Does GalCiv II have espionage and spies? Is it possible to steal technologies, or to obtain the specs for enemy ships, or to view enemy planets, or to get spies on enemy ships so you can see what those ships see?
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Espionage and spies?
"For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance." - Niccolo MachiavelliTags: None
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Re: Espionage and spies?
Originally posted by Shadowlord
Does GalCiv II have espionage and spies? Is it possible to steal technologies, or to obtain the specs for enemy ships, or to view enemy planets, or to get spies on enemy ships so you can see what those ships see?
Spies - no, not as individual units.
Steal tech - Yes - as a random event depending on your espionage level.
Specs for enemy ships - You can see them without spying.
View enemy planets - Yes
Spies on enemy ships - no.
Espionage is abstracted into a single espionage budget that determines how fast and how much information you gain."Stuie has the right idea" - Japher
"I trust Stuie and all involved." - SlowwHand
"Stuie is right...." - Guynemer
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If I had to pick one area of the game to criticize, this would probably be it. As with the first game (which was understandably and wisely made simple in some areas,) Galactic Civilizations II makes spying just a matter of allocating funds to determine the level of infiltration your agents have accomplished within a rival government. I do like the idea that a little espionage is actually good for diplomacy (I guess you get penalized for not showing an interest at all, and low level espionage is not so much breaking into vaults as it is paying close attention while interacting with aliens.) Yet high levels of espionage may bring about negative diplomatic consequences. I'm a little fuzzy on how it all works, but from a player's perspective it seems like the whole system could be automated or at least simplified. I generally go for two or three increments of espionage with any new race from the start, then back down to one click once my economy is large enough that one the lowest non-zero level is still reliable funding for the effort. With GalCiv 1 I toyed around with different levels, and if memory serves it is possible to pilfer techs this way, but as a random result of heavy spying rather than part of any operation.
That, ultimately, is what I would like to see done with espionage in this game -- develop a system of agents, operations, and postures to reflect the complex nuances of international espionage. If you want to keep things cool but still pay attention, then setting an espionage "posture" to something in the passive/casual range would automatically work to maintain a small number of infiltrators and accumulate new intelligence slowly, but negative diplomatic consequences would be extremely unlikely. An aggressive/swashbuckling range would almost certainly result in more diplomatic hostility, but efforts would be made to put large numbers of agents in place. Agents themselves would not be unique (though they could be named by a random name generator if designers desired it,) but rather would be an abstraction to represent how deeply a given regime had been penetrated. Unlike the existing low, medium, and high levels of penetration; this number could easily fall as a result of failed operations, rivals' counterespionage operations, or random bad luck. Yet it would also represent the capabilities available for such operations. Performing an espionage operation would simply be a matter of picking one from a list (though some may have tech prerequisites and/or only be available in certain postures.) The actual range need not be huge. In fact, here is a basic framework . . .
--Military secrets: This mission could turn up plans for enemy vessel designs or even a complete census of an empire's military assets.
--Political manipulation: This mission would generally be about stealing influence points, though it might have a secondary effect related to voting outcomes with some forms of government.
--Economic sabotage: This mission would involve destroying existing social improvements or at least cancelling progress in one or more ongoing improvements.
--Counterespionage: If this mission is successful, the number of agents from the target faction presently in place to act against the perpetrator's government will be significantly reduced.
--General mayhem: Anything from random acts of terrorism to scandalizing a beloved athletic competition, the purpose of this mission is to drive down approval numbers throughout an empire.
In fairness, my earlier thoughts did oversimplify -- each race dose have an Espionage ability that modifies the effectiveness of spending. It just seems to me like spying in the game as it exists now does not involve making any interesting decisions and often does not produce any interesting results. Yet espionage is crucial to strategy games of this scope, so I would like to see it do both. This system of setting postures, placing agents, and performing operations offers plenty of flexibility. It could be as simple as implementing those five options or as intricate as giving each a chance to backfire with spectacular consequences (mayhem makes a rival regime more popular or a spy is captured and compelled to reveal some of his/her faction's military secrets, for example.) It could even relate to the tech tree as different advances provide different bonuses to specific missions. All this really does seem more like an idea for the next game than for the current one. Certainly I do not fail to enjoy the game as it exists today, but I do think it might strengthen the weakest link if somehow espionage really was about making interesting choices and getting interesting results, even though this effort probably should not be implemented in such a way that clever espionage operations are a requirement for success in the game.
Regards,
Adam Weishaupt
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Good input, Adam, your posts are well thought-out.
I'm gonna jump in again and mention how Space Empires IV did it because, once again, it really did a lot of things well even if it had serious drawbacks overall as a game.
In Space Empires IV, you had the option to build Intelligence complexes on your planets which would yield Intel points, similar to research centers yielding research points. These Intel points could then be allocated to various "projects" that you had to research to make available, with an enormous spread of potential options, from sabotaging different parts of ships to fomenting unrest on planets, to poisoning populations to stealing census data on a rival empire. There were also defense missions that would prevent enemy missions against you from succeeding.
The systems primary failure was a very difficult to use UI, overall complexity that forced a lot of micro-management (though you could leave a set of missions on "repeat", which helped some) and an AI that simply failed to properly use the system. In multiplayer the system was unbalanced in that Intel efforts were too easy to block, thus making Intel a non-factor where it should have been the most fun.
I don't think the GalCiv system really needs that much work, and the more automated it is the better so that players don't have to manage it closely. However, I would love to see the return of the de-stabilization spending, which would push down approval and possibly encourage cultural revolts and civil wars if approval got low enough on some planets. It should be especially effective against empires with no/little morale or loyalty bonuses.
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Personally, I thought SEIV was rather overcomplicated in general, and I didn't find it fun, so I'm not sure if borrowing features from it would be a good idea.
There's something to be said for simplicity."For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance." - Niccolo Machiavelli
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Yeah, I basically agreed with you in my post. The Galciv system is simple and beautiful right now, I just think a second destabilization-type spending option to accomplish more aggressive Intelligence-type goals would be a nice addition and would actually allow for a lot of the functionality of the SEIV system without a lot of the hassle.
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I like the espionage system - it is 'fire and forget'.
It is a more strategic mechanism - and to me that adds to the flavor of me being the "Leader" of my race, -- the immersion factor -- I get to see the occasional report from my spies - but I have no idea who they are or the messy details of how they operate - good simulation of 'plausable deniability'.
I do agree that it would be a nice feature for those who want to be a bit more involved in the workings to have an option to do that -- but to also have the option to leave it the way it is.
Maybe in future updates this will be addressed if Stardock recieves enough input that people want a more hands on approach to it. But s it stands now, it is one of the better 'hands off' approaches IMHO.A man's private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always. - Mark Twain, Letter to Louis Pendleton, 8/4/1888
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