two steps forward ... (spies)

[razbo9999]

I haven't really decided how much I like the new espionage in BTS. (Not a criticism, per se, I'm just ambivalent so far.)

But one aspect I definitely do not like is the "Enemy infiltrators have destroyed a mine/farm/etc...." This seems a lot like the old days of Civ3 when you had to keep an army of workers on hand for pollution cleanup duty. This was rightly discarded in Civ4, as being so much un-fun busy work.

I can think of a couple of ways to make this problem less painful: (1) just lose the production of the mine/farm for some number of turns, after which it is automatically rebuilt; (2) have a worker action for "replace destroyed improvement", which takes precedence over any current action.

Other ideas?

[DirtyMartini]

I agree that it is annoying busy work, but I'm not sure just losing the use of that improvement would work. Ideally, the AI should be targeting vital tiles (not sure it aways does but it should ). So, if it blows up your one iron mine, and that mine is on the borderlands, and you're fighting a war on that border -- you could be in trouble. You'll have to get workers to that tile, then defend them in a disputed area. If you could just wait X turns for the tile to start working again, the urgency wouldn't be there.

The automated worker thing might be OK, but then, in the above situation, you'd probably have workings running headlong onto a battlefield. Since I can't think of any other alternatives, I guess I'm OK with it as is.

I think as long as the AI chooses intelligent targets, the system is OK (again, not sure it does). If the AI is just spamming spies and blowing up random stuff -- that's annoying.

My bigger complaint with the espionage system is the need to put a spy on anti-water-poisoning duty in every stinking city. That annoys.

[Wiglaf]

My bigger complaint with the espionage system is the need to put a spy on anti-water-poisoning duty in every stinking city. That annoys.

WTF you only need to be paranoid if you have an AI like Stalin spamming spies like there's no mother****ing tomorrow and in that case, you just do one or two counterespionage missions and get on with the party

[DirtyMartini]

Good point -- I don't use the counteresionage mission enough. Often, I'm not sure who's doing the poisoning, but in that case it's probably better to just counterespionage all continental AI than to spam spies for all cities.

[Wiglaf]

different AIs have different espionage priorities (eg Stalin has a high one, americans have medium, and India etc have very low). on top of that, AIs friendly to you are much less likely to run missions against you. So it shouldn't be much of a guessing game

[DirtyMartini]

Do they have to be Friendly? I've certainly had relatively decent relations with civs and still had them spy me up real good.

Also, I'm assuming that Friendly civs may still scout you with spies, so you may still see "Indian spy caught operating near London" and it doesn't necessarily mean India was about to posion the well.

[Quillan]

I have taken to keeping one spy posted at the border near every other civ that shares a continent with me, and every time it expires I do another counterespionage mission. Even that doesn't fully stop the rash of water poisonings.

[MoonWolf]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini
Do they have to be Friendly? I've certainly had relatively decent relations with civs and still had them spy me up real good.

Also, I'm assuming that Friendly civs may still scout you with spies, so you may still see "Indian spy caught operating near London" and it doesn't necessarily mean India was about to posion the well.

My experience is that it doesn't matter if they like you or not; AI will send spies against you no matter what. I my current game, I have a large empire (huge map, epic speed) and thereby have a lot of EP against everyone. I've also prioritized EP. I think I've had only one or two successful sabotage or poising missions against me. And I'm capturing 3-5 spies each round.

Now, what I really miss, is a possibilty to demand stop spying and that you don't get a lot of diplo hits if you declare war against someone who do something really serious like poising water supplies.