Spies...

[Seven.the.Hun]

just wondering if anyone has thoroughly tested spies and their effects...
i was a catholic faction in a campaign, i sent 12 spies into sardinia which was controlled by a catholic italians that i was allied to, all spies had 2 or 3 stars, and sardinia had no watch towers of any kind, and didnt build any during...i left all these spies in the province for 4 years and none of them died, yet no rebellion started,
so that got me thinking about the effects of spies vs. spies, and their valour ratings vs. their counterpart ratings...
anyone have extra info on this???
merci...

[mercian billman]

Are you using VI I noticed that the ability of spies in VI has been greatly deminished compared to regular MTW.

[Seven.the.Hun]

VI indeed, havent noticed that so much so is there some drastic difference??? are spies really on the backburner???
havent gone on many of my spy crusades so far in the expansion, and when i did i didnt notice anything trememdously odd other that what i mentioned before, and i tried to give many specifics as to what happened on one occasion, justs seems odd

[Phatose]

Hmm...you know, it shouldn't be too hard to test. I distinctly remember there being a column in unitprod that made spies invisible. Perhaps I'll change it to no so that they're visible, and see what kind of tests I can conduct.

[Seven.the.Hun]

damn, i had forgotten about that column, that's a really good idea phatose, i'll try it out too, let me know how you do?

[Mablung]

A good advantage with spies is that they occasionally give you warnings that the AI will attack another faction in a few years.

[Phatose]

I've run some tests using VI 2.01, and have realized why you're seeing no rebellions. This is obviously true only for VI 2.01



In VI, normal difficulty, a spy affects loyalty by the following formula - 40% + 20% per valour. So, a 5 star spy will have a rather catastrophic -140% loyalty if placed in an enemy province. Or, he can give +140% to one of your troublesome provinces. But, and here's the big but

Loyalty is only affected by the highest valour spy in a province. Additional spies have no effect on loyalty whatsoever.

Which means that seven valour one spies are equal to one valour one spy, not a valour seven spy.


Which means that in your example, your valour 3 spy is producing a nice -100% loyalty which the enemy is counteracting with their own spies, taxes or units - and all the others are doing nothing at all. Might as well be picking their noses, they have absolutely zero effect. This is true in enemy provinces or your own.

Right now, I even suspect that only one spy can lower a provinces loyalty period, though I'm not 100% sure of that. I highly suspect that if you and another faction both have spies in a third faction's province, then only one of the two spies will lower loyalty.

Gonna conduct a few more tests tonight, but then I'm going back to system shock 2.

[Kekvit Irae]

I still liked my Zerg Rush of spies into enemy territories and mopping up the leftovers by bribing the rebel armies. ^_^

EDIT: I should go back to playing SS2 too. That game freaks me out

[Mablung]

Thank you Phatose, I was wondering why 10 spies didn't cause a rebellion.

[Phatose]

If you go and play system shock 2 again, I'd highly suggest finding beta 4 of the SHTUP hi-res texture mod, cause it really does make the game look a heck of lot better. Requires a vid card with at least 32 megs, but that shouldn't be a big deal with today's hardware. Shock 2 Rebirth and the Rebirth rumbler are worth a looksee too, since it drastcially improves many of the enemy models which do look awfully dated. It's requires a non-ancient vid card though, and some criticism has been leveled about him changing the feel of the models too much.



(End system shock 2 section of post)




Anyway, I'll now say I'm 100% sure that only one enemy spy affects loyalty in a province. If you've got a v1 spy in tolouse, and the english have v5 James Bond there, only Bond is going to affect French loyalty. I'm also 100% sure the formula 40% + 20%/valour is true for all difficulty levels.

I'll also bet that only the highest valour spy counts for counterspying and catching enemy agents - but to be blunt, even v4 superspies make very poor police officers. Border forts are the primary determinant of internal security. (and if you don't believe that, mod the game so that everyone can build bawdyhouses with no requisities, but border forts take 1000 years to build. Watch as spies and assasins never ever get caught).

My obvious recommendation would be that if you intend to use spies to start rebellions, or even to effectively control loyalty, you should build to bawdyhouses ASAP and provide your spies a steady stream of disloyal mercs or bribed rebels to practice their framing talents on.

Also note that the computer will respond to your spies lowering it's loyalty by bringing in their own.




All of the above is for VI only though.

[Seven.the.Hun]

thanx a million phatose, i've now noticed some more of the oddities here, all the better in understanding the spy...

[Seven.the.Hun]

does the valour of a spy effect the tendency to be caught by towers???

[Mablung]

I have a feeling it may. Also, the valour of the target can give the spy/assassin a leap in valour (I think). I sent a 0 valour assassin against about a 3 valour alim - I think - and he jumped up to 2 valour after the mission.

[Wishazu]

whats the best way to increase a spies valour?

[therother]

Ah, only the best spy is active at one time That would explain the drop in spy power in the new VI patch. Thanks for the info.

About the AI moving spies to counter your spies, whilst I’m sure that you're probably right, I understand that you noticed this by making spies visible on the campaign map. However there is a possible flaw in your methodology: your spies are now visible to the AI as well, so it knows that you have a spy in the province. In the normal game, it should only note a drop in loyalty, and may just move extra troops into the region, without moving in a spy specifically to counter yours.

By making the spy a visible unit, can you now use your assassins to take them out? Also, now that they are no longer stealth units, do border forts and defensive spies still work as usual? Conversely, if you 'stealthed' a normally visible agent, e.g. an inquisitor, would the border forts catch them at the border?

As for improving spies, the ways I know are to incite rebellions in other provinces and to catch other spies and assassins in your provinces. I’m not sure about framing generals for treason or discovering vices: I never do them, the former especially. It's a great way to get your generals up in arms

One thing to note is that if you incite a rebellion in a province, all your spies in that province will get the credit. So let your valour 5 spy do all the work whilst all valour zero spies will become valour 1 and so on. This can improve spies very quickly if there is a rebellious province that has just been taken over by a new faction (say Livonia), and it's going to rebel anyway. Just cram your spies in there en masse and get them 'valoured' up for free. Just watch for the border forts though.

Another way is to look for one of your provinces that regularly get assassins passing through them. Destroy the border forts, and leave the spies to catch them. I once had the rebels producing assassins every year in Ryazan and moving them into Khazar (one of my provinces). For turn upon turn my spies caught a rebel assassin there. Even if you don’t get quite that lucky, there are usually provinces that get more than their fair share.

Anyway, I rather liked the ability to destabilise provinces, so I’ve fiddled with the new brothels (VI only) by increasing the valour of spies produced; a pretty simple mod in the crusader_build_prod13.txt file is all that is required. Just search for

{}, {UPGRADE_VALOUR(1)},{UPGRADE_VALOUR(2)}

The first {} is for the brothel, the second for the stew, and the third for the bawdyhouse. So you could change it to

{}, {UPGRADE_VALOUR(2)},{UPGRADE_VALOUR(4)}

Now this improves spies for everyone. If you want to be sneaky, you could also change the faction association to only your faction, so that only you get the good spies (or any spies at all), but that might well be called cheating

Quote[/b] (Seven.the.Hun @ Mar. 17 2004,07:22)]does the valour of a spy effect the tendency to be caught by towers???

Very much so: border forts will almost always catch a green spy or assassin. A valour 5 spy (say) will more often than not slip by unnoticed.

[Phatose]

Hm. Interesting, I hadn't actually considered that making them visible could have changed more then I bargained for. A reasonable question. I can't tell whether or not border forts did anything or not, as I had suppressed them to minimize how much I had to check to see effects. And yes, visible spies could be targeted by assasins.

I suppose I'll have to do more spy testing. Shouldn't be too hard to notice even without visible spies - unexplained 100% loyalty boosts are usually pretty hard to miss.

[Kekvit Irae]

What if MTW had campaign multiplay at the beginning?
I can just see it now...

WTF u hore
OMG spy zerg rush kekekeke

[SwordsMaster]

For scientific purposes it could be fun to see the actual programming code for the spies....

Although i dont really believe someone is gonna post it to the forum....

Very useful stuff anyway guys, keep it up.

[Seven.the.Hun]

still working on it myself, screwed up hero spies yet again, GAH

[Seven.the.Hun]

can i ask of fast and effecient methods of improving spies???
typically i use a few in one province to hack off merc leaders one by one, but i do find it tedious, should i start whacking off nonsense generals with higher ranks???

[tehNellie]

Getting spies out bribing rebel generals does work.

I also tend to leave my Bishop/emissary production centres unguarded by towers and use spies there instead. With a green spy you are going to lose a few bishops. But the spy will start to improve in valour as he begins to intercept assassination attempts, though I havent seen a spy progress past valour two as yet. If you are sieging a fort against a low valour general, get your 1-2 valour spies to open the gates from the inside. I've yet to have one fail to achieve this, though their chances against castles and high valour generals are small at this level.

Rookies rarely seem to successfully try High loyalty, low valour generals, but again their chances seem to increase rapidly as they gain valour.

[Kristaps]

Well, in my experience, spies gain valor very rapidly trying disloyal generals. The higher the general's command stars, the bigger the boost after a successful trial. Once had my 1 star, fresh out of the factory spy, jump to 6 stars after successfully trying a disloyal 7-star general... This super 007 then was used to try any unwanted elements in the empire at will.

[Blodrast]

hmm, doesn't all this make spies rather useless ?
i mean, the AI will never ever ever be so stupid as not to have border forts; with this new behaviour (only highest spy affecting loyalty) you'll practically never cause rebellions in enemy provinces; since hidden VnV's are no longer hidden, that use of spies is also gone.
What's left ? just keep them in your provinces to boost loyalty ? bah, there is no need for a new strategic unit for that... i can just use assassins, drop 200 more peasants in there, or just build the damn happiness buildings (which i do anyway)...

[Blodrast]

*hates being a junior patron and having to deal with flood control and no edit buttons*

i remembered one thing: why in the hell would i wanna kill my 6-7 star general (disloyal as he may be) just to train some lousy spy ? i can sure make a heck of a lot more use of the general than the spy...
loyalty of a general is not really an issue, just dump him in the king's stack/province, and his loyalty will go back up reasonably fast...

so even if i agree that this is a way of training your spies, i doubt that anyone would ever use it (unless you have too many jedi generals...)

just my opinion, ofc

[Kristaps]

Quote[/b] (Blodrast @ June 10 2004,16:41)]*hates being a junior patron and having to deal with flood control and no edit buttons*

i remembered one thing: why in the hell would i wanna kill my 6-7 star general (disloyal as he may be) just to train some lousy spy ? i can sure make a heck of a lot more use of the general than the spy...
loyalty of a general is not really an issue, just dump him in the king's stack/province, and his loyalty will go back up reasonably fast...

so even if i agree that this is a way of training your spies, i doubt that anyone would ever use it (unless you have too many jedi generals...)

just my opinion, ofc

Well, if I remember correctly: this general was the next heir in line and his vices were sure to send my empire into a civil war... Thus, training the spy on him was a good thing (for the good of all) :)

[Kristaps]

Quote[/b] (Blodrast @ June 10 2004,16:36)]hmm, doesn't all this make spies rather useless ?
i mean, the AI will never ever ever be so stupid as not to have border forts; with this new behaviour (only highest spy affecting loyalty) you'll practically never cause rebellions in enemy provinces; since hidden VnV's are no longer hidden, that use of spies is also gone.
What's left ? just keep them in your provinces to boost loyalty ? bah, there is no need for a new strategic unit for that... i can just use assassins, drop 200 more peasants in there, or just build the damn happiness buildings (which i do anyway)...

Actually, the spies are quite useful still: yesterday witnessed how a valor 5 spy of mine dropped loyalty in my enemies province from 130 to practially nothing. A revolt promptly followed. Previously, the loyalty drop using spies was gradual: over a longer stretch of time. Now, it's instant. :)

As to loyalty boost in your provinces: don't underestimate it's power... Spies have saved me from un-necessary rebellions quite a few times :)

[Blodrast]

hmm, it's been a while since I played MTW 1.1 (I'm now playing VI), so I am not sure I remember correctly, but I seem to recall that the drop in loyalty was also rather instant in MTW 1.1 as well.
It's true that I didn't test it properly, since what I was doing was dropping 10 spies (most of which had at least a couple of stars, since for each rebellion caused they gained one more) in a province, and usually by next turn the loyalty was low enough for the province to rebel (unless the AI brought lots of troops in, and lowered taxes to minimum, and sometimes that didn't help).

As a side note, has anyone had the feeling that pre-VI there was also a wrap-around bug with spies, similar with how traits wrap around and you risk getting a 0-star heir from a 8 or 9 - start king ?
what was happening was that I would drop 15-20 good spies in a province, and loyalty did not go down (or barely), and it did not change for a few years (I waited, hoping that, as Kristaps said, it might be gradual). And it wasn't because of taxes or extra troops brought in. But if I got them all from the province and then next turn only dropped, say, half of them, some of the time the loyalty would drop significantly more than it did before.

I am not entirely sure of the details, this was a rather long time ago and my memory sucks anyway.
I just wanted to know if you noticed anything similar, or if you have any idea (roughly, of course) of how the code for computing loyalty in relation to foreign spies works in MTW 1.0/1.1.

thanks

[bighairyman]

after VI, Spies loses their effectiveness. now as soon as your spies get into another province, they get caught and executed. now i mostly use it as a secret police , to spy on my generals and the peasants

[motorhead]

[quote=bighairyman,June 11 2004,22:35]after VI, Spies loses their effectiveness. now as soon as your spies get into another province, they get caught and executed. /quote]
well, only the highest valor spy counts towards happiness with VI. Spies often get caught by border forts, but that was the same pre-VI, except then you could flood a prov with 20+ spies and a good number could survive even that. But even with VI, I've had success sending good valor spies (3+) into provs with BFs. Granted, I don't send them on a whim, the prov has have borderline loyalty to begin with to risk a good valor spy.

@Blodrast - it could have been that the AI was moving it's spies around. Even with VI i'll sometimes see an enemy prov with my 5-star spy sitting in it, say loyalty 80%, then next turn (no new troops, no new buildings) and suddenly loyalty spikes up alot, say 140%. Even if their gov caught a virtue, none would hike loyalty 60%, which only leads me to believe a valored up enemy spy showed up.