Counter-Spying Is Very Limited in Civ 7

[Aluminum Elite Master]

In a game recently, every CPU must have been spying on me:

One turn, someone gets a tech.
Couple turns later, someone else gets 2,000 science.
Few turns later, someone gets 700 culture.
Another few turns later, someone gets a tech.

So, eventually, I go the in-game encyclopedia to figure out what I can do. Ah ha! I can use the counter spy endeavor!

But... well... I can only have one instance of this endeavor at a time? Everyone is spying on me. Stopping *one* of them is fine, but there's at least 3 more I'd estimate, and sure enough, I still kept getting stuff taken from me.

I understand that there's probably a social policy, or a wonder, or a unique, that allows more ability to counter-spy (as in, at least one additional use of the endeavor).

That said, it seems absolutely stupid to me that I am sitting on plenty of influence yet cannot counter-spy anything more than 1 enemy player. That's awful design IMO. Civ 6 was terrible, too, don't get me wrong, with needing a spy on almost every other neighborhood to prevent partisans. But at least in Civ 6 I could counter-spy against more than 1 player.

Why not, by default, allow players to counter-spy with as many endeavors as they need with just an escalating cost per simultaneous endeavor added? How is that not the system in use, here? I could pay the influence to do this, too.

[Zack]

I hated that too! So much that i started a war against the worst one. Later i was at war against 4 of 5 Civs.

Counter espionage should be always available and boost able via extra points.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Zack:

I hated that too! So much that i started a war against the worst one. Later i was at war against 4 of 5 Civs.

Counter espionage should be always available and boost able via extra points.

Exactly!

I would understand if there was a slight influence upkeep cost, or a slight rise in the cost of having multiple endeavors... but an arbitrary limit to one counter-spy endeavor is silly.

I actually like the idea of using an endeavor over having to build and place a bunch of spies in different districts. That part is great. Just need to let us counter-spy more than a single other player.

[Teslos]

Yeah, counter spy is functionally useless unless its a 1v1

[DadouXIII]

Could do with some improvements.
I wonder if the AI spies on each other, or if they just reserve their spying actions against the player. Because it sure doesn't feel that way.

[Kidkiedis]

Originally posted by DadouXIII:

Could do with some improvements.
I wonder if the AI spies on each other, or if they just reserve their spying actions against the player. Because it sure doesn't feel that way.

Recently I was the only civ not involved in our local World War. So AI attacks other AI quite often, so most likely steals techs too.

[Amethyst_Cat]

I've only seen a message about spying against me once in my two playthroughs. Either lots of stuff was being stolen from me without me knowing or the AI had very little to do with spying. I agree it's a bit limited but the diplomacy aspect is more about building up your world 'cred' now and spending those points to achieve goals.