espionage

[Grothe]

Hi folks,

please forgive me, if I should ask something, that has been asked frequently before, but the search funktion did not really help me and I'm an absolute newcomer in here.
I'm playing Civ III now for a couple of weeks and still have some trouble with certain functions, exspecially my beloved espionage, which I was absolutely fond of in Civ II.
How the hell do I get a spion? I've got the "Secret Service" (or what ever that is called in the English version, for I play the German one), I've got an embassy at least in one foreign capital (and how exactly do I get them? In the advices they say "just click on the icon of the foreign capital" - but nothing happens, if I do that), but I still can't initiate any revolts. Which units can be used for espionage and how exactly do I use them in this respect?
I would be most grateful for any help or links to helpful threads.

Greetings
Helmar

[Cerbykins]

Bad news, espionage is a fair bit weaker in Civ 3

Your request...

First: Get the espionage advance.
Second: Build the Intelligence Agency
Third: Go to the Espionage screen. You'll find it by clicking on the little 'E' (or whatever button it is in your version ) in the far bottom right.
Fourth: Pick a civ, and try to plant a spy.
Fifth: Do whatever nastiness it is you've got planned

#4 and #5 are helped by being in Communism. They have 'veteran' spies. There are no 'spy' units, at least not what you're after.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Spies as they existed (units) in Civ2 are gone. Same with Diplomats. There IS an Espionage system, as Cerbykins says, but it is toned down a lot.

First off, to conduct Espionage against an opponent you DO need an Embassy. You can establish Embassies when you get the advance Writing, and a pop-up should appear prompting you to pay for founding them (they cost from around 20-200 gold depending on distance, size etc. of your opponent) then. However, you can found embassies at later times as well.

On the side of the Mini-map should be the letters D E P and V. Click on the E and this takes you to the 'Espionage' screen. You can get to the same screen by double-clicking on the little Palace icon that appears next toyour capital (the star). On the left hand side you will see a vertical list of all the civs you have contact with. Clcik on one, then click on the button that has been activated called 'Build an Embassy' under the 'Select Mission' heading. At the bottom right of the screen the 'Safely' option under the 'Operational Costs' headingg should activate, and tell you how much the Embassy will cost to found. If you select it and click 'Execute' underneath you get the Embassy. RTFM for more on what this does for you.

Once you have the tech Espionage, you can build the Small Wonder 'The Intelligence Agency'. It is only once you have built this you can use the Espionage Screen to commit Espionage acts on other civs you have an Embassy with. This is about where I can no longer help you, as I have NEVER once tried Espionage - the last time I even got the tech Espionage in a game was several patches ago, and I found that the actions available (again, look at the manual for what they are) were too expensive to be of any use to me. Perhaps they are better in the newer patches, but I have not heard anything about it yet.

Hope this helps!

[Grothe]

Well, thanks for the answers.
My troubles start, where it comes to the little "e"-icon on the bottom-left-box. No problems to find it, but I never get the offer to establish embassies (exept once and I have no ides, what exactly caused it) and for certain, I never get any offers for espionage. The only things, I can do, is to investigate AI cities and steal techs. But I havn't managed yet to find out, how to start any propaganda action against them. In Civ II it was my favourite way to victory, simply to bribe all enemy cities (except the capitals).
Even if this seems no longer a possibility, I would still like to make some use of espionage.

By the way: Is there any known possibility to stop a cultural victory when victory by winning the space race is near at hand? I got my first game through with every chance to reach Alpha Centauri and then this stupid computer congratulates me for cultural victory.
I didn't know, whether to cry or to smash the computer.
Any suggestions?

Greetings
Helmar (still trying to find out)

[Alex]

If you only have vanilla Civ3 (the original Civ3, without any expansion packs), you won't be able to access the separate "Espionage" screen mentioned by other posters, but if you click on the "E" button you'll know what to do anyway.

[Alex]

Originally posted by Grothe
Well, thanks for the answers.
My troubles start, where it comes to the little "e"-icon on the bottom-left-box. No problems to find it, but I never get the offer to establish embassies (exept once and I have no ides, what exactly caused it) and for certain, I never get any offers for espionage.

The offer to establish embassies comes with the discovering of Writing. Espionage is not "offered" to you, and it is only available after you build the Intelligence Agency.

The only things, I can do, is to investigate AI cities and steal techs.

See above.

But I havn't managed yet to find out, how to start any propaganda action against them. In Civ II it was my favourite way to victory, simply to bribe all enemy cities (except the capitals).
Even if this seems no longer a possibility, I would still like to make some use of espionage.

Forget about using Propaganda to win the game, it is very expensive now.

By the way: Is there any known possibility to stop a cultural victory when victory by winning the space race is near at hand? I got my first game through with every chance to reach Alpha Centauri and then this stupid computer congratulates me for cultural victory.
I didn't know, whether to cry or to smash the computer.
Any suggestions?

You could always disable the option of Cultural victory in the rules screen, prior to starting a game.

[Grothe]

Hey, I've found the solution to my espionage problem. I made my way through all your FAQs and there it was. In the online manual there was nothing written about clicking onto the "Pentagon" icon of the city with the intelligence agency. Quite simple actually, if one knows, how to do it.

That leaves the second problem with stopping the cultural victory prior to space race. Disableing at the beginning of the game is no longer a possibility since I have already started that game and want to disable it while the game is running (I didn't expect to develop this far, so I wanted to keep the relative simple alterantive of cultural victory, but now I don't want it).

[Alex]

you could raze all your cities which have wonders in them...

[steven8r]

Grothe,

There's only one way that I can think of to stop a cultural victory. Check the "Victory Status" screen (F8 or the 'V' button on the Info Box--just beneath the little 'E') and check your Cultural status.

If you start getting close to victory, I guess you could start selling Temples, Libraries, Coluseums, Cathederals, Universities, or Research Labs. You would then lose the Culture points from those improvements.

However, you will also lose the Happiness/Research benefits as well.

In order to have a Cultural Victory, you have to have 20K Culture in one city or 100k Culture in your entire empire AND have at least 2x the Culture of any of your rivals.

Cultural Victory is easiest to achieve w/ the Babylonians. With other civs it is a bit harder, but not impossible. If your opponents have good Culture, it becomes harder to win that way.

Oh, and Propaganda is VERY expensive and doesn't usually work. I'd only suggest it if you have absolutely nothing else to do with your gold.

Steven

[Grothe]

@steven8r:

trouble is, that I need the libraries, universities and labs to achieve high research results to be able to get all necessary techs for the space ship.

So I presume, there is no way to just disable the "cultural victory"-possibility whilst playing?
That means: Starting all over again?

[:) Smiley]

Espionage as a whole costs way too much, and even then you don't always get it to work.

[Grothe]

No, there is no guarantee, that it does work, but it seems to me a nice possibility to "purchase" small enemy cities far away from their capital but too near to my cities. You have to know, where to invest the money, respectivly where better to save the money because it won't work anyway. I won't use it as in Civ II, but it's still nice to be able to use it at all.

Regarding my other problem I have just started a new game without the possibility of cultural victory for it seems, that the already running game in question can't be altered any more.

So if I may ask: What would be your favourite Civ for the space victory? Who has the best aspects for quick advance in technologies, preferably before all the others reach space travel. At present I'm still sticking to chieftain-level (until I got more used to all the changes and new possibilities).

[Xorbon]

One interesting thing: Once you've sent a spy to another civ, you can check with your Military Advisor ("F3" button I believe?) and see how many units of each type that civ has. Best of all, this function is free and has no risk involved!

[Alex]

So if I may ask: What would be your favourite Civ for the space victory? Who has the best aspects for quick advance in technologies, preferably before all the others reach space travel. At present I'm still sticking to chieftain-level (until I got more used to all the changes and new possibilities).

In theory, a civ with the Scientific trait would have better chances to go for the space victory, but this depends heavily on other circumstances, like the difficulty level, the map size and number of opponents etc. Sometimes you have to wage war in order to remain competitive, and a Scientific civ without the militaristic trait may not be ideal for this purpose...

I'd say that playing at Chieftain level for your first games (till you get used to how things work) is fine, but you should go up some levels as soon as you can, even if this means some initial frustration. It's basically impossible to lose in Chieftain, so this may create some bad habits which you'll find difficult to get rid of later.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Grothe
So I presume, there is no way to just disable the "cultural victory"-possibility whilst playing?

It's in here somewhere... somebody (Catt?) came up with a way to slam down culture points mid-game to do what you want.

[MrWhereItsAt]

There IS no way to turn off the option mid-game (unless there is some hack tool out there that does so - Gramphos?). If you can find that thread, Theseus, I'm sure we'd like to see it bumped - that is a new idea to me. Perhaps if you let other civs take your cities, or donated them and then took them back you could get some of your culture buildings destroyed, but then if they are needed that solution won't do much for your game, and you could always sell them anyway....

[vmxa1]

Well if you sell off the temple in the 1000 year old locations, that will slow down culture. Stop building them in newly aquired towns, but I have not heard off any way to disable it in the game.

I would think that if one knew where the flag was, it could be reset with a hex editor.

[steven8r]

Originally posted by Grothe
@steven8r:

trouble is, that I need the libraries, universities and labs to achieve high research results to be able to get all necessary techs for the space ship.

I didn't say it would be pretty, I just said that it might be possible.

Originally posted by Grothe
So if I may ask: What would be your favourite Civ for the space victory? Who has the best aspects for quick advance in technologies, preferably before all the others reach space travel. At present I'm still sticking to chieftain-level (until I got more used to all the changes and new possibilities).

On Chieftain level, any civ should be able to get to Space Race. Scientific civs might get you a head start. On the lower levels, you will wind-up doing most of the research yourself anyway as the AI's have a research penalty and won't catch-up with you uless you give/sell them techs. On higher levels, Monarch and Emperor, there is more tech parity (among the AI's--the human player has to pay attention to keep from falling behind).

Steven

[G4ian]

Originally posted by Xorbon
One interesting thing: Once you've sent a spy to another civ, you can check with your Military Advisor ("F3" button I believe?) and see how many units of each type that civ has. Best of all, this function is free and has no risk involved!

I've found this and "Steal Plans" to be the only useful parts of espionage. Propaganda simply doesn't work anymore

[Argos65987]

Originally posted by G4ian


I've found this and "Steal Plans" to be the only useful parts of espionage. Propaganda simply doesn't work anymore

I agree, propaganda doesn't have any chance.

It would be interesting if they changed the entire concept of propaganda. For example, you could use propaganda against another civs city and increase the unhapiness of the enemy city or war weariness of their nation rather than trying to steal an entire city.

[Xorbon]

Speaking of spy functions...

In the original Civilization game, I believe there was a diplomat function that allowed you to overthrow a foreign government. (I'm not 100% sure about this though. Can anyone with a good memory back me up on this?) With the ridiculous length of anarchy, this function would be deadly to the target civ in Civilization 3. On the other hand, such a function would probably cost about a billion gold.

[ftrooper93]

That sounds familiar...but I can't get it to run to check on my machines.

I agree that propaganda is too expensive. Costs over 100 per population point, it gets really hard to take a city.

[:) Smiley]

Most cases it'd just be cheaper to buy some tanks and take it. Only possible use might be cities on single-tile islands that would require amphibuous assault to take otherwise.

[The Vagabond]

Hell, it seems to be practically impossible to steal tech in Civ3. It costs a ridiculous amount of money. But I have not yet decided whether this is good or bad. On the one hand, AI never steals from you, which is good (at least this never happended to me in my first few games on Regent). But I don't like the fact I can't steal. Well, I'm new to this game, and please correct me if I'm wrong.