Spies to defend ... how much is enough?

heretk · March 7, 2003, 17:19

While I do enjoy the expanded options with espionage in MOO3, I do not like the amount of damage and at what frequency it can occur.

Let me elaborate. I was keeping a constant amount of spies (about 8) in my empire at all times. The thought was to use them to protect myself from spies. Now, as the Humans, I have a great bonus to Cunning, but that and the eight spies didn't do too much. I stopped playing last night right at the peak, where I was getting four to five spy attacks each turn. There are only five AI empires.

My question is: just how many spies does one need to provide adequate defense against enemy infiltration? And does the type of spy matter, like needing political spies to protect leaders, scientific spies to guard your reseachers, etc.

Asmodean · March 7, 2003, 17:26

How low do you have your oppressometer. The lower it is, the easier spies get into your empire.

Asmodean

Harry Seldon · March 7, 2003, 21:42

I have about thirteen in reserve for my Evon empire. I still have other spies getting through. I think it depends on how big of a dog you are, too; I've been number one on the victory screen for a while now and the longer I remain the more system seats of government I lose.

Tuberski · March 7, 2003, 22:36

It also depends on the type of spy you have in the reserve.

A Military spy won't stop an enemy Scientific spy. And so on and so forth.

I try to keep 2 of each at all times.

ACK!

heretk · March 8, 2003, 01:12

Quote:

Originally posted by Asmodean
How low do you have your oppressometer. The lower it is, the easier spies get into your empire.

Asmodean

I have my Oppressometer set to the high setting (within the brackets).

Yolky · March 8, 2003, 01:17

Quote:

Originally posted by heretk

I have my Oppressometer set to the high setting (within the brackets).

do what I had to do and bite the bullet and make the oppressometer even higher and lower the taxes too make the people happy. Remeber the brackets is where you won't have any problems with you population.

I guess you don't complain when your spies do all the damage eh? just have to make the oppmeter higher.

I could be wrong but any spy will help dosn't matter if it is military or scientific. its the oppmeter that really makes a difference.

hope this helps

Davor

Vince278 · March 8, 2003, 02:02

I always have a spy and a spare in each category but I rely on the O-meter yo-yo to do the cleaning.

vmxa1 · March 8, 2003, 03:05

How much is enough? If you get a difinitive answer let me know. In the mean time I try to have two of each standing by, not sure if the type matters or not.

Vince278 · March 8, 2003, 03:34

I thought you needed that type spy to defend against that type attack.

Yolky · March 8, 2003, 18:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Vince278
I thought you needed that type spy to defend against that type attack.

I have read that any spy in the reserve will help in defence, only when they are specilized for military or scientific or whatever, that is what they are only good for.

I had a scientific spy for defence and the enemy was still attacking my scientific leaders and stealing my tech. only when i bumped up my oppmeter did it stop. lower the taxes to make people happy.

Davor

ArmaGeddin · March 8, 2003, 21:43

The whole spy thing sucks in my opinion. The game would be great if we could just turn off that part of it at the start.

Vince278 · March 10, 2003, 00:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Yolky
I had a scientific spy for defence and the enemy was still attacking my scientific leaders and stealing my tech. only when i bumped up my oppmeter did it stop. lower the taxes to make people happy.
Davor

The O-meter does work better than counter-spies. I hate having to adjust the tax sliders everytime I adjust that up or down. Gets tiresome when it becomes about every 5 turns or so.

bakalov · March 10, 2003, 03:27

Th best defence from spies I have found out till now:

Citizenship: Loyalty
Government: Despotism

Opressometer: 7

90-95% of the spies cannot get in and if once one gets in set your opresometer to 10 to catch him quickly and then return the opressometer back to 7.

And the leaders are always attacked by the political spies ;-)

Prothero · March 10, 2003, 05:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Yolky

I had a scientific spy for defence and the enemy was still attacking my scientific leaders and stealing my tech. only when i bumped up my oppmeter did it stop. lower the taxes to make people happy.

Davor

I had 10 scientific spys and still lost 5 techs, only the oppressometer helped me.

BALROG · March 11, 2003, 22:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Tuberski
It also depends on the type of spy you have in the reserve.

A Military spy won't stop an enemy Scientific spy. And so on and so forth.

I try to keep 2 of each at all times.

ACK!

Hmmm... Spys in reserve actually DO something? I guess I didn't catch that from the "manual."

Tuberski · March 11, 2003, 23:32

Quote:

Originally posted by BALROG

Hmmm... Spys in reserve actually DO something? I guess I didn't catch that from the "manual."

It's all relative, but they do help some, but not as much as the "O-meter".

ACK!

bakalov · March 12, 2003, 03:39

Yeah, sometimes you get a message like "One of your operatives killed a spy belonging to ....." - this is when your reserve spies did some work. This is relatively rare event, though .....

Prothero · March 12, 2003, 05:22

i heard a rumor that 10 spies = 1 step higher on the oppressometer. However, it is only a rumor.

moomaster · March 12, 2003, 09:44

build lots of ground military units in each planet, and couple of spies in each category

Hydro · March 12, 2003, 10:10

Another option is to use one of the mods that are out to decrease the influence of spies. Some of the methods suggested: longer build time (so fewer spies), lower luck (die off faster), increase cost (bankrupt spy-happy empires - likely to hamstring the AI).

A friend of mine is playing with this since he hates spies and wants this to be an option he can turn off. He currently has spies taking 100 turns to build and living about 4 turns and, so far, he is happier. I'm likely to take a middle road make build times higher, but am undecided.

One side benefit of toning down spies is that leaders can now actually help your empire, as opposed to being a bloody assassinated mess found in your Imperial Council Room the year after they join you.

bakalov · March 12, 2003, 10:41

After some time they die just from old age :-) And this is inevitable ....

Flinx · March 25, 2003, 14:13

Quote:

Originally posted by bakalov
Yeah, sometimes you get a message like "One of your operatives killed a spy belonging to ....." - this is when your reserve spies did some work. This is relatively rare event, though .....

I get this message all the time, even if I have no spies at all. Having spies who are not deployed in the field is not the source of this message.

Flinx · March 25, 2003, 14:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Yolky

I have read that any spy in the reserve will help in defence, only when they are specilized for military or scientific or whatever, that is what they are only good for.

I had a scientific spy for defence and the enemy was still attacking my scientific leaders and stealing my tech. only when i bumped up my oppmeter did it stop. lower the taxes to make people happy.

Davor

Where did you read about spies having defensive abilities? The only thing I have seen is people in the forums saying that they keep spies in reserve for defensive purposes. My experience is that the oppressometer is the only thing that affects the frequency or success of spy attacks.

Tuberski · March 26, 2003, 22:23

Quote:

Originally posted by bakalov
After some time they die just from old age :-) And this is inevitable ....

I had Loknar come to help me once, he had survived 1000's of years to come help me. A few years later he died of old age!!!!!

Ridiculous.

ACK!

bakalov · March 28, 2003, 05:05

Flinx, you can find out when your defending spies do the work by the text of the message in the sitrep. If it says "One of your operatives killed a spy belonging to ...." then this is the case .... Otherwise it says "Your security forces ..."

Noone · March 28, 2003, 08:24

Ive found that counter spies are no where as usefull as O-metre, but that has been said about 5 times already....

Ive found that when you get a sudden spike in spy actvity its often cos uve "annoyed" the new orions, cos when they send spies i dont think anything stops them (well a slight exageration :|) and they can smash you up pretty bad.

moonmaster mentioned that having troops on a planet helps, do they? i havn't bothered to put troops on planets cos of the passive ai.

MichaeltheGreat · April 3, 2003, 00:23

After reading this thread, I decided to play around a bit, and with Humans and corporate government, I've been able to crank the oppressometer all the way up, get more or less viable tax rates (15-17% planet, 6% empire) and waste enemy spies on a regular basis. I've had no asset losses, and no leaders assassinated (I've got some I'd actually rather keep). This is with 7 to 8 of my spies hanging around.

Previously, with the oppresometer at 5 or 6, I was getting reamed on a regular basis, and really hurting with it at 2 or 3, no matter how many spies I had sitting around, or what types.

Dr. A. Cula · April 30, 2003, 07:48

Slightly off-topic: how do you get so many spies? I can only get 4 or 5 before they die of old age, and that's only one time, at the beginning of the game. For the rest of the game, I only have about 2 or 3 spies at one time. By the time I finish training a new one, at least one of the others has died.

And about leaders: after the 2 leaders I started the game with were assasinated, no other leader came to join me. Did this mark my empire as one where important people get killed (so nobody wants to come here anymore), or was it just bad luck?

Edit: can't spell

gloob · May 4, 2003, 18:04

To Dracula: increase their luck by picking cunning level "dangerous". Some social techs as well as some leaders also increase spy luck.

Setting random events to high yields more leaders. I also think being a low ranked empire heightens the chance for getting leaders, despite the text "leader joins our successful empire".

Having events set to frequent produces leaders faster than they die naturally. Having bad relationships with someone, especially with the NOs, is disasterous. I played Nommo (O-meter at 7) and got my 4 leaders killed by NOs in 4 consecutive turns. After that, they blew up every gov seat I had. Every 2 turns I caught a spy, but apparently NOs can produce spies faster than that.

MichaeltheGreat · May 15, 2003, 12:11

If you have the opressometer at 10, it's rare to non-existent that enemy spies will do anything to you, and you don't need unassigned spies at all.