When spies are useful

[Quillan]

In one of my games I was butting heads along the fenceline with Hammurabi on the other continent. I had collected well in excess of 30k EPs allocated to him, while he had barely over 10k allocated to me. But even this much he was able to poison water supplies at will it seemed. I stacked units in the vulnerable cities, I stacked spies in those cities, and still he'd sabotage production or poison the water supply. I eventually had 2 spies in each city plus ran counterespionage against him, and even that did not stop up. However, the vastly increased costs eventually depleted his store of EPs allocated to me, and he wasn't able to do it anymore. As a side bonus, his dwindling EP allocation enabled me first to see and then to inspect all of his cities.

[Galactus7]

Fortify a spy, LOL. I never thought of that one before, I must be slipping Truth be told, I'm far from good at this game, but i have both warlords and BtS

[realpolitic]

With such a huge collection of EPs, poison and unhappiness could have done lots more damage.

[gdijedi7]

I recently tried putting spies into enemy cities and throwing them into a revolt right before I attack, but they ALWAYS catch my spy first.

It stinketh.

[realpolitic]

Maybe they have spies protecting the city. I've tried that a couple of times & failled too.

Poisoning water & Happiness Attacks work well early against an opponent too strong to attcack.

[OFogy]

So, Lord Avalon, what's the benefit from dropping a spy on resources? Are you talking about resources inside or outside you territory?

Originally posted by Lord Avalon

I also put them on key resources (e.g., Cu, Fe, horses).

[Lord Avalon]

I'm assuming that would help prevent sabotage.

Outside your territory - don't think I've done that, but a spy would help keep an eye on it, to see if someone else takes it, and wouldn't get killed by barbarians.

[realpolitic]

I can imagine that at critical junctures, using the slider can be helpful (esp if depopulating your #1 rival before or during an attack)

I do use spy specialists I belive 4 spy points > 3 commerce, however I don't see much use for great spies.

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by realpolitic
I can imagine that at critical junctures, using the slider can be helpful (esp if depopulating your #1 rival before or during an attack)

I do use spy specialists I belive 4 spy points > 3 commerce, however I don't see much use for great spies.

Well, a great spy can give you 5000 instant EP against a rival. If you are stealing tech or flipping his cities, this is useful.

[Fleme]

I'm not a huge fan of active espionage.

My first spies are usually trained when I have an improvement destroyed, a tech stolen or one of the other nasty things done to me. At this point I usually put my slider at 10%, train a spy or two in all of my cities and play defensive with them.

Occasionally, when I for instance get a civilization who has early game espionage potential through their UU's, I use spies offensively to put a city in revolt when I have my stack parked next to it. I just hate it when spies get ported back to my capital after every single action they do though. The least they could do is have us the option of setting a base of operations somewhere instead of teleporting my spy overseas after he poisoned a well in a distant land.

So yea, mostly defensive because the way offensive espionage is implemented sucks in my opinion. To be honest, the whole espionage system is implemented badly

[Ming]

I'm also not a big fan of eh espionage system. By just building the right buildings, I usually generate enough points to keep track of what everybody is researching. Beyond that, I build a spy for every city and might use one to guard a key resource. They are good for exploring enemy land, or taking down a cities culture by putting it in revolt, but I seldom waste the time.

The bad news is, I think esponiage has made BtS even easier on the human player. The AI's pay way to much attention to esponiage, and while they do gather some advantages for it, it usually hurts them in other areas of the game. I LOVE that the AI thinks esponiage is important, and wastes a lot of resources to it.

[joncnunn]

Myself I get a good portion of the points I'll need for quite a while by building Court Houses everywhere which I would do anyway. Another portion comes from high hammer - low commerce cities building the specific esp buildings when not building units. And this is complemented by the city governors choosing some specalists to be spies. (I generally don't overrule the governors).
I don't bother building spies myself, and usually use any Great Spies for Golden Ages.

[Velociryx]

The one thing spies are useful for is THWARTING ENEMY SPIES!!!

Even if a civ loves you, if they're on your continent, they have spies all through your territory, poisoning your water and blowing things up.

Of course, if you reciprocate, you get a -10!!!!! Your spy was caught causing troublez and now we hates you! We hates you...forever! Because the computer is apparently Gollum. And he wants his ring.

So anyway, fortify a spy in each and every one of your cities. Your people will thank you when they don't die.

Wholeheartedly agree with this.

The best use for spies, IMO, is passive. They have become an integral part of my garrisons.

I also second what Ming said. It has been my experience that, in BtS, you can easily keep pace with the AI's in the tech race because they're putting such emphasis on the spy game.

Hand in hand with this, simply by building all the requisite "spy stuff" buildings (again, as Ming pointed out), you net yourself a sufficient number of EP's (esp. when coupled with using spies as part of your garrison load out) that you can stop most activities against you, cold.

Net effect, an easier victory.

-=Vel=-

[KMadeleine]

one great use for spies has nothing to do with EPs at all. they can pop guarded huts! the ones that are oh-so-annoying, on islands where you have to cross ocean tiles. before BtS that meant missionaries, explorers, or GPs on caravels at that stage of the game, and those guys don't fight real well, even against a mere warrior. but barbs can't see spies, so you can just walk on the tile and collect the goodies. spies aren't guaranteed good results like scouts are, and they might just get more barbs, but those can't see them either, so big deal. and maybe, just maybe, you'll get astronomy that way .

Originally posted by jkp1187 I'm pretty sure there's a cap on the amount of unhappiness that "your spy was causing trouble!" can generate. -2? -3?

it can definitely go higher. i had a game where i was being a real brat to Pacal. i got to -3, and it stayed -3 through several more attempts that he found out about. i just loaded up a save from very late in that game to check whether it ever grew. in the save i found, i'm at "-6 your spy was caught causing trouble!" so he did get more and more miffed over time. he kind of had a point tho, i definitely was making trouble.

Originally posted by Ming
The bad news is, I think esponiage has made BtS even easier on the human player. The AI's pay way to much attention to esponiage, and while they do gather some advantages for it, it usually hurts them in other areas of the game.

i agree with you 100%. not the first time by a long shot, but i think the first time i've posted to admit it . some of the AIs spend so much on espionage i want to shake them! pacal in particular seems obsessed with it, at least the games i've run into him (and no, not only the games where i was causing trouble ).

they really want to catch up to you if you have a huge EP lead, and like you said, they're just not able to balance out how that hurts them in other areas. i used an early great spy to infiltrate HC once when we were the only two on a continent, and i stole gobs of techs. he noticed my huge EP lead and he started running his slider at 20%. i checked out his cities quite a bit, and i never saw it at less than 20% at any point in the entire game, and sometimes it was higher. he never got anywhere close to the amount points i had against him, but he never did stop trying. that slowed down his tech rate all game long! yes, he lasted the entire game ... i didn't kill him off because i was having fun playing culture wars with a couple of his cities, i'm weird that way.