Spies Input

[abaddonis]

Going in order.

What on earth could spies do to make people want a different government and whats the point when you take into account the national wonder that negates government desire?

Since when has international espionage had ANY effect on what god people want to worship? And this one ALSO has a national wonder attached to it.

How could spies possibly change the defcon level of a nation? That's even less believable than changing peoples government desires.

These are spies, not Special Forces. They don't go around carrying anti armor weaponry, they gather information.

Again these are spies, not special forces. How could they possibly destroy a cruise missile? These things are huge and stored in very secure areas.

This is the most ridiculous option of them all. Not only is it totally implausible but it's absolutely unbalanced for it's price.

If you know who the enemy spies are then how can they spy on you to begin with? it doesn't make any sense.

Destroy money? The economy doesn't work that way. If I went out and robbed 200 banks and burned it all no money would be lost.

This is almost as bad as the nukes, I don't see how a spy could do anything without millions of dollars of equipment for balance reasons.

Destroy technology... stealing if they are more advanced I could understand but again this is still hideously unbalanced for the price.

Hey, stealing, here it is. Buuuut why would you have destruction as an option when you can just steal it? Still horribly unbalanced for the price.

Overall this idea is a failure imho. Excluding the absurd options of changing religion, government, and defcon levels most of the stuff I would expect Special Forces teams to take millions of dollars of equipment and training to accomplish as it has NOTHING to do with spies and everything to do with outright military action, but even ignoring that this is still hideously unbalanced for how much it costs. For a few thousand dollars I could cost someone millions of dollars in damage with no worry of repercussions, and god help them if they are in peace mode because chances are they will be hit so hard by both peace mode AND the "spies" that they won't ever recover without tons of outside help.

It's horribly unbalanced, negates the 35 million dollar national wonders, defeats the whole point of peace mode, and even within itself is inconsistent with it's own concept and the counter is most likely going to be superfluous at best and harmful to the user at worst. I just cannot see how ANY of this could possibly be balanced unless it took a variable amount of time for each operation to complete, it took a significant amount of time and money to train and equip spies, operations were at least twice as expensive as this, and having spies had the risk of blowback with your population. Something along the lines of -5 to -10 happiness and riots for getting caught.

My suggestion is to scrap the idea in it's current form and have spies work like they really do, with information. Troop movements, positions, amounts, that sort of thing. Percentage modifies for your success rate, effectiveness of long range attacks like bombers and cruise missiles raised since you have precise targetting information and know where the defenses are. Give each nation a low maximum limit of intelligence agents and have them deployed either abroad or domestically for the purposes of information gathering or spreading misinformation. That would put some skill and choice into the equation instead of making it the Mercy Guides Missile of cybernations (supreme commander players will get that).

How does it negate the gov't and religion wonders? They'll be happy with whatever is selected.

Edit: Destroying a nuke should cost MUCH more than the current price. Since the price of nukes are relatively fixed, the cost of destroying one should be at least the price of the most expensive nuke. Perhaps a sliding scale that depends on how many nukes the target has? For example: 2 mil to destroy 1 nuke in a nation that has 20, 1 mil to destroy a nuke in a nation that has 1 or 2. The destruction of the nuke also prevents the owner of said nuke to rebuild that nuke that day.

Also: the time frame for attacks needs to be longer, i.e. once every 2 days or so.

Edited September 11, 2007 by awesome-o

[Sefarst]

Will this lead to new improvements like counter intelligence agencies that can raise your protection from spies/weaken your enemies?

Also, do you think that a nation's defcon lvl should effect how successful spy attacks are on them? For instance, if a nation is in Defcon, it can be said that their nation is on "high alert" and it would then be far more difficult for an enemy spy to infiltrate the nation, IMO. I think if you did that, then it would make that dynamic of the game more interesting from a political viewpoint. Then, spy raids would only really be useful on defcon 5 nations, during peace time. This increases the likelihood that the prolonged epochs of peace we sometimes experience could be broken more often. Alliances will have to decide what their policies are with regards to peace time spying.

[totem]

I think there should also be something like a information gathering mission, to tell you how much money someone has on hand, what level planes they have and anything else you can't normaly find out about another nation.

[lastr0ce]

I think there should also be something like a information gathering mission, to tell you how much money someone has on hand, what level planes they have and anything else you can't normaly find out about another nation.

exactly, one option that shows the basic principles of spies: gathering info

[AirForceFan101]

Im on about the larger nations having to pay more, there should be formula in place where smaller nations get actions cheaper, larger nations have to pay alot more for actions.

I agree

[Daedalus27]

People have mentioned tweaking prices which I tend to agree with. Up the prices for larger nations, reduced prices for smaller. Spies should have upkeep maybe based on numbers with escalating costs, (It takes a lot of money to fund the CIA or KGB). Spies should only be able to target someone within their range of fighting to allow for retaliation if discovered.

Also I think we should modify one of the existing improvements we have given the addition of spies. Intelligence agencies should be adjusted to instead of upping tax income, effecting this area. I would suggest either eliminating the tax performance bonus altogether, or adding something. Maybe 5% bonus to spy missions success and 5% bonus to counter-intelligence operations.

Edited September 11, 2007 by Daedalus27

[garbunkel]

Gathering info should be their main function. I would suggest that a spy mission to replace one of money stealing would be better.

All the nation info that is hidden from public view should be viewable as a timestamped snapshot of the spy mission. I do not think that they should be able to effect a peaceful nation.

Edited September 11, 2007 by garbunkel

[Rozalia]

Will this lead to new improvements like counter intelligence agencies that can raise your protection from spies/weaken your enemies?

Also, do you think that a nation's defcon lvl should effect how successful spy attacks are on them? For instance, if a nation is in Defcon, it can be said that their nation is on "high alert" and it would then be far more difficult for an enemy spy to infiltrate the nation, IMO. I think if you did that, then it would make that dynamic of the game more interesting from a political viewpoint. Then, spy raids would only really be useful on defcon 5 nations, during peace time. This increases the likelihood that the prolonged epochs of peace we sometimes experience could be broken more often. Alliances will have to decide what their policies are with regards to peace time spying.

Read the thing again. Defcon affects things.

[abaddonis]

Gathering info should be their main function. I would suggest that a spy mission to replace one of money stealing would be better.

All the nation info that is hidden from public view should be viewable as a timestamped snapshot of the spy mission. I do not think that they should be able to effect a peaceful nation.

I do like the timestamped information idea.

Why? Nations at peace are still nations. Any nation can be spied upon. Just because Switzerland is peaceful and neutral doesn't mean they can't be spied upon

[thedestro]

I applaud the admin for trying to add new features, but I just really don't like this one.

[Viluin]

I have to agree that it is horribly balanced.

- $150k to change the other guy's desired government? All that would do is suddendly make the other person lose 1 happiness. I seriously doubt people will use it.

- The same goes for changing the other person's religion. It's just -1 happiness. There are probably better ways to spend $150k as well as the spy slot.

- Changing the defcon level could actually be really useful. I have to say that this one is far too cheap, because its effects can be devastating in an update blitz.

- Destroy a max. of 50 defending tanks for $200k? Not worth it.

- Destroying cruise missiles could be useful, I suppose. This one is actually pretty useful and not too expensive / cheap.

- Destroying 1 nuke for 200k? I think this one is actually too cheap.

- Killing a max. of 20 enemy spies.. Hmm.. Dunno how useful it will be.

- Ehh, it costs $300k to destroy $1 mil? This one seems a bit overpowered compared to the other ones.

- $350k and a spy slot just to destroy 10 infra? Not worth it imo.

- Destroying 5 tech has got to be the most useless one on the list. 5 tech is pretty much irrelevant to anyone that has enough cash to afford spies.

- $500k to steal 3 tech? We all know no one is ever going to use that. Way too expensive.

Edited September 11, 2007 by Viluin

[usgroup1]

I think Intelligence Agencies should affect operation odds. Also why not some sort of Infra stealing operation? its just one operation per day.

[KarlMarx]

You should have stated your oppion eariler. Now you're stuck with it. But the idea isn't bad. Spies are special forces by the way. Hell they might be Ninjas, bring out the pirates Admin.

You should have read the topic title - it's asking for input. I trust that we aren't "stuck" with anything, as the Admin has always been gracious enough to listen to the playing community's opinion on new ideas.

Where is there any real-world precedent for these ideas? Sure, we all like to believe James Bond-esque missions are possible, but CN is a "geo-political, nation, and government simulator." Spies rarely blow stuff up; they deal more with intelligence gathering, as has been mentioned in this thread.

How would a spy be able to steal technology? Grab a computer and then kill every scientist that knows how to make a new one?

How could I spy destroy a nuke? Sure, I can see tampering with the targeting system so that it couldn't be fired for a day, but even getting into a position where one could do that damage, let alone having the tools and opportunity to cause that damage, is highly unlikely.

From a player perspective, the idea needs quite a few tweaks. In it's current manifestation, spies will cause chaos and be able to quickly and cheaply negate weeks of work for a nation.

$200,000 to destroy a nuclear weapon I spent $2,000,000 building? $350,000 to destroy infrastructure it cost me $16,000,000 to build?

When compared, the prices make even less sense. Why is the difference between a Defcon/government/religion shift - which will only marginally affect a nation - merely $50,000 less than the destruction of a tool which is worth $2,000,000?

Overall, admin, I'm glad you're building new features for this game. The spy idea has great potential, especially because it can reach nations in peace mode; however, its current iteration needs quite a bit of work and player consultation. Please, take the advice in this thread to heart.

[Granite]

All the nation info that is hidden from public view should be viewable as a timestamped snapshot of the spy mission.

I like this idea although I could see this being abused by nations at war since there's no consequence. They could just have alliance members spy on their fellow alliance nations and that would block enemies from spying. If there were a consequence like negative happiness or destroyed money, that might work better.

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* Change Desired Government = $150,000 (Randomly chosen)

* Change Desired Religion = $150,000 (Randomly chosen)

These seem out of place to me since it would be pretty hard to change the desired gov't or religion of a large nation. Of course, this is CN and it happens on it's own from time to time.

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* Change DEFCON Level = $150,000 (Changes to level 5 or 4)

If a nation is at war and your spies manage to change the DEFCON from 1 to 5, seems that could hurt pretty bad. Also, seems like it would be next to impossible to change a nations DEFCON level via spies. Should be more expensive too if left in.

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* Steal Technology = $500,000 (Max 3)

Realistically, not sure if anyone will use this one. I know I wouldn't. I'd rather buy 50 tech from someone for $1 to $1.5M

Gotta run. Thanks Admin for adding new stuff

Oh, and on the Nuke thing, I can see where it's easier to destroy a Nuke than to build one (infiltration issues aside).

[Haflinger]

Will that be total land purchased after resource bonuses?

Also, maybe it should be just total land, rather than land purchased. That way, those of us with resources that increase the natural land growth (cough, furs) will actually finally see some tiny benefit accruing from that growth.

[admin]

I'm looking to add a Gather Intelligence mission. I've also updated the base costs of spy missions. If someone has a suggestion on a formula to use for the costs of the spy operations (maybe something based on strength) then please submit it. This formula should use the base costs provided in the spy information index and then modify the costs from there.

[Assassin Xaero]

500k for 3 tech, which can also fail, seems like a huge rip off... maybe up the tech that can be stolen?

[Paradigm]

Mission costs need to be raised much much higher for any damage to infra or nukes.

Edited September 12, 2007 by Paradigm

[Kevin1993]

I like this idea its really cool I also like the new countering thing they just put in thats cool too.

[Daedalus27]

Present costs as listed in the information thread

Change Desired Government = $75,000 (Randomly chosen)

Change Desired Religion = $75,000 (Randomly chosen)

Change DEFCON Level = $150,000

Destroy Defending Tanks = $200,000 (Max 50)

Destroy Cruise Missiles = $200,000 (Max 5)

Assinate Enemy Spies = $250,000 (Max 20)

Destroy Money Reserves = $300,000 (Max 1 Million)

Destroy Technology = $350,000 (Max 5)

Steal Technology = $500,000 (Max 3)

Destroy Nuclear Weapons = $500,000 (Max 1)

Destroy Infrastructure = $500,000

Taking these as the base I would tweak them based on this simple forumla:

Change Desired Government = 10 x nation strength

Change Desired Religion = 10 x nation strength

Change DEFCON Level = 30 x nation strength

Destroy Defending Tanks = 5 x nation strength

Destroy Cruise Missiles = 5 x nation strength

Assinate Enemy Spies = 5 x nation strength

Destroy Money Reserves = 25 x nation strength

Destroy Technology = 20 x nation strength

Steal Technology = 10 x nation strength

Destroy Nuclear Weapons = 40 x nation strength

Destroy Infrastructure = 25 x nation strength

If this formula was implimented, you would have to make it so missions could only be run on nations you could declare war on (within 50% or 150% of your strength) to avoid having smaller nations used as proxies. I used the multiplier based on the percieved usefulness of the activity with nuke destruction being the most useful item. Its a simplistic formula but I think it provides a sufficient sliding scale for smaller nations as well as expressing a more significant cost for larger nations who have larger resources.

[Matt Palazzolo]

Since they are spies, and there should be a touch of realism, how about if the mission is successful the identity of the attacker is hidden, and if it fails, his identity is revealed?

EDIT: Forget it, it appears this is already in effect.

Edited September 11, 2007 by Matt Palazzolo

[Daedalus27]

There is that element already. 4 options (success and hidden, success and identified, failure and hidden, failure and identified) anytime you run a mission.

[Ameris]

For all of those people who are wondering why spies should change government choice, it has been done in real life. I suggest you read up on Operation Ajax, CIA backed coup in Iran.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

Edit: Never mind, it changes desired government.

Admin, if it changes desired government choices, will this automatically cancel the Great Monument national improvement effects, or will this feature not work for nations who have one?

Edited September 11, 2007 by ameris

[V The King]

Destroying nukes and money reserves are extremely strong. I think it should cost 700Kish for the money reserve, and 1 Mil + for nukes.

[Daedalus27]

Whoops, didn't conform my cost idea to the Admin's request (although I still think a straight strength modifier provides the clearest cost acceleration).

Existing cost chart

Change Desired Government = $75,000 (Randomly chosen)

Change Desired Religion = $75,000 (Randomly chosen)

Change DEFCON Level = $150,000

Destroy Defending Tanks = $200,000 (Max 50)

Destroy Cruise Missiles = $200,000 (Max 5)

Assinate Enemy Spies = $250,000 (Max 20)

Destroy Money Reserves = $300,000 (Max 1 Million)

Destroy Technology = $350,000 (Max 5)

Steal Technology = $500,000 (Max 3)

Destroy Nuclear Weapons = $500,000 (Max 1)

Destroy Infrastructure = $500,000

Modified formula:

Change Desired Government (Randomly chosen) = $75,000 + (1 x nation strength)

Change Desired Religion (Randomly chosen) = $75,000 + (1 x nation strength)

Change DEFCON Level = $150,000 + (5 x nation strength)

Destroy Defending Tanks (Max 50)= $200,000 + (1 x nation strength)

Destroy Cruise Missiles (Max 5)= $200,000 + (1 x nation strength)

Assinate Enemy Spies (Max 20) = $250,000 + (2 x nation strength)

Destroy Money Reserves (Max 1 Million) = $300,000 + (5 x nation strength)

Destroy Technology (Max 5) = $350,000 + (2 x nation strength)

Steal Technology (Max 3) = $500,000 + (1 x nation strength)

Destroy Nuclear Weapons = $500,000 + (15 x nation strength)

Destroy Infrastructure = $500,000 + (5 x nation strength)

Honestly I think the cost associated with stealing technology is a little high (if it is limited at 3). I included modifiers on all actions although I think the costs and limited utility of most of them means they are already a little high. If you only get 1 mission a day, are you really going to waste it changing a government, or blowing up 50 tanks? The only missions of utility right now are destroying nuclear weapons, changing defcon, destroying money reservers, and maybe destroying infrastructure. Everything else appears too expensive and of limited benefit to be worthwhile.