Some time after we cure those living in denial?  How exactly do you propose to design a system that doesn't get decided on random number rolls?  Your thread post is riddled with chance this and chance that, how, if not by random number generation, would you do anything you've suggested?

Well, if you happen to come up with anything functional that isn't batshit insane, or really really boring, let me know.  I can't.

Well, I think there is a way to make espionage interesting without causing too much micro-management. You just have to change the focus of spies are used for.

In the real world, spies are used for three things: information gathering, stealing technology and sabotage.

Most of the proposals I've read on this thread have focused on information gathering, but in a game like Elemental, much relevant information will be given away to players without the need for spies, such as the location of cities, the number of units guarding cities, racial info, etc.

I therefore propose the following: a MOO2 style spy system. Here's how it works:

Your cities build spies. You can move them accross the map like regular units, but are invisible to enemies when on their own. They have poor combat skills.

Spies can enter enemy cities with little chance of getting caught. Having spies in a city gives you access to a bit more info than you can usually get. The more spies you have in the city, the more info you have access to. With 5 spies in a city (max), you'll know what buildings and units are being built, what's being researched, etc. Spies that are simply info-gathering have a very low chance-per-turn of being caught.

Spies in cities can also perform actions. These actions are more likely to succeed the more spies you have in a town. These actions can be accessed in the same way as other unit abilities. Here are the options:

1) Steal resources: Spies can steal common resources, such as money or building materials. Low chance of being caught, you can set spies to do this every turn without manually going back to the spy. When caught, a single spy is destroyed.

2) Steal research: Spies can leach research points each turn, and have a small chance of learning enemy spells. Spies have an average chance to be caught at this.

3) Sabotage structure: Spies can weaken or destroy defensive structures. High chance of being caught, and if caught all spies are destroyed.

4) Poison the Wells: Gives all defending units a bad status effect (eg "poisoned"). High chance of being caught, and if caught all spies are destroyed.

5) Assassinate unit: Spies can kill any unit stationed in the town. All spies are destroyed whether this action is successful or not.

These ideas give players two options: gather useful info and don't worry about your spies, or have them do stuff and possibly lose the info. There could also be the option of leaving spies defensively in your own cities to increase the chance of catching enemy spies. The drawbacks to spies would be the cost and upkeep of maintaining them. If spies are useful by just sitting around, they wouldn't force frequent game-play decisions on the player which might cause the game to bog down.

Do you guys like my ideas here?

While I like the idea of rare spies and specialist spies, the idea of all spies having to be heroes is a bit restrictive, considering that in Elemental heroes will be people in which you have invested essence in, and thus increadibly hard to get, especially for a city-building player.

1. Make it harder for players who don't "go Gandalf" to engage in espionage, and
2. Make it just an extension of military victory, as opposed to its own strategy.

EDIT: Now, being able to make champions out of spies........ that could be useful. A little bit of the E-juice, and you've suddenly got James Bond......

Scoutdog, what kind of espionage victory do you envision separate from a military or diplomatic victory? I envision a spy as either weakening an empire so you can conquer it, manipulating leaders so you can persuade them to back you up in a diplomatic victory scenario or turning them into vassals (Grima style), or causing your culture to take hold in enemy cities until they convert to you. 

When you say espionage victory, I'm envisioning some kind of "you stole the KFC recipe you win" type of deal. What exactly do you mean when you say espionage victory? 

The best single chunk I remember is in Brad's July FAQ OP, which includes the sentence, "The channeler might choose to imbue a hero with 5 essence points to make him into a channeler." For me, the surrounding context leaves me thinking, but not at all certain, that recruiting heroes is one thing and imbuing them with essence is an option after you have recruited them.

Now I echo Denryu's link request. I don't recall any dev prose on the subject and a few of the screenshots look very much to me like units can enter towns. If they can enter towns and walk around streets, why not enter buildings (building interiors could end up as a sub-class of dungeon spaces) as well? Spying aside, I still want to see some champion units that are better suited to helping out towns than they are for field duty, like Master Farmers or Master Traders.

From what we know so far, you need to defeat an opponent's summoner to truly beat them - and I just don't see any way to beat an enormously powerful wizard through spy tricks. Weaken his civilization to erode the support it gives him, or force him to expend essence to hold it together after you sow discord, yes those I see likely. What I don't see is a sudden "oh, you got one of sauron's agents promoted to be Gandalf's personal secretary, so now you can control everything he sees and does" style victory.

No, dice roll systems blow.  Get lucky, kick ass, get unlucky, die horribly.  If I wanted to play a slot machine, I'd hit the nearest casino.

Before you guys start arguing over an espionage victory, someone needs to come up with a system that doesn't suck.  Until then, whether it's too rpgish or whatever is rather irrelevant.  As long as the options for spies all fall into the domain of the almighty rng, we're fucked.

Goodmorning all

The ultimate Espionage victory would be that all the opposing mages end up completely surrounded by your agents,  They think they are giving order on how to run thier faction, but infact all the information they ever recieve is a lie, a cleaverly manufactured lie.  If they cast a scry spell, your agents know it's going to be cast before it is, and set up a decoy so that what the wizard sees is what they expect to see. Entire towns cease to take orders from the Channler, but the channler doesn't know, doesn't even suspect. untill it's too late. Complete governmental reoganization, a silent Coup.



Also Regarding Champian Spys ... There are two ways to see this, regular hero units who also have spy abilities. (really not fun, spy becomes military)

or Special spy units that are individulized to the level that you them and thier roles by name (I would like to see this).

I still think it is a huge mistake to make Spy units field units.  Sabatoage and Assasination are Gorilla war tactics and should be restricted to the military stream.  Make high cammo units that can sweep in and target individual units to one on one combat, or who can drop a vial of liquid death # 8 upstream of some unsuspecting town. But please don't call them spys, and don't involve them in the spy system. 

I for one would really like there to be a Spy masters desk, with missions and specialists, and spy reports.  A seperate place where you command your most loyal and devious units who walk amounst the opposition unsuspected, trusted.

I agree Spy units should NOT have assasination and sabataoge abilities there is no good way of doing it that doesn't beg for save hit try it, if it fails load, repeat till the great random number generator in the sky smiles on you.  All spy missions should be long term with progressive effects. 

For example, Stealing a Lump sum of gold isn't something a spy does, setting up a system to syphen profits out of a town until the town governance is so corrupt that all of it's profit is being re-directed on the sly... way cooler. Setting that up in such a way that it can't be detected which town is failing to pull it's weight, Cooler still.   Robbing a bank is a millitary stratagy, Get in, bust stuff up, Get out and hide. Corrupting the system itself THAT is spy work.

The benifit of this system is that there are few or no important Random Number Gernations in the spy system, and it's addaptable to many different playstyles.

Anyway that's my two cents.

Take care all.

Robbie Price