IV. Espionage

In this section...

The nature of spies

The wise know that the right information at the right time is worth two armies. Spies gather information about far empires, foment rebellion in neighbouring lands, and keep an eye on your generals' actions.

Spies are not represented on the map. Rather, they are a formless pool of snitches and scumbags which are available to further your foreign policies. All espionage operations are conducted in the espionage window. Intelligence agencies are expensive to maintain but of prime importance in gaining the right information to give the smell of truth to your lies.

The algorithms used to determine the outcome of each type of espionage mission are given in the appendix. The civilized nations tend to perform espionage better than the clueless barbarians.

To send agents on missions hit the large brown Espionage button. This will give you a window where you can buy spies and send them to work. You may wish to enter a mission for multiple turns, which means the mission is executed every turn until you either cancel it or run out of agents.

Types of missions

1. Assassinate agents

Vermin extermination. It's a nice opening move when you want to hammer someone with agents next turn as it removes their ability to retaliate.

2. Aid saboteurs

This causes the target player to lose funds as terrorists get educated. Thank God they don't have access to the Internet.

An Iberian dagger with a very nasty blade. Remember to turn the blade horizontally, so it doesn't catch on your ally's ribs.

3. Bribe leaders

This lowers the loyalty rating of a random leader from a designated nation. Each agent carries one offer, so assigning multiple agents means that this mission is executed multiple times, finding a random hero for each offer.

Note: this mission costs 2 gold per attempt.

4. Intercept messages

This is the chance that one message, at random, from anyone in the game other than yourself, will be intercepted. If no messages were sent last turn, then the mission automatically fails.

5. Scout garrison

A successful mission will reveal all units within the sighting range of one random city in the target player's empire. Note that this can be deep behind enemy lines, as spies are easy to hide in cities.

6. Locate cities

Advance scouts will explore the lands beyond your empire and report the location of any cities they discover. This will render the city "seen" on your map but not "spotted". That is, the city and the surrounding area will be drawn on your map, but you will have no information about armies or leaders in the vicinity.

7. Slander a ruler

This will lower the target player's happiness rating (expressed as a percentage), which primarily affects the population growth, which in turn affects taxes collected. Happiness also, however, determines the production of rebel units.

8. Watch hero

This mission, assigned to a designated hero in your command, will return the hero's current loyalty rating if successful. As in mission 3. Bribing heroes, check for detection first. If the spies are detected, the loyalty rating is not reported and the leader's loyalty takes a moderate drop.

9. Gather state secrets

This mission will return info on an empire. This report may include the happiness rating, population, tax rate, leaders employed, and the number of military units (not type, though).

Next section: Diplomacy