Spies Input

[Lavo]

Gather Intelligence = $50,000 (See money reserves)

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 5)

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

Destroy Infrastructure = $500,000 (Max 5)

In order:

Well, their spies.

Worthless. But the -1 Happiness costs the victim more then the cost to do it, so this makes sense.

... How can a spy change a nation's religion?!?

EXTREAMLY useful. Price probably needs to be tweaked though.

Make this 500 tanks and lower the cost by around 50k.

Seems fine. How much do spies cost?

Useful/balanced.

300k for 1 Mil? Make it at least 800k for the mission as it's EXREAMLY cheap for the effects.

Worthless.

Worthless except for stronger nations.

Make this more expensive. At least 1 Mil (due to 1 Nuke per day plus a uranium trade).

How can a Spy destroy Infa? Also, this is wayyyyyy too cheap for stronger nations in which Infa costs millions.

Also, "Assinate" is spelled "Assassinate"

[Shadowe]

Imho this is still horribly unbalanced and largely ridiculous. Instead of individuals lets call it a cell since a lot of these operations would require more than one person to complete, and lets make it more expensive but at the same time more USEFUL.

 
It takes 3 updates and 500K to train a cell, and 500K a day to maintain deployment. Border walls improvement increase chances of being caught while infiltrating an enemy nation up to 25% and 10% while exiting an enemy nation. While deployed you get to see all the information that a nation's owner sees and can undertake risky operations. If your spies are caught the other nation has a chance to do with them as they wish.

	* Troop movements (same effect as altering defcon level)= $1,500,000
	* Sabotage Defending Tanks = $500,000 (Defending tanks at 50% effectiveness for 1 update)
	* Sabotage Cruise Missiles = $800,000 (Intelligence on where to fire sabotaged, 50% effectiveness for 3 updates)
	* Counter-intelligence = New effect of the intelligence agency improvement, with all 5 enemy spies have up to a 25% greater chance of being caught and 10% chance of failing outright
	* Sabotage technology = $1,000,000 (Aircraft at 50% effectiveness for 2 updates)
	* Sabotage nuclear weapons = $5,000,000 (Nukes have 30% possibility of failing to create a fission reaction (2.5x cruise missile, no riots))

If caught during a war spies may be executed publically without trial for +50% infantry bonus (zealotry) and -2 happiness to the enemy nation
If caught without war being declared spies may either be executed publically without trial for -3.5 happiness to the enemy nation as an event OR put on trial for +4 happiness as an event
In either case it is assumed the spy is interrogated and anything that spy did is negated if caught in the act or half as effective if not caught in the act.

Something like this makes them actually USEFUL during or before a war or cold war, makes having them deployed useful but not without risk, and the operations are genuinely damaging to the other guy without being absurdly overpowered and without the possibility of backfiring like a real undercover operation. This is the sort of thing I can imagine a nation actually using undercover operatives for rather than employing them as overglorified jehovas witnesses.

Edited September 12, 2007 by Shadow of Eternity

[apland]

boy this amkes me nervous. once this comes out im afraid everyday to come online and see that my tech is gone. oh well.

[Syzygy]

well. i like the overall concept. but i have a great "BUT":

- "Peace Mode does not affect Spies": does this mean, a nation in peacemode can send spies against other nations and is totally immune to military retaliation? Peacemode nations should be valid target for Spies, but they should not be able to send out spies on their own.

- You need a limit on Spying-Attacks that are able to launch against one nation at the same time: just imagine an alliance is bored and choses a 50k unaliged nation and now 50 nations launch all spying attacks against that nation. every day, just for the lulz. even if a lot of these fail, the target nation will be just destroyed in very short time. make it that a nation can only suffer 1 of such attacks per day, first come first served.

- IntelAgencies should be a requirement to buy spies, maximum 100 per IntelAgency so you have the limit of 500 with 5 intel agencies.

- PoliceHQs should increase the defenders chance to catch a spy by 5% each (+25% chance with 5 PHQs)

- make mission costs dependent on the NS of the nation you send the spy against (more/better equipement needed, better training required, more efforts and such). This is needed, because Infra for example is INSANELY expensive for a highlevel nation. We talk about a some millions CN$ for destroyed 10 Levels of infra here. Make the price for a spying mission something like: 100k + NS*10. Otherwise ppl will just do some math and spam-launch spying attacks if the costs for the target nations infra is just high enough to sacrifice 9 failed spying missions just to destroy 10 infra in the 10th mission, because 10 spying attacks are still cheaper then 10 levels of infra. (i think you got my point).

- nobody should see another nations Threat Level and Number of Spies.

[admin]

It seems a lot of you are getting hung up on the word "Spy" asking questions like, "How could a spy do this or that?" The feature is about spies, terrorism, and espionage all rolled into one. If you hover over the new Threat Level icon in-game it mentions the word terrorist. If you read my origional topic about this here note my first couple of sentences:

The next update that I am considering is an espionage system. Espionage will work similar to the current war system...

The destructive properties of the operations are what I envisioned from the very beginning so stop saying spies should be seperate from the war system and lets also move away from the "spies can't do this" or "spies can't do that" comments.

[admin]

- "Peace Mode does not affect Spies": does this mean, a nation in peacemode can send spies against other nations and is totally immune to military retaliation? Peacemode nations should be valid target for Spies, but they should not be able to send out spies on their own.

You make a good point. The problem is that if peacemode can be spied on but can't spy back that adds yet another big penalty for being in peace mode.

- You need a limit on Spying-Attacks that are able to launch against one nation at the same time: just imagine an alliance is bored and choses a 50k unaliged nation and now 50 nations launch all spying attacks against that nation. every day, just for the lulz. even if a lot of these fail, the target nation will be just destroyed in very short time. make it that a nation can only suffer 1 of such attacks per day, first come first served.

From the information index page: "Nations can conduct only one spy operation per day and nations can be attacked in only one spy operation per day."

- IntelAgencies should be a requirement to buy spies, maximum 100 per IntelAgency so you have the limit of 500 with 5 intel agencies.

- PoliceHQs should increase the defenders chance to catch a spy by 5% each (+25% chance with 5 PHQs)

I like this idea. I'm still thinking on ways to include existing improvements to this feature.

- make mission costs dependent on the NS of the nation you send the spy against (more/better equipement needed, better training required, more efforts and such). This is needed, because Infra for example is INSANELY expensive for a highlevel nation. We talk about a some millions CN$ for destroyed 10 Levels of infra here. Make the price for a spying mission something like: 100k + NS*10. Otherwise ppl will just do some math and spam-launch spying attacks if the costs for the target nations infra is just high enough to sacrifice 9 failed spying missions just to destroy 10 infra in the 10th mission, because 10 spying attacks are still cheaper then 10 levels of infra. (i think you got my point).

This has just been added per the forumla provided a few posts up, however it is currently based on the attackers NS. Do you still think it needs to be based on the defenders NS?

- nobody should see another nations Threat Level and Number of Spies.

I think we'll need to discuss this further. The game is going to guage the operation odds for you but players will want to know what's behind the numbers. And besides, if a player puts forward the effort they can figure these things out with simple math.

[Ameris]

Admin, do you know what is the most frustrating this on CN? Its losing a trade.

How about an expensive option, maybe 2 mil, to force the nation to lose a trade?

How about using them to destroy nation improvements, or wonders?

Edited September 12, 2007 by ameris

[Rozalia]

Admin, do you know what is the most frustrating this on CN? Its losing a trade.

How about an expensive option, maybe 2 mil, to force the nation to lose a trade?

How about using them to destroy nation improvements, or wonders?

wonders? Do you know how much those cost. Its insane to think like that.

[calaustria]

Admin, I know it's hard to take into account what everyone wants, and all these omgspaisdontkillnuks and people complaining is annoying. I do admire you for making progress to the game as well. However, there is one thing we've all been begging for since the very start of the espionage thread. Hide all of our personal information such as threat level, tech, soldiers, tanks, etc. and make the spies uncover that stuff. A gather information mission would be pointless as it is, since we already have everyone's information.

EDIT: A personal idea from me: Don't cancel trades. That would result in epic failure. Instead, show us who the nation is trading with.

Edited September 12, 2007 by calaustria

[lmcfalcon12]

I agree that defcon, gov and religion shouldn't be able to be affected b/c that would be a major annoyance. adding something like "start riots" would be more appropriate where it could put you into anarchy for 1 day.

I agree as well. I think government and religion having happiness penalties and what not is very complicated...and what if you can't figure out the right gov't and religion your people will like?? You take a penalty for being unable to guess correctly.

Overall the spy idea will make an excellent edition. I think the more features the game has, the better because sometimes I would love to do stuff in the game for more than just 5 minutes a day.

Edited September 12, 2007 by lmcfalcon12

[calaustria]

what if you can't figure out the right gov't and religion your people will like?? You take a penalty for being unable to guess correctly.

You are wrong my good sir. You will take a penalty for being unable to read the guides correctly.

[admin]

Admin, I know it's hard to take into account what everyone wants, and all these omgspaisdontkillnuks and people complaining is annoying. I do admire you for making progress to the game as well. However, there is one thing we've all been begging for since the very start of the espionage thread. Hide all of our personal information such as threat level, tech, soldiers, tanks, etc. and make the spies uncover that stuff. A gather information mission would be pointless as it is, since we already have everyone's information.

EDIT: A personal idea from me: Don't cancel trades. That would result in epic failure. Instead, show us who the nation is trading with.

There is still a good amount of hidden information that can be provided from a Gather Intelligence mission. The two most important that are included are the nation's money reserves and their trade partners. The spy feature will not destroy trades, I wouldn't do that to you, but with this information you could possibly put pressure on their trade partners to cancel specific trade agreements.

[calaustria]

If we can see who they're trading with, I will be happy.

[Warfunn]

yes big thanks!

possible input: I see on "Spies cost $100,000 each to purchase and nations are limited to 500 spies." But the actions on it's own cost thousand of dollars too.

It would make it kind of weird of you would want to steal tech, as you have to buy spies and then pay for the operation. It'd be cheaper to just buy the tech..

spies =/= war system, right

And maybe we could steal more things? like steal a nuke or maybe land?

It's always fun to steal something you can't get..

To be honest it would be way more fun to actually just steal stuff, instead of always destroying tanks, land, money, tech and INFRA.

Just my thoughts.

After all, the game is there to have fun, right

Ok how would a spy steal land? Dig some up into a bucket and bring it back?

[Syzygy]

(DAC)Syzygy)

- make mission costs dependent on the NS of the nation you send the spy against (more/better equipement needed, better training required, more efforts and such). This is needed, because Infra for example is INSANELY expensive for a highlevel nation. We talk about a some millions CN$ for destroyed 10 Levels of infra here. Make the price for a spying mission something like: 100k + NS*10. Otherwise ppl will just do some math and spam-launch spying attacks if the costs for the target nations infra is just high enough to sacrifice 9 failed spying missions just to destroy 10 infra in the 10th mission, because 10 spying attacks are still cheaper then 10 levels of infra. (i think you got my point).

Admin

This has just been added per the forumla provided a few posts up, however it is currently based on the attackers NS. Do you still think it needs to be based on the defenders NS?

Well in my opinion the its the only way to make sense, because the enemy territory is the environment the spy must work in, the more sophisticated the target nation is, the more trained and equipped a spy needs to be to survive in that environment. In addition, when basing the formula on the attackers nation, you just penalize nations for growth.

To make it clear: i mean "mission costs" when going into an enemy nation - not purchase costs for spies. it doesnt make sense to base these on your own NS.

Another point: will there be a limit (50% - 200% like for war) on which nations you can perform spying attacks? because, well I for example have ~3500tech. No matter what spying defense another nation has, if i just chose one with only 100tech, my attacks will be successfull almost every time... it would be just unfair because that nation can never attack me nor can it launch successful spying attacks on their own against me. Using the standard nation range of 50-200% would be a good move, because nations could decide if they catch a spy how to react: send a spy on their own or declare on the spying nation.

[admin]

Another point: will there be a limit (50% - 200% like for war) on which nations you can perform spying attacks? because, well I for example have ~3500tech. No matter what spying defense another nation has, if i just chose one with only 100tech, my attacks will be successfull almost every time... it would be just unfair because that nation can never attack me nor can it launch successful spying attacks on their own against me. Using the standard nation range of 50-200% would be a good move, because nations could decide if they catch a spy how to react: send a spy on their own or declare on the spying nation.

The spy features uses the same limits as the war system 50%-200% and everything over 50,000 NS.

[Drai]

I like this, but my only suggestion is that it gets put in after the current war.

Thanks admin for continuing to improve the game.

[Shadowe]

There's just a few of us posting in this thread, the real answer will come with how people react when this actually gets added in. Personally I think this is going to end like a cross between Dynamic Weapon Pricing from VALVe and the Mercy from GPG.

Edited September 12, 2007 by Shadow of Eternity

[Fire Lord Zuko]

with these enabled the unjustpath will surely win the great war

and the nuke option is bad

reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal bad

i suggest u remove the nuke spy

really bad idea

[Daedalus27]

On the whole cost based on attacker or defender, I would suggest it is based on the attacker. The attacker will be equiping and sending the spies so the cost is based on the resources they can provide (so it would be based on their strength). The defender nation is taken into account in the defensive formula with their factors of tech and land taken into account in the formula.

If we want to use a OOC example, the cost associated with the US spying, lets say, Nepal are similiar to the cost associated with spying on Venezuela. It is based on the resources the spying nation is providing, and fixed expedatures in terms of advanced structures and training the sending nation can provide, and would not very much depending on the spy victim. If you want to a modifier based on defender so that more advanced countries are more costly to attack, we could try that but it works both ways and makes it less costly for an advanced nation to attack a less advanced nation. Given they already have advantages in terms of resources and success rates, do we want to make it cheaper for them to do so.

Just trying something maybe we could use this:

(Defender tech x infrastructure) / (Attacker tech x infrastructure) to modify the existing costs (cost of action + modifier x nation strength)

So for instance a nation 25k strength with 3999.99 infra 400 tech attacking a 30k nation with 4999.99 infrastructure and 600 tech would result in the following (4999.99 x 600)= 2999994, (3999.99 x 400) = 1599996, 2999994/1599996 = 1.87. This modifier would be added to the existing costs so that for gather intelligence mission using this formula (Gather Intelligence (See money reserves) = $50,000 + (1 x nation strength) x [(Defender Infra x Defender Tech)/(Attacker Infra x Attacker Tech)]) It would be 50,000 + (1 x 25,000 x 1.87) = $96,750 or a 22% increase in cost over the formula using just fixed cost plus nation strength.

However if the advanced nation wanted to conduct a similar mission against its attacker, here is how it would work. Flipping the values results in this calculation 1599996/2999994 = .53 Using the gather intelligence mission again we have 50,000 + [(1 x 30,000) x .53] = $65,900. We are now making it cheaper for advanced contries to conduct operations when they already have so much cash to be able to afford it. Does it really make sense to factor it into the costs of the missions when we already take account the disparity of tech and strength between parties on the success rate?

Edited September 12, 2007 by Daedalus27

[Fire Lord Zuko]

oh another great idea would be putting furs to good use

maybe it can decrease cost of spies due to the fact that furs make spy outifts or are part of it

then that would make ppl complain less of that horrible resource

[Filipinoboi122]

Admin: I think you should add a new bar to the CN nation page that says:

Spies caught: ( enter number here )

[Paradigm]

I think as a check and balance it would be PERFECT to have a mission that would uncover the last 10 spai missions that nation performed.

[Cirrus]

Peace Mode does not affect Spies

So you go on vacation and come home to a bunch of lost stuff?

That's really unfair, especially since the Vacation Mode suggestion has been turned down.

How about for nations in peace mode, spying can be passive only. That is to say, spies attacking or being sent from peace mode nations can gather intelligence, but not destroy or change anything?

[Viridia]

Through the history of the game, resources have been added or modified whenever new features have been implemented. Well that time has come again, so I feel you should perhaps modify some of the existing resources (my suggestoin furs and lead, and whatever else you see fit) to better equip the new feature. Along with this, perhaps a new improvement, or improvement modifications, such as intellgience agencies and satellites providing better spy chances etc. Additions like these I feel are imperative, and I am sure others feel this way as well, especially those 'tortured souls' who were cursed with fur ( )

At the very least it would stop some complaining and add a little more strategy to the game.