Spies - Worth it?

[El]

What the title says. Forming the spy agency ties up valuable civilian factories and unless you're a faction spymaster you can only get 2-3 operatives at most. This means that your operational range is very limited and if one of them gets caught you have to drop everything to bust them out or wait for them to die and recruit a replacement. Last game I was able to do some funny stuff like puppeting the Berlin area via a collaboration government while the Allies and Comintern took everything else, but the novelty quickly wears off. When La Resistance first came out there was talk of doing more stuff like setting up leader assassinations and coups, but I've never actually seen the option.

Should I just focus on counterespionage and put those civilian factories to better use?

[IeShima]

It depends.

Investing into your espionage branch as it is in vanilla La Resistance is a bit of a drag as it's a lot of input with little payoff. I would strongly recommend the mod "Improved Spy Slots & Upgrades" by Levi, link:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2008308819

It revamps the intelligence tree just enough to make it worth it, and also lets you recruit up to five(?) extra spies so you have more flexibility.

Beyond that, the bonuses you get from broken ciphers and intelligence networks is handy for invasions, and preparing a collaborationist government before the war can save you a huge amount of pain later on when resistance gets to high. On the other side, you can also fund and support allied resistance movements in occupied territories, do sabotage missions to damage industry, and also steal technology.

In short, get the mod that makes it better, and if you invest some resources and time into it it can be useful, but it is not a must have in most games and you can ignore it and still do fine.

[Poison]

Either way can work. Personally I always create an agency, even if I only have one spy and no upgrades. In peacetime, do the pressure mission to help get nonagression pacts with same-ideology nations for the relations bonus. Before going to war, build a network to 100 and set the agent to quiet network to avoid getting captured. This helps with naval invasions, greatly speeds up your troops' planning inside the area, grants recon and a small intel buff to division stats in combat, and reduces enemy planning and entrenchment bonuses. In ironman my 2nd, 3rd, etc spies help mainly by extending the network and spying on more countries. As a major I may put one or two on defense if I see a lot of activity, or if I've just captured the region that spy had a network in.

Operations are riskier, but you can get a nice tech boost by infiltrating any department then stealing their blueprints. Only major powers should ever bother with collab governments, only vs the US or USSR to make them surrender with less grinding, and even then they're optional because of the high cost to get enough spies and launch the op. All other ops can safely be ignored. If resistance is starting to become a problem, eg 15-22%, apply a harsher policy under the occupied territories menu to keep it under 25%. Compliance is nice, but you don't actually need it.

Edit: cyphers are also pretty strong, and worth getting as long as you know who you'll be at war with. They passively improve your intel level on a nation, and the 30 day buff to breakthrough vs that nation is great. I never bother with encryption upgrades, though. Either the AI doesn't build cyphers vs minors, or I don't notice the effects when they're slamming into entrenched infantry.

Also, I don't know the multiplayer meta at all. This is just from singleplayer achievement hunting.

[zz_tophat]

Yes but not always a priority. The 5 factories needed you found an agency is always worth doing mostly because it's fairly quick but going beyond that you generally want to focus in one area of the spy agency... if you want to invest at all. The 2-3 spies are pretty flexible and even if just left on defense are useful, that being said, many minors don't need defensive spies so use them for... something. Even just a basic intel network is good.

[El]

Originally posted by Poison:

Either way can work. Personally I always create an agency, even if I only have one spy and no upgrades. In peacetime, do the pressure mission to help get nonagression pacts with same-ideology nations for the relations bonus. Before going to war, build a network to 100 and set the agent to quiet network to avoid getting captured. This helps with naval invasions, greatly speeds up your troops' planning inside the area, grants recon and a small intel buff to division stats in combat, and reduces enemy planning and entrenchment bonuses. In ironman my 2nd, 3rd, etc spies help mainly by extending the network and spying on more countries. As a major I may put one or two on defense if I see a lot of activity, or if I've just captured the region that spy had a network in.

Operations are riskier, but you can get a nice tech boost by infiltrating any department then stealing their blueprints. Only major powers should ever bother with collab governments, only vs the US or USSR to make them surrender with less grinding, and even then they're optional because of the high cost to get enough spies and launch the op. All other ops can safely be ignored. If resistance is starting to become a problem, eg 15-22%, apply a harsher policy under the occupied territories menu to keep it under 25%. Compliance is nice, but you don't actually need it.

Edit: cyphers are also pretty strong, and worth getting as long as you know who you'll be at war with. They passively improve your intel level on a nation, and the 30 day buff to breakthrough vs that nation is great. I never bother with encryption upgrades, though. Either the AI doesn't build cyphers vs minors, or I don't notice the effects when they're slamming into entrenched infantry.

Also, I don't know the multiplayer meta at all. This is just from singleplayer achievement hunting.

But if you're not using mods, is there any way to get more than two spies (three if you pick the adviser that gives you a third slot) other than getting a lot of puppets or becoming the spymaster for one of the major factions? Most times I want to do a mission I have to pull my spies from intelligence network building or counterespionage.

[Poison]

Originally posted by El:

Originally posted by Poison:

Either way can work. Personally I always create an agency, even if I only have one spy and no upgrades. In peacetime, do the pressure mission to help get nonagression pacts with same-ideology nations for the relations bonus. Before going to war, build a network to 100 and set the agent to quiet network to avoid getting captured. This helps with naval invasions, greatly speeds up your troops' planning inside the area, grants recon and a small intel buff to division stats in combat, and reduces enemy planning and entrenchment bonuses. In ironman my 2nd, 3rd, etc spies help mainly by extending the network and spying on more countries. As a major I may put one or two on defense if I see a lot of activity, or if I've just captured the region that spy had a network in.

Operations are riskier, but you can get a nice tech boost by infiltrating any department then stealing their blueprints. Only major powers should ever bother with collab governments, only vs the US or USSR to make them surrender with less grinding, and even then they're optional because of the high cost to get enough spies and launch the op. All other ops can safely be ignored. If resistance is starting to become a problem, eg 15-22%, apply a harsher policy under the occupied territories menu to keep it under 25%. Compliance is nice, but you don't actually need it.

Edit: cyphers are also pretty strong, and worth getting as long as you know who you'll be at war with. They passively improve your intel level on a nation, and the 30 day buff to breakthrough vs that nation is great. I never bother with encryption upgrades, though. Either the AI doesn't build cyphers vs minors, or I don't notice the effects when they're slamming into entrenched infantry.

Also, I don't know the multiplayer meta at all. This is just from singleplayer achievement hunting.

But if you're not using mods, is there any way to get more than two spies (three if you pick the adviser that gives you a third slot) other than getting a lot of puppets or becoming the spymaster for one of the major factions? Most times I want to do a mission I have to pull my spies from intelligence network building or counterespionage.

Those are the only methods I know of for getting spies. And faction members/puppets need to have enough factories to contribute spies to the spymaster now. Ops are a way to gamble, so if you want a reliable benefit just build networks and don't do ops starting ~8 months before you go to war. Also, in singleplayer you usually don't need to do counterespionage unless you're a major power.