Coldwar Espionage Scenario

[Hobbes]

Well, the other day I saw the movie "The Russia House", which was really good and I am also reading an espionage book by John Le Carre, called "Smiley's People" and now I have an idea for a scenario!!!

Okay, it's about the KGB vs. MI6(along with the CIA and INTERPOL) vs. some private renegade agencies (such as SPECTRE).
And it would take place in Europe, most of Asia and parts of Africa, with some of the Civs being the Europeans, the USSR, the KGB (playable), MI6 and friends (also playable), etc.

Anywho, I have a few interesting ideas, but I need help! Anyone have any ideas this scenario?

[H Tower]

i think its going to extrememly hard to do. and will probably be event driven. some event suggestions: CIA aiding afghan rebels, terrorist attacks in the middle east, stealing nuclear secrets from each other and industrial espionage. i have no idea how you'll do it but i'd love to see it done.

sounds really hard though

[Case]

Can stealing a technology trigger a recieved technology event?

If it can then this scenario could work very well indeed as by aquring technologies players could be rewarded for sucess, and scoring determined by the technologies the player has stolen by the end of the scenario

[Hobbes]

Yes, Case, that is the idea!! stealing techs trigger certain things. Also, yes, the scoring would be determined in who has the edge in the technology race. But, you also have to work on counter espionage, because if your enemy has the overall edge, nuclear war will errupt.

H tower, I know it sounds complicated, but I have most of it worked out in my head (which doesn't always work in Civ2)

and I like the aiding of the Afghans, I hadn't thought of that.

... more ideas!

[Marquis de Sodaq]

If the CIA is involved, don't forget to give them points for overthrowing democracies that aren't worshipful and allied...

It sounds like a tough scenario to design. Even if you only get it half working, there might be enough innovation to interest plenty of other people! Would you make a whole range of espionage units, or just use the original two?

What about making some units be things like secret documents, codes, or such? Events could give the "killer" of such a unit gold or tech or units. Which calls for non-espionage spy units - the gun toting goons, perhaps. Or traps.

[Hobbes]

Marquis, yes codes, very good idea! okay here are some units:

General Use:
secret agent
snipers
SWAT but better (like the dudes from Rainbow Six)
Spy plane
mole
etc

Units used only by the actual nations (NATO, USSR):
police- always movable- can only operate around a city
army- some not movable until war breaks out
tanks- not movable until war breaks out
planes- some not movable unit war breaks out
artillery- not movable until war breaks out
etc

then of course there will be specific units for each nation and secret service. examples:

Afghan militia
Mig-25 Foxbat
James Bond
Red Oktober
etc

Then the units that are created by the events:

Informer - 'attack' to get message
defector - 'attack' to join your side
crashed U2 spy plane
border guards
etc

what do y'all think? other units?

[Case]

Hobbes, instead of bringing in army units, why don't you just limit the scenario to epionage and counter-espionage? This will keep the scenario simple and focused.

Some other units:

Los Angeles Class submarine - these American attack subs were used to land agents and tap underwater phone lines

Embassy - an invincible unit within a foreign country that can be used to shelter spys.

[Hobbes]

Case, you're right, I was thinking before and I though that military units would be unnecessary, because war is declared between NATO and the USSR, it's game over anyway, so I'm not going to put military units in the game, except for when russia invades Afghanistan (if I put that in the scenario).

Embassy? Submarines? Damn, Case, these are some nice ideas!

oh, here are some of the units:
from left to right- KGB "swat team", MI6 swat team, secret agent, hitman/goon, MI6 Mole, KGB Mole (note: the same graphic as the mole, is used for the British and Russian diplomats, so it's hard to tell them apart- sneaky)

[Hobbes]

here they are:

[Case]

Hobbes, those units look great!

I'd sugest that you rename the 'SWAT teams' as either paramilitary or special forces.

[Grothgar]

MI6 is the british intelligence foreign service. We dont have "SWAT" teams we have individual agents that work seperately from each other to minimise the risk of mass discovery. Anyone seen the James Bond Movies lol. By the way thought hobbes those units do look rather good. I might have to sneak one into my scenario For an espionage scenario you might want to include the SAS which are the worlds best anti terrorist/anti intelligence armed force. And its british lol. they do some intelligence work on behalf of MI6 anyway so you should include them. for SAS think Delta Force but 100 times better

[Grothgar]

by the way dont you think the double agents should have moustaches lol

[Case]

Originally posted by Grothgar
I might have to sneak one into my scenario

Grothgar how is your scenario going?

[Scott F]

There is an excellent book on Cold War submarine espionage called Blind Man's Bluff. It's available in novel-sized paperback for like six dollars. I highly recommend it. It would probably provide you with some excellent ideas for submarine espionage missions and such.

[Grothgar]

at the moment i have to sort out the events file and place the units and sort out the city improvements. and then i will release it for playtesting. But i have Civ2 burn out at the moment so im trying to muster up enough enthusiasm to continue but i will succeed

[Hobbes]

Grothga, the "SWAT" name was just temporary, that is why I stated:

SWAT but better (like the dudes from Rainbow Six)

Do you know the technical name for these dudes?

Scott, I am reading a book called "Smiley's People" by John Le Carre (the guy who did 'Spy Who Came in from the Cold', which is a very realistic and well done spy book, but if I get the chance, I will read that book.

[H Tower]

how about an event about the glomar explorer? it was a ship built by the CIA to raise a soviet submarine (a golf class i think) off the bottom of the atlantic. there could also be a russian event too about raising the USS Scorpion from the bottom of the atlantic. another ocean event could when those atom bombs were lost in the mediterranean and the us navy had to search the ocean floor for them.

if you have nuclear submarines for both sides, have an event saying "soviet and american subs again bump into each other while playing cat and mouse games. this time the game was a fatal for the soviet/american crew."

how about kidnapping/killing high ranking military or scientists or politicians as a task?

if you make most cities into a unit, when ever a spy/saboteur kills the unit an event says "soviet spys steal important military secrets from the not so secret military research base in Los Angeles" and then have another Los Angeles city unit placed

make the spys be destroyed after attacking maybe because their cover has been blown

[Hobbes]

Tower, I love the idea of raising ships from the sea floor! the sunken ship could be an 'airunit' and the salvaging ship could have the ability to 'salvage' the ship. Also the ideas for capturing VIPs is really good, now it get to use some of Nemo's general units! I'm going to keep cities as cities, but I will have R&D and military compounds that can be raided to recieve technology.

Also, I think I will include other factions into the spy game, besides NATO and the USSR. Terrorist groups and smuggling rings, as well.

Oh, any ideas on special terrain? I want to do the map soon. thanks

[Case]

Hobbes, here's how I see this scenario as working:

As the AI is far too dumb to use spys or raid effectivly, I beleive that this scenario is going to have to be designed solely for play by one side. For this suggestion, let's say the west (CIA, MI-6, etc) is chosen.

Map: Use a map of the USSR. As for special terrains, how about restricted areas (high movement cost to slow down spys), Gulags, urban areas, and borders (high movement cost and low defencive value)

Objective: the Player (playing as the west) has to attempt in infiltrate spy units into the USSR and perform espionage and sabotage activities.

How it works: Set the USSR and west at war with each other (provided the West can't have its cities taken, and spys are too weak to defend captured cities this shouldn't cause any major problems). Now the player has to move its spys about and attempt to gain technologies via spying on cities and destroying (or 'capturing') various special targets.

Also, at random(?) intervals, the player could be set special goals to accomplish (eg, smuggling defectors out of the country, stealing military equipment, etc)

At the end of the scenario the player calculates their sucess or failure by comparing the number of objective they achieved (techs stolen & units killed) with the numbers of units they lost carrying out these objectives.

BTW, In the intelligence community, people who perform covert military attacks are called 'operatives' (normal spys are 'agents')

[H Tower]

Originally posted by Hobbes
Oh, any ideas on special terrain?

uranium deposits on mountains, nuclear test ground(worthless terrain) looks like desert. on eternal's website he has gulf war scenario that has a heavy industry and industry terrain maybe you can use those as a the terrain outside cities (suburbs?) or as military research buildings. the site is here

[Hobbes]

Okay, how the scenario works:

Since the AI is dumb, there will be probably specific scenarios geared for each side. The map will consist of Europe, parts of Asia and Africa.

The USSR and NATO, are NOT at war, however there will be 'war' between MI6 and KGB, as well as war between KGB and NATO, and MI6 and the USSR. So, MI6 cannot capture USSR cities, KGB cannot capture NATO cities, but the two secret services can capture each other's bases, even though there usually isn't much point.

The Civs:
The USSR
NATO
MI6- playable
KGB- playable
Afghanistan
SPECTRE
Neutrals

The objective of the game is to give your side the advantage, by stealing technology, and making sure your enemy doesn't steal yours, because, if they steal enough techs, they can research a 'doomsday' tech that will end the game.

Normal attacking units are called "secret agents", and ones who have the espionage ability are called "moles"

This is incomplete, but I hope this gives an outline of how this scenario works.

[Case]

Hobbes, are you planning to create the map from scratch? There's a map called Silkroad which covers the area your talking about with a good deal of accruacy.

[Hobbes]

really? cool! I've been looking for one all over. I see if I can find it.

[Hobbes]

ahh, the map covered a bit too much area, not enough for detail. But, doing it from scratch is fun anyway.

[Eternal]

Hobbes, you should get that map editting program. You could change the map into a .bmp, crop off parts you don't want, resize it as necessary, turn it back into a map. That's what I did to make my NATOPact map.

[H Tower]

Hobbes, did you ever see Dr. Strangelove? your doomsday device is alot like the doomsday ship from that movie. the ship had tons of nuclear weapons onboard and was programed to detonate if any nuclear explosion happened anywhere in the world.

[Alex Woehr]

I have a few ideas concerning an espionage scenario. However, because of phone line problems, I won’t be able to check the forum very often. So I’ll put my two bits in and check in a week to see what people think.
Unfortunately, my ideas are somewhat opposed by what I’ve seen so far.

I envision a huge, multifile ToT scenario that consists of a gigamap of the world and approx. 30+ cities on it. Next to each city there would be a thing that lets you go to other maps called a city entrance. Now on these other maps we would design actual cities. This scenario would have 5 agencies (CIA, MI6, KGB, Mossad and SPECTRE) 2 civilizations that would actually own the cities on the wold map (US-Aligned and Soviet- Aligned) and a rogue civilization (Barbarians) for terrorist activities. The way that I would do it is use this to mimic the actual events of the Cold War. YOU could run through cities assassinating Black September leaders and ferrying Jewish refugees to Israel. YOU could try to rescue hostages in the Iranian embassy and combat Osama Bin Laden. YOU could find and “neutralize” resistance to the Communist party, and of course, YOU could steal the others’ technologies. The scenario would begin in 1950 with the Korean War and end in 2000 with the African embasssy bombings and maybe go further to include fictitious missions that never really happened.
Those are my ideas, do with them what you will. I won’t be back for a week or more.

[H Tower]

Originally posted by Alex Woehr
I envision a huge, multifile ToT scenario the others’ technologies.

Dear God, NO!

Unfortunately, my ideas are somewhat opposed by what I’ve seen so far.

Thank heavens there's no way i'm going to go out and buy TOT just to okay this scenario

Go with FW or Multiplayer Gold

[Hobbes]

No worries, mon! It's going to be in FW.