Any plans to rebalance Espionage missions?

[GermanJoey]

I'd love to see active Espionage make its way back into Multiplayer Civ4. The single player community has found some crazy and creative niche uses for it, and I always feel disappointed that Multiplayer doesn't have any similar mechanic for making "big plays." Now obviously, the missions as implemented in BTS are ridiculously imbalanced, but I wonder if fixing some of the more egregious exploits and increasing the cost of the missions would make them viable again? What do you think?

For example, some suggestions:

• Capping the spread culture mission per-city to the total amount that a great artist would give.
  
• Completely remove religion-based discounts on spy missions.
  
• Prevent players from viewing other players collected EPs, and let demographics be viewable with a fixed number of EPs equal to the current age the target civ is in. (e.g. 20/40/80/160/320)
  
• The "change civic" and "change state religion" missions would have greatly increased cost, take a couple turns to complete the switch (like how an Inquisitor works in FFH2), and not induce Anarchy when the switch occurred.
  
• "Sabotage Production" would work like an anti-whip; the current build loses 30 hammers and the city gains an unhappy face.
  
• Remove the destroy infrastructure and building missions.
  
• Any civ has complete active-mission immunity when in a golden-age.
  
• Rebalance EP generation from various EP-generating buildings.
  

[Krill]

Missions that screw with an opponent are some of the most unfun things that can occur, and I will never, ever, (re)introduce them to the game.

Change civic and change religion were some of the most stupid ideas ever to be introduced to a civ game.

[GermanJoey]

=/ Disappointing to hear that. Why do you consider espionage unfun? I agree that the missions are very unfair (and thus unfun) in their base implementations, but I disagree that the concept is fundamentally flawed. They allow some really out-of-the-box strategic/tactical plays in the right situations.

[Cheater Hater]

Missions that screw with an opponent are some of the most unfun things that can occur, and I will never, ever, (re)introduce them to the game.

What's the difference between screwing with an opponent via an espionage mission and screwing with them via taking a city or two? Obviously this assumes there's a similar way to counter espionage like you counter military (the espionage slider corresponds to cost of units, the hammer cost of units could be redirected to giving more espionage bonuses to earlier buildings, and the loss of units from an attack corresponds to the espionage cost of missions), but that's presumably something that could be balanced. That might not be right for this mod, but it certainly could work in a mod.

[Krill]

=/ Disappointing to hear that. Why do you consider espionage unfun? I agree that the missions are very unfair (and thus unfun) in their base implementations, but I disagree that the concept is fundamentally flawed. They allow some really out-of-the-box strategic/tactical plays in the right situations.

The concept of some interactions are not fundamentally flawed, don't get me wrong, but actions such as civic swapping are. Civ is an empire building game where the aim is to meet a victory condition by improving and developing an empire that you control. Actions that remove that control from you, either through espionage or through other game mechanics such as random slave revolts are othogonal to the original stated aims.

The difficulty with active espionage occur on multiple levels, such as the thematic aim of what epsionage does such as information gathering, and on the mechanical, because there needs to be methods of countering another players actions. Most of the skill in strategy games come from the ability to predict future actions and plan (and even react) accordingly. The mechanics introduced in BtS just don't allow that to happen. It would require a total rebuild of the system for active missions to be reintroduced.

Missions that screw with an opponent are some of the most unfun things that can occur, and I will never, ever, (re)introduce them to the game.

What's the difference between screwing with an opponent via an espionage mission and screwing with them via taking a city or two? Obviously this assumes there's a similar way to counter espionage like you counter military (the espionage slider corresponds to cost of units, the hammer cost of units could be redirected to giving more espionage bonuses to earlier buildings, and the loss of units from an attack corresponds to the espionage cost of missions), but that's presumably something that could be balanced. That might not be right for this mod, but it certainly could work in a mod.

Those assumptions are the main problem really. Yes, it is possible to create a system that works, but it needs to be integrated holistically with the rest of the systems with Civ 4, whereas what exists in base BtS is just this monstrosity tacked onto the side that ignored the necessity of counter play that is needed in an MP game. It's fine for SP where AI are just speed bumps though.

I never played civ 5 but a system where espionage is abstracted off the map, and is there to gain information could work. Unfortunately, the amount of information necessary to make basic, informed strategic decisions requires stuff like graphs and the demographics screen be available both early in the game and for an extremely low cost. For example the passive system in BtS is fine. It could be done, but as you said, not here.

[GermanJoey]

Yeah, you're probably right, it really would need a complete rework rather than some trimming and remolding here or there. Ah well.