all.

Region and Local should only impose postives and negatives upon your Civilization unless StarDock constructed events afterwards or during a siege of a planet as in the dissent between the planets original race, Drengin for example and invaders, Humans.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This truly would help make this into the best diplomatic section in a game that I've ever played. I don't like how relatively ineffectual the esponiage option is compared to the cost to get spying started. Besides, it's almost impossible to roleplay the Drath well (they're supposed to be the ultimate string-pullers, but it's impossible to pull strings from the shadows if there are no shadows to pull them from). Anyway, I'd like to add my whole-hearted support to this idea.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Technology stealing should be exclusive and ultra-expensive otherwise we'll repeat CivIII techwhoring when it was easier to invest everything in economy and jsut steal techs on gained income.
Maybe each level of espionage can allow additional options like at low level - can gain info about planets, medium can allow some minor sabotage and on high sabotage is much serious.
For additional options:
Epidemic outbreak - reduce population and increase unrest on chosen planetŠ±. Can spread
Bribe Scientists - gain some research points from AI - like you research Laser now and going to research Planetary Improvements and then you Bribe Scientists(assuming AI now research or already done with Planetary improvements) - so still you research Laser but Plan Imp will cost you cheaper.
Implement your culture ideas - increase your influence over chosen player
Special random events:
"Size is not important..."
Preq:Player X Economy is higher than yours, You are in trade witch chosen civilization, medium infiltration rate, freighter reach you within N or more weeks.
Your spies succeeded in infiltrating Player X's economy minister(or other title, like corporation leader)'s private life and managed to blackmail him so we gained access to valuable economic information(+N% economy bonus, but around 1% or 2%). Information is highly secret and we are sending freighter to deliver all data. Beware, economy minister can bribe pirates to prevent freighter from reaching destination.
Effects: Special Freighter launched from Player X planet - only you can recognize it(same applies to AI special freighter). Every turn whyle it moves(depending of his level of infiltration ofyour Civ) Player X can get message about special freighter and can recognize it. So he have option to hire pirates who would target freighter(evil), bribe crew to dump cargo into vacuum(neutral), and some good...surely there should be some "good" option. You'll get bonus as soon as freighter reach your colony.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
could be cool if implemented well, hope the first expansion comes with a better system than the mediocre espionage system that's available now.


Monc34
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Plant disease- Very contagious virus epidemics. Not lethal, but lowers productivity. Since it's difficult to infect entire planet, effect should be lowering production by 30-75%, and this varies every month (Spreading or fading of disease). Also, epidemic should last for some time, and if planet has trade route, disease could spread on other planets


OMG... That would be VERY nasty indeed.. I use usually 1 planet (my main cash cow) to start all my trade routes. If it gets infected..

Other races could put your empire on quarantine, no? Stop trades, and prohibid your from doing any invasion?
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree that the current espionage system is pretty weak. I just ignore it, currently.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can already see treaties without espionage.And I don't think there are any pacts per se.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've said it before but I think that espionage could be changed mostly by removing a lot of the information that is currently available to you without espionage.

Currently, you can see everything about enemy ships just from clicking on them. If you had to spend cash on espionage first before you could get their stats.... and more money before you could see the individual components.... this would go a long way to making espionage a more useful experience.

Of course, there are a lot of potentials beyond that, but I think this simple thing would make the game more interesting right now with just a minor tweak.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Here are my ideas on things that should be included with espionage. I have based a lot of these ideas on playing MOO and Civ3/4

Cost of Espionage/Counter-Espionage
Instead of a single cost, there should be an amount of money that is put into both spying on another race, and the amount you put into your own empire to detect espionage from other races (Called Counter-Espionage).You need to have this second spending section as some races may not want to spy on others, but want to protect their own information from being taken like the Terran Alliance.

bonuses to Espionage
There should be racial bonuses for espionage, as well as techs and improvements which also grant bonuses. This includes both when spying on others, and things that reduce espionage done against you (ie Police State)

Blaming war on someone else
It should be possible to insight a war, but purposely lay an information trail that points to a race of your choosing. This then allows you to effect another race without being direct. As a counter to this, a race that has been used as the scape goat should be able to use counter-espionage to try and find out who framed them. This could then allow the war to be overturned and the race then declares war against them if they so choose (or at the very least, end the war with the race that was framed)

Chance to discover Spying
There should be a % chance to discover spying, which would decrease the more money is spent on it. Thus each week there is a chance of being discovered. This allows you to choose if you want to "risk" a bit of spying to gain technology and then stop once you have gotten it, or if you want to always spy safely by paying more. There should also be an option to "auto-update" how much you spend to keep the required % risk.

Espionage Focus
You should be able to place a certain % of your espionage spending on the area of spying/influencing you want to do. This could include propoganda (infuencing towards your race), technology (stealing tech), Economic (stealing money), Insurrection (insighting a loss of morale). Different alignments could also have different things that they can focus on, including outright terroism for evil races to Avangelism for good races (ie the truely believe the other race would be better off if they convert to our races beliefs).
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I usually spend the minimum amount on each race, just to prevent any 'diplomatic incident'. Then as one race starts wiping the floor with the altarians (who seem to be quite weak in 1.1b4), I spur the espionnage rating to 75% until I can start stealing techs for free each rounds (luck helps iirc).

I think the current espionnage scheme suits the 'neutral' player's needs, but I sure wouldn't use it if I were playing a more aggressive style.

I'd really love to see a mix of MOO/SMAC espionnage (units/counter/intelligence).
Cheers,
Emperor Palad1
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Blaming war on someone else
It should be possible to insight a war, but purposely lay an information trail that points to a race of your choosing. This then allows you to effect another race without being direct. As a counter to this, a race that has been used as the scape goat should be able to use counter-espionage to try and find out who framed them. This could then allow the war to be overturned and the race then declares war against them if they so choose (or at the very least, end the war with the race that was framed)


would be GREAT when you're in minority in the Senate
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It would be great if you could sabotage starbases too. It is somewhat frustrating to be powerless against influence starbases or just general starbase spamming, as the AI usually does. It seem that war is the only option at the moment ... and not a very good one at that.