Espionage - the AI is cheating

[Willem]

(seeing that I'm not able to stop the sabotage attempts and thinking that maybe the culprit was Surayavaraman, not Saladdin).

And how exactly did you determine that it wasn't someone else, and that all those espionage attempts were caused by Saladin? As was pointed out, you can't see Spy units even if you can look inside their cities. So you have no way of knowing who had them or how many they had. It could have been all of your neighbours, not just Saladin. With each having a stockpile of Spies since their Alphabet days, that would be quite a few Spies which can be reused over and over again.

[sorinache]

And how exactly did you determine that it wasn't someone else, and that all those espionage attempts were caused by Saladin? As was pointed out, you can't see Spy units even if you can look inside their cities. So you have no way of knowing who had them or how many they had. It could have been all of your neighbours, not just Saladin. With each having a stockpile of Spies since their Alphabet days, that would be quite a few Spies which can be reused over and over again.

That's an easy one - there were only three of us on the continent : Surayavaraman, Saladdin and myself. The other appeared quite late (after Astronomy). In order to bring in anything more than one or 2 spies, they should visit my territory with transport vessels (caravels, galleons, whatever) which are NOT invisible. And I'm pretty positive, I did not have many visits in my waters. Set aside the occasional frigate and then destroyer and there were very few transport vessels navigating my waters. The invisible spies do not teleport and cannot cross the oceans in invisible rowing boats, can they ?

I can't say for sure what proportion of the espionage attempts were due to Saladdin and what proportion to ascribe to the Khmers, but I'm quite sure that taken together, they made up around 99% of the total, if not more. A strong hint also comes from restored saves : when reloading, what was "A Customs House in Rotterdam was sabotaged by enemy infiltrators" sometimes became "A Arabian Spy was stumbled upon in the city of Rotterdam" or something similar ("A Arabian Spy sabotage attempt was thwarted by Dutch counterintelligence"). I've never seen anything other than Arabian and Khmer. No proof, of course, but a hint.

[snoopy369]

I'm fairly confident the AI does not get any 'free' spies. It does get some free military units at higher levels, but I don't think it's spies. The AI does abuse the espionage slider something awful, though.

[sorinache]

I'm fairly confident the AI does not get any 'free' spies. It does get some free military units at higher levels, but I don't think it's spies. The AI does abuse the espionage slider something awful, though.

Not only that, but, as someone mentioned it, it heavily leans toward specialist spies when deciding what kind of specialists to assign and, at least for Saladdin, it also tends to favor building espionage buildings.

Since I have investigate city on him, I took a look, he's running 20% espionage, 30% money, 50% science. Yesterday evening I was 6 turns to victory (launched the spaceship 4 turns ago). Just for the fun of it, since I managed to destroy the Khmers' only oil source, I decided to DOW on Saladdin (my huge army might as well see some battle and I have no land border with Surayavaraman and no open borders with my only land neighbor, Saladdin).

The 1943 turn took about 2 hours to play - I attacked a border city where he had stacked about 45 units. Started with jet fighters to get air superiority, then brought in the stealth bombers. Then I reloaded because I noticed I forgot to soften the city first and my bombers were not as effective as I was hoping. So I brought in a handful of mobile artillery and bombarded the defenses to 0%. Reordered the stealth bombers to rain fire (ahhhh, 12% damage is better than 8% damage ...). Then brought in more mobile artillery : pretty damn effective, lost a couple but I turned Saladdin's units to minced meat.

The brunt of the work was done by the mech infs - it has to be my favorite unit because the AI has no easy counter unit (unlike the modern armor, against which the AI always builds swarms of gunships). The finishing touch was done by whatever still had movement / attack points in my empire : a couple modern armor, a couple mobile sams, a handful gunships.

Aside from the mobile artilleries, the only casualty was a Combat II gunship whichwas downed by a ... camel archer ... the combat odds were at 99.6% in favor of my gunship. I let it be considering that in RL gunships are known to fall down from time to time even when nobody shoots arrows at them ...

Saved the game, pressed "enter" to end the turn and read that, what a surprise, a Factory in Apache (Apache is an inland city, there's no custom house) was sabotaged by enemy infiltrators ... Reloaded, went from 10% to 80% espionage, switched all my engineers in Apache to specialist spies, changed my allocation to 58 points toward Saladdin (from 32) to 42 for the six other AIs (from 68), re-pushed enter to end turn and read that (what a surprise again) "A Arabian Spy's sabotage attempt was thwarted by elevated Dutch counterintelligence" (or something like that).

[rah]

NOrmally I only get that thwarted by counterintelligence message in the following 10 turns to successfully completing a counterespianoge mission against them. I mean how many points difference did that one turn make? Not tha many probably in comparision to the overall total. By the way what was you current ratio?

[sorinache]

NOrmally I only get that thwarted by counterintelligence message in the following 10 turns to successfully completing a counterespianoge mission against them. I mean how many points difference did that one turn make? Not tha many probably in comparision to the overall total. By the way what was you current ratio?

I don't know exactly how it's computed - I had about 35 K espionage with saladdin, from a total of about 55 - 60 K. I was running 10% espionage, producing about (if I remember well) about 300 esp. pts. per turn. Going to 80% and changing engineers to spies (given that I also have a Scotland Yard in said city "Apache") took me to about 2700 pts for that one turn

BTW, I do not even have the option to run a counterespionage mission with Saladdin, and never had. I can sabotage production and project, poison water, steal treasury, foment revolt, etc, but "run counterespionage" mission simply is not listed. I do have that option (and used it) with the Khmers though. Any idea why it doesn't get listed with Saladdin ?

[rah]

It won't be listed if you've already done one in the last 10 turns. (since it lasts 10 turns) The only case where I haven't seen it listed.

[snoopy369]

I don't use it much myself, but are there slightly different requirements for running a CE mission in terms of where you do it (where your spy must be)?

[Jaybe]

CE cost varies with proximity to your capital along with EP ratios. City visibility & city inspection cost appears to vary with same religion, culture, and EP ratios.

[sorinache]

It won't be listed if you've already done one in the last 10 turns. (since it lasts 10 turns) The only case where I haven't seen it listed.

Should I understand that I can't run a CE mission with Saladdin because I've recently run CE with the Khmers ? One CE every 10 turns FOR ALL the enemy AIs ??? I would have assumed that I cannot run a CE mission against the same opponent but that it would work for a different opponent ...

[rah]

Same opponents only for the 10 turn restriction. Sorry if it wasn't clear.

[sorinache]

Same opponents only for the 10 turn restriction. Sorry if it wasn't clear.

Well then it's probably a bug we have here, isn't it ? I don't understand why I can't run CE with the Arabians ? Any other conditions need to be met to unlock the CE mission ?

[Blaupanzer]

You have to have enough esp points to run the mission in order for it to be offered. You must have a spy in one of their cities who has been idle for at least one turn. I think that's about it.

[Theben]

I think I may have solved your dilemma, as the other day I played MP with some buds but had to leave for an hour so they let the AI run my civ (foolishly, with my permission). When I returned took back my civ and checked my ESP ratios. They were a little different for the AIs, from +2 to +12, but BOTH of my human friends were set at +73! And one I hadn't even met, but still had accumulated points against.

[Illuminatus]

In my current game, my northern neighbour is William. Around late industrial age he switched from tech grabbing to armed expansion. It remained fruitless, due to me and Shaka. Then his tech research time for Plastics suddenly slowed down to 135 turns.

In other news my northern cities keep having buildings destroyed, wells poisoned and foreign agents caught en masse.