Matrix Games Forums

Send a couple of spies in to a zone, and you get 100 recon on every hex. For a negligible cost, you get to see all units, their troop types, location, posture, makeup, even readiness and morale levels. Maybe not accurately (I don't know), but still more than enough. To me, this is overpowered, as it reveals too much, both from a strategic and tactical perspective, for too little an investment. And the way regime reports carefully withhold information from you until you build embassies, trade relations and such is artfully done, but it flies in the face of the amount of information revealed just by sending a couple of spies.

What do you think?

I agree it is. At least also my experience in past games. Just get a good director and you are basically set for rec for the whole game.

Is that true regardless of the difficulty level chosen? I just assumed it was because I was playing on easy.

ORIGINAL: mroyer

Is that true regardless of the difficulty level chosen? I just assumed it was because I was playing on easy.

Yeah, I'm playing on extreme and only now on round 350 or so the last two majors are somehow able to control my spying BUT would not if I spammed them. Also makes recon of minor and independent zones a bit too easy. I play full FOW.

Yes. it is OP. And I would like an option to eliminate it completely.

Yes - I also feel it is fairly over-powered. I now always try to get 3+ spies on all non-aligned and minor zones as they rarely get hunted down. 3+ spies gives you all the unit and location data you need. Not sure what the answer is though.

Some regimes seem to be better at hunting down your spies then others, some don't even try (free folk zones). Seems like gradual spy attrition everywhere would make things more interesting, and keep your Spymaster spending PPs to maintain things, and/or force you to be more selective on sending spy teams.

Somewhat related question: which stratagems are produced by which secret servive priority? I always keep it at 33% each.

You can check which priority generates points and which ones are currently available to generate for each stratagem in the reports > Stratagem Generation Overview.

I was more asking for a list, which priority which produces.

I haven't seen a complete list posted anywhere but the report does a pretty good job and will even show you the weights:

I'm not sure. Investing BP into your spy council should increase the rate at which you remove enemy spies from your territory right? Presumably the AI factions can do the same.

ORIGINAL: KingHalford

I'm not sure. Investing BP into your spy council should increase the rate at which you remove enemy spies from your territory right? Presumably the AI factions can do the same.

If that was a mechanic, it would probably be mentioned explicitly somewhere. As far as I've observed, the skill of your Secret Service Director is the main factor in how often you lose spies.

So the mechanic is assigning BP to Internal Security in your Secret Service Council, which I'm fairly sure is what determines your espionage defence.

Internal Security produces a specific subset of strategem cards, such as Investigate Leader (I think the only one that isn't locked behind a regime feat), Threaten Leader, Assassinate Leader and Gift to Faction, in the same way as the other Secret Service Council tasks. It does not appear to have anything to do with counterespionage. After a keyword search of the manual for "spy", I found it actually explicitly states what factors go into catching spies:

5.14.2.3. Losing Spies
You can lose Spies due to various reasons. Think of those disappearing as
getting killed in action or returning to base to avoid exposure.
The better the Covert Ops Skill of the Director of your Secret Service
Council, the less chance there is this happens.
The higher the Troops density, security level, Governor Secret Ops Skill,
Tradition level of the Zone of the Spy’s operations, the greater the chance
of losing the Spy.

It's worth noting that the AI does not actually use spies, it just gets a baseline level of intel for free and sometimes generates spy-related events in your regime for flavor (per manual section 5.18.).

ORIGINAL: KingHalford

I'm not sure. Investing BP into your spy council should increase the rate at which you remove enemy spies from your territory right? Presumably the AI factions can do the same.

The AI does not use Councils. Way to much work to make the AI even remotely competent at it.
See 5.18. in the handbook for all the differences. And the affordances to work around them.

It would really help to get an official statement/rework of the manual entry just to not pump BP into worthless priorities.

Does anyone change the secret service priorities away from 1:1:1?

Ah right. Yeah I'm not surprised actually, I think that's pretty standard across strategy games not to use such things. In the original Master of Orion, the AI had no fog of war and could see everything you did. But it sent out scout ships anyway, just to give the player the impression that it was "scouting", which is a neat little feature to keep the player immersed

Spies do remove all of the fog of war, in endgame of multiplayer games started with easier setting as that supposedly ends up in more even distribution of starting positions of players and major AI nations (at least it was believed to be the case in Saros's Discord -channel couple months ago).

Variation and fake reports (of fake brigades and perhaps long rails and perhaps advanced tech buildings etc.) for few turns in random places would be an interesting spice. Also might it be needed to adjust spying so that you couldn't just see insides (with the production rolls and all) of all of those military counters in a hostile hightech region with only 10-30 spies.

I wouldn't call myself a master of the game but I indeed declared myself "won" in one campaign on regular difficulty on Large maps with Severe Violence & Survival stress

I would say it is OP;

I really don't mind the RNG (for getting the card or rolling the dice) but I do mind that it doesn't cost anything!
Yes, it does cost a single BP but whatever... It should be more costly to operate spies. Money and BP visa