Agents - how is this a good addition?

Hopefully they will fix some of the problems you mentioned in version 2.0, I hear theres going to be a significant enhancement to espionage.

Build the "Counter Espionage Center" on every planet. It will prevent spies from being placed on the planets its built upon (will not remove existing spies). It also provides a morale bonus to prevent it from being a complete waste of a tile. Innaddition, this planet improvement will help to protect your worlds from the spy megaevent.

You should find the required tech in the diplomacy section of the tech tree.

Edit: I double checked something I read, and it turns out that some civs like the Drengin and Korath can't research this tech.

I'll try that... the way it is now, I quickly got to the point where I didn't even feel like playing anymore.

Isn't there a way I can mod stuff to "nerf" spies entirely? Make them unavailable to even use, or at least stop the increasing cost of countering them?

Hell, I don't even care for enhancements, I'd rather just have the option of using the old espionage slider method when starting a new game!

It's usually a mistake when you're changing a major feature to not give people the option of using the "old version". I mean, the old version was already implemented, how hard could it have been to leave it in with a checkbox? "Disable agents"

In some ways the espionage system is really quite good. It could have been absolutely awful and have a random chance f success like in the Total War games. The agents cancelling each other out is very simple, and they are easier to manage.

However, the logic used for the costing is just mind boggling. There's no way anyone's economy grows at the rate needed to recruit new agents. It's not just the way the cost increases though; they're just too damn expensive overall.

Most of the time, I am spending more money on esionage to recruit one agent every 20 turns, then my one agent is costing the player when he's active, and even then he's usually nullified after 4 or 5 turns.

They need to be cheaper. It should just be a lower, flat cost per agent, slightly altered by techs and race abilities. But it will still need to be a hell of a lot cheaper than it is to justify itself as an offensive tool. Perhaps agents should not just steal production from enemies, they should add them to your own? Perhaps the degree to which they do this is what your espionage techs and abilities should determine?

How cheap is cheap? and a flat rate should be out of the question or else people would forget about military victory ??? My point is, if you make it cheap, then you can't take advantage of the AI with espionage. Already, the AI manages it's spies so well that it's hard as it is to sustain those spies on it. I mean, everytime I play a game, I was always able to succeed to start stealing tech from hardly one CIV! I want a system where your able to earn a certain level of espionage and at the same time be able to have a choice of what I want those spies to do on a particular CIV. That's why I hope the enhancement has those changes.

I agree, the spy feature sucks. It is even worse in the last release TOA. They have reduced your income and raised the amount of spies that the civs throw at you. I just got hit with 8 spies in the same turn. I got rid of 3, but got four back the next turn. When I managed to buy an other spy 3 turns later, I negated one more spy, only to get an other one on the next turn. My economy is now F_______d and a game that I have invested a week playing is no longer any fun to play. I give up.

Stardock, your spy concept needs some re-thinking, lost of it!

It may help if they were not so expensive. But that would only be a good start. When playing the larger maps, with many civs, a limit should be imposed on the total spies that can placed on a civ, and maybe a civ can only have "X" active spies at any time. "X" could be linked to a civs population. Then you would use them more wisely. Maybe the incremental cost increase can be changed to a high fixed cost. This would delay the use of spies until a civ's economy is capable of affording spies.

The spy system is mostly superior to the old slider method, given that you can use it to help invasions or make worlds more vulnerable to influence flipping.

Of course, the problem is that the AI likes to flood you with spies. If you have multiple opponents, they can easily overwhelm your ability to counter them (until you get counter-espionage centers online, but those are not cheap).

Yeah it's clear that they didn't think agents through very well. I'm also shocked to discover that agents were added in the FIRST expansion, but were not corrected (maybe made even worse) in the second supposedly FAN BUILT expansion. Perhaps these "fans" were fans of killing the game so Galciv III could be made, or maybe they were just such big fans that they stopped playing the game and didn't realize how bad agents sucked... lol.

Overall, I'm very disappointed by Twilight. Unique tech trees, for all the mass amounts of work it created, don't seem to add that much to the game. New invasion screens? Honestly I kinda liked the old ones better, even with it's 1980's style and all. Espionage - hell yea the old slider method in the original was MUCH better in all ways. Only way it could be improved on is to create things that push the intel level in the other direction. THAT is how it should have been upgraded...simple.

What else did Twilight get us... a barely functional map editor? Lots more bugs? (I'm seeing a ton of weird movement speed behavior that I didn't see with DL.) Meh... I'm 90% of the way just going back to the original and saying I wasted my money upgrading in the first place. Crap!

Sure, humans can make use of them that way. But the AI? Kinda doubt it's that smart, considering that it's still too stupid to form fleets to attack my fleets from ships orbiting their planets. Yeah, that's what *I* would do if I had a big enemy fleet sitting near my homeworld... just stay orbiting the planet and let the fleet take out my ships one by one. How is this still not improved???

Anyway, the sliders were much better. AI can use that easier and it didn't create stupid annoying spy micromanagement. The new system might be cool if it were about 10 times more sophisticated with 10 times more options, but then the AI definitely couldn't deal with it.

It's a crap feature that we'd be better off without.

I've got to agree that the present spy system is not the greatest, and I also liked the original better. Wasting a precious tile on every planet with a counter-espionage center is not my idea of an attractive solution ... especially since it does not remove the spies that are already there. I look forward to this aspect of the game being improved.

The use of spies enables you to steal technology. But seriously, it costs way too much and takes way too long and you don't even know which tech you're going to get.
TOA really was a disappointment...I've been working on a new tech tree...for weeks...and I'm about sick of it. It's working, but it's just so mind numbing. And plus, if you don't like the way your civ is or you want a new custom civ you have to spend just as much time creating an entirely new tree.
But that's beside the point.
Hopefully 2.0 will be a big improvement.

Unless I'm am already kicking the bejesus out of the AI, I save all my spies for defensive purposes. I usually start producing them pretty early so I have a stockpile when and if the AI decides to hit me. So far that has worked pretty well, but I haven't played a 1.96 game yet.

No, it's not. What we should have is the option to use the old sliders instead of training agents.

When I can use spies to double the strength of my invading troops, though, I have to argue that they're not crap.

The problem is that the feature isn't well developed.

Also - ToTA is fanmade? No, it was designed inhouse at Stardock, by people who worked on the first two installments. Plus, 2.0 will include an update to espionage, hopefully improving it.

I also have to agree that the current espionage system is not my favorite.

But instead of ranting here some improvement ideas:

- Separate espionage from counter espionage. Give civs a separate espionage and counter espionage ability. Espionage will work basically like it does now, but counter espionage will be performed by allocationg funds to that activity. The amount of money spent and the difference between your counter espionage and the enemy espionage ability determines a probability with which enemy spies are caught each turn. That would solve the problem that currently you stand no chance to eliminate all enemy spies when three or even more civs spam you with those because you won't need real agents from your pool to defend, those are just for offensive actions.

- Introduce techs that increase your espionage and counter espionage abilities.

- The cost of new agents shouldn't be exponential. Instead make it a base cost that is modified by your espionage ability: the higher that is, the more expensive your agents become because you need more effort to train them. So you have also a new strategic decision: go for a large number of poorly trained and because of that relatively easily spotted agents, or research all those spy techs and specialize in few but highly effective ones.

Just to be on the clear side, I'm not saying that the current system is perfect. It has some good applications that weren't possible with sliders, and I'd hate to lose those. It does, however, need the overhaul it'll hopefully get in 2.0.

I like the addition of agents as an improvement. It adds more granularity to espionage, rather than making it bland and automated. Now you have the choice of having high security, gathering intel, doing some high power sabotage (which usually gets the agent nullified quickly), or ignoring intelligence in favor of a fat treasury. It forces some careful decisions.

Having used the spies as many have suggested in this thread and others I found one more use for them.They are a terrific drain off of all that cash lost from the 20k cap.

I just toss it all into espionage.I then get spies every 3-6 turns or so and they add up big.The last game I played on painful I had over 60 of them in stock.Come and get me baby.

Of course this does mean one has to have a fantastic economy but I always have a fantastic economy.
The espionage could be tweaked a bit no doubt, but it is far from a game killer and for this player anyways it is almost insignificant.

Yes, it is CRAP. I seriously doubt the AI is smart enough to do anything like that anyway. And I'd also argue that doubling the strength of a planetary invasion is WAY out of proportion for how much it should be allowed to help. I don't care if this is James Bond working together with Jason Bourne, no stupid "agents" should be a deciding factor in any PLANETARY scale invasion, ever. So I don't see the point, other than that it added a bullet that Stardock could put on the expansion's feature list.

It adds needless complexity, micromanagement, and brings very little to the game, other than a moronic money-sink for out of control powerful economies.

I think the last expansion claimed it was "fan built" on one of their (decieving) advertisements for the expansion. Whatever that means, I don't know, maybe it means the devs played the game. Once.

Wow, bitter much?

No, it doesn't take just spies to double an invasion's effectiveness. It requires: at least one morale building on a +approval tile on the target planet and 800 bc to pay for Information Warfare.

It also helps if the planet already has a low approval. But it made taking a capital with 16 billion people possible with an invasion of 6 billion or so, with worse soldiering bonuses than the defenders.

Also, considering how much I paid for some of those agents (all the cheap ones having been used to stop enemy agents), I should get some benefit for using them strategically.



Because I totally said it was exactly as it should be and didn't require any improvements, right? I especially did not say that I think it needs the 2.0 overhaul, right?



I never really noticed the advertising. Fans beta tested it (and bought into the beta testing by preordering), but it wasn't fan-built. It was Stardock built. I don't believe such an advertisement exists.

I'm sure the devs play the game - I know Frogboy plays it frequently when developing an expansion, and makes changes during his playtests if things aren't doing what they should.

The question you shouldn't be asking isn't whether they've played the game at all, but what they see in the new espionage system that you do not.

I don't care about your defense of stupid agent strategies. Blah blah blah, agents suck. I'm bitter towards anyone defending crap features that don't deserve to be defended. Now they have to spend time "fixing" this broken feature, instead of fixing all of the other problems and new "issues". And the terrible broken cost formula for training new agents is not a valid excuse for justifying it's disproportionate effects.

I never said you thought it was perfect, so I don't know why you're getting all pissy about that, but okay. It's really a shame that such an overhaul of a "feature" that clearly wasn't thought through will be taking time away from opening up new modification possibilities, and bug fixes.

"Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor was made by gamers who love the series." - Okay, "gamer built", implying that the devs played the game (this isn't always a given). Still I find it hard to believe they've played it much, given the crap load of "issues".

The thing that pisses me off the most is the number of "features" promised in the expansion, which turned out to be just as half-assed as all the other expansions for other games out there. Stardock should give their advertising crew a raise, and then have them go work for Obama. They did a really great job making it seem like the expansion was "different" - oh no, not like all the other low value expansions out there at all! lol

Blah blah blah. Agents are stupid. Bring back the old sliders. End of discussion.

No. The sliders are too abstract. The agents are too expensive, especially given how easily they die. I wouldn't mind a hybrid system - espionage and counterespionage sliders for getting information or blocking it, the Espionage ability to mean something, the ability to target planets for sabotage.

I'm not getting pissy, but I was annoyed.

The agent strategies aren't stupid, they're actually more interesting than moving a slider around.

Yes, the AI doesn't (and apparently can't) use agents like that, but that's by far not the only strategy they're unable to take advantage of.

I haven't had any problems, but I haven't played the latest patch yet, and I haven't played past normal yet (next game I'll be upping the difficulty though).

I'm with Phaedyme on this - the sliders were simply too passive. Set and forget, even minimal expenditures could gain you espionage levels and tech, and completely defense-proof. Spies give an active use to espionage, the ability to deny enemies knowledge, and most importantly STRATEGY. If you can't use them effectively, that's not necessarily the system's fault. When used properly, you should never be the victim of spy spam, only the instigator of it.

lol! So I guess I didn't use agents properly, when I was assaulted by agents from every race out there, non stop. Actually, I would prefer to not use them at all, but of course this is impossible now. To defend against espionage with the old sliders all we needed was another simple counter esp slider to reduce the enemy's intel level, along with a natural time-based intelligence decay rate. Implemented in one day, problem fixed.

Abstraction is needed. This is a SPACE CONQUEST game, not James Bond visits alien planets to break their playstations so they get all pissy at their government. Must be some stupid aliens not to catch these agents snooping around. haha

Actually, you know what, I'm wrong about abstraction. It's not needed at all. In fact, I think the game has TOO MUCH abstraction. They should also add more detail to these "abstract features":

1) Land combat - I mean, come on, why can't we like.. control some little 2d tanks rolling around the planet shooting aliens or something?

2) Buildings - geez man. We get like max 26 buildings on the whole planet?? It should be like... 26 million! Yeah, just open it up and let us build infinite numbers of buildings. Just building one is too abstract.

3) Research - why don't we get to research 10 different technologies at once. It's more realistic! This simplification of research is too abstract! And we should be able to research things like, zero-g cupholders and space toilets, instead of just the abstract "Interstellar Construction". What is that? It's too abstract, that's what it is!

4) Graphics - Hello people. Even grandma knows that space faring civilizations in Star Trek have HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of ships in fleet battles. Why are we only abstracting that with a fraction of what we should have? And look at planets! OMG They are SOOOO big compared to stars in this game. The scale should be realistic!

5) Economies - Wow, this one isn't even CLOSE to simulating a galactic economy's complexity. The game takes way too many liberties and is far too abstract! A space game like this should do everything in detail! If the Drengin are running low on Pampers because of a chronic diarrhea outbreak on Toria, that shouldn't be a galactic "EVENT" - it should be a normal everyday occurance, simulated in the economy!

6) Influence - What the heck ARE influence points? It's too abstract, that's why there's no answer!

7) Espionage - Budget sliders on a space warfare game? Come on, that's way too abstract and doesn't even begin to simulate in detail all the cowardly ways you can screw over and spy on your opponents! We should be able to deploy spy satellites! And robotic spy drones on planet surfaces! And, intercept alien communications. And we should be able to transmit fake signals to confuse them or trick their helpdesk technicians into giving out their passwords! Oh yeah, and we need secret agents like James Bond or Jason Bourne that can go down in alien costumes, and like... damage stuff!!!

Agents are an arbitrary (almost random) addition that adds as little to the game as most of the above "ideas". In fact they were probably just added because it was easy to implement, and it could be claimed as a new feature on the expansion box. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think people were ever going nuts busting Stardock's doors down for an espionage upgrade. And most importantly, the only way agents affect the game's fun factor is to lessen it. Maybe they'll break even on fun factor, after resources are wasted on fixing them. Yay! lol