increase spy effectiveness

[Hereno]

Paying $20,000 to kill 8 tanks - on top of paying $50,000 each for each spy + upkeep - is dumb to the point of being broken and unusable. Spy odds need to be given some sort of minimum effectiveness, like 5% of current soldiers/spies/airplanes/whatever is being attacked.

[Prefontaine]

Paying $20,000 to kill 8 tanks - on top of paying $50,000 each for each spy + upkeep - is dumb to the point of being broken and unusable. Spy odds need to be given some sort of minimum effectiveness, like 5% of current soldiers/spies/airplanes/whatever is being attacked.

 

Spies were only good for gathering intel and destroying boats. The previous idea was they can destroy a builings worth of units. Soldiers 3k, tanks 250, planes (15?), and boats 5. The damage would fall somewhere reasonable below that mark based on the number of spies used, difference in strength (higher strength better odds, makes it harder for someone with 1 city to spy someone with 10), and of course number of defending spies.

Spies were only good for gathering intel and destroying boats. The previous idea was they can destroy a builings worth of units. Soldiers 3k, tanks 250, planes (15?), and boats 5. The damage would fall somewhere reasonable below that mark based on the number of spies used, difference in strength (higher strength better odds, makes it harder for someone with 1 city to spy someone with 10), and of course number of defending spies.

 

 

Another idea, Make spies have a cap based on the number of cities. Cities x 4 or x 8 or something. That would help balance on low cities vs high cities and odds of less spies vs more spies.

[Wilhelm IV]

Spies need to be capped full stop, as they offer a ridiculous advantage over smaller players currently. A old nation that is small can fight a small nation and utterly mess them up due to the difference in spies. Add a cap in that involves population, cities or maybe even upkeep for spies. 

 

As for damage, maybe change things around a bit, add options for spies to cause unrest in your population, perhaps lowering income, maybe give them an option to destroy improvement, launch terrorist attacks that damage infrastructure. Disable aircraft or nukes from launching. There is a few ideas you can put on the plate.

 

Do spy attacks kill other spies currently? If they don't, add that.

[Hereno]

Spies need to be capped full stop, as they offer a ridiculous advantage over smaller players currently.

Your opinion on this subject is invalid because you have no idea what you're talking about. By all means, cap spies and take away the advantage that comes from being able to spend 50+x production cost in order to kill off 8 tanks per day.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Hereno

[TheNG]

 

 

Do spy attacks kill other spies currently? If they don't, add that.

 

There is a spy operation that will kill other spies.

 

As for whether they should be capped or not, spies are definitely underpowered, a cap isn't a good idea. I used spies a lot back in the speed round, and the reason they were nerved in the first place was that since money flowed freely, people could afford to build and use gigantic spy armies, and could use them multiple times per day. Such aggressive tactics got some people complaining they were overpowered, but it was simply due to the circumstances. Now, when the game is slower, you can only attack one per day, and still need a ton of spies to accomplish any real damage with good success, but the cost and use are too expensive to get really good results, so spies are borderline useless until you get to higher levels, and their still limited to one use per day, if you can afford it. They should definitely be brought back to pre-nerf levels simply because this isn't the speed round, but we have spies that are still balanced for it.

Edited September 9, 2014 by TheNG

[Ayayay]

There is a spy operation that will kill other spies.

 

As for whether they should be capped or not, spies are definitely underpowered, a cap isn't a good idea. I used spies a lot back in the speed round, and the reason they were nerved in the first place was that since money flowed freely, people could afford to build and use gigantic spy armies, and could use them multiple times per day. Such aggressive tactics got some people complaining they were overpowered, but it was simply due to the circumstances. Now, when the game is slower, you can only attack one per day, and still need a ton of spies to accomplish any real damage with good success, but the cost and use are too expensive to get really good results, so spies are borderline useless until you get to higher levels, and their still limited to one use per day, if you can afford it. They should definitely be brought back to pre-nerf levels simply because this isn't the speed round, but we have spies that are still balanced for it.

The problem was that 20 spies could, in one attack, destroy 15 opposing spies or 10 boats. I think the nerf was fine, I wouldn't mind seeing the upkeep costs reduced a bit (maybe -10% upkeep included with the intelligence NP?)

Edited September 10, 2014 by underlordgc

[Alex]

Spies are supposed to be expensive, the intention is to keep people from spying on each other willy-nilly since there's no "range" that you can spy in. It's a soft cap, for example the #1 nation in the game could do a spy attack on a lowly alliance member's opponent, but it's supposed to be 1) expensive and 2) not super effective to keep this from happening all the time.

 

Sure, it's still possible, and it should be, but the price/effectiveness essentially makes it something you don't want to waste. It's up to each nation to decide whether having spies is worth it or not.

[Hereno]

Why not just implement a range and make the feature actually sometimes worthwhile? The only purpose it serves right now is a way to trick people like me into purchasing spies because I thought that units that cost $50k each would actually do something. That's not really a feature.