Spies Ruin Game

[Baron.Vladimir.Harkonnen]

"A foreign spy stole $991 from your treasury!"

[2 seconds elapse]

"A foreign spy stole $1006 from your treasury!"

[14 seconds pass]

"A foreign spy stole $662from your treasury!"

[a microsecond passes]

"A foreign spy stole Optics technology from you!"

What on earth is the point of this mechanic? It ruins the entire game. How do I turn off all this espionage crap that gets in the way of playing with airships?

[Volsung]

Agreed, there is the option to turn off diplomacy and a few other features but not spies?

The whole espionage thing is just frustrating for me tbh, stealing technology and seeing inside cities/airships is all well and good; but the AI spamming actually harmful events is annoying af

[Dewa]

The old option to spend part of your income on spy protection should come back, I didn't mind spending 1/4th of my income if it meant (near) complete immunity from enemy spy actions

[Red Bat]

Cultists get a tech that reduces enemy spy action success by 30% and it's mutually exclusive with one that increases your own. Didn't realize how much more useful the former is than the latter, but 100% spy success without spending money on a spy network is still pretty lulzy.

I personally like the idea of spies, but man do they feel overtuned. If you're ahead, within a few months you've got a +20 unrest penalty on all your cities, all your tech advances are getting passed around to everyone, your cash is occasionally being stolen, your productions keep getting interrupted, etc. There isn't a whole lot of counterplay either. I feel like they aren't anywhere near as useful to the player unless you are falling quite a way's behind.

I think the ability to steal research in particular feels a bit weird from a balance perspective. Sure I could spend a lot of time and money trying to slightly increase my own research speed so I'm researching tech slightly faster than everyone else, but they can get 50% of my progress with no investment, making focusing on boosting research feel a bit of a wasted effort as half the advantage you got goes to everyone who has spies in your area.

[=J13=Serenity]

Same here
Just non-stop enemy spy actions spam

[=J13=Serenity]

Yea, its unplayable
Just started the game
Right after unpausing all surrounding countries send an ultimatum and declared war on me
WTF happened to this game?!
Any way I can revert to a version before this new update?

[Dewa]

Originally posted by =J13=Serenity:

Same here
Just non-stop enemy spy actions spam

Same here, luckily it's always just them stealing supplies from my garrisoned ships, so it doesn't actually hurt me at all

[Haniel]

I agree with the poster; I've been playing this for years and only really used the mechanic to scout (because just spamming to 'incite revolt' was cheesy), while keeping my police level at Severe and basically paying to ignore the mechanic.

Either overhaul it or let us remove it completely, please.

[Zarkonnen]

I will look into it and overhaul as needed, yes.

[nephilimnexus]

I can't recall ever even having a spare $1000 laying around in my treasury.

[Zarkonnen]

Originally posted by Baronewbietutsdone:

Originally posted by Dewa | PTFO:

The old option to spend part of your income on spy protection should come back, I didn't mind spending 1/4th of my income if it meant (near) complete immunity from enemy spy actions

Hi!
I'm new. Just done the tutorials.
Why was that feature removed from the game?

It's replaced by building city upgrades.

[Ketobor]

What difficulty are you playing on for this? On hard, at least, it wasnt a significant problem for me, but I just annihilated my neighbors pretty fast.

[BitSizedGamer]

Personally, I like the Espionage mechanics, but agree that some tweaking might be good. Suggestion: Maybe give a stacking (limit: one at a time) Espionage defense (say +10?) for each successful espionage event that happens against a faction (sort of like, when you have $1,000 stolen, you are a bit more vigilant in real life) that is on a cooldown (like 6 months)? Might be a good way to slow down espionage spam. An alternative may be to introduce cash costs to espionage attempts (to bribe agents, etc.) to raise the percentage % of success of the spy event - with a very low baseline percentage chance of success to begin with (because no cash investment), based on the value of the reward.

[Dewa]

Originally posted by Zarkonnen:

Originally posted by Baronewbietutsdone:

Hi!
I'm new. Just done the tutorials.
Why was that feature removed from the game?

It's replaced by building city upgrades.

the anti-spy building upgrades don't help much when you have low reputation

[szucskrisztianrobert]

If possible, I would also really appreciate the option to turn spies off. Other than that, I am in love with the game.

[Walmir]

Even on the easiest difficulty, the AI ​​is still spam this ♥♥♥♥ And it's very frustrating