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[luddite]

I think I’m most concerned about forced civic swap stuff, city revolt, and forced unhappiness, but I’m inexperienced enough with espionage to not know really if the cost is high enough for it to be a fair tradeoff. We've just spent so many years either modding these out or banning active/certain missions that I'm not quite sure what the "ideal" setting is.

I'm no espionage pro either, and I've also forgotten a lot. But as I understand it, espionage is kind of all-or-nothing... if you commit to it, it can be incredibly powerful. But if you put in just a little bit, you won't have enough points to do anything. Also, even if you have enough points to hurt someone else, that doesn't actually *help* yourself... you need to either steal a tech or win a war to gain any positive value from espionage.

I just thought espionage might add some interesting flavor with the bonus techs. But if it's too much trouble we can ban it, I don't mind either way. I can see how getting forced into a civic swap or unhappiness would just be annoying without being interesting.

[scooter]

I think I’m most concerned about forced civic swap stuff, city revolt, and forced unhappiness, but I’m inexperienced enough with espionage to not know really if the cost is high enough for it to be a fair tradeoff. We've just spent so many years either modding these out or banning active/certain missions that I'm not quite sure what the "ideal" setting is.

I'm no espionage pro either, and I've also forgotten a lot. But as I understand it, espionage is kind of all-or-nothing... if you commit to it, it can be incredibly powerful. But if you put in just a little bit, you won't have enough points to do anything. Also, even if you have enough points to hurt someone else, that doesn't actually *help* yourself... you need to either steal a tech or win a war to gain any positive value from espionage.

I just thought espionage might add some interesting flavor with the bonus techs. But if it's too much trouble we can ban it, I don't mind either way. I can see how getting forced into a civic swap or unhappiness would just be annoying without being interesting.

Yeah the stuff that has minimal counter-play I guess is what concerns me most. Civic/Religion forced swaps sounds incredibly irritating as does fomenting unhappiness or unhealthiness. But I would like it so someone has the option to invest heavily in espionage and profit. Like you said, bring the chaos. Others like City Revolt or Steal Technology are appropriately expensive and situational and either cause limited harm (1 turn, 1 city) or no harm, and resource sabotage is counter-able in sequential by just having more workers around. The sabotage production/building stuff can be mildly frustrating, but it’s also expensive and counter-play does exist for it.

So, I guess a middle ground proposal would be banning Civic/Religion swaps and fomenting unhappy/unhealthy, but allowing everything else? If someone with more espionage experience wants to step in and make a suggestion, I'm all ears.

[Qgqqqqq]

If the game goes late, city revolt can prevent spaceships.

[Ramkhamhaeng]

With the swap to sequential I think missions are OK in terms of functionality if not balance, I can't recall about the counter espionag mission though. I think there were problems in simultaneous but don't know if the mission ends when the playyer ends turn, or when the whole turn rolls.

Counter espionage was fixed: You can restart it before effect runs out.

Code:

CvPlayer.cpp:        if (GET_TEAM(getTeam()).getCounterespionageTurnsLeftAgainstTeam(GET_PLAYER(eTargetPlayer).getTeam()) <= 1 /*0 */) // PBMod: Allow Counterespionage in last running round

Tech steal is problematic/cheap if stacking bonuses are maxed out.

[luddite]

So what's the current voting on espionage? Is it just me in (weakly) in favor of it, Scooter (weakly) opposed, and everyone else neutral? We do kind of need to reach a consensus one way or another.

[Tarkeel]

Just FYI: First draft of starts have been posted. I'm leaving for a week or so on sunday, and hope to have pickable starts available by then.

[scooter]

So what's the current voting on espionage? Is it just me in (weakly) in favor of it, Scooter (weakly) opposed, and everyone else neutral? We do kind of need to reach a consensus one way or another.

Yeah, would like more input. I'm growly slightly more against active missions the more I look into it and get comments. With techs available that make EPs super accessible, I'm slightly concerned that things could break in an unfun way, and the passive espionage benefits alone are still substantial, so it's not totally removing EPs as a perk. The counter though is there's a lot of things that could theoretically net out as unfun, so if others really prefer missions allowed, I'd be OK with it, though I feel fairly strongly about the forced civic/religion swap missions as it might effectively mandate Spiritual.


Oxy, Cairo, still also need your play windows in order to generate a turn and pick order. We do NOT need to rush into the actual draft once starts are posted because I assume we all will want time to think it over once we know our draft slot, but it would be nice to know what order we're in.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Playtime window for me is 9am-4pm GMT

[scooter]

Updated:

Oxy: 0900-1600
Luddite: 1300-1700
Yuris: 1300-100
Scooter: 2300-300


I PM'd Cairo as he hasn't replied in a bit.

[yuris125]

No strong feelings on espionage, but happy to go with no active missions. It is possible that espionage in general is worth exploring more, and we could have a game where espionage is explicitly allowed and players are encouraged to use it, if only to find ways to make it fun and not just default to banning it in every game. But this game is experimental enough without it

Maybe we could explicitly allow steal technology mission, as a potential counter to a starting tech people might consider uncounterable otherwise