01-03-2003 00:50									#1
	Spies. Are they a tad too powerful? a bit unbalanced? Get a bigger avatar today!

Spying seems a very important part of moo3, which is fine, but at times they seem a bit too powerful.

I was playing as the humans(i know, i know - humans=easy prey for spies). But still...

At one point i was at war with the meklar and the sakkra and had treaties with the klackon and the trilarians.

I began to have 2 to 3 techs stolen, half a dozen buildings blown up; trade routes, production lines sabatoged, people intimidated, scientists and others assasinated, and three to four spies caught and killed, including those of my so called allies; just about every turn.

It was insane.

I thought, enough was enough. Recruited and maintained as counter spies atleast one of every kind.

Inserted and maintained in enemy territory atleast two scientific spies.

I soon had my spies stealing techs, sabatoging assasinating and pretty much turning their research on its head. Had economic and social sciences research cranked up, stole and traded for the others.

30 turns later, spy activity in my empire had all but stopped except for the occasional capture and execution of spies.

Thank god i did not have the evon for my neighbours.

	01-03-2003 00:54									#2
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Spying has always been over powerd in Moo1/Moo2 and now Moo3. I hate it and was so happy when Aaron agreed and did make it so you could disable it in SEIV.

Last edited by vmxa1 on 01-03-2003 at 03:40

	01-03-2003 00:57									#3
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How can you disable spies? I find it completely abstract and utterly worthless. I mean when i have 30 planets who cares about some building on craplar III.

	01-03-2003 01:04									#4
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I try to maintain 2 of each spy defensively at all times and that seems to have stopped what used to be a big problem. I can't always have it because people leave/retire but I try. In addition, it may take a disproportionately large amount of your (the players) time but it isn't taking that much of your empire's money. Compared to how much you spend on research and military and buidlings it is insignificant - so just maintain these spies and don't think your empire is killing itself to maintain spy defense.

I personally like that spies are good. Spying is fun. It also gives another potentially viable way to defeat someone increasing strategic options. It also means that if one race is good at spying and one good at military both are roughly equally good (not true in other games like this). That may not be realistic - but I think it makes for a better game.

	01-03-2003 01:18									#5
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Just a question: if I keep the spies at home sitting idle, this it mean that they are automatically performing counterintelligence within my frontiers?

	01-03-2003 01:22									#6
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dunno the manual is vague on that point. I think raising oppression does work though.

	01-03-2003 01:46									#7
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@ Yodasplat: yes they do.
if you have a couple of them; you see from time to time messages like how an assasination attempt was stopped etc.

@ aiin: Having a couple of buildings blown up once in a while, one does not even notice it, or overly worried about it.

But as i mentioned in my example, having a bunch of your leaders assasinated, research being pushed back anywhere between 2 to 15 turns, half a dozen planets going into unrest can put a hole in your pocket, especially when you are in a multi front war.

I am new to the moo universe, but historically have ignored spying/espionage in these type of games.

but now i seem to have to do it, if only to keep my enemies off my back. The A.I. just swamps you with spies.

	01-03-2003 02:07									#8
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Yeah, the spies can be a bit much.

Though it seems once I've unleashed mine on my enemy, they stop coming in.

The should really calm the assasination down, I can never seem to keep a leader around for more than a handful of turns.

	01-03-2003 02:08									#9
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Yes, spying does seem a bit overpowered, although it could just be that the computer goes overboard and sends 20 spies at a time or something....

It seems like they didn't put enough time into it. You can't issue any orders to spies after they've been inserted (or can you?). There's no option to have your spies simply gather intelligence or "sleep", they always have to go around blowing things up. This makes it hard to spy on allies if you just want to steal their techs or gather intelligence on them without hurting their development.

Spying should have to be a significant investment of your empire's resources, not just an afterthought...

	01-03-2003 02:56									#10
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quote: Originally posted by Yodasplat Just a question: if I keep the spies at home sitting idle, this it mean that they are automatically performing counterintelligence within my frontiers?

I do not have the answer, but I am dubious of it.
I was trying to find out how counter intel is handled, but it seems automatic. I see spies getting caught and killed, but I have yet to build any spies. I was looking for a place to make some for defense, but I do not see anything but agents to send to other races?

	01-03-2003 03:28									#11
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Leaders are very temporary anyway. They die after 30-40 turns anyway.

	01-03-2003 03:46									#12
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Geesh. The espionage model in this game ROCKS. It is, thusfar, my favorite part of the game. The enemy spies are annoying, sure. But then you have your own spies.

The espionage part of the game is the one part of the game I can honestly say that thusfar I actually ENJOY.

Then again... I always liked playing the Darloks in MoO1 because I thought MoO1's espionage model was awesome. MoO2's espionage model had much to be desired in my opinoin and unfortunately MoO3 takes on SOME of those problems, but it improves so much on both MoO and MoO2 that you won't see me really complaining.

I'm so happy they brought back social espionage. That was always my favorite form of covert attack in original MoO and I really missed it in MoO2

	01-03-2003 04:10									#13
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@ Arnelos: Have to admit, it was very satisfying to steal a whole bunch of techs, sabatoge and impede scientific research, and assasinate leaders. One game i just sent in spies to really ruin my enemy (a meklar race), steal a bunch of tech and traded them to my ally, and a while later my ally(a klackon race) just pretty much walked over them. I didnt have to do much, except intercept an occasional lone ship, in terms of combat to wipe them out.

If only they would
1) clear up doubts on counter espionage
2) more control on spy missions(what they can actually do)

i would be more than satisfied.

@ vmxa1: i am not sure on that either.
One thing though, if i had spies idling around, my sitrep has reports like how my counter-espionage spies found some tech stolen, prevented sabotage etc. Otherwise it is only so and so spy killed, questioned etc.

@ JonahFalcon: One game i had 2 leaders who(i can almost swear) lasted about 50 turns. one was a human who gave me trade and diplo advantages; the other a evon who gave me spy bonuses. They were great for my empire.

I found that if you have leaders of races that you have no diplo contact with; they last a long time(had an ithukul leader for about 25 turns till i came in contact with them - i know!!?. must have be high on something)

Leaders from enemy races don't last long; the ones from your allies even lesser.

	01-03-2003 04:25									#14
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Defensive spies are a virtual boost to the oppressometer without the associated unrest.

	01-03-2003 04:36									#15
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quote: Originally posted by vmxa1 Spying has always been over powerd in Moo1/Moo2 and now Moo3. I hate it and was so happy when Aaron agreed and did make it so you could disable it in SEIV.

i always thought spies in Moo2 sucked to much.

-Mellian

	01-03-2003 08:43									#16
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The thing I found annoying is that it seems that you cannot send more than one spy of a certain type into the same empire at the same time. That is, I can't put three spies into my enemy's territories to really mess up his military. It also seems that I can never get out enough spies to cover for the ones I lose. I just keep some around for defense, mostly.

That's about it for my problems with espionage. It's almost totally worthless for my opponents to use on me, and it only seems to do minor damage to my opponents most of the time.

	01-03-2003 08:48									#17
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quote: Originally posted by canamrock The thing I found annoying is that it seems that you cannot send more than one spy of a certain type into the same empire at the same time. That is, I can't put three spies into my enemy's territories to really mess up his military. It also seems that I can never get out enough spies to cover for the ones I lose. I just keep some around for defense, mostly.

Huh? Sorry but that's wrong, you can insert as many spies of a single type as you want..

	01-03-2003 09:17									#18
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Every time I've tried, it just automatically recalled all but one of them. So basically, I've been restricted to 6 spies, one of each kind. I wish I was wrong, but it won't work that way for me.

	01-03-2003 10:56									#19
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To my relief, I FINALLY managed to stop the enemy spies' habit of constant infiltration and destruction. There is really nothing you can do about it until you start researching some of the higher techs which boost your detection ability of enemy spies.

I had a leader actually live for more than 2 turns for a change.

	01-03-2003 10:59									#20
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quote: Originally posted by Mellian i always thought spies in Moo2 sucked to much. -Mellian

Not sure what sucks means in this context.
At impossible, prewarp games, if you have little or no spy traits and especially if you use -spying, the AI steals you blind for quite some time.

	01-03-2003 13:10									#21
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Wasn't the biggest factor of 2, and probably 3 as well, the relative proximity of neighbors? Not the true distance, but the lower time it takes to meet your opponents in the game. I tend to use large maps, and am typically on a good road before I meet more than one or two opponents. By then, my counter-intelligence technology seems to be mostly sufficient to stop the vast majority of incursions.

	03-03-2003 04:37									#22
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So far, I'm liking spys a lot...one of the better parts of the game. Once I get my game going, I always have a spy in the queue. Still toying with this, but I have 3-5 to counter other spys while I send 2-3 others in to do their thing.

Social spys are the cheapest to build, and I use those for counter spying. I'm not sure if the luck, cloak and dagger numbers have much to stopping other spys, though. If you check your spys, those values will change from spy to spy and type of spy.

	03-03-2003 04:48									#23
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I think you races Cunning has a lot to do with the spyings sucess.

	03-03-2003 16:52									#24
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I don't seem to have any luck at all in offensive spying measures. At high tech levesl my leaders do seem to be staying alive though.

I've not had any problems sending multiple spies into an empire before, but then again they're almost always arrested immediately. A couple of times I've had multiple successful science spy insertions for a few turns before they get discovered and killed. Its cost me about thirty spies for every tech stolen though.