Why did you castrate the Spys?

[Tiberius]

America has its own spies and they don't consider them terrorists, I suppose.

Anyway: not all options are sensitive from this PoV. Steal technology, incite riot/spread propaganda, spoil relations with a third party nations, steal money, detect foreign spies: none of these are terrorist acts. Leave the assasination or poisining out if that's such a sensitive stuff, but add some fun to it, please !

[Franklinnoble]

Yeah, bring back the spies with nukes...

[JakeCourtney]

I hope the Realism Mod over at www.civfanatics.com will do some stuff with the spies.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
Yeah, bring back the spies with nukes...

LOL that was fun but way too powerful...IIRC you could blame it on someone else as well.

[WolfEyes]

I had loads of fun with that, mostly though I used it to bypass enemy SDI.

I also hope someone mods in a saboteur unit, a civ 4 version of SMAC's probe team.

[Traelin]

I agree. Heck I may be stupid, but I can't even figure out how to get the stupid spies to detect an enemy spy. They keep taking out my oil well, and I got 4 spies surrounding that spot that still don't do squat. I mean according to the unintuitive Civilopedia, they're supposed to detect spies within a certain radius.

[dearmad]

Put them ON the oil well.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by dearmad
Put them ON the oil well.

I had 4 of them on the well and they did nothing. I'll try it again though. One other really rad feature of eney spies is that, if you're building something that requires oil and you lose it, you also lose all production on whatever it was that you were building. Talk about stupid.

[catlas]

Why does the spy say "level 1" when you can't promote them?

[Badtz Maru]

One has to wonder how much people would appreciate stronger spies if the AI used them against the player more. Stealing specialists, blowing up improvements, and having relations ruined with third parties sounds fun until you're losing your hard earned specialists, having improvements you just spent dozens of turns building destroyed, and going to war with trading partners that you shared your military techs with.

Even with the spies as they are, people get bent out of shape when the AI knows where their units are and accuse it of cheating. I've never seen the AI use spies to destroy resource improvements, but if they did that would be a huge pain in the ass. I think people who want stronger spies are assuming that the Civ AI will continue it's long tradition of rarely, if ever, using them.

[Badtz Maru]

One has to wonder how much people would appreciate stronger spies if the AI used them against the player more. Stealing specialists, blowing up improvements, and having relations ruined with third parties sounds fun until you're losing your hard earned specialists, having improvements you just spent dozens of turns building destroyed, and going to war with trading partners that you shared your military techs with.

Even with the spies as they are, people get bent out of shape when the AI knows where their units are and accuse it of cheating. I've never seen the AI use spies to destroy resource improvements, but if they did that would be a huge pain in the ass. I think people who want stronger spies are assuming that the Civ AI will continue it's long tradition of rarely, if ever, using them.

[yin26]

My idea for spies is to have them be the means of gathering the TONS of information we are already getting for free: For example, you can just toggle up the Power graph to see precisely how much more powerful Civ X is than you. So if revamped spies do nothing more than make me work a bit more for that crucial information, that's a start.

[Louis XXIV]

Spies were weakened in Civ3. One would have hoped that, since they are now physical units, they would have been strengthened again, but I guess that's not the case. There are a few things that would be nice. For starters, I think you should be able to destroy city improvements (even if it doesn't have a good shot of succeeding).

I also would bring back both stealing technologies and propoganda. In Civ3, stealing technologies was only worthwhile if you didn't feel like anyone else getting your money, so you avoid paying for techs. It should still cost money, but be cheaper than buying the tech from the other civ (however, it should also have a fair chance of failing). It would also only work if you make the attempt in the capital or forbidden palace. For propoganda, I don't want to make it overpowered. My suggestion would be to have it double the chance of a cultural flip (so a city that is more likely to flip would get pushed over the edge). I'm not in the mood to figure out exactly how cultural flip odds are calculated, so I don't know how practical this is.

At the same time, I would add a diplomat unit. Unlike spies, Diplomats would be visisble and can only enter a civ you have open borders with. But they can still steal technologies and investigate cities (I'd leave it at that, though). I'd also suggest some "peaceful" functions for them as well, though. Perhaps an "establish embassy" or something. I would make it do more than give better relations with the AI civs, since I want things to work both in SP and MP. Perhaps something to do with bonus trade for each civ (making it worthwhile to establish embassies in civs that you have open borders with, even if they might use it to steal technologies or investigate your cities).

Another idea I've been thinking for with diplomats is the ability to bribe barbarians. I thought it was cool that the Civ2 barbarians tried to blackmail you for gold (if you didn't pay, they'd attack). I don't know if I'd go that far, but I'd give diplomats the ability to bribe barbarian tribes so they won't attack you. It would be cool if you could also pay them to attack someone else (the cost increasing the further away they were from you).

Well, those are my thoughts

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru
One has to wonder how much people would appreciate stronger spies if the AI used them against the player more. Stealing specialists, blowing up improvements, and having relations ruined with third parties sounds fun until you're losing your hard earned specialists, having improvements you just spent dozens of turns building destroyed, and going to war with trading partners that you shared your military techs with.

Even with the spies as they are, people get bent out of shape when the AI knows where their units are and accuse it of cheating. I've never seen the AI use spies to destroy resource improvements, but if they did that would be a huge pain in the ass. I think people who want stronger spies are assuming that the Civ AI will continue it's long tradition of rarely, if ever, using them.

That's why there needs to be ways to counter spies. It's still a game of rock, scissors and paper.


And, in my opinion, whatever abilities the spy has, she has to be able to frame another civ. Rather like in MOO, only not as abrubt... (You stole tech from us! -65 )

One other thing, spies could feed civs dis-information. The leader is made to believe, that a third civ is massing troops at it's southern borders... Or that he has 100gold in his coffers and tech at 90%, when, in reality, he is -100gold and 30% tech... False orders to troops, told to attack someone or pillage his own lands... Doubling maintenance for X turns by messing up his government... And sabotaching tech, so that the first few battles he fights with tanks, they fight at 50% efficiency. etc. etc. ad nauseaum.

[Veritass]

I would put more capabilities on spies, but more limits as well. Some possibilities:

• The spy is civ-specific. When you build the spy, you have to say that spy is for spying on only Egypt.
• The spy actions take multiple turns. If you want to try to steal a tech, this might take five turns, and only then will you find out if you are successful.
• The spy actions should definitely have diplomatic consequences. If I try to blow up an oil well and fail, there should be some chance that it is pinned on me.

I found that spies were the easiest ones to abuse the reloading of the game with. It is most often not worth cheating and reloading a game for a battle outcome, but to get the right spy outcome, it is totally worth it. Taking multiple turns to complete the spy action would help to deter this.