Most Damaging Covert Action

[Claudius Aetius]

Hi all

I was trying to figure out the most effective covert (spy) action. Sometimes it seems to me a huge waste of diplomat and adm power points, but perhaps you can give a tip: Is the use of a covert action worth it?

[Rabob]

My experience thus far:
1. Fabricate claim and Area claims are worth it for obvious reasons.
2. Trade conflict is useless, except for maybe Great Britain in rare situations.
3. Support rebels, usually this is too expensive to do and with too little effect. However in some cases it might be worth it to destabilize a country or to have the rebels be friendly towards you (So you can walk over them)
4. Steal maps, I use this quite often when playing say Castille and not having map vision over West Africa and the Kongo.
5. Slander merchants -> I wouldnt use it unless you really have too many diplomats, which should never really be the case.
6. Sabotage recruitment, this can be interesting, but very often it's just not worth spending the diplomats time on. Especially since it will often fail before you get to 80% network.
7. Sow discontent. Now this is something actually useful. It gives +2 unrest and -1 legitimacy which increases unrest even further. So if you attack say the ottomans, you would want to do this at the end of the war so they have War Exhaustion + Discontent making it quite easy for rebels to spawn.
8. Sabotage reputation I would use in very specific cases. Like against the HRE emperor or anyone else who benefits a lot from high diplo rep.
9. Corrupt officials is a pretty minimal thing. If you have the network for it sure, but it's really low impact.
10. Agitate for Liberty. While this one is nice, it's the same problem as Sabotage recruitment. Getting a 90% network takes a long time and is prone to fail.
11. Infiltrate Administration is also really nice and not that expensive, but it is so late game that you often won't see it at all. By the time you get it, you usually are the big bully, so where their army is does not really matter since you outnumber them.

In short, things that are mostly useful:
Claims and sow discontent

Things that are useful in specific situations:
Sabotage Reputation, Steal maps, Support rebels, Agitate for Liberty

Things that you might as well forget about:
Corrupt officials, slander merchants, trade conflict, sabotage recruitment.

Very often it's more useful having a high network for the bonuses to siege and tech, rather than spending it on an action.

[tonypa]

I agree with Rabob - making claims and Sow Discontent are important, everything else can be ignored unless you are constantly building spy network on rival anyway.

If I know I am going to war against certain country, I will try to build up some Spy Network before the war for the Siege bonus.

[Tasty Bunny]

Other than fabricating, it's all pretty much useless other than two near-end game operation-map hack and agitate liberty.
Sow discontent have some use but personally, it's also practically useless for another reason: AI does that always toward eachother themselve so I rarely even get a chance to use it anyway lol

[Claudius Aetius]

Thank you all! You help me a lot! Special thanks to Rabob, very nice guide!

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by Rabob:

[...]
3. Support rebels, usually this is too expensive to do and with too little effect. However in some cases it might be worth it to destabilize a country or to have the rebels be friendly towards you (So you can walk over them)
[...]

One thing to add: This can be used to break PUs if you support Pretender Rebels in a PU Junior which can occasionally(!) be quite useful.