Spies in naval warfare

[n.c.]

The spy's skin-tight outfit is actually a wetsuit!

Anyone else use spies in naval warfare? I have never played MP (and have an old version of CivII), but against the AI they can be very effective. Presumably a person would be smart enough to stack and thus avoid use of spies.

(disclaimer- many will read this and think "D'uh"; however, there are a lot of new Civ players that I think will enjoy it)

1) If an enemy ship parks next to your coast you can sabotage it to then hit with a plane or your own ship. You can also bribe it and use it against other enemy ships.

2) Pack a bunch in a transport and send off with your armada. If the other guy has a vet battleship use two spies and get it down to the red zone. Of course, you can also use bribes.

Spies rarely get captured beforehand, and even of they do after it can be worth it to sink a battleship (given the relative shield values).

I also use them to troll other Civ's coast lines (in a transport) collecting valuable "None" units, esp. engineers. However, their single best use is to scout for coastal fortresses before bombardment and for fighters in cities before sending carrier-based bombers.

[Sieve Too]

Another interesting feature to note about Spies and Diplos bribing warships is that it costs them no movement points. Combined with some creative ship-chaining (which really is a cheat), a single Spy can bribe over and over again in a single turn.

[Drago Sinio]

I think spies and diplos are the second most important thing to build a lot of, right after caravans. They are so versatile, and relatively cheap. I often devote one of my cities exclusively to espionage, producing spies/ diplo's throughout the whole game. I do build the basic infrastucture to keep growing the city, but other than that I just keep training new spies.
When I get a boatload of them I load up a transport and send them to an enemy city, and have them sabotage it.
I also send them along as scouts with the army during an invasion. It seems they can see further away than other units.

Definitely one of my favorite units.

[Smash]

Spys are great units regardless of where/how you use them.

Cheap to build.

No support.

Flexibilty-they have so many different missions available.

[Ribannah]

n.c. I used to do that, too, but nowadays Flight comes so quickly after the good naval units that I hardly ever bother about sea warfare anymore. I only use ships for transportation (caravans and freight, mostly), and spies can't bribe a transport with cargo.

- Rib -

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Ribannah]

And I forgot to mention: I normally discover Espionage AFTER launch, if at all.

- Rib -