Is "Covert Action", the Freedom ideology, broken?

[top_candidate]

There is a first tier Freedom ideology called "Covert Action". The benefit gained from Covert Action is supposed to be: "doubles your chance to convert city-states"... I just selected Covert Action while coincidently having a spy in a city-state with chance for coup of 76%. The chance for coup remained the same after Covert Action was selected..

If you select other ideologies that benefit things like culture, happiness, or gold, you see the benefits immediately, so I don't know if Covert Action is broken or only works conditionally or whatever.... I didnt expect to see a chance for coup of 152%, but I did expect to see the chance increased to the max allowable coup chance, 85%

[Dose]

I believe that you misunderstood the description. The actual description of Covert Action is "Chance of rigging election in City-States doubled." This does not refer to the chance of a successful coup; rather, it refers to the chance of rigging the election that all city-states hold every 15 turns.

[mss73055]

This bonus only helps when there are spies of other civs present. With one other spy present it typically raises your chances from 50% to 66%. And when the city state is heavily contested the bonus becomes non-existant.

Freedom got a few tennets to deal with city states. I think the spying one is by far the worst of these.