Espionage Screen

[Urban Ranger]

Opening the gates is one thing. Suddenly the city becomes part of the enemy nation is quite another.

Trying to win an enemy city is quite a complicated endeavor. "Bribing" seems to be too simple a mechanism, esp when there is no counter for such a move.

[Sir Shiva]

I feel that this spy screen should only become available in the modern age... In the early game, we should be restricted to the normal diplomat-type spying.. I do not think that espionage was well organised and an important part of ancient empires' agendas..

We should be careful that we do not make Civ3 something like Spy3... Espionage should be important, but must not require our constant attention.. We should also have to take care of military and economy...

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-Shiva
Email: shiva@mailops.com
Web: http://www.crosswinds.net/india/~shiva
ICQ: 17719980

[MidKnight Lament]

I'm no historian, but I would have thought spying was still quite important in ancient times. Feel free to tell me otherwise though. I think the espionage screen should become available quite early on. Certain options in the screen would not be available until later.

I agree that spying should not require our constant attention. I think this is why a spy stationed in an enemy city gradually giving you small pieces of information is a good idea. You wouldn't have to pay him too much attention, but they'd still be quite useful.

It was also suggested that the longer a spy has been working for you, and the longer he's in a city, the more effective he becomes. So it's not like you'd be moving them around all the time.

- MKL

[Grumbold]

Many ancient nations used diplomacy and espionage most effectively. Even Ghengis had a crude but effective terror tactic - every city that refused to surrender was totally slaughtered. Made many others eager to ignore any heroic defenders and throw open the gates at the first opportunity.

Spies should certainly be able to influence morale in enemy cities and have a chance at lowering the defensive bonuses but I dislike the current all-or-nothing method. Better if you only find out when you attack if the city wall is in effect or your spies have done a good job and got the gates open. Cities simply do not revolt in favour of an enemy nation that cannot then protect them from retribution. Equally Diplomats do not go trolling round an enemy state with 90% of the countries treasury in his back pocket or have the ability to teleport money in at will. Keeping as much as possible run from a screen rather than a unit avoids these awkward and sometimes nonsensical features. A good espionage service could involve hundreds if not thousands of personnel. A dozen on-map spy units cannot replicate this look and feel properly.

[tniem]

The longer a spy is in a city, not only should his information be more acurate it should also be harder to acquire. For example anyone in a city could see an improvement being built. He should report this as soon as he enters the building. But the longer he is in a city, especially capital, the better his connections. So, if Civ III has invasion preparations and plans (or simply a group point), then the spy should be closer to gaining access the longer he is there.

The same thing with science. Science should be done in labratories and libraries in Civ III (another thread I am sure) and so when the spy first arrives he is able to tell your empire what they are researching in City C. But later when he has science connections the spy can give your research points or information from City C. And then the longer he stays maybe he can give you the technology when City C finally discovers it.

[Ubergeek]

MKL, I agree that linking outright bribery to early forms of government is appropriate. Certain options should become available or unavailable depending both upon the status of your own civ and that of the target civ.

Also, keep in mind that, in most times and places, people identified themselves by what city or (at most) region they belonged to. A medieval Italian might refer to himself as Milanese or from the Piedmont, but the idea of calling himself Italian simply because he spoke the language (and, in Civ terms, probably belonged to the "Italian Republic") would have seemed a bizarre and alien thought. That's why, for so much of history (especially European history, but this holds true for the pretty much every civilization for which we have records), it was seen as perfectly respectable for a city's leaders to offer their allegiance to the strongest power that happened to be in the neighborhood at the time. So the idea of "suddenly becoming part of the enemy nation" is an imposition of modern thought upon a situation that doesn't support it. The aforementioned Milanese would probably have thought of it more in terms of getting on the winning team so as to better share in the spoils.

Also, we have to remember that this whole system is necessarily abstracted, as is every other aspect of Civ. It's very tempting to see a spy on the screen and think of it as a lone individual doing specific actions, but in reality it represents an allocation of resources by the owning civilization that is sufficient to achieve a specific goal -- the Natasha Fatale-looking figure is just an abstraction of the focus of the effort, and may represent anything from dozens of actual agents ferreting out information to an extensive and long-lasting propaganda campaign that makes a sizeable portion of population of the target city prefer you to your enemy. Thinking about it as a sort of Jane Bond can only mislead you about what it should and should not be able to do.

Sorry if the foregoing was a bit pedantic. I have a tendency to get that way at times. I'm working on it.



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Better living through tyranny

[Gord McLeod]

I like the idea of throwing money to the pirates (red units, barbarians, whatnot.) I think Civilization should take an idea from Colonization though, and introduce the concept of privateers to the game. Unlike in Colonization (I think, been ages since I played that), the civilization should not have direct control over privateers.

You'd basically have the normal options when "bribing" a red ship, with one additional - "Offer Letter of Marquee". If the barbarian ship accepts, they roam about as normal but they ignore your units and harass other civs, especially your enemies, maybe supplying you with a little gold after each 'raid' until they're destroyed.

[MidKnight Lament]

I loved privateers! You're right that they shouldn't be in our direct control as well. This is the sort of thing that we should be able to negotiate with minor civs. Let them take the flak (?) for it. That'd be cool.

- MKL

[Theben]

RE: bribing cities, here's something from the old "more abilities for spies!" thread.

quote: Purchase unit/city: Assuming bribing cities is allowed at all, IMHO cities should be more expensive(plus a nationalism tech could make them even more expensive or unbribeable) but I will go on record as saying units should be cheaper to bribe, mainly because early on bribing units can bankrupt your empire. The nat'lism tech could make units more expensive as well, plus later govts & units are also very expensive to bribe. Plus a 2nd option to pay less to get an enemy to disband rather than join you(perhaps bribes to switch sides could stay the same, but disband bribes could be cheaper). Again I say that all units should be allowed to bribe enemy units, but that units other than dips & spies(and any stack with a "leader" unit) would cost twice as much because of dips & spies diplomatic skills and leaders ability to inspire troops(even enemy troops). Allow bribing of units in stacks. Miltary units can "demand surrender" of a enemy city, with success determined by criteria set below. [sic] City revolts(if kept) would be modified as below. Spy may either bribe city, military, or both. If citizens only, then they must "fight" the military for control, if military, they must "subdue" city; both would be best to insure success(expensive). Mods would be 1)# & type of enemy military units in city & nearby; 2)the current happiness of the citizens(EACH citizens happiness is a factor, not just content/in revolt); 3)average happiness of your citizens(fundy types, take note); 4) any "black marks" your empire has inflicted on the enemy; 5) current mods(distance, courthouses). For "demand surrender" include the above but 1) would be replaced with-your army size vs. their army size. Even so, the result could be that the city remains loyal, switches sides, or declares neutrality.

Yes, this idea shows its age, but I still like it. It was written for an actual unit, but could work with "missions".

[MidKnight Lament]

I was thinking about doing a summary for this idea, but soon realised that there was a few more things that still need to be debated. Hopefully these three questions can spark some more discussion on this topic.

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1. The way spies are used in the Espionage Screen is rather different to the way they were used in previous installments. A major part of this is the idea that you will not be able to trust any spies you are financing. These spies could be working for someone else. Either to provide your enemies with information, or to give you misinformation.

Keeping this in mind, is it still best that we have to "build" our spy units? Is there a better system for doing this? After all, who's going to want to disrupt their production queue to build a unit (although not in the traditional sense) that may not even be loyal to you? (On another side note, production is a misrepresentitive way to 'build' a spy. Money is far better.)

Should you have to scout for potential spies amongst your population? Should spies 'offer' information to you? What is a better system?

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2. I've suggested (and have not heard any arguments against this) that spies stationed in a city should slowly acquire information rather than just respond to unit actions such as stealing maps, or viewing a city screen. (Another side note - some 'actions' such as 'plant nuke' could perhaps still be included as actions.) Anhyway, there will be a number of different types of info a spy may 'acquire'. (I'll try to draw up a list of these soon).

With this in mind, should we able to prioritise which type of information we would like the spy to concentrate on trying to get? This could be as simple as selecting one type. (eg. choosing 'steal tech' which gives you twice as much probability as you would otherwise have of stealing a tech). Or it could be as complex as giving you percentage ratings to help you prioritise. (50% to steal tech, 20% to steal maps, 20% to locate enemy units, 10% to find what the city is building).

These 'priorities' should not guarantee that you will find any information, nor should failing to give a priority disclude you from finding certain information. It would just let you focus more on what you wanted to find out. It's still up to how skillfull and loyal your spy is, and how good the enemy spies are at keeping the information from you.

Priorities could be set on a per spy basis, or set at a global level. Perhaps a better compromise would be to have all the spies who are spying on the same civ to have the same priorities. That way you wouldn't have to set too many, but you'd still have control. It's a matter of micro-management vs. control.

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3. Should you have to keep track yourself of which spies you believe are staying loyal and truthful, or should the computer come up with a figure to help you decide? I believe that some sort of indication would be helpful to the player so that they don't have to focus all their attention on what their spies are doing. On the other hand, being given a figure (perhaps loyalty as a percentage) takes away some of the uncertainty that I found interesting about this idea. Perhaps you could be told how much of the information the spy has given you has been proven to be true. You should have some way to track your spies (and know which are your best ones), but not be totally certain that your spy is 77% (for example) loyal. Any ideas?

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I'm done now. What do you think? I still think an Espionage Screen could be really cool, especially in multi-player, but I think we need to flesh out the way it would work a bit better. All comments are appreciated.

- MKL
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited April 10, 2000).]

[tniem]

MKL-

Thinking as I am typing, so well anyway...

I think that there should be a improvement that is the CIA/KGB/Scotland Yard/etc. Headquarters that would allow you to train spies that would be more effective. They would have a higher loyality rating and would return greater information.

You should have a recruiting office that hires the number of spies that you pay for out of college (your best) and then trains them. This way you could have 2% of your population involved in spying.

Definetly in need of tracking spies. But I think it would be best simply if a screen tells you what city you are receiving the information from and the % of what that city's spy has revealed to be true. In that way it would be a less of a hastle then thinking about how many spies you have, where, and their individual percentage.

Spies should be able to expand influence. Russian spies were believed to be influtrated in enemy counter-intelligence to know if any of their spies were under suspicion. Possibly you should be able to spy on other's spy agencies, so if the Americans steel Computers from the French and you are spying on the Americans then you have a chance of getting it.

[MidKnight Lament]

Any more ideas on this? Do people think the whole thing is a bad idea? I thought the questions I raised might have sparked off some conversation, but it appears not...

- MKL

[Slingshot]

These are fantastic ideas.

I'm just wondering about where to go from here...

Back to the wall of frustration. It would be nice for a programmer to give some feedback.

Maybe we could have this complied and DanQ/MarkG could send as another official recommendation to Firaxis? I also wonder if Activision would like to see this...