Spies are eating my lunch

[Lancer]

They destroyed a couple of plantations and now just wiped off the map a camp.

I have my three spies spread around in likely cites but my border is long and they are few. What to do?

[Lord Avalon]

Station a spy in each city?

[Lancer]

Somehow I got the impression we can only build 3 of each national unit. Not so?

[snoopy369]

In BTS Spies are not national units and can be built ad nauseum. I often have a few in each city, to deploy in opportune moments...

[Lancer]

Not so. Build spies.

Thanks.

[Lancer]

Snoopy, they were national units in the earlier versions! Ha! I don't feel so dumb now.

[LordShiva]

You should take your spies up to teh border, reveal teh enemy spies, and before killing them, shout "I spy with my little spy, something beginning with PWND!"

[Seedle]

Spies are so dumb. You can have a spy in every city, plus all espionage buildings (and from what others have said, the defensive bonus does not stack), and the AI will still poison/destroy all improvements until you scream. It would be okay if I could declare war on the saboteurs without diplomatic penalty (you destroy my mine? I destroy your every city on the continent! ) but no, you get to just sit and take it. So basically, don't worry too much about defending against enemy spies, because nothing you do will really help.

[Lancer]

I get some consolation from knowing who is doing it and knowing I've already wiped out, burned, destroyed, and sewed the ground with salt 5 of his cities after he declared on me twice now. His parade has been effectively rained on. Now this underhanded crap is all the war he can make, the XgFdGGDEdfCghgY!

[Wiglaf]

Now you know what it was like for the US in the cold war. It is a wonder we have any plantations left.

[Lancer]

[Yosho]

The security building is pretty good too. The thing about countreing spies with your spies is that you can make him lose a few hammers in making new spies, but he dosn't lose any espeanaouge points in the process, so he can keep hititng you, and his odds get better and better. But with the security building, his spy actions not only fail more often, when they do suceed they cost him more espeanage points, so he can hit you less often, and with less EP's his odds are lower.

And the more EP's you have against him, the better chance you have of stopping his attacks. Check your EP ratio often; make sure you're not getting EP's on civs were it's not useful (someone you're on good terms with on the other side of the world; minor vassels of someone; ect). If someone is really targeting you with a lot of spies, then bump up your percentage of EP's you are getting with that person. The key is the ratio; the better EP ratio you have with someone, the more often his spy attacks on you fail.

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by Lancer
Snoopy, they were national units in the earlier versions! Ha! I don't feel so dumb now.

Actually, you could recruit 4 spy chicks (I guess they were jealous types).

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Yosho
The security building is pretty good too. The thing about countreing spies with your spies is that you can make him lose a few hammers in making new spies, but he dosn't lose any espeanaouge points in the process, so he can keep hititng you, and his odds get better and better. But with the security building, his spy actions not only fail more often, when they do suceed they cost him more espeanage points, so he can hit you less often, and with less EP's his odds are lower.

And the more EP's you have against him, the better chance you have of stopping his attacks. Check your EP ratio often; make sure you're not getting EP's on civs were it's not useful (someone you're on good terms with on the other side of the world; minor vassels of someone; ect). If someone is really targeting you with a lot of spies, then bump up your percentage of EP's you are getting with that person. The key is the ratio; the better EP ratio you have with someone, the more often his spy attacks on you fail.

In theory, sure. But in my experience, on the rare occasions when the RNG decides I discovered who was committing the espionage, it is almost as likely to be a friend as an enemy. Not that altering your espy ratios is bad, but trusting your "friends" is not always a sound strategy either. And the ratio doesn't have as big an effect as I think it should. I generally have at least twice the espionage points on all opponents as they do on me, and I still get slammed late game. That's why I said it's pretty pointless to actively attempt to defend against enemy spies, you can have a huge ratio advantage, and the protective buildings, and still lose an improvement/ have a city poisoned every other turn. Actually, maybe the problem isn't how often they succeed, I see more spies getting caught than I see actually hurting me, but how often the AI tries use spies against me. It doesn't matter how bad the odds are if they send 5 spies a turn... But the whole espionage thing still seems to add a lot of annoyance and little fun to the game.

[Yosho]

Well, you're right, you can't stop spies completly, all you can do is try and make sure it costs the AI more then the damage it does to you, and to minimise the damage.

I donno, I think spies are kind of fun. The big problem, though, is that with the way they're set up with EP's, you're quite limited in what you can do. It'd be better if you could, say, also gain EP's by sending spies into his terratory without them getting caught.