Bond...James Bond

[Lunacy]

Hi all,

I love Civ3 but I've been disappointed in how the spying works - it really needs a James Bond. I've only been playing for about a month but it looks to me like espionage is just a roll of the dice. You pay the money and you get a report back on whether it worked or not. Am I missing something? Is there anything you can do to improve your chances? Can you setup the espionage in any way?

I think this aspect of the game would be a lot more fun and challenging if the player could actively conduct the espionage - create a spy, take him/her into the other Civs' territory - have the spy navigate toward a targeted city perhaps avoiding secret police units who would be the only ones capable of spoting him/her. You would have to have your own secret police units to try to catch any spies in your own territory. The spy could be disguised as a worker so the secret police units would have to approach any worker that seemed to be behaving strangely. Once you get into the more modern ages when you have a zillion workers running around keeping track of them is near impossible. Perhaps in sending a spy you could run the risk not only of having him killed but having him betray you and give the other Civ info. about you.

I never played CivI or CivII. Was the espionage handled the same way in those versions of the game?

Lunacy

[TheStinger]

In civ 2 the spy unit was ludicrously overpowered, you could bring down whole empires with horeds of spies

[ChrisiusMaximus]

That is true about civ2 but in civ3 its gone full circle and the spy is ludicrously underpowered.

[dojoboy]

You can use the editor to spice things up.

[Ethelred]

The spy seems about right. In the real world spys get information in most cases. They occasionaly engage in espionage but that usually destroys their ability to gather more information.

Stealing tech seems overpriced but if was too low the whole concept of research would be wrecked.

[player1]

70% of origial steal tech cost works fine for me.

(everything lower is not balanced)

[- Groucho -]

I hated the superspys in Civ II - and though the probe teams in SMAC were cool, they too were overpowered. Battlefield bribery? Subverting entire cities with a pot of cash? All too hard to suspend disbelief over.

[asleepathewheel]

Re: Bond...James Bond

Originally posted by Lunacy
I never played CivI or CivII. Was the espionage handled the same way in those versions of the game?

The diplomat/spy was a unit. There were several actions, lets see what I remember:

Investigate city: self explanatory. I prefer the Civ3 way, where I can look at any city at any time, rather than moving a spy and losing its turn on only one city.

Plant nuke: same as nuking, but not the diplo hit unless they find out it was you, in which case, ruh roh.

poison water supply: knocks down population by a point

steal tech

bribe unit: can bribe almost any field unit (ToT only unbribable units?) unless they are in democracy. Why build your own units, wait for the ai to attack and just buy off their army. can't remember if these would be free unsupported units or not.

subvert city: buy a city if not under democracy. By far the worst. build up a large treasury and buy off all but the capitol cities.

I'm sure there were others, can't remember right now

I liked the unit, but the bribery was insane.

I prefer the current system, though I would add more options. At least you can tweak the prices to make more affordable.

I would like to knwo the exact effects of a propaganda hit, though.

[Alex]

I agree that the espionage aspect of the game should be improved, but not in the way the first poster suggests; this would only add an insane level of micromanagement.

I think the espionage aspect should have more options, to be cheaper and to be more effective earlier, not only after you build the Intelligence Agency.

[ruby_maser]

espionage

I don't mind the interface but I think the missions are prohibitively expensive... or maybe I need to focus on commerce a lot more