BtS' Poisoning Water Supply - Fair or Broken?

[MrWhereItsAt]

Spies' actions may need some balancing - I spread enough of my culture in an enemy city deep within my borders to put me over the 50% mark with ownership of the tile (could investigate the city first). Mission was allegedly successful, but for the next dozen turns at least, there seems to have been no effect in the tile cultural ownership percentages. My Esp points aren't back at the level that I can see the city screen again to check what happenend, but something's fishy.

That cost me 460 Esp points. I got sick of waiting, so I sent another Spy in and added 8 unhappy citizens for 70 more. Will see what effect THAT has. It sounds far too much for far too cheap to me.

[Nugog]

The cost balance does seem to be out of whack - especially on longer speeds.

Even epic seems to fast for me...................

[vilemerchant]

Whining?? It's totally broken. On marathon you can basically make all your enemy's cities size 1 simply by running 20% espionage for a while. It'll happen to your capital if the timing is wrong (pop just grown so no food stored) and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Currently, the game is more broken than a hookers hymen :P

[Proteus_MST]

What about Epic?

Is the problem less grave at this speed setting?
If yes then I will bite into the sour apple and play the game on epic when I finally get BtS tomorrow or on friday

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by vilemerchant
Whining?? It's totally broken. On marathon you can basically make all your enemy's cities size 1 simply by running 20% espionage for a while. It'll happen to your capital if the timing is wrong (pop just grown so no food stored) and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Currently, the game is more broken than a hookers hymen :P

that's a pretty weird way to put it.

seems like they don't do much testing on marathon. I guess that's reasonable, since marathon is really long and they added it in a patch anyway, so it's hard to consider it a core game feature.

relax, this will be fixed i'm sure. at least normal/epic seem to be okay.

[Shrapnel12]

Unless you really like spies, couldn't you just mod out spy units? Then only passive espionage would be possible. I'm making a guess going by Solver's review, having not played the game myself.

[LordGek]

Originally posted by Wiglaf


that's a pretty weird way to put it.

seems like they don't do much testing on marathon. I guess that's reasonable, since marathon is really long and they added it in a patch anyway, so it's hard to consider it a core game feature.

relax, this will be fixed i'm sure. at least normal/epic seem to be okay.

Ditto on this!

While I KNOW it would drive me crazy if I were a big fan of this mode, you can't place this anywhere near the level of bugs that plagued the initial Civ 4 or Warlords releases.

Pardon my French but, "**** happens" and bugs will slip into the release. My true judge of character comes in seeing how the devs react to these issues. If they get right on it with a patch within a few weeks all is well but if they say, "Enh, live with it" and don't feel its worth addressing THEN you have a right to riot (or at least send some scathing emails).

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, it should last 3 times as long rather than have 3 times the strength. That way it would balance out when your population has decreased and equilibrium is restored once more.

[CreepyD]

I always play on Epic, and have never had a problem. Size 10-15 cities usually drop 1-2 pop at most.
I usually just have to change the tiles I'm working and presto, I have only -2 or -3 food.

Another point is just put 3-4 spies in every major city, for me this catches almost every single attempt made.

Try playing Gods of Old - pestilance is far worse, permanently subtracting 1 food from every square in the city radius (grass -> plains, plains -> desert)

[marvinkosh]

I tend to agree that poisoning should be toned down. After all it's relatively simple (if expensive and time-consuming) to bring your opponent's health score or food production down with sabotage.

[eris]

I have to agree that this is over powered at Marathon. I don't know about the other speeds because I don't use them. I like the suggestion of affecting only the length of time not the amount. In my first game so far, I have had it done twice to my citiies and done it repeatedly to an AI city. It is downright nasty both ways. I don't think it was meant to be quite this bad.

[ayronis]

I do not play anything slower than Normal speed but I think it is just right on that setting and I would prefer it remain the way it is.

To me, it feels like the right level of effect for the amount of invested resources and inherent risks associated with it. I have used it and I have been attacked with it several times now, and I think it has added nice variety and strategic options to my game.

[Kekkonen]

I'm playing on Marathon, and last night I got a couple of water poisonings. It's fairly late in the game, and when a spy poisons a well in a size 20 city that has a nearly full granary, the city is definitely *not* wiped out. Sure, its' a pain, but it's supposed to be. Sure enough, earlier in the game -- say, when the city is size 10-12, it would be devastating.

The only problem is that it's state-supported terrorism and I know the Khmer are behind it, and really the only thing I can do about it is an outright war. I'd really like to issue a 'Stop or else' ultimatum, in which, given our relative strengths (I'm the most powerful nation on the planet, the Khmer are the weakest nation that wasn't formed as an overseas vassal), the 'else' option means death for Suryavarman.

[Lord Avalon]

Perhaps if one poisoned one's own cities a little, then gradually increased the dosage, then when another civ tried to poison them, it would be ineffective as they had built up a resistance.

[MoonWolf]

I think it's a bit too early to tell weither it's fair or broken (or owerpowered of you'd like). This is a new feature and of course it will take time to learn how to play with it. Will you call Ship of the line overpowered also now that frigates can't protect your galleons well anymore? Or airships before you have planes? Just learn how to play with it, build some spies yourself and increase EPs against your neighbour.