Spy Promotions

[ZEE]

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[Ari]

SMAC probe teams (the equivalent of spies) were able to get promoted. Higher promotions meant higher success odds for a given mission, and higher chance that that given unit would survive the mission. I *think* elite (highest promotion) probe teams also had one extra move (maximally promoted military units did, but probe teams might not have). Slightly different in SMAC was that spies would directly battle each other if a defending spy was already in a city, making promotions even more important.

Definitely would be a neat idea to have in civ. Also, in SMAC, different civics either created resistance (or immunity!) to spying, or affected the base promotion of the probe teams (would be neat if switching over to state property, say, also got you better spies).

[ZEE]

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[Ari]

In SMAC, spies could be brutal; not only could they *easily* steal techs, but one of their missions let them *capture* cities immediately (this cost significant gold, but not so much that this was rare; quite the opposite). Perhaps these superpowered spies fit better with the sci fi motif of the game (when a spy took over a city, I think the flavor text refered to it as a mind control virus, or something). Spying in general was far less a component of vanilla civ iv than it was SMAC. Given that, it makes sense that spies got the shorted. A real pity, though.

[jkp1187]

Originally posted by Ari
SMAC probe teams (the equivalent of spies) were able to get promoted. Higher promotions meant higher success odds for a given mission, and higher chance that that given unit would survive the mission. I *think* elite (highest promotion) probe teams also had one extra move (maximally promoted military units did, but probe teams might not have). Slightly different in SMAC was that spies would directly battle each other if a defending spy was already in a city, making promotions even more important.

Definitely would be a neat idea to have in civ. Also, in SMAC, different civics either created resistance (or immunity!) to spying, or affected the base promotion of the probe teams (would be neat if switching over to state property, say, also got you better spies).

Police state, more like. (Is there a distinction though? ) And that Hunter-Seeker Algorithm project gave immunity to spies for its owner. (THAT was annoying if you didn't get it....and forgot who owned it!)

I'd be interested to see how this could be implemented.

[frenzyfol]

I like the idea, gives the spies individuality.. I always look after my super promotion units whilst spies are treated like fodder.

There was a neat thing in Rome Total War where you could put a spy into a city and use him to attempt to open the city gates.

This type of thing occurred allot in history. Maybe one of the higher promotions could be an open city walls promotion?

However, I guess thats the same as destroying city walls improvement.

[Asmodeous]

Originally posted by AAHZ
interesting...

interesting that:

1)Firaxis didnt think of this...
2)Firaxis DID think of this but didnt implement it for whatever reason...
3)There is no support for this idea in the community

I'm going to make a wild guess 1 is not correct.
2 is probably most heavily into it, and probably it was due to implimentation issues and game balance. Most spy missions are really easy to succeed at (like destroying province stuff and poisoning water supplies), and you'd end up with AI with super-ultra-elite spies ravaging your countryside all day, or players abusing the snot out of the mechanic by moving one tile in, destroying an improvement, repeat until spy is level "uber", then all but destroying cities with them.

And I think that's why 3 occurs.

Me.

[FIN Marshal]

Spy could also get Assassinate unit promotion so that a defending unit unit could be destroyed... (Quite high promotions needed for such?)

[Petrus2]

Originally posted by FIN Marshal
Spy could also get Assassinate unit promotion so that a defending unit unit could be destroyed... (Quite high promotions needed for such?)

I don't think such an effect makes any sense though. A spy eliminating an entire military formation? While I completely am aware that Civ is not always 100% logical, there are some things that are just too much. IMHO

[Blaupanzer]

Could get too powerful to be balanced. But a spy could bribe a unit --m either to change sides or to just go home. In that way, units were "destroyed" by single men in the olden days.

[snoopy369]

Egads, we'd be back in the days of Civ2 spies ...

[Blaupanzer]

The good old days... (Nostalgia)