What causes some empires to be harder to spy on?

[Krytor]

One of the Majors in my game has a 120 Difficulty for the Send Spy card (The single spy, the Spy Ring is 136). Other majors have 20 and 96. Does the difference have to do with tech level of the empire? Is this info available somewhere? The manual suggests that you can lose spies from some factors, but I'm not sure these are the same factors for Difficulty of playing the card because all zones from the same Major have the same Difficulty, and the factors for spy loss in the manual would have each zone be different (Based on governor/security ect)

[zgrssd]

IIRC a big factor was the number of spies already present. Keep in mind that on anything better then a crit failure, the Spy team cards will still deploy some.

[Krytor]

Interesting. The place in question had 0 of my spies in it at the time I recorded the difficulty numbers. Anything else that might factor in?

[zgrssd]

I dug around for the Stratagem. The following data is from the 1.10.07 Beta. Keep in mind my eyes are pretty tired, so I might missread.

Table is SE_Diplomacy -> Flex Diplomatic.
Card ID's are 201/202/203.

Difficulty is 120/140/160 - Relations. Easier to infiltrate if they like you.
This is halved against any non-Major Regime

ROLL=che(249,1,CHARID,40)

Crit (50 over): Double result.
Success: Normal result.
Failure: No spies, no Relation Change
Crit Failure: No spies, -10 Relations

[Krytor]

AH! There it is. The higher difficulties hate me with the passion of many burning suns. Don't know how I missed it. Thanks!

[Returner]

Then the next quesion is: Do the others infiltrate the player? If so, do they have the same difficulty calculation? And if so, how do you determine your own standing with the faction, if you like them or not?!

[zgrssd]

Then the next quesion is: Do the others infiltrate the player? If so, do they have the same difficulty calculation? And if so, how do you determine your own standing with the faction, if you like them or not?!

I do not think the AI uses Espioange at this moment.
It is one of the many areas where Vic had to allow different rules for the AI, to make a decent game challenge.

[Cassini]

Dragged up an old thread because I'm having a somewhat related issue with 'spies'...

I've gone for many rounds without losing a single spy. I had Director with a Covert skill of 120, so I could easily play a 3 spy card against zones of a Major that I am at war with with no chance of failure - had complete 100 recon of all zones of this Major. This Director retired and was replaced with a leader with the highest available covert skill (about 55 or so). I had taken over a couple of zones of the Major I was at war with around the same time the retirement took place, then it appeared that a MASSIVE zone realignment was done by this Major and ALL of my spies in this Major all dropped to zero. In other zones I also experienced a very significant drop in spies during the same round.

The two zones marked in 'red' are still held by the Major I'm at war with, and they both zeroed out in a single round.

So... is the MAINTENANCE of spies reliant on the Covert skill of the sitting director???

I also had spies in minor regimes drop dramatically in the same round (Hamburg, Calibantown, Seedfrost - which is a vassal, Verdun - which is held by a major I'm not at war with and have 'Friends' relationship.

Going from practically perfect intel against a major I was at war with to only having slim info 2 hexes deep into their territory was a MAJOR impediment against my 15:1 kill ratio against their forces.

[Soar_Slitherine]

So... is the MAINTENANCE of spies reliant on the Covert skill of the sitting director???

That's right. If there's no Secret Service Council, the secretary is responsible instead.

[Cassini]

So... is the MAINTENANCE of spies reliant on the Covert skill of the sitting director???

That's right. If there's no Secret Service Council, the secretary is responsible instead.

That is not relevant to the question posed....

Are the MAINTENANCE of existing spies dependent on the Covert skill of the sitting director? There is a director of Secret Service. The one who retired had a skill of 120 and I can't recall a single spy being lost while that director was in. This director was replaced with one of 50 skill, and spies started to be lost almost immediately - in multiple zones lost all their spies in a single round (reference screen shots).

Put another way, does the 'check' for maintaining spies in a zone (not losing them), depend on the covert skill of the Secret Service Council?

[Soar_Slitherine]

I already answered "That's right", because the answer to both

is the MAINTENANCE of spies reliant on the Covert skill of the sitting director???

or

Put another way, does the 'check' for maintaining spies in a zone (not losing them), depend on the covert skill of the Secret Service Council?

is yes, based on both the manual section about losing spies under section 5.14 and practical experience with them, except in the specific case where it is handled by the secretary instead.