Suggestions to Improve Espionage

All good ideas, here are some more...

Allow spies to disable or reduce trade routes.
Allow spies to slow down research/production (globally or locally).
Allow spies to worsen diplomatic relations between other races.
Allow spies to sabotage ships (in terms of movement, attack, or def value).

Basically make espionage a real part of the game

To do this I'd keep the same sliders for espionage funding by race (add it for minors too). Then I'd make a seperate screen or drop down menu, where various operations could be selected. Each operation would have a cost associated with it, so you'd have to bank some espionage points first, then spend them for the ops. You can also make internal ops that lower the amount of espinoage points available against you.

I dunno, anything is better than what there currently is, hopefully this will be expanded in the big update this summer

There also needs to be counter-espionage. Starships Unlimited http://www.apezone.com is an interesting cousin to GC with a good replay/dollar ratio. They have a free demo that runs for 100 turns. You (and the AI's) have a probability of uncovering spies from other civilzations and discovery of espionage modifies your diplomatic relations. The probablity is controlled by a "Security" sllider. It seems kind of cheesy that all the spying and de-stabliztion takes place with no defensive capablities or a way to adjust them.

Saving this discussion. Anyone else have any thoughts?

I think that another great part of real espoinage is military defection.

What if espionage could also cause ships to turn over to your side?

Alz

A rather strange thought that had occurred to my addled mind was -- what if you could use your spies to *support* another empire? For instance, say an enemy is destabilizing one of your allies, or perhaps he's just lost an election. Perhaps you could provide some covert assistance to him. I'm not sure that people would actually choose to do this very often, however. As for ships... defection in space seems a bit tricky (depending on crew size, this would be VERY hard to pull off...), but it might make sense for ships to occasionally lose a movement point or two due to snafus in communications, falsified orders, and so forth.

Add a "sugar in the gas tank" tech for spies that would immobilize a ship in orbit. It would, of course, require the "flaming bag of dog poo in the airlock" tech.

Well there's alot of potential sugestions... Is the dev team considering adding in a new page for espionage? Or would it be more likely for it to just get slightly expanded. Obviously this can be made as hideously complex as anyone wants

I think that keeping it simple, but expanding the options is probably the best fit for GalCiv. To do that maybe make an espionage page for each race, similar to the stats or report pages that already exist. On this page you would have 2 sliders, one for espionage points agains that race (and store them like a bank), and the 2nd for counter espionage, basically lowering their bank of points against you (and or all their espionage banks). I think it would be best if the espionage banks were kept seperate for each race, rather than a single espionage bank to draw points for all races.

Now there should also be a menu of available operations against that race. Intel ops, theft, destabilization, terrorism, ... I'm sure that you can come up with a reasonable list. Each op has a cost, and maybe the ability to overspend to gain a better chance at success (kinda like in Civ3). Some ops should be instant (next turn) some should be longerterm, but once selected you should get some feedback on the espionage screen as to how your active ops are doing. The intel ops for example should be continuous, but you should have to periodically reinvest in them or something to get up to date intel.

It would also be an opportunity to expand the tech tree by making new techs for certain ops, or just allowing certain ops to be available as existing techs are researched. Obviously there could also be techs to modify your costs or successes of espionage ops.

Well those are some mechanics off the top of my head, care has to be taken to include new diplo AI to handle expanded espionage, and also care mush be taken so that no ops are too unbalanceing.

Hmm, another quick idea is that in order for you to run certain ops you have to have a certain amount of influance in the sector you want to run the op in, or you have to have a starbase with certain modules present...

Or make some ops cost influence instead of cash...

Heh, the possibilities are endless

Or heck, even require some ops to occur when one of those little ships that are always wandering on trade routes reach a planet. Then op can proceed from there...

Tying trade and espionage together would be an idea. And taking into account techs like the trade tech Smuggling. That would also offer more opportunity.

Damian

~SDC~

Taking a lesson from other games, there are generally three aspects of espionage:

1): Intelligence

Some examples would include...

- Reveal tax level and tax income
- Reveal military maintenance
- Reveal social maintenance
- Reveal tribute
- Reveal leases
- Reveal espionage (intelligence) targets and spending
- Reveal destabilization (sabotage) targets and spending
- Reveal other intelligence spending (see #2/#3 below)
- Reveal trade info with breakdowns for each trade route: their origin, destination, length, absolute value, relative value in proportion to income, and current location of trade ship for each route
- Reveal Diplomatic standing with all major and minor races, including the "people's opinion"
- Reveal all diplomatic activities
- Show military unit list that remains accessible during war time
- Show planet list that can be sorted as the player's would
- Access to planetary management screen that reveals current progress of military and social projects and any existing structures
- Reveal progress of current research

2): Sabotage

We can always go wild here, as long as balance is maintained:

- More feedback regarding the effects of destabilization
- Targeted destabilization on specific planets
- Disrupt military and social projects. This can take the form of restarting the project or increasing its cost, either in a micro (target specific planet) or macro (empire wide random project disruption or overall production penalty) style
- Disrupt research projects by removing accumulated research points or simply increasing the cost of research
- Disrupt trade routes by lowering their value (selectively or overall) if not outright cancelling them
- Disrupt diplomatic relationships, perhaps even triggering war given enough effort
- Bribe officials to improve the diplomatic relationship between the target empire and another one (not necessarily the player)
- Ship "debuffs" with some creative options (e.g. activate a wormhole and teleport a ship to some random location), perhaps even outright destruction or defection
- Steal research (more so than currently possible)
- Shifting blame to another race for any of the above actions

With the UP vote and influence model in mind, it might be interesting to devise a similar system where investments into sabotage are accumulated until the player orders his agents to take action, at which point he can cash in his investments by selecting from a variety of operations. Tying sector influence into the success rate of sabotage might not be a bad idea, but we must first fix the load game sector influence reset in that case.

3): Security

- Just plain old counter espionage here.

in a recient game I had extra cash so i destableized the torians with over 100 credits a turn for several years and noticed nothing...am I missing somthing?

Eliminate Espionage/Subversion as it stands. Instead, make individual Spy Ships. Send them to an Alien Planet. Everybody always may attack/kill a Spy, even if not at war. There you have a use for Starfighters.

When a Spy successfully infiltrates, there could be a little menu with options (similar to invasion menu), this could include blowing things up, collecting Empire info, stealing tech, subversion,... (options increase with tech level)

Success should depend on mission difficulty, planetary defense, both players espionage stats, and countermeasures.

Countermeasures: Propaganda helps against subversion, add an Empire-level slider for counterespionage, and perhaps a building or two that help with this.

I think just about everybody would like a little subgame along this line, or am I wrong?

Caution, though: Success should not be too easy. Also, Enemies should employ this as well.

To make a long post short:

We could have Espionage and Counter-espionage with wide options such as in Space Empires IV. (mainly information gathering)
And Sabotage would be devoted to special units to build and send the Alpha Centauri way ('Probe teams'). (with options as in SMAC and SEIV: steal tech, blow up things, decrease planets, ...you name it!)

Maybe stealing a tech or 2 or 3.
A ship defecting? or maybe that would be destabilization.
Having the opposition party gain control.
Having a starbase module or 2 blow up

A ship defecting wouldn't be due to espionage, but rather to your level of cultural dominance.

Lots of fun ideas here though.

I really would like to be notified of when trades/gifts between civs occur and what exactly was traded/gifted. I have to keep a matrix on paper of every tech that each civ has and I painstakingly update it each turn to try and discover this information myself, but it would be much nicer to have a list of events like this delivered to me each turn by my operatives. I would pay for that.

~SDC~

I'm glad to see others are as interested in the espionage potential of this game as I, and there are some great suggestions here. However, as a start I think it could be very simple to implement the suggestions in my original post, without much redesign:

- On each of the current screens that we humans use to view our own empire, add a control which will switch the data on these screens to reflect the same information for one of the other races.

- The AI must be tracking all of these alien race stats anyway, so simply let us humans view them.

- The amount of alien info available would be determined by the espionage level reached for that race (may need to add more espiaonge levels).

- No major gameplay changes required.

- No new interfaces to design or learn.

Damint Zah, we're on the same wavelength again. I think revealing the fog of war regarding their military units might be a good idea at some point. More so, I think espionage needs more tangible effects straight out- for example, if I cant steal a tech, I should at least have the ability to find out who they're talking to, what deals they have made lately, the terms of there other trades and such. I could then use that information to structure trades to my benefit, because I have more information- hell, I could have an advisor who points that- "The Yor are very interested in Cultural techs right now- they will pay a premium for those."

Basically, in the scenario I described, my increased espionage level lets me know what is going on at a much deeper level, and help me diplomatically- If I know what they want and what they'll pay for it, it stregthens my negotiating position.

A lot of great suggestions here, especially on the intelligence side of the equation. I'd be leary of giving too much ability to sabotage unless there was a relatively cheap way to counter it. Destabilization is already annoying enough when the AI puts it on you since you can't counter it at the source; the ability for the AI to take actions like knocking out social would make most players rather upset.

One very simple request for intelligence: peg at a certain espionage level (probably Medium) the ability to see the other race's starbases on the map all the time, even if you don't have ships near them. This would only work for the sections of space that you've revealed, of course. Once you "know" a part of space you should always be aware what starbases a race puts there, if you have sufficient espionage on that race. It seems silly that on larger maps it is necessary to write down lists of resources and who has starbases on them, just to try to remember them all. It is even sillier that you can see a free resource without a starbase on the map, but as soon as a starbase is placed on it, the starbase and resource disappear from view. Tying the ability to see starbases to a moderate amount of espionage would increase the usefulness of espionage, as well as eliminating an annoyance from the game.

just giving this a *bump* so that people 'more intelligent than I' can add some flavor to this discussion

Don't be shy 'dirk. Let's hear your opinion! I always find much more informed posts than mine, but it's still fun! LOL

Just wanted to say that I like Coffedragons post above, I think that would make Espionage cool. The ship could attempt to capture other ships as well, or even capture Starbases.

Updated my notes on this.

The only way I've been able to steal any of the AI's research/technologies is by conquering a world or by a vote in UP.

I think as you increase your espionage spending for a certain race, you should be able to steal that race's research/technologies more and easilier.

Also, as you increase espionage spending on different races, you should be able to steal trade goods from that race, or at least get that certain trade good's bonus stats added to your stats.

*bump*

Wow, great ideas...I would pay for a expansion pak that would implement many of theses ideas alone

me too