Spies

[caralampio]

I haven't played many games, but I have noticed that planting a spy only works about 10% of the time. With such odds and the unpleasantries involved with discovery of the attempt, I have pretty much given it up.
Is there any way to improve a spy's chances of infiltrating?

caralampio

[Coach]

Not that I'm aware of. Once you do get a spy planted, doing anything interesting is extremely expensive and also unlikely to succeed. The only value I've seen from it is checking on the progress of opposing spaceships.

[HalfLotus]

After failing to plant a spy once, dont do it again for awhile, your chances are lower after you fail.

It helps to be commie. My experience has been about 75% success with planting spy in cummunism.

Once you have a spy, you can see other civs military on F3 screen for free.

[caralampio]

Yeah. I loved the spy in Civ 2. You could really go places with her. In Civ 3, they might as well have dumped the espionage concept altogether.

caralampio

[jan3]

yep the spies are allmost useless unless to know the military.
but it's that way for the ai to so....
i have made an auto reaction on this
the one that plants a spy: i raze 2 cities
the one who try's to use him: i try to whipe him out
and believe me after a while they dont try again

[Skanky Burns]

A good idea is to try and plant spies when you are at war with a civ. Generally it succeeds during war, and they wont get *more* upset with you if your spy-planting fails

[PashaM]

Can you guys tell me how to actually plant a spy? It says that i should press a Espionage button on the Info Box... where is the InfoBox?

[Skanky Burns]

Double-Click on the star icon next to the city name of the city where you built the espionage mini-wonder.
From there its pretty much a case of following the instructions.

[Dodgy Geezer]

Use spys to keep track of your opponants armies. Since the AI tends to keep 2 defensive units in each city, it is possible to work out how many spare they have, and how many offensive units.

Also when planning or executing war, it is really handy to know how many offensive units they can throw at you. If they have loads it is often better to get another civ to start a war with them first to have them used up.

[Kc7mxo]

Planting spies drove me to distraction, many civs who i was on otherwise great terms with happilydeclared war on me if i failed to plant a spie once. Which meant it was a pretty good way of getting them to declare war on me.

Though, since i can't see my reputation i can't tell if its making it worse.