[spoiler!] Ruffing Bull of Spain

[Ruff_Hi]

Wasn't there a rule against spy civic/religion swaps in this game?

Yes - but NSA AI is an AI and so far he hasn't posted in the pbem13 complaining about my spy religion swap.

[Ruff_Hi]

12 or 13 culture per bomb ... lets say 15 by the time I am ready to go ... that means I need 50k less 4k (GA Bomb) divided by 15 or (approx) 3100 successful spy bombs ... so about 3800 spies per city (155k hammers) ... who am I kidding .

Wait - it isn't as bad as that ... as the culture from each bomb is 5% of the culture in the centre square ... and spy culture bombs add culture to the centre square. If it is a straight 1 for 1 addition (I will need to test it), then the culture from each bomb builds with each successful bomb and (according to my calcs in excel), I only need 104 successful spy bombs (about 130 spies) per city.

That is much better.

[SevenSpirits]

Yes - but NSA AI is an AI and so far he hasn't posted in the pbem13 complaining about my spy religion swap.

I know you're just kidding around (and playing a shadow game), but obviously following the rules is important even when your opponent can't know you're breaking them. (Man, I bet you're reading the AI's thread too, that's how you know he hasn't posted about it, you cheater. )

[Ruff_Hi]

Now, how much EP do I need ...

each culture point costs 3x base cost. I get -20%, -40% for trade routes and religion. I can get -50% for stationary spy. The above screenshot shows a +66% for distance but I can bring that down by moving the capital (say to +15% or lower). Espionage spend will be -35% to -40% .... so putting all of that together ...

46000 x 3 x (1 - .2) x (1 - .4) x (1 - .5) x (1 - .35) x (1 + .15)
= 46000 x 3 x 0.179 (which is rounded down to 0.17 but I will call it 0.18 for a margin)
= 25k per city.

Break even EP at the moment is 70% and generates 3500 EPs per turn. So I can be ready to go (from an EP point of view) in 22 turns. Just need to build 390 spies - 20 cities will take 20 turns to build that many spies - that lines up very nicely.

[zakalwe]

Max 5 spies per turn, I believe?

[novice]

Max 5 spies per turn, I believe?

There's no such limit as far as I know. Maybe you're thinking of missionaries?

[zakalwe]

I guess I was, I thought there was a similar limit for the number of spy units you could have. But that's just for missionaries and executives, then?

[Krill]

There used to be a limit in vanilla and Warlords, but the entire espionage system got "revamped" for BtS.

[Ruff_Hi]

Apart from having to wait until T263, it turned out to be very easy. Didn't need the GArtists to bring the cities out of revolt (they didn't enter revolt) and only 44k EPs were required (there was a cultural city discount that I didn't know about). More details with pics later.

[Ruff_Hi]

Following the plan layed out above, I went on a spy binge ... here was a comparison of units just before the spy bombing started ...



NSA AI had teched out to tanks, built wonders, landed Great People, etc. They didn't kick off any golden ages, rather using their Great Merchants for Coin missions.

So, I split my 400 spies into 3 groups and sent them into the three city targets ... end of turn ... and ...



I guess I should have expected that. Naturally, this didn't help my relationship with NSA AI (I had lost the shared religion bonus too when he swapped to free religion) ...



And so the bombing campaign commenced (first bomb at the top, 'several' bombs later shown at the bottom) ...



One item that my spy EP cost calculation didn't account for was the 'city culture' benefit ... I don't know the formula, but it increased all the way to 49% at the end. I would assume it would be similar to the EP spend discount (1 x their culture + 2 x my culture) / (2 x their culture + 1 x my culture) ... so when the city is almost 50k for me and 500 for them - 50% discount.

In the end, the discount was 92% ... almost 1500 culture for 300 EPs. As a comparison, I was generating 1500EPs at 0% and 6000 at 100%.