Espionage Options Extremely Disappointing!!

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Fredric Drum
Do spies in real life blow up buildings and incite riots at an alarming rate? I don't think so. And please don't mention 11-9.

As for adding stuff later.. what would have to be in an expansion pack, but I frankly don't see it happening.

It would be real cool to be able to lots of stuff with spies.. but what do they do in real life? Fred

They arm, equip and train terrorists, as the CIA did in Afghanistan in the 80s to fight the Soviets. Sometimes it does backlash, of course.

And why not mention 11-9? It´s a perfect example in point.

[Iceius]

Terrorist unit? Well, yeah, maybe to blow up a library.
But:
You can precision bomb city improvments with the Stealth Bomber as well, but... how about a commando unit to take out military installations like the SAM defense first?

Just a thought... not very clear what I'm thinking either, or is it?
Ah, screw it. I'm in a hurry

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Ozymandous
Umm, how about trade and/or diplomacy for gaining tech's when you're behind

Your argument is self-defeating: If you can trade it, you can steal it.

[Comrade Tribune]

Re: Re: Espionage Options Extremely Disappointing!!

Originally posted by Kramsib
I know somebody could be worried, but has anybody thought they were only some of the NEW habilities?

The traditional ones will BE, and these news too, so don't worry, be happy.

Believe it or not, I have considered that thought.

However: Note that they did mention something as utterly self-evident as the change base option for planes.

So the list of air missions is obviously a complete one; I am afraid the same is true for espionage options.

[The diplomat]

This issue of Computer Gaming World Mag has an article on the effect of sept 11 on games. It lists some of the games that were delayed or changed because of sensitive content. They claim that Firaxis removed the "poison water supply" spy mission because of the sept 11 attack on the WTC and Pentagon.

I wonder if Firaxis could confirm or deny this.

[Dutch]

Strange.

I really don't think "evil options" in a game like Civ should be limited just because someone decided to make use of "evil options" IRL.

Next time someone nukes a city, a nuke-free game patch will come out for Civ III.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Crouchback
If there is no steal tech or blow up building why include a counter espionage option, what are they countering?

Well, off the top of my head I would think that the "counter-espionage" option would stop or reduce the chance of all successful foreign spying in your empire for X number of turns. If you knew where all the spies were, or were on "extra" guard for them they'd be less successful.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune


Your argument is self-defeating: If you can trade it, you can steal it.

Umm, no.

If your civilization is far enough behind that you don't have the prereq's for an advance how the heck would you know what you're stealing to begin with? I guess according to you someone from the feudal age would know what the blueprints for a tank were, or rocketry, etc? lol, they may as well break in somewhere and steal any kind of paper they find in hopes of it being an advance...

I'd assume that trading an advance (not a tech, an advance in human knowledge) would also include some sort of training class in the basics of whatever concept it is and basic instructions in how to build and/or maintain anything produced by the advance, like a tank for example.

What they should do is to hace some advances not work unless you had certain other advances discovered first. This way you'd not have folks with a Feudal Age society suddenly being able to build tanks.

Heh, come to think of it, this would be easy to accomplish if they have the tech's that allow the player to see resources seperate from the tech's that allow them to build units. Would be amusing to give someone the tech of how to build a tank but they didn't have the proper tech's to know what oil and rubber were..

The advances in the game aren't individual tech's, get to understand that concept and you'll see why the ability to steal them was apparently removed.

[Panzer]

What! No 'plant nuke' missions ? I was really looking forward to that, especially if you would have had the option to blame it on another Civ!

I already had visions of planting a nuke in Paris, blaming it on the Aztecs and watch them nuke each other into oblivion while I would laugh myself to death!

[kaminwx]

The lack of physical spies and caravans worries me a bit. In Civ2, I spent a good amount of time moving those units around. If they no longer exist, will non-aggressive(not much attacking) civs have anything to do besides sit around accumulating knowledge and culture, etc?

[Akillias]

ummm wtf where is the put a nuclear device option??

[Lorizael]

There are two reasons I believe you cannot steal a technology. For one, enemy civs would always steal space flight from me before they even had flight, and this just isn't realistic at all. Not to mention it defeats the point of science, why get there myself, when i could just build a spy and steal it. Also, you cannot steal Literature, or Philosophy, or Nationalism from a civ. Those are ideas really, not techs.

"So what did you learn on your mission?"
"I learned to love their country. I'm defecting!"

It's also hard for a spy to take out large and complete buildings. It rarely happens. (I said rarely, 9-11 is an exception) and maybe they do feel it's too sensitive right now.

Planting nukes was simply way too powerful in Civ II. It was understandably taken out.

[Fredric Drum]

Originally posted by Bane


Point well made...although it won't come as a surprise to who did it

I thought some of the idea behind stealth/precision bombing was to not know for sure who did it.. unless you're at war with someone. I don't know how this has been implemented in the game, but in RL it should be possible to conduct bombing raids without the people on ground knowing who did it...


Fred

[ajbera]

Regarding stealing techs...

In Civ2, once you had stolen an advance, you could build everything associated with that tech, which was unrealistic.

What I would have done with Civ3 is make the chance to steal tech low, the cost high, and if the tech was stolen, not allow the thieving civ to build anything associtaed with the advance, or research anything that had the stolen tech as a prerequisite. However, once the prereqs for the stolen advance had been learned, then the civ would be able to use the knowledge gained from stealing the tech. It would still make stealing advances useful, though riskier and not game-imbalancing, while circumventing the preposterous notion that a feudal civ could build tanks just by stealing the necessary tech.

[ndnls]

One way to balance the steal tech ability would be to only allow spies to steal techs that their civ has 1 or 2 prereqs for, allowing
small nations to keep up or get ahead but not allow them to take
your latest, most advanced technologies