Espionage

[LDiCesare]

Spying has very little information about it on the web. Here is all I found, from the diplomacy model page:

7) Spying: Intelligence operations aimed at other civs. There are two types, passive and overt. As a general rule, each civ expects the others to conduct passive spying, so there's little downside. Overt acts carry more severe penalties should one be caught. Penalties include reputation loss (of varying severity), change in treaty status, even internal unrest.

a) Passive:
- Society Details (Potentially all info contained in another civs Social Model)
- Government Details (Potentially all info contained in another civs Governance Model)
- Economic Details (Potentially all info contained in another civs Economic Model)
- Military Details (Awareness, but NOT theft, of another civs Military unit info)
- Research Details (Awareness, but NOT theft, of another civs Research Model info)
b) Overt:
- Theft of non-Military Research info
- Theft of Military Research info (harder and more dangerous)
- Bribery of Cities (Added 6/16)
- Bribery of Units/Armies (Added 6/16)
- Bribery of Characters (risky)
- Assassination (VERY risky)
- Moles (Intelligence Agency penetration)

I looked for an espionage thread, but couldn't find one, and the search function has been disabled for the moment, so I started this new thread.

What I want now is very simple: Passive spying to gain information about geography and military units of another civ.
Note that, from my point of view, there is little or no difference between spying and exploration.
The ai, and the player, in order to plan moves correctly, need to know what lies beyond the fog of war and in the dark places of the map. Since moving units just to uncover the map is tedious and you may have better usage of the units (unless you want to throw them into the midst of an enemy army), I want the auto explore thing demipomme wants too (cf. http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=78844 ).

Now my question is: How do you achieve this spying thing, what user interface would you like?
There are automatic explorations done by conquered territories, units, and merchants. These are already coded, except for merchants. I don't know what the merchants pathes are, but if we can retrieve them, it should be straightforward to set the squares explored by merchants as 'seen'.
Now, the direted explorations, where the player or ai spends money to get information.
How to show these spendings, and how to direct them?

Should there be separate exploration and spying UI? Should spying be part of the diplomatic UI?
Should this be limited to an entry in the econ orders window?

Exploration could be limited to sea/unsettled territories, while spying would work for settled territories.
Exploration would require directions, like selecting a far away in-the-black square, and letting the explorers move into that general direction (they'd probably explore not only in the shortest path, but also a bit around it).
Spying could be targetted to a civ, and spendings made per civ.

Here's how I see it:
I need an exploration and spying econ entries to give funds to these activities.
Exploration would ask for a general direction and explore that way. It should be possible to specify several targets. If no target is specified, but spendings aren't null, then exploration would expand in all directions evenly.

Spying would be an option in the diplomatic gui, with an area to enter the amount of money to put into spying in each civ's entry. Counter measures can wait.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Laurent, I don't think there Is very much on these topics. If there is it is Very old.

Your take on spying/exploration sounds reasonable to me for a first shot at it. In addition to exploring in different directions I would allow a "center-out" exploration possibility. It could explore in all directions equally. Although it may be you could do this with your suggested interface by just picking all the directions. You could also give the player a little bit of this center-out exploration for free, so that no action would be required to very slowly unveil nearby parts of the world. It seems reasonable to me. . .

Merchants don't actually use on-the-ground paths at the moment, but when they do, we can certainly do what you suggest.

[Lord God Jinnai]

There may be only 1 major difference i'd say with your point on spying/exploration being the same...

In the former you are assuming the land and general metrolpoliutan structure hasn't changed so you don't spend the time to remap what is already known, unless there is a signifigant change....it may not sound like much, but it applies to how you direct and supply the various endevours.

[LDiCesare]

LGJ, any suggestions on how to present that to the player?

[Lord God Jinnai]

Sorry for the late reply.

IMO the player should know all ajacent knowledge, unless specifically hidden from them.

Beyond that, the more you build up your passive intelligence, the more likely you are to know when major changes happen within a country as far as land changes, ie new cities, new resources discovered, forest is destroyed. Active intelligence should be required though for troop movemnts.

iF a player wished to know about a specific area IMO highlighing the area and paying and amount based on size, technology, how far away it is and level of your intelligence in that country. The success would be based on the level on normal counter intelligence measures. You would always find out the next turn all info on those areas as far as if there was no fog-of-war, including hidden troops. After this fog-of-war effects come back into play.