When does espionage become available?

[Crouchback]

I've just been looking through the tech tree and noticed there is an advance called espionage in the Industrial Age. Does this mean we won't have any spy options until 2/3 of the way through the game? Cause that really would be disappointing, it'd make spying rather pointless in fact.

David

[Gramphos]

You can probably modify it if you want, and it might be so that you get more advance spy functions after that knowledge. Well have to wait.

[Mars]

That's exactly how it was in civ2

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Crouchback
Does this mean we won't have any spy options until 2/3 of the way through the game? Cause that really would be disappointing, it'd make spying rather pointless in fact.

Pointless? Why? Compare with Civ-2.

You could perform limited spy-actions with the diplomat, then about 2/3 (or half?) into the game (with communism) advanced spy-actions, with the spy.
That concept worked in Civ-2, didnt it? Why should Civ-3 suddenly have advanced spy-actions available from early beginning? Remember that the years pass by much slower near industrial & modern times. More turns to play with.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Ralf
Compare with Civ-2.
You could perform limited spy-actions with the diplomat, then about 2/3 (or half?) into the game (with communism) advanced spy-actions, with the spy.

Correct, but then you had Diplomat wandering around.
Now I suppose you'll have access to a limited kind of missions until proper espionage is "discovered".

According to the official site Ask The Team, we know we'll have these available missions:
[list=1][*]Sabotage (sabotages the current project of an enemy city) [*]Propaganda (attempts to convince an enemy city to join your Civilization) [*]Steal Plans (reveals all troop locations of an enemy Civ for one turn) [*]Steal World Map (reveals what an enemy knows about the world) [*]Expose Enemy Spy (ferrets out opposing spies) [/list=1]

BTW: no more units bribe?

I suppose that Steal Map and Steal Plans will be available quite soon, may be Propaganda and Sabotage will be the next, while Expose Enemy Spy will be the last. OTOH Propaganda could shift to a later appearance, if intended as modern propaganda.

What's your opinion?

Side note: I really appreciate the disappearance of espionage micromgmt and the nasty units bribing.

[Alex 14]

I reckon when diplomatic spying first becomes avalible it will be pretty cool, but when you discover Expionage it will proberly also increase your chances of success as well as giving you more features.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Alex 14
when you discover Expionage it will proberly also increase your chances of success as well as giving you more features.

Good point. Any Dan Magaha out there to confirm details?

[N_A]

I think the espionage system should be avaliable rather early on, possibly early middle ages. After all, we see in history that the intelligence networks were very elaborate in ancient China and the rest of those Far East Asian nations (See Sun Tzu and other works in the Wu Jing Qi Shu for reference to use of intelligence). Perhaps it will get alot more complicated as it moves on, but defintely something that should exist early on.

[Sarxis]

I am hoping that there will be some limited espionage options in the beginning, but am glad that the full blown espionage options don't come in until later.

Not that there hasn't always been some kind of espionage throughout every epoch in history, but it just doesn't 'feel' right to have James Bond like spies out doing their business before Communism.

[Grumbold]

Spies have been around for as long as rulers have wanted to know what their neighbours are up to. I would hope that the advanced espionage level will simply improve chances of certain activities. There's nothing on that list that needs to wait for the industrial age to begin. Now if there was a plant nuke option, naturally it has to wait for the right advances ....

[Faboba]

"You're spy was pierced with a stray arrow from the 1st mounted archer battalion under comand of Great Leader(tm) Gorgeous George. He was consequently unable to plant the nuclear device sent to you from the future. Sorry for the inconvenience. Good day t'ya"

[N_A]

Well it won't feel right to have James Bond type superspies in the past, but there are still crazy Ninja type spies in the past.

[Acemo]

I think I remember seeing or hearing, maybe the preorder movie, that one would have to discover writing before any spy options would be available.

[Lorizael]

I've seen screenshots that had the little E button along with three others. As Dan told us the E stands for Espiosage. I'm not sure where (I think it was in the most recent screens on GameSpu) but I saw a shot where that E was missing. IIRC it was pretty early on but I could be mistaken. But I also remember that there was a Diplomats and Spies tag on the Editor shot so who knows what will get and when.

Wow I didn't say anything useful there did I?