useless spies

[Jaholt]

Spying was one of the biggest pleasures in Civ2. This has been seriously messed up in Civ3.
Bring back the spy & diplomat units!!

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Jaholt
Spying was one of the biggest pleasures in Civ2. This has been seriously messed up in Civ3.
Bring back the spy & diplomat units!!

Getting rid of the spies and diplomats was a blessing and one of the things that firaxis got right. The only real use I had for them was to bribe enemy units, as bribing them in foreign lands would give them to you for free. However I would like to see the "poison water supply" and "plant nuclear device" options in the new espionage options.

[Alex]

I thought that Firaxis had fixed the espionage costs in ptw... seems like they didn't. Oh well. Let's go to the editor, then.

[theNiceOne]

I believe a lot of espionage cost complaints come from people who simply haven't learn't how to use espionage effectively. I am not among those who master espionage (I have never tried to steal a tech yet), but before you start to bash the espionage cost you should look at a few games that have actually used it.

I have fond memories of one of the deity succession games on CFC where the players had a crappy start and was the underdog for the entire game. However, much due to stealing of techs they managed to catch up just in time to steal the spce ship victory.

In that game, espionage was the tool that secured the victory in an almost hopeless game. So don't bash espionage until you have at least read how great players can use it.

[Alex]

I know that great players can make good use of espionage; the problem is to strike a balance wrt its cost. If it is too high, the AI will rarely use it, because it simply doesn't have the money; if it is too low, then the AI will use it all the time, as was pointed out by Warp, thereby destroying the adequate balance between war and covert operations.

[player1]

Actually.

Stael tech cost is expensive in ancient and middle age era, then usefull in late industrail are, and at the CHEAP in modern ear.

Of course, the key is stealing techs which only one civ has.

Since otherwise they would be cheap to buy anyway.

[Brutus66]

Just seems to me that I usually fail when trying to plant a spy, and when I do the opposing country doesn't hesitate any to declare war.
It's not very realistic- if the US and USSR declared war over such things the world would be a sizzling grease spot by now.

[djafrot]

After all that complaining (myself included) I have been using spies a little in my recent game.

They're deadly expensive, but 2000 gold gave me the location of all of one of my rival's troop positions, across the board. VERY useful, no?

Of course, planting those spies got two civ's at war against me, so...