Spies...who needs them?????

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by minke19104
Except for Americans. They converted to Monarchy in my game instead. Which is pretty damn funny when you think about it.

They seem to do that often, actually... perhaps emulating their real-life affections?

Does anyone here ever sabotage production?

[minke19104]

I've done it once or twice for wonders. Mad expensive though... It can go up to 7000-8000 or higher when they are near completion...

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Originally posted by minke19104
I've done it once or twice for wonders. Mad expensive though... It can go up to 7000-8000 or higher when they are near completion...

But did it work?

[The Mad Monk]

I just use spies to see what the AI is doing. I don't even use them strategically, much. I'm just really nosey.

[player1]

I don't know... I'm just not willing to spend 2453 gold on Sanitation... especially if there's a dim chance I might not even get it, and start a war...

Actually I could get same price for let's say Computers, while buying it from AI would be 5000gp minimum.

[epics]

I used Espionage in one of my games.
I had RoP with a civ and gathered my units near their cities so when RoP expired I started a war. I wanted to smash the civ within one turn so I had to know how many units do I need to counqer each city. So I used "Investigate City" about 30 times. It worked
Iroquois was kicked out of the planet in a SINGLE turn

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

player1: re: computers...

wow! that cheap? maybe I should give it a shot again...

epics: 30 TIMES?!? Didn't that cost you a pretty penny?

[epics]

Originally posted by Yahweh Sabaoth

epics: 30 TIMES?!? Didn't that cost you a pretty penny?

I think 2000-2500. But I'm sure not more than 3000

I had 1000 per turn so...

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

And, um, how did you get 1000 per turn? Were you selling all your valuable techs or what?

Oh well, I guess that's a subject for a different thread. Since in most of my games by the espionage era I'm averaging about anywhere from 150-450 gpt, and new techs every 4 turns (except Ato. The. and Electron. of course), I'd hate to blow my hard-earned money on simply investigating. I'd rather use it to buy temples and courthouses in my annexed cities (democracy for me, thanks!)

[theNiceOne]

In my current emperor difficulty game, I have a net income of 600-700 gpt, before having built any stock exchanges or the Wall Street (I've just got the tech), while researching a tech every 4th turn, and selling off a tech only every 10th turn or so. I expect the income to pass 1000gpt when I get stock exchanges around everywhere.

So it is not too difficult to rack up large amounts of gold when you get a good empire up and running. The only problem is that this is when you don't need espionage missions.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Hmm, well, I guess I need to balance the books a little better, but this is a topic for another thread.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Having a spy in an opposing civ so you see their army strength in the F3 is usually not necessary, but it IS interesting and "entertaining". I prefer to do it that way, though I rarely use the other espionage functions.

This is normally the only reason why I get myself a spy. Or to provoke the AI to declare war. But I don't put espionage high on the priority list when deciding the research path.

[Odin]

It seams to me that spiess are useless; It seams like I can never plant a spy in a civ I am with war with, and with the civs i'm at peace with I can only plant a spy successfully about 25% of the time.

[Verto]

Bounty hunters...we don't need their scum.

I mean, er, spies. Yes, don't need them spies.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Of course, I just came to realize recently that in the 2-4 turns after a failed spy mission, any mission you launch against the same target civ is bound to fail.

Well OOPS.