No Biological Planting for Spies

DarkCloud · October 21, 2001, 16:58

In the newest version of Computer Gaming World (the one with the Everquest cover) there was an announcement that Civ III will not allow spies to plant biological weapons in a city... Is this true... If so why? ????

I see no real reason except:

"I am tramuatized and an @ss**** and I want to sue someone."
[Avoiding Lawsuits of idiots]

and

"I am a terrorist- I train with Civ III"

ixnay · October 21, 2001, 17:00

Maybe you can add it with the editor...

MarBaS · October 21, 2001, 17:11

when is the last time a spy planted a biological device anywhere in history. Thats not even a job of a spy sooo i dont see why they would have them do it anyway. Maybe a different unit could.

SerapisIV · October 21, 2001, 17:37

How was poisoning the water supply useful in Civ2? All it did was piss off the AI or any the player if the AI did it. It barely touched or hurt production. There's been a lot of talk about simplifying Civ3 to its core gameplay (by Jeff and Sid) as one of the main goals. Poisoning the water supply was not useful, so why include it again?

Sarxis · October 21, 2001, 20:25

Hmm, I can't say that historically, biological planting has been an effective tactic.

I mean, look at the Anthrax scares here in the U.S.- not doing any substantial damage except the 'scare' factor.

Of course, we will have to see what comes to pass of all this.

Blake · October 21, 2001, 22:17

But it's not really the job of a leader of a civilization to order Anthrax scares

, more the job of fanatics, or possibly terrorists sponsored by a government.

But anyway, mass killing of civilians and destroying buildings is NOT the job of spies! Spies spy! They *may* sabotage research projects or 'secret weapon' projects too, they could possibly be used to assassinate as well.

If you want to do all this evil sh*t I think the best way would be to introduce a new government, possibly Fascism, and give it a "Terrorist" unit, which has such nasty abilities as blow up buildings, poison water supplies etc. It would be a cheap'n'dirty alternative to the more civilized method of blowing up buildings with airstrikes. Or, perhaps you could have an option to sponsor terrorists, which would then go around unleashing random chaos on the target civ.

Ofcourse use of terrorists would cause an international incident.

Most or all of the terrorist actions could probably be added in a mod.

player1 · October 22, 2001, 02:05

Poisioning in civ2 was pretty useless, but Infector from CTP2 (not CTP1)
was very usefull:
-it lowered production for 20% and added -5 Unhappines,
-or killed 20% of pop

Urban Ranger · October 22, 2001, 02:26

Most spies just convertly collect information. This is their job. Using biological or chemical agents is off since your spy will mostly get killed.

Unless you have religious fanatics for spies, that is.