Sima Yi - Is he a Spy?

[Tropicdragon]

Playing as Sun Jian I had an event that said Sima Yi showed up and joined a certain warlord. A few turns later he was available in my character pool, being lv 7 he wants obviously a higher court position. Now I am wondering if he was disappointed with Cao Cao or if he was send to me as a spy? I made him a Administrator in some Backwater low populated place not certain what to do. The glossary says that if you can keep a spy at 100 happiness for like 8 turns he will switch sides. Any suggestions?

[TDBD-SEBN]

How do you know if he/she is a spy. I have no idea if AI knows how to do it. any indication anybody knows of?

[Experica]

satisfaction over time which is my assumption

[Tropicdragon]

Well I do not know if he is a spy but it is a bit suspicious that he was employed by Cao Cao and then shows up in my character pool, some characters have a note that says they were dissatisfied while being under someones rule so I imagine those are not spies but right now not sure if there is a guaranteed way to tell if someone is a spy.

[reevestone]

CA has said the AI can and will send out spies, and there are techs/items specifically designed around counterspying and hindering enemy spies. That being said, I've yet to see anything happen that clearly indicated I had a spy in my midst that was messing with my operations, with one thing that I believe to be an exception where one of my characters suddenly had their Satisfaction plummet by -30 due to "Events", even though I'm pretty sure no event had fired that I saw that would do that, so I'm pretty sure that there was a spy somewhere in my court that had just done the "Discredit Character" action.

All that being said, Sima Yi is by far most likely not a spy. In both my own campaigns and those of others I've watched, Sima Yi pretty much always leaves Cao Cao almost immediately and goes bouncing around China looking for a master. The reason is pretty simple: he's a Level 7 Strategist with the Ambitious quality just dropped in out of nowhere, his Satisfaction will be at zero and he'll leave the same turn he arrives unless you immediately give him a sweet position, something the AI Cao Cao is almost never smart enough to do. It's the same reason why, if Lu Bu ends up leaving his faction or gets kicked out, he usually bops around China getting hired by people and then immediately leaving them until he ends up with the player, because he's at minimum a Level 7 character with the Disloyal trait.

[Baby Beluga]

I got Sima Yi the same way and I have not experienced a problem after many, many turns at war with Liu Bei, his original master. I think the AI might not value Sima Yi as much as it should and that's why he shows up in the pool.