Why did you castrate the Spys?

[KoBushi]

I've been playing Civ4 since the day it was released...

And so far I love the gam but there is one MAJOR issue I have with it; and a couple minor ones.

THAT MAJOR ISSUE IS Spys.... they are 99.9% worthless.

1: Spys were common place even in Sun Tzu's time... why can't we get spys in Civ4 until almost the end of the game?

2: They can't do anything useful... can't sabatage existing buildings, can't steal technologies, can't incite riots... all they can do is delay current production, and find out where a civ's units are... oh joy, how worthless.

As for my minor gripes; Your civ having money is pretty much worthless now untill you have Universal Sufferage... but what if you don't want Universal Sufferage? ... no point in saving any money.

You can no longer trade anything for anything... you can't trade lump sum of gold for resources anymore, for example. Too limiting.

The warning bubbles that tell you where you were attached or where you have global warming/etc can't be clicked because the "What to build in this city now" menu pops up and prohibits you doing with the warnings. They should either stay longer, or you should b able t cick them even with that menu up.

Anyway I've been playing Civ since Civ1... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back spying as a worthwhile feature in the game!!!!!!

[Julinoleum]

Money serve to upgrade old unit too...

[KoBushi]

That's true, I forgot about that... Though I wish there were a more centralized way to upgrade units... in Civ3 you could do it from the military advisor menu.

When you have 50 cities it gets hard to upgrade units. one at a time.

But mainly I'm just unhappy with the spys... Spys should be available as soon as you have writing. (just maybe less effective until later techs) and should be more useful than they are.

[xxFlukexx]

Yeah I miss spies too. Although spies can be great for disabling AIs spaceship production. I also use spies to gank enemies rares like oil and aluminum to kill their military production.

I would love spies to have abilities and stuff, but I dunno...I've never seen spies in a TBS game where I haven't been able to abuse them to get a substantial advantage.

As for money, it's very important for upgrading and trading for techs. The problem with buying anything for cash is that you have to put a $ value on every item, and if the value changes or the value is wrong, I will make big $$$.

[AoA]

Even some nice Assassinate Specialist option, or Spread Propapanda or heaven forbid, the dreaded Posion Water Supply.

Oh, and the Spy's a chick. You can't castrate chicks. It don't work like that.

[Strudo]

You can upgrade all your units of the same type to another type buy holding the ALT key when you upgrade. Also the mouse over for the upgrade will show the cost to upgrade all units if you hold ALT before moving the mouse over the upgrade icon.

I think the money in civ4 is great. I've always run my civs on bare minimum, which for me made espionage worthless in civ3 cos it was so expensive. With nothing but unit upgrades to spend on, I find it's just easier up upgrade troop than to replace them.... mostly.

Good call on the spies though. Should appear earlier with basic skills which improve with tech.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Yeah, I agree spies are somewhat underpowered. I'd like to have the ability to help along some of those stubborn culture flips, for instance. Not necessarily just buying a revolt outright, but maybe spread propoganda that gives you a few extra percentage points in that city.

Another option I think would be interesting would be to give spies the ability to kidnap great people. This should probably go in the mod section, but it would be nice if a spy could enter a city and make off with a great person that is either sitting in the city as a unit or was added to the city as a specialist. Either way, the spy and the great person (as a unit) returns to your nearest city.

Of course, if spies are made more powerful, spy defense would also have to be made more powerful...they're pretty pathetic right now.

[Tiberius]

Re: Why did you castrate the Spys?

Originally posted by KoBushi
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back spying as a worthwhile feature in the game!!!!!!

Early spies would be a great addition to the game. As of now the only fun I have with them is destroying terrain improvements (quite useful), but they could do so much more!
They should appear earlier with basic skills (diplomats anyone?) and should be ungradeable with a later tech. They should have upgrades as well, like regular units. Buildings such as the KGB academy should be available to train experienced spies.

I am not necessarilly advocating the "destroy city improvements" ability; this may be too powerful. On the other hand I've heard already many great ideas that would make the game more interesting:

- open embassy: permanently add a diplomat to a foreign city; should improve relations and would be a prerequisite for some diplomacy options (like trading tech for example) or would help new deals (more probability for accepting new deals, lower prices or something else)
- plants spy option: this would add permanently the spy to the city (capital only?) and would give you inside infos, such as: total number of military(civ3), current research, political plans (one turn ahead warnings about upcoming wars?) and so on
- steal technology; or maybe steal some research papers only, meaning a certain percentage of a technology (it should be possible, since the game remembers how much I've researched from a certain tech)
- incite riot/spread propaganda or something similar (city more likely to flip)
- assasinate great people
- spoil relations with a third party nation (my favourite!)
- steal money!
- detect and fight against foreign spies (in own cities)

[Egbert]

Think back to the diplomats and spies in Civ2. Do you really want those grossly overpowered things back? Expend a few shields to build a spy and go steal a tech. Expend a few shields and send a spy of to bribe a city (how much is that city in the window?).

Did you ever wreck a civilisation with a couple of very early diplomats?

[Balderdash]

Re: Why did you castrate the Spys?

Originally posted by KoBushi
The warning bubbles that tell you where you were attached or where you have global warming/etc can't be clicked because the "What to build in this city now" menu pops up and prohibits you doing with the warnings. They should either stay longer, or you should b able t cick them even with that menu up.

True, this is annoying, but I discovered a trick tonight by accident.

If you miss a bubble, open up the log file (pencil icon in left hand top corner) and click on the message. This should center the map to that location.


Now, I only did this for a resource discovery message that I missed out on due to the city build pop-up, but I imagine it will work for all locale specific messages.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by peterfharris
Think back to the diplomats and spies in Civ2. Do you really want those grossly overpowered things back?

Sure not. However, the solution to an overpowered unit is not a underpowered unit. This is just plain silly.

This is like bringing back the caravans from civ2 but don't let them build trade routes.

They brought back the spy because using the spy unit is 500% more fun than using the spying interface from civ3. Now, if they brought it back for fun, then let him do something, because I don't find too much fun in using it! Do you?

[Egbert]

Originally posted by Tiberius


Sure not. However, the solution to an overpowered unit is not a underpowered unit. This is just plain silly.

This is like bringing back the caravans from civ2 but don't let them build trade routes.

They brought back the spy because using the spy unit is 500% more fun than using the spying interface from civ3. Now, if they brought it back for fun, then let him do something, because I don't find too much fun in using it! Do you?

True, the solution to an overpowered unit is not an underpowered unit. Something of moderate power.

I liked your ideas about "open embassy to improve relations" and "plant spy to get inside info" and "detect foreign spies".

I don't like the ability to steal tech with a cheap Civ2 spy, make that very expensive as in Civ3 so I must carefully consider before attempting to steal.

BTW I much prefer the spying interface.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by peterfharris
BTW I much prefer the spying interface.

Well, I like moving my spies around

However the spying interface has its own advantageous, I admit. What I liked in the civ3 style spying was the easiness in opening an embassy, in planting a spy or investigating a city.

On the other hand using a spy unit for special actions (like those described above) is more fun.

About stealing tech: if you make it possible to steal only a certain percentage of tech, and make it cost some money too, wouldn't it be balanced? I mean, there is also the risk to ruin your relations with the other civ, so why would that be unbalanced? You risk something and you gain or lose something. It is a decision you have to take, and I find it better than not having a decision to take.

[wilebill2]

When Brian Reynolds, project lead on Civ2, included spies in his RTS Rise of Nations, he put some limits on spies, though they are still very useful. And sabotage and assassination go with another unit entirely. Plus, there is a structure to detect spies. In RON it works. Maybe there will be an xpack for Civ4 that will include something like what he did there.

[Kristjan]

It is all about political correctness. We are in the war with terror, you see. An American company does not want to include terrorist into its product for a number of reasons - even if it actuallty means removal of them.

Yadda yadda yadda.