Awesome, that's a much needed tweak to AI. Is that the extent of the changes though? One of the major complaints was being crippled with agents, and another was the exorbitant cost that fielding agents required. Decreasing the cost of agents (or making it dependent on the number of agent's you currently have available/in the field) would solve that well enough.
Sweet can't wait to test it out.
Not quite what I was hoping for, but a perfectly good solution I think.
Jonnan
Starstriker, the cost of agents now becomes much more reasonable because you don't have to risk losing them just to gather intelligence. You no longer have to constantly replace your agents as they get nullified every few turns.
Fixed pics.
Exactly...costs should stay reasonable for those playing a passive espionage game. It's only when you're trying to use the spys in an agressive manner do their cost start hurting.
That's not to say we wont need further help balancing, but we think this is step in the right direction.
This spying system sounds better than what it was, but it still doesn't make me go "Yay, spying!". It's just a feature in game that I must give some consideration but it's still not "fun".
I don't know how to make spying fun, but this doesn't sound like it...
Btw, if passive agents can't be nullified, how does one prevents enemies from spying you?
I do have a question, though. Once you reach the highest espionage level with a civilization, does it remain for the rest of the game, even if you reassign all your spies elsewhere?
Oh, and how does technology theft figure into all of this?
To be honest i expected a lot more from the improved espionage promised in 2.0. It seems just a bit streamlined but it will remain as much interesting as it was before........
Thanks for the workaround
What i had hoped to see in the spying section was what you have included and the inclusion of a system that upon placing spies on a planet you could choose whether to nulify the building or actively try and tech steal from the base tech of the building you placed the agent on. IE if you placed an agent on a factory you got 'X' percentage chance of stealing a production tech etc...
That said i am happy to see the new version you are releasing so thanks
Yeah, I know people we're hoping for an overhaul, but we really needed to keep things simple for backporting purposes (plus there's only so much you can do with a 4 year old codebase before massive pain ensues).
The main issues that we're trying to address here are...1. Gaining intelligence levels by spys that can be nullified is a PITA.2. Spys get too costly (mostly becuse of the tug-of-war caused by 1).3. You should be able to spy on minor races.There were TONS of cool ideas that were thrown around the forums concerning Espionage, and they've all been filtered into our massive 'GCII possibilities', but at this point it needs to be very straightforward (but gameplay and coding wise) to be considered for an update.
N.P we still love you . Any update to the espionage system is happily welcomed!
Oh and god bless you for point 3!
There was no way to stop this in DL, so in respect to passive intel, we are back to DL's methods.
Seconded...er now it's like...thirded or so? In DL once you hit advanced and stopped spending on a race, you'd get random tech steals. In DA/TA it seemed on when you'd have a spy on a race and hit that high did you get a tech steal. How will 2.0 work in this resepct?
And a whole new question I think, I see a Place button for the passive agents, can you remove them to place elsewhere, or are they gone forever in intel gaining/maintaning?
I was always more interested in passive spying anyway. Nice to know I wont need to bankrupt my economy just to get some info on people in a timely fashion.
*claps*
Sounds good. I hope the negotation upgrades are good... sad that UP ain't updated... or is it?
I griped *lots* about being forced to harm a neighbor just to learn about them, so I'm pretty darned pleased to see the empire-wide location for spy units. But I can't deny that I was hoping the "fix" would include some way to assign resources to empire-wide counterintelligence.
Don't you mean GCIII by now? I've actually begun to expect a new category for GCIII to appear shortly after y'all wrap up the 2.0 effort. I expect a fair share of folks will at least putter with GC2 over the next couple of years, and it seems like "out of scope ideas" could help make the core engine work going on for NotMoM yield base code that's as flexible as possible.
what do you guys mean by campaign updates?
Correct, GCIII I'll edit accordingly.
Good enough to me!
I sure would have liked a true 'sabotage' option integrated in an entirely new espionage system, but it makes sense to use the opportunity to enhance what we already have with the newly added passive principles while keeping in mind sky's the limit for GCIII. Code_wise, any extra feature(s) simply ran the risk of destabilizing gameplay too much.
Espionage is more of a strategic concept which *could* destroy the entire dynamics of this game if wrongfully rendered; as the past 'versions switch' proved to us.
Nice touch with the 'Extremes count' & the 'Events control', fine-tuning these two is some additional customization which will allows even more (or better!) variable conditions.
I would have loved to see Extremes become increasingly valuable by cranking the odds of high bonus tiles on any; say, a single Predator Mine per Immense map when 10% (rare) is selected as option *would* make that one or two Toxic planets a treasure to fight for... etc.
Sometimes, it's all in the smallest details (including those yet to come!).
I want to make a suggestion to this new espionage system. I'd like to see the necessity to continue spying on races if you want to see updated information/updated tech researched or even for tech stealing. The reason is in the beginning we may not be able to counter all the spies (especially playing suicidal as cash is tight in the beginning) and I would hate to see that specific races know everything about me from early/mid-game on before I have a chance to start countering.
Likewise, the reverse is also applicable. A human player should not know everything about a race for all of the game length just because they hit that race with spies early on. The system should account for some maintenance to continue our information stream and/or tech stealing.
Just my two cents.
-Jonathan
WHAT!!!!
You are making me choose between Megaman 9 and this game's newest beta (2.0 of all things)? Here I thought the Drengin were evil, but this... this... Arghh!
/joke
All joking aside, its nice to see the spying problem addressed (and improved by being able to spy on minors).
Keep up the good work!
Although not directly related to the new espionage system, please make espionage bonuses more useful. As it stands now, i believe they only allow you to spend more bcs towards spying. This is nigh useless and any race that is forced to take it as a bonus is gimped as a result. Please make it more worthwhile, like reducing the costs of spys or increasing the info gather rate.
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