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Harun ar Rashid
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Oldenburg, Germany
Apr 1999
time: 05:13
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On the old BB I made the promise to elaborate upon 'my' ideas about intelligence. It took a while, but now I am able to present a sketch.
My motivation is the bad implementation of intelligence in civ like games (with the exception of Master of Orion). At least that's my point of view.
'My' intelligence model would reduce micromanagement and add some new elements to strategic gameplay. To be honest, 'my' intelligence model is a conglomerate of what I've read so far, seen in other games and some ideas of my own.
No spies?
There won't be spy units visible on the map. Every civilization has an intelligence agency which must be funded from treasury. It is divided into internal security (isec) and departments for each civ. The player can decide which departments get certain amounts of money. Here is an example how it works:
Imagine you are the Romans and you have 100 CC to spend every turn. Then there are the Carthaginians and Macedonians, too. Of course you want to know about their plans. You decide to put 50 CC into isec and because of some special reason you give 30 CC to the Carthaginian department and 20 CC to the Macedonian department.
That's the way it works in Master of Orion, nothing new so far.
What does intelligence do with your money?
After adjusting the fundings the player need not build any spies. They are hired by the intelligence agency. The maximum number of spies in each department including isec depends on the funding. Spy activities grow slowly so there has to be a certain time before the maximum number of spies is reached. Losses should also be taken into account. Once a spy network (at least one spy, numbers are abstract) has been established in a foreign civ or as isec the spies will send their reports to the capital.
Also not very innovative, but let's see.
Establishing spy networks and reports
Spies can always get caught or killed by enemy agents. So while operating in a foreign civ the enemy isec has a chance of catching/killing each spy. This chance must be calculated based on the number of spies in isec. An isec agent can also be 'removed' by enemy spies operating in his country.
The following list contains the information that may be obtained by spy reports. It is not complete.
- Reports on foreign countries
[*]tech status
[*]demographics
[*]happiness of population
[*]whereabouts of army groups
[*]planned movement of army groups
[*]locations of important weapon factories
[*]diplomatic plans
- Reports on internal security
[*]terrorism
[*]detected operations of enemy spies
[*]loyalty of governors
[*]danger of civil war or revolution
An idea of Mark is that the information you get might be corrupted by enemy intelligence. I support his idea. And in addition to that I think that information should almost be a bit out of date depending on the number of spies and the distance the news have to travel. Some small inaccuracies are also inherent in such reports. Remember the bombardment of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade these days!
Special operations!
Having all this information about the opponents is very nice, but who cares? Therefore special operations are a must but they should be expensive and rare. That means the player has to pay extra money for the extra action. And it will take time so enemy isec can torpedize it.
Perhaps it would be fun and less frustrating having more results than success or failure.
Here's the -of course uncomplete- list with explanations and possible outcomes:
- Steal technology
- Stealing the technology only makes it cheaper to research by yourself. A minor success results in a marginal cost reduction. Corrupted data might even slow down research on the stolen subject.
- Incite revolution
- If one class of the opponent's society is unhappy spies provide them with weapons so that they can revolt properly. The success determines the military strength of the revolutionaries. Perhaps there will only be a period of terrorism. An alternative would be the support of separatist province leaders which would cause a declaration of independence.
- Fund guerillas
- Support one side in a civil war. The enemy isec might get the money if you try to help the opposition. Supply guerillas and partisans in territories lost to the enemy in a war. A major success could be the withdrawal of enemey forces caused by the destruction of their supply lines.
- Bribe governor
- This results in more accurate and up to date information about the civilization. Slight chance that the governor is prepared by isec. Then all data will be corrupt.
- Infiltrate enemy intelligence
- Get all their spy reports until isec finds out.
The only thing the player has to do is to choose a special op and perhaps decide how much money to spend. The program calculates the degree of success or failure according to number of spies, operation's difficulty, chance of corruption and money spent.
That's all for today. Please respond to this post because I would like to hear if this model might be fun or not.
Harun aka Stefan
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Hrafnkell
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Reykjavik, Iceland
May 1999
time: 05:13
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I for one support Harunīs ideas. The only idea I have are for those who want to control this themselves.
Spy Rings: if a players establishes a Spy Ring he gets more valuable information, the Spy Ring can renew and even expand itself (if not destroyed by enemy counter-intelligence), and players could direct the Spy Ring to spy on certain things, such as specific techs, military plans, army positions and such, which 'normal' spies canīt (they only steal whatever they get their hands on). Players could then maybe upgrade their Spy Rings to the level where they can carry out assassinations, plant rumors, insite riots (you already got that) and so on. However, (and this goes for 'normal' spies as well) counter-intelligence can not only eliminate spies, it can also turn them (I guess this is Marks idea). The spies then feed their owner false information, if players are not 'into' the spy thing this will simply be some garbage provided by the computer, but players should be able to dictate what info to send.
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Harun ar Rashid
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Oldenburg, Germany
Apr 1999
time: 05:13
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BUMP!
Please add further suggestions to the "Diplomacy Model v1.1" thread.
This one was bumped for Kull, duke of diplomacy.
[This message has been edited by Harun ar Rashid (edited June 16, 1999).]
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16-05-1999 20:30
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