espionage strategy

[wodan11]

Please keep in mind that I did say that IMO an espionage SE was stronger than an espionage CE.

Wodan

[hart276]

"What makes an EE a "handicapped game"?"
I was mostly refering to the increased cost of technologies and units when playing on prince difficulty or harder compared to the AI.

"quote:
I usually have to put a cottage or two in all of my cities before i begin gearing them for production or commerce.

I don't agree with this at all. Seems self-defeating to me, and it contradicts your "money" city suggestion as well. To each his own, I guess. "

I try to overexpand in the beginning until Im paying just a little bit of inflation. It gets a lot harder to gain new territory later on if you dont and it helps your power status for wars and what not. Its not like the inflation is that bad with financial leaders.

"Dont forget to build cities on hills if you can.
Why?"
By themselves hills give defenders a +25% advantage. I believe archers get another 50% on top of that. If its a plains hill you get one bonus production for the city square worked by the city itself.

"It may actually be a bad thing to found a religeon because you are handicapped at spreading it so not many will have it.

Why will you be handicapped at spreading?"

Your missionairies cost more than rivals missionaries at prince level and harder.

"As for running a specialist economy with spies... A cottage which is only the second growth of a hamlet gives you 2 food and 3 gold for espionage vs 4 espionage and great spy points.

You mean "commerce" not "gold", correct?

Not sure your point here. "
I was mostly thinking of the bags of gold if you get if a citizen works that square. It will probably take a long time to get to constitution for a specialist economy. It seems to me that a cottage by a river for 4 gold and 2 food are better than having to wait and make a building.

[LDiCesare]

I confess that the hammers from spies is really nitpicking.

Don't you run the risk of the opponent popping a Great Spy and targetting you, leading to a sudden change in the odds of stealing techs? Or do you have such a lead that a single great spy won't make much difference?

[wodan11]

Originally posted by hart276
"What makes an EE a "handicapped game"?"
I was mostly refering to the increased cost of technologies and units when playing on prince difficulty or harder compared to the AI.

Oh, this has nothing to do with espionage, then. I'm not sure why you think having aggressive AI on high skill level is a bad idea. Anyway, it's totally off topic.

"quote:
I usually have to put a cottage or two in all of my cities before i begin gearing them for production or commerce.

I don't agree with this at all. Seems self-defeating to me, and it contradicts your "money" city suggestion as well. To each his own, I guess. "

I try to overexpand in the beginning until Im paying just a little bit of inflation. It gets a lot harder to gain new territory later on if you dont and it helps your power status for wars and what not. Its not like the inflation is that bad with financial leaders.

Inflation? You mean city maintenance, right? That's totally different from inflation in the game.

On the one hand, having a cottage or two in each and every city can indeed help as you suggest. However, it requires cities to build markets, banks, etc, which is a waste of hammers unless you're in dire need of the +1 happiness or whatever. Otherwise you're giving up the market bonus.

Alternately, you can have commerce cities which build almost all cottages, and provide the money for your whole empire. This is what I thought you had suggested at first for your espionage economy suggestion... for example, make your capitol a pure cottage city, then run bureaucracy, and you'll have more than enough money to pay for quite a few cities.

"Dont forget to build cities on hills if you can.
Why?"
By themselves hills give defenders a +25% advantage. I believe archers get another 50% on top of that. If its a plains hill you get one bonus production for the city square worked by the city itself.

Again, totally off topic to an espionage strategy. That's what confused me.

"Build on hills if you can" is a very basic tip that applies to all games. There are a lot of other tips, such as "chop forests on rivers first", but bottom line they really have nothing to do with an espionage economy unless there's some synergy you're trying to point out.

"It may actually be a bad thing to found a religeon because you are handicapped at spreading it so not many will have it.

Why will you be handicapped at spreading?"

Your missionairies cost more than rivals missionaries at prince level and harder.

In SP against the AI, yes. Not in MP though.

I think the hammer bonus the AI gets is irrelevant to a player's strategy. If that player is good enough that he wants to play on high level to get a challenge, then the AI's bonuses affect ALL aspects of the game.

It's not like the fact that the AI gets a hammer bonus and thus effectively builds "cheaper" missionaries is any different from the fact that the AI builds "cheaper" units.

In any event, getting an early religion usually means it spreads a great deal by itself. Thus, missionaries are not even an issue in the early game. Furthermore, once an AI adopts your religion, many of them will build missionaries and spread your religion to all their cities at no cost to you.

"As for running a specialist economy with spies... A cottage which is only the second growth of a hamlet gives you 2 food and 3 gold for espionage vs 4 espionage and great spy points.

You mean "commerce" not "gold", correct?

Not sure your point here. "
I was mostly thinking of the bags of gold if you get if a citizen works that square.

That's commerce. (Which is different from gold. There are two "gold" mechanics in the game. One is money that goes into your treasury. Two is the "gold" luxury resource that you see on the map.)

It will probably take a long time to get to constitution for a specialist economy.

A specialist economy will usually get to constitution before a cottage economy could get there. In addition, you can build Pyramids if this is your strategy.

In any event, I am suggesting that it is only AFTER this point that the spy specialists really get hugely powerful. You have jails, intelligence agency, and security bureau.

It seems to me that a cottage by a river for 4 gold and 2 food are better than having to wait and make a building.

I don't think we're comparing doing a cottage early game vs running a spy early game. What I would suggest is building libraries in a lot of your cities and running scientists, plus cottages in your capitol (and only in your capitol). Use the great scientists you get to lightbulb techs like Education and Philosophy. Use Liberalism to give yourself Nationalism for free. Quite soon you have Communism and you switch all your cities from scientists to spies.

Wodan

[wodan11]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Don't you run the risk of the opponent popping a Great Spy and targetting you, leading to a sudden change in the odds of stealing techs? Or do you have such a lead that a single great spy won't make much difference?

Over the course of the game, yes, in the games I played the sheer number of EP means that one great spy from the opponent was irrelevant.

Regarless, once you start running spies yourself, you have great spies popping up for you all the time. If your chosen "target" civ hits you with a great spy, you can do it right back.

Early game, you are using a great spy yourself to steal 8-10 techs. If your target gets his own great spy at the worst possible time (to you), then this would make stealing the techs cost more, so maybe you get 6-8 techs instead of 8-10.

Wodan

[wodan11]

By the way, the early game "great spy" trick can be done by any economy. You have to have early great spy points to pop a Great Spy, but that's all that's necessary (besides Alphabet I think to make the spy units).

Wodan

[hart276]

There arent really a lot of things you can do to get great spy points early game.
I did not mean city maintenence, I meant inflation. If you control more than the ideal number of cities and so forth for the world size you get bonus costs in addition to the normal costs as a percentage of the normal costs. I like to overexpand because paying a little more with a financial ruler is not that hard and you cant reclaim the space that easy later on.
I wouldnt really build a bank or market in a city with one or two cottages thats just to keep the techs moving while I am still over expanding.

[LDiCesare]

I'm struggling with espionage late game. I often use it for research early but late game, my spies seem to be captured far too often to my taste. The lag in research and the cost in hammers seem a bit too much for me, along with the randomness factor which means you may lose many turns if you're unlucky.
How many spies will you send at a particular opponent you want to steal techs from?
How long do you let them stay in the targt city (5 turns to get -50% cost, or less)?

[wodan11]

Tips that will reduce capture odds:
-- minimize "travel time" to get to target city by first heading to the narrowest part of the border
-- target a newer city which has less chance of having a Jail (etc.)

Wodan

[hart276]

I usually do 5 turns for the 50%. You can build roads up to their borders for faster travel trime, or even inside their borders if you need to. Since it takes 5 turns, I send a couple spies in case one gets discovered. Be sure to go to the espionage screen to see which city is cheapest to steal from.

[LDiCesare]

target a newer city which has less chance of having a Jail (etc.)

Unfortunately, new cities often cost more in terms of tech stealing than older ones, so staying 5 turns in a new city may not yield a better cost than staying 1 or 2 turns in an old one.

Is is worth it sabotaging jails in order to steal techs more easily?

Also, I believe spies help finding out other spies, and it's hard to know where they are, so maybe targetting sub optimal cities will result in better results?