espionage strategy

[hart276]

hey guys,

I came up with this espionage strategy to counter the increased cost of techs in higher difficulty levels and I wanna see what you guys think. Start out the game and go for archery, then masonry, pottery, then straight to alphabet. (bronze working is optional). When you get masonry, build the Great Wall as quickly as possible. Stopping barbarians isnt the important thing, the Great Spy points are. Once you reach Alphabet, you will not invest any more money in research for the entire rest of the game. Instead, invest it all in espionage and steal techs from other civilizations. The Scotland Yard will double the "research" from your best city and beats the heck out of the 25% library. Castles will now basically replace libraries for that matter. Between stationary spy bonus, religeon bonus, and open borders bonus, you can steal techs from rivals for about 60% the cost of researching them straight up. (Not to mention when they wont trade for any price). I have not yet perfected the art of making my neighbors happy with me yet but wars in name only (not sending units yet formally decaring war) would have to be part of this. I normally do this with dutch or elizabeth on pangia with huge world size and marathon length.

Has anyone else ever tried this type of thing before. Any comments or suggestions? Thanks

[hart276]

One more thing, am I the only one cruel enough to put 24 unhappyness and 24 unhealthyness in a rival city right after it has finished growing or do you guys do that regularly as well?

[Addled Platypus]

I never heard of that, some of the gurus here might have


will have to try that one game

[MoonWolf]

That was a new one! Should be tested out...

[Chopper]

Espionage Scorecard

It would be nice if at the end of the game, or earlier if you resign etc, if it gave a breakdown of AI gains on spywork eg techs extracted, improvements destoyed by AI Civ etc. In current game, I am sure I haw-whoopped Ramses on all fronts but kept him as safe neighbour for d-purposes, yet Wang (beyond Ramses-up North) is up too high on tech without spy gains from both Ramses and myelf unless Rameses is giving them away. A theroy but I would like facts if meausrable. What do people think?

[wodan11]

There's a whole slew of people on CFC who have done and are talking about this. I've tried it once or twice but am nowhere close to perfecting it.

Wodan

[UnOrthOdOx]

I currently lack BTS, but in the event I ever got it, this was going to be the first thing I tried. Love to hear more and/or see it in action.

[hart276]

Well I dont really have the attention span to play a game like this all the way through, but nationhood and beauracracy would be the civics of choice. Can you imagine having the vast majority of your commerce increased by 50% and then doubled with scotland yard 200 turns in to a 1500 turn game? Nationhood later on when you have several scotland yards and if you are big on commerce. I like financial, philisophical, and creative traits for this strategy. Financial, obviously, because it is a money strategy. Philiosophical because it can greatly increase your number of great spys produced. Creative because it just takes so horribly long to produce culture when at a handicap. You may want to go for courthouses with this strategy just to increase your great spy points even further in your great wall city.

You have to be like perfect with your military units when playing at a handicap because each one represents such a huge investment of resources and cannot be so easily replaced. I basically came up with the solution of crippling their cities during war time with 24 unhealthy/happy so they cant make war on you. Defending is another story.. Maybe cities on hills with walls and castles. Lets not forget that you are playing an espionage strategy and that with enough espionage points you get free sight of their cities and production lol. Since espionage points are calculated somewhat on thouroughput, meaning the more you spend the less you have to next time, end game this would be a killer strategy because no one else should be even close to your espionage totals.

You need to be producing spies all over the place for this strategy to work. It is sooo depressing to wait for five turns to have your spy discovered and not perform their mission successfully.

[CharonJr]

I have not really tried a purely espionage focus strategy till now, but what I would really be afraid of is not being able to get a tech before one of the AIs does (e.g. assembly line).

It would depend on how different the research speeds of the AIs are I think. a decent spread between warmonger AIs and builders/researchers it might work great, but if anybody is on a fairly similar research pace I would hate to be basically unable to wage war with a tech advantage (which is possible for short periods of time even on Deity).

CharonJr

[LDiCesare]

Even better. Play Gilgamesh. As sumerians, you get courthouses with priesthood so you get spy specialist early. Don't fear someone else might build the great wall.
The problem for stealing techs is it's very effective early game, if you pick a target with good research, but afterwards it pays less.

[wodan11]

What do you mean "afterwards it pays less"?

Wodan

[Supr49er]

Welcome hart276.

[Theben]

There are certain techs that I'd prefer to get 1st, or better yet well ahead, of the AI.

[LzPrst]

so let me get this right, you build Scotland Yard with your GW spy and crank up the espionage to max? interesting...

or do you settle him for the early spy points?

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by LzPrst
so let me get this right, you build Scotland Yard with your GW spy and crank up the espionage to max? interesting...

or do you settle him for the early spy points?

I move him into the tech leaders territory if I can for large amounts of EP to steal tech with.