I wrote about this a little in other threads, but I think it deserves a thread of its own.



One of the things that I feel lacking the most in this game is intelligence:

How much military does a certain empire have? should aim to ally with it or atempt to conquer it?

How close are the other empires to completing one of the victories? should I be worried?



Information is key to making the right choices, and right now we don't have much except for how many planets do other sides have.



I'm thinking we can resolve this in one of 3 ways:

1) Add a victory conditions window, letting you see who is leading in each victory category, and perhaps some graphs about military strengh.

2) A more engaging method might be to have the player actively spend dust on intelligence, or send a hero on a reconneisance mission, to later on receive a report about the subject he requested, wether it be an empire's strengh, how close are they to winning, or even where are their main fleets located at the moment.



Both of these might be considered alot of work for this stage of the game, but I would like to hear your opinions anyways.

An intelligence system would be awesome. I still look to CIV4:BTS as the ideal example of how intelligence should be handled. (In my opinion, anyway.)

Moved to the proposals section

MalodorousMonkey wrote:
An intelligence system would be awesome. I still look to CIV4:BTS as the ideal example of how intelligence should be handled. (In my opinion, anyway.)

Im not familier with the system, anybody able to clarify the basics?

You can assign a certain percentage of your income to espionage, which will give you a certain amount of espionage points per turn. You can also build certain buildings that give you espionage points every turn.



If you have more of these points than a particular opponent, you get special bonuses against them. The greater amount of espionage points you have over your opponent, the better the bonuses will be. For instance, with enough Esp-points, you can actively see inside the enemy's territory. You can also investigate your enemy's cities. Eventually, you can get information as to how many units of what types the enemy has, allowing you to gauge whether war would be an intelligent option.



Apart from the passive bonuses, you can also spend your points on special espionage missions. For instance, you can spend points to steal a technology from an enemy. The lower the enemy's esp-point value, the higher the chances of success for you. You can also pay to have spies foment revolts in enemy cities, or poison water supplies. Of course, if you spend these points, it will leave you with fewer points, possibly ruining the passive bonuses you get from having a high esp-point count.

Well that kind of all or nothing aproch might not be the best thing, surly it should then be devided down into offence intelligance and defencive intelligance with your points contributing towards a success percantage of an action or reaction.



Like if an opponet issues a intelliance mission with 10 points into offence, while you have 5 points into defence, that gives you a 25% chance of defending yourself against their action.



Some races could then have spending bonuses to offence and defence like the UE having a 10% bonus to offencive spending, and the sophons a 15% bonus to defencie spending.

I'm sorry if this counts as thread-jacking, I didn't want to make a new thread when its subject it precisely this:



If you really want to introduce espionage, why not go a little bit further than just spending dust to get a little bit more information about the enemy? Why not give defensive/pacifist/enterprise factions another output than simply tech'ing to victory? So how about, to begin with, the money spent on espionage is actually akin to the industry->dust, industry->research functions in the build queue. As the espionage points increase, they actually add to each system's control sphere that shows up on the map. So while you increase your sight, defense, and happiness of your population, you are increasing your ability to "see" into the enemy system. First, it'll just be a building upgrade here and there. Next, you'll be able to see what they're building, and then, with some upgrades, decrease enemy population happiness even more. The system here is already in place...it just needs some bells and whistles added to it.



Now, the next part would require a bit more work, so I understand if it is too "out there" for the moment. But, it ties perfectly into many of the systems already in the game. For one, the espionage "tree" could be distributed among the diplo, industry, and military trees. They would range from enhancing the zone of control already talked about, to adding more cards, modules, heroes, and maybe even ships. The cards added could be activated via new hero abilities, techs, or modules. I don't want to say that there needs to be a "spy" hero, as adventurer already covers part of that, so maybe all that is needed is a new trait line. The cards functions could be the same as the normal espionage ones, but with a twist: they require espionage points to play and could tip the tide of battle in your favor pretty well. Things like "sabotage power plant" to nuke a random ship in the enemy fleet, damaging it severely and decreasing its offensive/defensive capabilities. Or "spoof radar" to double the chances of your missiles hitting the enemy as it tries to swat away invisible missiles. Or "holographic fleet", which automatically fills out the rest of your fleet points with fake ships that deal no damage but can take a little bit so as to protect your other ships. By adding espionage as a new resource to use, it creates a greater balance among the resources.



As for modules, that'd be the trickiest and last on my wish list, but here's a brief outline: cloaking modules to provide a fleet-wide defense bonus, holographic fleet (to provide the proper card function), ECM jammers (for spoof radar), military intelligence (to provide a bonus to invasion by letting the enemy have false intel), race understanding (to provide a flat bonus to offense/defense to said ship against a specific race's ships). These modules could be tailored for a new command-type ship, or be given a large weight to offset their abilities; they're meant for a single ship designed for fleet support, not as a module to place on a destroyer. So, all ships save a certain type could have a negative "bonus" to equipping these modules, as well. Hey, it's still alpha/beta...let's think big!

Igncom1 wrote:
Well that kind of all or nothing aproch might not be the best thing, surly it should then be devided down into offence intelligance and defencive intelligance with your points contributing towards a success percantage of an action or reaction.



Like if an opponet issues a intelliance mission with 10 points into offence, while you have 5 points into defence, that gives you a 25% chance of defending yourself against their action.



Some races could then have spending bonuses to offence and defence like the UE having a 10% bonus to offencive spending, and the sophons a 15% bonus to defencie spending.

Offense and defense intelligence would be cool too. I mostly liked the general idea in the CIV4:BTS, which is that you have an espionage slider that determines how much money you allot towards it, and can accumulate those points until you start getting bonuses towards enemies. Spending points is also cool.



I also might be remembering incorrectly. I haven't played CIV4 in ages, and maybe your "defensive" espionage number didn't change, but your "offensive" number did. Like, if you accumulated 1000 espionage points, you would always have 1000 points counting towards accumulated benefits, but if you spent 500 points on a one-time bonus, you would only have 500 left to spend on future one-time bonuses.

I must comment on this as I mildly laughed when I saw the thread from the forum screen as it only showed "[Suggestion] Intelligence" and I was thinking about how many forums I'd get kicked off of for posting that as the title on, lol but no it's a legit thread with more to it then just that title. Made my day, and made me think about how many silly forums I'm part of.