Espionage??

from GalCiv2 Forums
Ok. Have been playing quite abit of late. Created a custom race specializing in espionage as well as a custom tech tree and componants which would maximize their espionage far beyond anything in the base game. So here's my beef. Have 300% or higher (have had upwards of 500%+) espionage rating and sending spies to spy on a foreign race, 9-10 times my spy is neutrilized in 1-2 turns no matter how weak the opposing race is with espionage. playing often on normal setting for testing. Is their something wrong with my understanding of espionage or are the game mechanics messed up currently in regards to it? The hwole idea with the custom race is that the race would have little in regards of technology, but extremyl high espionage... something like thew spy race back in Master of orion 2... any help here is appreciated.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Espionage only allows you to spend more per week on training spies. You'll get them quicker than others. Once they are created, they are just as good as other race's spies. Heck, that first spy you get for chump-change is as good as the spy you train for 10,000bc.

One difference for you to note between MoO and galciv, you don't need to worry about the race knowing who's spies they are, they aren't flagged by race like they were back in MoO.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the clarification. Might need to evaluate how I design the race then. So basically in order to effectivly spy you need to pump out spies and place them like crazy? Is there any way to make spies more effective as well?
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The best methods to place spies is to:

A) Place in mass amounts. This gets large amounts of spy man-weeks done at a time before the AI can react AS well. If you trickle in 1 every time you gain one, so will they. Mass amounts I consider 10+, you really need to swarm them.

B) Aim at any facility that generates increased income. Spies are created off a slider that goes from 0%-25% of your income. If you decrease their income amount, you decrease the amount spent on training a spy, thus slowing the training process. A spy has a solid bc cost designated to it (depending on how many you've trained so far that game, it goes up as you train more and more, thus my 10,000bc comment).

Once those two things are taken care of, if you get to the point that you can pop out a spy faster than they can (due to your increased espionage ability and hopefully stronger economy) then you can continually keep them locked down and eventually even spread more spies into their worlds.

It's a slow and COSTLY endeavor, often cheaper to just buy armadas worth of ships and troop carriers. BUT I've been able to pull the lead man down to attackable range by shutting his economy down, thus restricting his navy. Once I had him running in the red, his ships started disappearing due to wars and never were replaced.

Most cases though I'll just place about 4 or 5 to a race just to hit Low rating to see their influence ratio number, then pull them off from that race. After that I'll place them on planets I'm about to conquer to shut down morale (for propaganda invasion) or farms (to starve billions of people the week prior to invading).