Espionage has many problem

jubjub bird wrote:

In addition to spies, if you're sitting on a ton of cash you should be buying resources from the market to build recruiting centers and build units, at a minimum.

There is always stuff you can build to make your army a little more efficient. Even stuff typically ignored, like infrastructure on highly traveled routes, can help speed up your win.

This applies less for small maps when you can easily hit a point where you're unbeatable a few days before actually winning, so constant resource optimization is less important.

Fox-Company wrote:

How do you think i have enough money that i can use it for spies? first priority is recruiting stations and production. i have the resources, i have the army, i can do whatever i want with spies and get all enemy intel and still have millions leftover.

Fox-Company wrote:

Idk why everyone cries about spies, just put 1 intel and 1 military sabo in each core city and scatter intel throughout the rest of the country, that always does the trick for me.


I guess my spies are just better or more motivated than your spies.

z00mz00m wrote:

Fox-Company wrote:

How do you think i have enough money that i can use it for spies? first priority is recruiting stations and production. i have the resources, i have the army, i can do whatever i want with spies and get all enemy intel and still have millions leftover.

Fox, if you are at this stage of the game, you've already won. The game is over. The game should have been over days ago. We're not talking about games where you are all-powerful and you have more resources than you can spend. Nobody is interested in that. There is nothing left to discuss.

On the more interesting topic of games that are not decided. Games where you are battling powerful opponents. Games where you may be at a size and resource disadvantage. This is worth discussing.

My normal strategy for using spies is to place 3-4 military sabotage spies. They have to be placed in rural provinces that have no improvements/structures. Nothing at all. By doing this, the spy will have nothing to sabotage, so he will try to do a troop reveal. I think each spy has about a 15% chance of success, so 4 gives you a 60% chance of revealing all of the enemy's armies at day change (when you see the time remaining count down from 23:59:59).

Unit reveal is the single biggest advantage in a war. You know exactly what the enemy is building, and where he's sending it. The locations and movement directions will change later in the day, so you can't assume those will be correct, but at least you know what to prepare for. This allows you to formulate a winning strategy.

Hiring 4 spies costs 40k one time fee, plus the mission cost per day. This is reasonable enough to use in the mid game (say around day 4) and doesn't require you to be a millionaire. For ~50k you have a ~50% chance of knowing the military disposition of a powerful adversary. This can have a significant impact on your chance of winning the game.

Other spy missions exist, but they are more situational, and rarely worth doing in most games. Military sabotage in undeveloped rurals is always useful. It's common practice in any competitive game between skilled adversaries.

Another thing to keep in mind is that spy reports can be shared if you have Intel Sharing (a feature of High Command) enabled with your allies. That means 1 country can hire all the spies, run all the spy missions, and everyone else benefits for free. The usual protocol is for everyone to donate cash to the spy master, who does all the spying for the team. Only this person needs to give Intel Sharing, so only 1 person needs High Command.

This is how I use spies.

Gen. Smit wrote:

Fox-Company wrote:

Idk why everyone cries about spies, just put 1 intel and 1 military sabo in each core city and scatter intel throughout the rest of the country, that always does the trick for me.


I guess my spies are just better or more motivated than your spies.

This is wrong, intel can be anywhere, so put them in stupidy isolated regions, economic, you put them in the city with resources you want to disturb the production of. Military sabotage, usually on airstrips certain buildings or for reveal army in provinces without units and buildings.
For reveal I usua;lly pu 2 x3 or 2 x 4 spies in 2 provinces so 6 to 8 spies, and that will work in general. if you put more spies in a province they often get caught so I prefer a bit of spread. and preferably in provinces I am certain nothing is present.