How do you wan't espionage management

[Stuff2]

For quite som time ago someone suggested an 'espionage window' (I don't remeber who but I think it's a splendid idea).

Now I wonder: What would you like to see in an espionage window? What options do you wan't? How should the espionage window be designed? Or is it all an bad idea? Even so what should be possible to do with espionage?

I have have some vague suggestions:
- Steal maps
- Steal tech
- Give demographics
- Infiltrate another civs espionage system (and see what operations are going on there)
- Infiltrate a province/city government
- Control governor (if the province is about to revolt you'll get noticed in time and can kick it off)
- Protect science
- Terrorism

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

I think its a great idea, although a espanioge window is already in civ2, and will most likely be carried into civ3.

heres my wants and demands:

Diplomat:

1. infiltrate city (see whats going on inside) 80% chance of success.

2. establish embasy (makes it so your units can move freely about that civs cities, also starts informing you of important stuff about that civ, for example: changing of governments, revolts, etc.) the % of chance for this option depends on that civs feelings about you, so if he is friendly, then 100% chance, if he is neutral, then 60% chance, and if he is not so happy with you, then 20% chance.

3. steal technology, 50% chance of success.

4. steal unit (it would be the closest unit to your borders) 50% chance of success.

5. negotiate with civ (allows negotiation from that moment on)(I do not think negotiation should be for free in civ3 as it is in civ2, after all, you do need a diplomat to negotiate) 100% chance of success, the civ can turn you down, but usually will not.

thats about it for the diplomat, now for the spy:

1. infiltrate city (free) 100% chance of success.

2. incite revolt (in civ2, this would allow you to take control of city, but in civ3, it would incite a revolt into the entire kingdom, all their units would be -1 on both defense and attack during the next 5 turns) 60% chance.

3. plant nuclear device (does what it says, the weapon is a bit weaker then a nuke, it would destroy 5 improvements in that city, and destroy half the population) 30% chance of success.

4. capture unit (capture the closest unit to your borders) 70% chance of success

5. steal technology, 50% chance of success

NOTE - many of you may think that my nuclear device is a bit strong, but stay tuned for my thread on NUCLEAR WARFARE, I will be posting in a few days, in that post will I tell you my idea of what nuclear warfare should be in civ3.

well, thats about all I can think of at the moment.

[Sindai]

Also, you could always have your intelligence services 'Create Pretext' for warfare. IE: They set up some international incident which makes it look like you're justified in starting a war against a given country, so you don't suffer a loss of reputation for being the aggressor. Just the thing for us aspiring despots who don't want all those wimpy-arse democracies ganging up on us because we want to "liberate" some of our neighbour's resources....
[This message has been edited by Sindai (edited April 23, 2001).]

[dognheat]

I want to see espionage MACROMANAGEMENT. This was actually discussed on another post topic not too long ago, but I don't want to see all my spies hanging out with my infanty waiting to get into the city. Spies/espionage shoould be managed on a separate screen altoghether(like the trade screen,diplomacy, etc.). When a spy you have allocated to an empire is in a position to do something, you should be presented with a pop-up window asking what to do.

One other thing, city revolts shoudn't happen in one turn with one spy and a sack full of gold. At the least, a bribed city should take multiple turns to revolt, and that is only if the owning civ doesn't take any measures to quell the rebellion.

[SerapisIV]

Spys/espionage should require upkeep or training, to balance becoming macromanaged. Or the amount of "Espionage Points" you get is proportional to your tax income, signifying something like a CIA budget.

[Mister Pleasant]

Adapting the intelligence window from Space Empires III (not SE4), as I said before would be cool. Instead of moving spies around the map you would allocate resources to different areas of intelligence (new areas could be given with new advances). One might allocate 25% of their intelligence resources to fermenting discord in a Russian city, 50% to stealing advances from the French, and 25% collecting production data on the egyptians. So instead of a spy unti that moves around the map, you would instead have a window that controls a spy network that has already infiltrated the other civs you have contacted. The dumb thing about a spy unit is is that spys infiltrate - a unit assumes behavior comparable to a conventional military group. But I guess some civers will insist that every task be delegated to a unit lest they don't "feel" like their really running an empire . . .
Anybody else ever play SE3? Sure the intelligence window was a bit spreadsheetish, but it made sense.

[Stuff2]

Some interesting ideas here.

Diablo: I see that you would like espionage managed bye units. About your incite revolt thing. I just can't help thinking it's a bit too powerful. I'm imagening my whole vast empire getting in disorder by a small tribe whom i recently gave som money as a gift in exchange of their maps..

Sindai: I love it.

Dognheat: I agree.

Serapis: Yes absolutely.

Mister pleasant: It sounds interesting. But in how many peices can you split the 100%? And how do you do with temporary tasks like inciting revolts?

About incite revolt. I think that should only be possible if the city already are in disorder (yet another reason to keep your pop happy).


[This message has been edited by Stuff2 (edited April 24, 2001).]

[Ralf]

I think that percentage chances should be avoided as much as possible in espionage outcomes. Those of us who lack in character ( and we are many )tends to just reload a saved game.

Some kind of allocation slider system, with combinations of benefits/trade-offs is better. Any ideas?

[Stuff2]

You've got a point Ralf.

But I'll explain a little more what I mean with percentages.
I'll give an example.
I want to steal a tech from the Russians. So I have as an ongoing operation to steal tech from the russian. The inital success rate is 30% and the getting captured is 10%. This means that this will probably take 2 - 4 turns and it will most of the time be successful. This is an ongoing operation and my only contribution to it is paying for its annual upkeep. But if the russian have decided to guard their technology the chance of getting it each turn falls down to 15 and the chance of getting your spy captured is suddenly doubled. And if the russians have some counterespionage operations going on the chance of getting captured is even bigger.
In this case the chance of getting caught. On the other hand if I already have infiltrated their spy network the chance of being successful increases again. Let's say that the odds are now: 30% success and 40% getting captured. Every captured spy may give away some info of you (most of the time just demographics and maps but sometimes really interesting things). It will take you 2 - 4 turns and loss of atleast one spy and possible some secret information, but you'll gain the tech eventually. Every turn when a spy is lost the upkeep cost is doubled. But the operations keep on going on until it's finished or until you tell it to stop.

In order to make 'reloaders' a little more careful i suggest that every spyoperation takes atleast two turns before it begins (and the outcome is calculated two turns ahead). Not like in civ2 where you place your spy outside a city and saves the game for reloading.
With this system you would have to remake two entire moves, just to find out that the spyoperation didn't succeed this turn either. I wouldn't reload if i had to go through that kind of trouble again. Atleast not in lategame.

[Ecthy]

quote: I think that percentage chances should be avoided as much as possible in espionage outcomes. Those of us who lack in character ( and we are many )tends to just reload a saved game. Some kind of allocation slider system, with combinations of benefits/trade-offs is better. Any ideas?

well, do you want a "will work"/"won't work" system then, with cryptical calculations for each of those possibilities?

[dognheat]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 04-24-2001 03:52 PM I think that percentage chances should be avoided as much as possible in espionage outcomes. Those of us who lack in character ( and we are many )tends to just reload a saved game. Some kind of allocation slider system, with combinations of benefits/trade-offs is better. Any ideas?

All right you asked for it with this flamebait...

It is up to Firaxis and the rest of us to police your reloading activities and make it harder for you to cheat ? GIVE ME A BREAK !!! If you want to play the game reloading before every crucial decision then do so, but the fact that you can/do play that way should have no bearing on the game at all.

Just know that the AI is laughing at you, and telling the ATM machine what a wuss you are.


Stuff2, I like the idea. One thing I would really like to see, is the longer you leave a spy operation active, but don't perform any aciotns with it, when you do call upon them to perform the % chances should be higher.

[Sirotnikov]

quote: Originally posted by Sindai on 04-23-2001 09:57 PM Also, you could always have your intelligence services 'Create Pretext' for warfare. IE: They set up some international incident which makes it look like you're justified in starting a war against a given country, so you don't suffer a loss of reputation for being the aggressor. Just the thing for us aspiring despots who don't want all those wimpy-arse democracies ganging up on us because we want to "liberate" some of our neighbour's resources.... [This message has been edited by Sindai (edited April 23, 2001).]

Cool! This is the best and most ralistic thing ever!

(note: do not call the pre-text "Make Sharon Visit Temple mount" no matter what)
( at Imran)

[To_Serve_Man]

I spy agency would be very more effective than a spy unit like in Civ2.

Has anyone every played Microprose's Star Trek: Birth of the Federation? This game handles espionage superbly.

If you have not played that game, let me explain the idea.

There would be an Espionage menu. We [the forumers] are not 100% sure as to how the interface will look, but somewhere, there is an Espionage button which brings up the Espionage menu.

From there, you would have a Main Screen. In this main screen there is the following; Total Funding for your Spy Agency, a Goal button, Embassy button, and History button.

The Funding for your Spy Agency is the total amount of Resources you are spending on obtaining information. The Resource would logically be Gold. There would be a slider bar, or some type of way to increase or decrease the amount of Gold you spend. (This could be per/turn, per/year, per/everyother turn, etc)

The Goal button is clickable and will bring you to the Objective Screen. This screen will have a large bar on the top of the menu from 0% to 100%. This is called your Counter Intel. Under that there will be several slider bars. The slider bars have different catagoreys. They would be; Technology, Infastructure, Military, Economic, Diplomatic and General. Under those 6 menus you have the following slider bars; Sabotage and Espionage. At the bottom of the screen there is some type of menu (drop down, window) that has all the other Civilizations that you, ask a player have discovered.
Heres an example of how it would work. I have 100% Counter Intellegence. I move the Sabotage slider under Economic. Then I select another player. I click an OK button, and now i have sent spies. The Economic field would eventually steal money from that player.
I will explain more of this after the Embassy Button and History Button..

By pressing the clickable Embassy button, it brings up all FREE information on a certian player. The FREE information is, Players name, Capital City, etc. Much like the Embassy screen from Civ2. **Theoretical Idea** Maybe, since we're in the Espionage menu, and you are in the Embassy mode, you can set up negotiations for a secert alliance? Just a thoght.

When one presses the clickable History Button, you get a screen with all the Espionage acts you have done already, and can re- open them. Wasn't it a pain is the butt when you could only spy on a town once? Shouldn't you have some type of documentation about this? Well with this window, you can. It my be outdated, but its there. It would also tell you about any Espionage acts that were by another player toward you and.. since they failed, you know about them now.

About how the 0% to 100% slider works. The Counter Intl amount is the strenght you Espionage forces are in your own civilization. The higher the Counter Intel, the harder and less succesful another player will be to crack into your 'secrets'. However, it is almost certian that there will be more than 8 civs per game. If, theoreticlly, there were 16, how could you take away any decent amount your Counter Intel to put a decent amount into the Espionage or Sabotage sliders PER player? That would mean with 16 players, you could only put 6.25% total between Espionage and Sabotage for EACH player, and thats with a Counter Intel of 0%! Well I have the answer. First of all, if your playing a game, and you have a very close ally, you probably will not need to alliagn any Counter Intel in their slots. "Hey Mister!" you say, "I'm a bad guy and play Blood Lust, I got no friends!". Well, i got an answer for you too. The more funding you funnel into your Spy Network the more effienct it will work. If you budget in a very small amount of money, then expect results of "Your spy in Athens droped his suit case, spilling all the fake documents onto the streets. It will take several months to re-establish an Espionage holding here" often. It will take several turns to get any results. However, if you funnel a large part of your budget in, you'll be getting, "Our Agent in Athens has succesfully stolen 2 Panzer tanks. They are ours to command and are stationed in New Helvitica". Also, by building upgrades, in towns, or researching new technologies will add bonuses to your Counter Intel. So that you will not have 0% to 100%, but 0% to 150%. This will allow you to put more spies into more cities without losing your Counter Intel defense.

oh, and there is a Cancel button.

The Star Trek: Birth of the Federation Spy newtwork was much more basic than this. They only had 5 teams, so you only had to split it 4 ways, (instead of 16+). Also there was not so many optaions, and they used a Point system, not a % system.


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[This message has been edited by To_Serve_Man (edited April 26, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by To_Serve_Man (edited April 26, 2001).]

[Venger]

At the very least, I want to be able to control what espionage is allowed in the game, and with a rules file control success percentages.

That is to say, I should be able to select no city bribery, no technology stealing, etc. And if I do allow them to, I should be able to control success rates for stealing technology and a base rate for bribery.

Now I have to do it by simply allowing/disallowing Diplomats and Spys altogether...

MEC2