Szemis wrote:
When doing a round up it seems like it doesn't matter how much pop you have in industry regarding the boost that security gets. Right?



I'm currently playing a Broken Lords game and I am getting infiltrated quite a bit. I've got all my pop currently generating dust, so is there any major negative to just constantly doing round ups?

Does anyone have something good to say for spying?

To successfully defend against spies in Shadows, you must not neglect the espionage aspect. Roundups by themselves are not enough.

• Build Watchtowers everywhere. If they can not get line of sight of your cities, they can not infiltrate them.
  • If there are areas you can not cover with watchtowers, consider researching the Pillaging technology to use a hero as a patrol unit with Detection.
• Keep your approval up. Higher approval means a higher base Security score.
• If necessary, research and build the Security improvements.
• Most important of all: Have your on spies on counter-intelligence missions. Get a spy in every enemy empire you have reason to suspect will spy on you, get them trained up to quickly build infiltration levels, and when the enemy spies hit, you use the action to expel enemy spies.

Also, you just have to accept that no spy defense is ever perfect. That said, even in games against multiple Forgotten AIs, who are usually very aggressive about espionage, I have never had them crush all my cities down to two population in the late game.

Everything else failing, I recommend turning off Shadows, since the Forgotten do not really work without the espionage system, so you would effectively only lose pillaging.

Thanks for the advice.

As you mention, spying has to be taken into account from relatively early game. I had not done that and I had to abandon that game., it was essentially too late to come up with the measures you mention, even though I had good approval.

After several games of starting next to the Forgotten and rage quitting after all my cities were dropped to minimum pop in the early game (and I've yet to catch a spy with a roundup without reloading), I've found that the most economical way to deal with early game spies (vs AI) is to get peace with the offender.  I can't guarantee it works every time, but my current Endless difficulty game as Vaulters I was sandwiched between the Necrophages and the Forgotten with only 4 cities myself.  I peaced the Forgotten ASAP and took out the Necrophages without any spies bothering me at all (and now I'm steamrolling the Forgotten at turn 110).