Espionage

The more time you spend with agents deployed, the more the espionage level will rise on your target race. Having more agents out there at once will make it rise faster.

It sounds like Espionage is a function of the number of agent-turns you have planted in that civilization. Is the number of agent-turns needed for Low/Medium/High espionage dependent on the galaxy size, or is it constant? thanks

I'd expect it's constant, but I don't know what the thresholds are.

Actually I found it takes less time to reach higher espionage levels with agents (having 3 in a civilization) than the old way.

True, I found it a tad odd, somewhat tedius, but once I saw the benefit I deemed it cool. It is costly to build agents fast, however, and you can't "info creep" the AI by spending a little espionage money on EVERYONE.

Honestly, it's more realistic in a sense because you have to manage who you put where, though the agents being able to teleport anywhere - or move with ships without worrying about travel speed in the role-playing aspect of the game, is not realistic, and I assume each "agent" is actually a team like the Mossad uses, not 007.

I would love an option to choose either style but I'm not sure Dark Avatar AI would appreciate that.

Mmm, 2nd thought - what we're missing from the old method is the "fire and forget" aspect. You could just manage sliders and these agents handled themseleves invisibly. Now it's an active aspect of the game, where you have to choose where to put them and what to put them on (I noticed the AI left agents on non-valuable resources longer).

So if you miss being able to adjust sliders and forget about it, this new mode simply won't appeal to you.

If you enjoy crushing the production of a specific planet's unique resource (and replacing the agent a lot)... uhh... then you do.

Is there any real documentation on this stuff? The manual is very brief about it (as it is on all topics) and the wiki seems horribly out-of-date.

Anybody know if it's possible to plant an agent just to gather info?

The thing that seems odd about th espionage to me is that you apparently automatically know if agents are operating against you - I think - no clue really. I haven't placed that many agents (had no clue that was how you raise your knowledge level) but most I placed got nullified immediately.

(Possible spoiler ahead) Best use I had for agents so far, and I guess it was a good thing I was just saving them, was to respond to a particularly nasty random event.

I'm not overly enamoured with the new espionage sytem either. But its early on, and Im sure Ive not mastered it yet. But thats another point in disfavor...In DL it was maybe overly simple, but it was also straighforward and grasped pretty much instantly. With the new system, you feel like to have to discover the "trick" to making it work.


1) To a first time player, it seems like the espionage system involves placing an agent, generated at great expense, on a planet for a minor penalty on a single improvement, only to have it killed the next turn or so. Its very easy to see many players not bothering to include it in the remainder of their games based on this impression...I almost didnt.


2) So it seems, to get any bonus you have to save up agents( again, at great cost...producing agents in excess of the ones you need to simply keep enemy agents off your territory is prohibitive) and use them in handfuls ( Ive been instructed to use groups of three). Then if they survive long enough ( you still have to replace one every few weeks), youll start getting a higher espionage level...on that one race. The most civs Ive been able to maintain this on by the time the game is already essentially over, is two( out of 8 or 9).


3)If youre one of the top or three civs youre going to be beset by enemy agents, from all other civs, and just the cost of swatting these off your worlds will keep you from proliferating espionage.



So, is this by design...do they not want you to be able get esionage info on more than a couple races the entire game? Was espionage info so overpowered it required a nerf? It seems to me the only thing of any real value gotten from espionage was the ability to see ship destination (nice, but I live without), and the far too rare occurence of occasionally stealing a tech.


All other race info can be gleaned from the diplomacy screen, and you can use the "spy" function on planets when you have a single agent in stock, to see whats built on the planet. Weve always been able to see troop numbers (population), and enemy ships present(with their precise statistics!)


Sure you can use it to supress enemy production to some degree if you manage to proliferate your spies high enough to keep it supressed indefinitely, but I cant help to think Id do much more damage with all the extra money it takes to do so(and to maintain supression), rush buying ships, factories, and wonders, outright buying any tech I want with that bankroll, flipping planets with super-upgraded diplo bases, etc.


I'm assuming I have this wrong....it seems unlikely that much effort would have gone into something so fussy and so money draining, without equivilent payoff. What am I not seeing, or what have I not discovered yet?

Bingjack, you expressed it so much better than I did. For me Espionage now seems to be a cross with the old destabilization (how do you spell that?)feature and the old spying functionality seasoned with additional micromanagement.

Is there a way to get the spies to work in a non-destructive manner? I would like to get information on my allies or my potential allies as well but I do not want to penalize their production doing so.

I don't think there's a way to do totally non-destructive spying. However, I've found that if you put the spies on a marginal improvement on some armpit-of-the-universe backwater, it'll minimize the damage done and, in doing so, maximize that agent's life expectancy.

I'm still experimenting with the Espionage system. Having only played one game through on Normal difficulty though, I'm not comfortable making any judgments on the system yet.

I have noticed that Agents get detected and die very quickly though. I noticed that none of the civilizations I was spying on had any counter-intelligence researched. It makes me wonder what the point is of researching this technology, when it seems Agents are detected and squashed so quickly anyways.

However, I do like that you need to "work" for your intelligence.

- - -

I wanted to invade a certain world, but I wanted to see what they had BUILT on that world before I decided whether or not to use Mass Drivers when invading. Then I noticed I couldn't view the world, because I had no level of espionage on that race.

"Wow", I thought, that's pretty cool. It actually makes me WORK a bit for my intelligence information.

I went about holding off my invasion transports, and built a couple of Agents. Then, I discovered that when I PLACED the agents... it showed my what the AI had built on the world. So... it looks like you can "cheat" a bit, and get that much intelligence not from placing Agents, but just trying to place Agents.

Not sure if this qualifies as a bug or not. It certainly seems like an exploit that's available in the game though.

I'm pretty sure the answer is "No." Harrumph.

My 0.02...

Here's my guess: I'm sure there is a good chance that SD is going to improve this system over the next few months. It is a good start. I like the fact that you have to do more then just move a slider and throw money at espionage.

However I'm like the rest of you in that I don't like the fact that I spend a good bit of cash to get a spy only to have it eliminated the very next turn. I've experimented some with which planet I place them on and it does seem as if the AI ignores them a little (maybe 1 or 2 turns more) if you place it on some out of the way world. Maybe if they didn't cost as much or take as long to produce I'd feel different. Gonna have to dig around the XML files and see if you can adjust the cost per spy.

I'd really like to see the counter espionage branch flushed out more. Maybe have to actually research things to allow me to detect spies/make mine better at staying hidden. Then I have a choice if I want to be able to keep spies out in the field or be able to defend myself better against them.

As for the AI empires ganging up on me when I'm the big dog I just build the counter intelligence building on my most important worlds and ignore the rest.

Also anyone know if spying is a minus in terms of relationship with the other empire? I would think it is but haven't been able to keep spies out long enough to see if the reported status effects change at all. Or maybe it gets lumped into the *We know what you are doing* category. I seem to get that one a lot but for entirely different and nefarious reasons .

I would like to know that as well. Does anyone know?

No, as there is no way to identify where a spy came from.

This for me gets to the nub of the problem with espioange as currently implemented. In catual fact from turn 1 the player already has in essence a fully fledged spy network which can instantly tell you planet population, a detailed breakdown of enemy ship statistics, and a list of all the techs the other empires have researched alogn with their financial situation via the diplomacy window. What does greater espionage actually tell you? That planet x makes 85 credits a week? Was that information really worth all those BCs? Only at the highest level does further relevant information present itself. And of course the strangeness of having one spy in reserve to cycle through all an opponents planets has already been mentioned.

The sabotage aspect of spying could do with some tweaking but at least functions coherently. It just seems like most of the information you start with should only come with espionage otherwise you're largely picking up worthless information.

It seems to me, the current espionage system is missing a corresponding tech tree. Im aware of the "counterespionage" tech, but that isnt quite what Im talking about. Im talking about a tree that increases the effeciveness of, or reduces the cost of training agents over time.


The default version of the system feels like the "base" version of every other mechanic in the game...i.e, alomst impossible to excel with until you put some research into it.


In my current game, Im spending about 2 or 3 hundred a turn on espionage, which generates me spies about every 5 turns...which is just enough to keep spies off my own worlds. I am however, making 4-5000 bc a turn (money to burn), and I still dont think its worth increasing my espionage spending to the point I could actually proliferate my agents. The cost ramps up exponentially, and Im much more dangerous channeling all that money into my infrastructure and buying techs.

Good point.

It's been mentioned in other threads, but I'd love to see techs designed to create special agents. One set focused only on gathering tech data and ship designs. As a bonus I'd like to see scientist spies. Agents you send to the enemy world that actually helps a bit with their research, but sends you back data much faster than a normal spy, since s/he understands the work.
If implemented this would of course lead to the other side of the coin. Agents who don't steal research, whose only purpose is to sneak into a place and do as much damage as possible, for as long as possible, until cought.

One thing I'm curious about. Do AI races espionage each other? Posters have described having to keep a pool of spys available as every other race is spying on them. If I'm in a game with 9 other races and they all spy on me alone, I would be very hard pressed to keep up.

Galen

I never liked the DL system. It was too trivial, really. Set 10 bc spending per civ early on and just sit back as the info and techs roll in. The new one is much more interactive and consequently much more interesting. It's harder to acquire information and techs. I wouldn't mind seeing the DA system refined a bit, but a reversion would be very unfortunate.

Yup. I'll frequently come across agents on alien worlds that I didn't put there.

Personally, I think Espionage is working great.

I am currently playing a Suicidal game on a Gigantic map.

I didn't build any Agents until after my economy was strong. I spent the first year investing in my economy.

I was way behind in the colonization race. I only have 25 planets while some races have as many as 50 or 60, but my economy is booming, and now I catch up.

I can easily build 1 agent every turn for just 4% to 5% of my budget.

I have economic/research treaties with the largest race, and I then convinced two other races to go to war with that race.

And now each turn I put an Agent against that largest race to hamper their production. They have no hope of killing my agents now because my economy is way larger than their economy, and they are at war.

That seems like a great use of espionage. Lots of fun, and very effective.

Also, once you have one Agent you can use the Agent to slow down production on enemy planets where they are producing the same sort of unique building that you are also interested in. Every turn it is effective.

So far I love the espionage feature. Loads of fun.

- Livonya

in DA do u still have the ships u had in dl and the new ships in DA or r they all completely diferent

It depends on what you like. Placing one agent every turn is just boring micromanagement for me. It's kinda like not using the autopilot for sending ships somewhere. You take the strategic decision, you know where you want to go, but you don't want to micromanage every step.

An off-switch or a system of automation would make me happier with the game.

Yes, they spy on you in relation to how big of a "threat" you are. If youre the number one race, you will be assaulted by handfuls of spies every few turns. Just keeping up defensively will keep you from proliferating your spies high enough to spy on a single other race, for something thats not even *worth* investing in. Youd recieve much more benefit from putting the thousands youll waste in keeping up spy production to the rate you need to even fight off the hordes of spies assaulting you, into your infrastructure, buying techs, paying off other civs to decalre war, factories, ships, wonders, etc.


Im making thousands of BC a turn in my current game...turning the espionage up high enough to keep the 3 or 4 enemy agents I get hit with every few turns off my worlds would reduce my profits to a couple hundred a turn. I *know* how to grow my economy...I put considerable effort into doing so each game...its just not worth the investment for any other reason than its being forced on me.


IN DL, espionage wasnt great, but at least it was optional. Now its just a mandatory money sink. I guess the idea is they want to force you to build those anti spy buildings on every single one of your worlds...which is retarded. More effort should have been put into actually making a real "value" for espionage (limiting info gleaned from the diplomacy screen, limitng the info players can get for free simply by clicking on enemy vessels,planets) rather than in contriving a new system to "force" it upon the player, and hamper the players economy, which is already tougher to grow in DA.


I gave it a chance, but now I really just want to be able to turn it off altogether in my games. Not that I want to have it taken away for anyone who actually enjoys it...I just want a "disable espionage" checkbox. Some people dont like tech trading...I dont like the new espionage system. Its a curse. Please Stardock, lift the curse.