Covert Operations (Espionage, Sabotage, Assasinations, Theft)

Frogboy implied there was going to be a rich diplomacy element to the game. So we shall see...

I'm not sure I like the idea of having to assign any of my heroes to do espionage, tying them up on essentially trivial tasks. Being a huge fan of the underhanded game, though, I'd love for there to be specific actions for them to perform in relation to assassination, stealth, and so on.

I'm hoping for Elemental to really allow you to play that kind of underhanded game, hit-and-run tactics, cloaked units, and so on.

I thought that spy game was include Elemental.

If they can add an-epic touch in it that would be great.

Who want heroic show down in random city ?

I think I'd prefer for there to be scrying magic than bog standard espionage. Although invisible spies could also be cool.

If there will be spying, what better way to do it than...

Ninjas!

That would be pretty sweet.  That and some magically enhanced creatures specialized for spying/scouting.

Counter with magic that block scrying and we are back to old school spying.

Beside the quest victory will require some infiltration as you might need to explore a dungeon deep inside the enemie territories.

As long as one can choose hot sexy geisha or drow chicks then all will be OK.

On further tough I can defitnaly see magic being used to aid in any possible operation. For example you can either have an 'agent' inside the enemy keep or have your own wizard make a magical statue that can 'see' for you and thats what happens to be sent to your enemy as a gift.

We all know that when you army's meet we get a combat encounter how about something similar for spionage? Example as your hero and some of his men go in to assasinate enemy uber general. The have a field to cross and camp to inflitrate  w/o sounding an alarm and reach their target. This could be layed out like a battle grid. Just an idea.

It would be great if our diplomats and assassins and traders and whatnot were actual units with personalities and skills.

Your spies could be deployed in different ways. There is the invisible spy who no one can find. The chameleon infiltrator who no one notices. The plant who was there from the beginning, and so on.

In most strategy games like rome total war you can send in an assassin but in the end all you get is a message about whether or not they succeeded. Imagine if you could train a spy as an archer, get him to infiltrate an enemy unit of archers and have him shoot the enemy general in the back at a descisive moment.

I thought that in Civ4 BTS the espionage system was a bit heavy handed. I'd love to see a subtle and balanced system that could be ignored- espionage should be a minor aspect of the game. By no means should it be allowed to balloon in importance past a tool in your arsenal into a staple of your Civ.

Bears wielding daggers?

I thought they had 10 built in daggers for nails - silly me...

If you guys ever played the Master of Orion games, there was a race that specialized in the cloak and dagger,The Darlocks.

Basically they had almost every spy, survillance, theft bonus you could think of. It was a blast playing them since you could invest a decent chuck of your econ to espionage etc. Ironically in Master of Orion twould 'custom race' and create a truly insane underhanded race (you had a better than average chance to pin your naughty action on a diff race and still be able to improve diplomatic relations with your victims).

Now I am now saying Elemental needs to do something that extreme. I just think the potential exists in the game if its implemented in the form of optional quests.

Its not so much an idea, but rather just a comment.   I know some of my more hardcore Civ 4 fan friends hate the espianoge in that game because once the expansion pack added it, you could no longer view the world without putting an annoyingly hefty amount of resources into covert ops.  While adding an interesting element to the game, the inability to turn it off also made it very frustrating.Its like if you are not counterspying, then you are pretty much screwed.  While that is pretty realistic, its a shame to those who do not wish to deticate a bunch of resources to it, since it becomes a core mechanic with as much as it does.    Simple spying, like just being able to know what an enemy is casting x-turns after they start may be all we really need.

The real question is how much omniscient are each player is on his/her land.

We can divide the spy job onto 2 categories :

- Intelligence gathering :

1. Passive form you discuss with foreign marchants about their contry and cities or you send someone travelers into that contry (tourist mode on)
2. Active form you pay for the information with bribes or you try to infiltrate enemies a casern or research facility.
   

The kind & the quality of the information will differ between the passive & active form.

To know that a city has a big funace or that they a lot of soldiers garnisoned is the kind of passive information that can be gathered just by opening eyes & hears wide

To know what kind of research or the exacted quality of the force gathered in city will require the active form of information gathering.

- Sabotage, destabilisation, assassination.. :

1. Any form of active destruction of enemies assets that can be from the destruction of a facility or the assassination of a hero to the poisoning of a whole city.
2. Any form of destabilisation & subversion that can from spreading FUD about an ennemie leader in a third party city to sour the relation between those two or the bribery of an enemie hero or unit to the incitation of revolt in a city.

As in any good spy game counter spy can stop those activity from speading in your teritories.

Another point is the use of hero spy VS use of grunt spy/assassin.

Heroes must be free to travel between countries not at war but more famous is the hero and harder it is for him or her to not get noticed from the other side save if he/she has some steath ability.

The spy UI must be rather easy to use you just have to alocate money & grunts for the different tasks like in galciv 2.

Grunts spies can be affected to a country or to a city changing the scope & quality if the gathered information.

Grunts spies are in the passive information gathering mode by default you must pay for any other form of action.

Counter-spies not only try to twart ennemie spies move but also gather passive information as they spend a lot of time with your foreign residents, marchant, travelers...

Maybe not "the" question, but certainly a major basic parameter for how the rest of the stuff might work. Things could be wildly different depending on whether channelers might normally have full knowledge of any land or unit they've imbued with essence or whether the process of that essence transfer leaves no enduring connection.

For me, the question of making hero units the core of any intel/covert ops system really depends on how common hero units will be on the largest maps and how long it will take them to move around in a typical 'hot zone.' If hero units are relatively numerous (e.g. several tens of them by late mid-game), I wouldn't have a problem if getting intel or assassinating an enemy hero required a hero unit.

At the moment, I quite like the idea of map units for this part of the game, but I think I'd prefer them to be 'regular' units and not the questing heros. Building spy-blinds in the wilderness, opening a frybread stall in an enemy city's market and just listening, or even poisoning the toasting cup at an enemy hero's fete could all be done by a less-than-hero unit with the right training and gear.

I also am greedy enough to want both unit-based stuff *and* channeler magic for things like that watchful statue _D7_ mentions.

I want to stress that we're Channelers. Wizards. Magicians. Sorcerers.

Not gods (although I hope there's a way for me to present myself as such); It'd be hard to have any kind of omniscience(sp?) even in your own territory. Not saying it's not doable, but I'd say that it'd be some pretty high-end magic.

I think there should be no fog of war within some range of population centers and watchtowers - like in galciv 2 (planets/starbases have an LoS). But I think it should be a pretty significant range. Could be explained away as travelers talking about what they saw, indirectly reaching your channeler's ears. It could even scale with population, to a limited extent (could be logarithmic growth, for example). That way a 1 million population city wouldn't be able to see half the world - in fact it'd hardly be able to see more than a 100k pop city would see.

Scouts would have to patrol or be stationed at key locations that aren't covered by that default LoS. And just because there's no fog of war in those regions doesn't mean things can't be hidden by you - stealth units, concealed objects or structures, and anything magically enchanted to avoid detection should be much harder to detect.

And I suggest easy-to-construct, cheap watchtowers, instead of having to place scouts at key locations. They'd be like small keeps, but with much less defense and a much great LoS. Of course, keeps/defendable positions and watchtowers should be able to be combined/constructed on the same tile.

Ok the discussion got me thinking. I like the luckmann's idea of 'watchtowers'. The can behave as LOS stations, that lift the fog of war around them depending on how upgraded/well constructed they are. This would also open up the possibility of placing towers at the border to observe the enemy movements or having a 'stealthy' tower that you could place in enemy turf. Now these could just give you simple information. For example "Farsight tower reports a large enemy army of well over 10,000 men marching towards <insert city name>" which would not be the same as having a detailed breakdown of numbers or units types.

I also like this idea. Esentially you could create 'inflintration units'. Who better to find enemy info if one of your units happens to run the local bar? Another could join their army and perforn sabotage depending on the orders you left this particular unit. One could be a sculptor who has magical training to make some very intresting statues...

I still some missions should be done by major heroes. Especifically theft of major artifacts or assasinations of other heroes.