Twilight Question? Espionage...Where'd the slider go?

Due to a change in the way espionnage works the only way to increase your knowledge of another race is to directly use your agents on one of their worlds.

Frogboy did say that there was going to be a change in that in the final version but seen as nothing has been seen on that side of things in the last few betas i guess it is not going to change, unfortunatly. BTW You can still not spy on minor races either!

This makes me sad =(

Oh well, I have said agents, so I'd best be pulling them away from the super secret meeting they've been having around the galactic coffee brewer for the past 8 game years...

Kinda of an odd change really.


I would really prefer the individual sliders to be put back in place, with your agent training/spending being the slider in the domestic bar.

Perhaps a slider to divy up the total percentage of espionage being spent towards different AI players: 45% to AI 1, 20% to AI 2, 35% to agent training...

Perhaps even the placement of an agent within the AI's worlds would add some sort of percentage based increase or multipier to the amount funding being spent on them.


All in all, I think agents should COMPLEMENT to the old system, rather than replacing it....

Also, placing agents stops production of the building they are placed on. Some buildings (starports and initial colonies) cant have agents put on them, but as far as I know, all the other buildings are fair game. This makes spies useful in certain situations. Attacking a planet? Place a spy on a farm for one turn and billions starve, making the planet easier to attack. Wanna stop a planet from making ships? Place your spies on their industrial centers and they wont be doing anything on the planet fast.

It should also be noted that spies also counter act spies the AI places on you. So if an AI places a spy on one of your planets (a stock exchange for example) you need one of your spies to negate him (note that the AI does this as well). Thus you need to understand when to use your spies for offense and defense. Unless you have counter espionoge centers on all your worlds. Then use your spies as offensivly as you want.

On the flip side, I do like the original espionage system from DL better myself. Perhaps use that with agents preforming their primary function as of now (stopping building production).

It's been like that for a long time, though... you skipped...

Yes, I stated this above.

I have kept up on the game, visiting the galciv2.com many times, even though my gaming attentions were elsewhere.

I know how to use spys to shut down buildings however I did not find it listed anywhere that they replaced the slider bar as far gaining information from your neighbors

If the absence of the slider bar had been in one of the posts I sifted through for my answer, I wouldn't be here posting for some clarification.

Would you like to know more?

Ty for the tips on using spys

Brad mentioned some time ago making a "2.0" update to Galciv, after TA is released I think. He was going to consider allowing spies to be used passively, ie you could assign them to gather intelligence against another empire without you actually having to place them on a building and exposing them to being rubbed out by an enemy agent. I presume we will still see this update at some point in time. Many people have expressed dissatisfaction with the new spy system and Brad assured us that this would eventually be addressed.

well, been a while, and I stopped playing GC really because of the spy system. I don't know if anyones played Pax Imperial Emanate Domain but that really had the best espionage system.

You had a kind of Slider that would increase or decrease your Espionage rating. This then was compared to other races for success/ failure when performing black ops missions such as causing instability, stealing ships, ship positions/ movent ect. I would like to see something like this, and it dosnt seem like it would be hard. I think the formula was something like dividing your espionage with the number of planets. as well as buildings to improve planet specific security.

Still I hold the opinion that you are not the micro manager, but the one with the plan to guide your race. Your advisor's should be managing your spies, not you.

Also, you should choose how you spy on what. if all you want is military info, then click a box. Civilian sector? another box. Flat out steal ships? cause government instability? start rebellions?

Well, Im not the game designer, but I would surly pay money for that.

This was gone over soooo much when DA came out. There was (to my knowledge) no thoughts of reverting to the old system.

Just a FYI, the things (that I can remember) that changed from DL->DA are:

-Super Abilities for each race
-Espionage system overhaul
-Asteroid mining introduced
-Mega Events now an option for in your game
-Tech Tree consolidation (ex Laser I, II, III etc are all in one segmented block)
-Extreme Planets requiring new techs to colonize

There may be a few others that I have forgotten though.