As the title says: 

Please add a button that allows us to toggle whether or not our own units ambush others or not. It is extremely frustrating that your spies and other stealth units will trigger ambushes - sometimes on people you're not even at war with. 

I am at the tail-end of my very first campaign, I am at around turn 250. I just spend about 10-15 turns moving my spy assets into enemy territory (they are on another continent) - and the first thing one of my spies does is trigger an ambush on an army they have NO CHANCE destroying. When I choose to disengage the spy gets revealed... Great, now they know the spy is there. Good job, spy, very stealth.

Don't get me started on my submarines. My current enemy is at war with virtually the entire map. But I am not allied with all of his enemies, some are just neutral to me. Yet I just triggered like 3 ambushes in the same turn because one of the neutral AI happened to float above my submarines that I have put into strategic observational positions. But now they are all revealed, because they all triggered ambushes on a neutral enemy that I had no interest in attacking in the first place - and I am sure they had no interest in attacking me either, because my units were invisible to them. 

What gives?

What is this stealth system? It isn't stealth if the first thing your unit tries to do is give away its own position.

Again, this is my first campaign, so I might have missed something. Is this the intended design? Is there a button somewhere I missed?

Here's why a toggle-ambush button would be a good solution:

I'm not against having ambush as a mechanic in the game. I think it is cool that there is stealth gameplay. I just feel like you lack the control as a player when moving your own assets around. I don't understand why they would want to ambush enemies by default. Especially when odds are not in their favour. I don't understand why your own unit would want to break their own concealment with no gain. An ambush is only good if it has been set up in advance with correct timing and intelligence. The auto-ambush mechanic seems to fly in the face of the intention behind stealth. Giving the player the choice when to ambush would put the strategy back in the players hand instead of being a frustration you have to content with. 

As it is right now; using a spy is more of a liability than a boon to your empire - as long as you can accidentally trigger grievances against others like this. 

Gr1zzly wrote:

I guess when your actively using spies for syphoning resources it becomes profitable or at least worth to do so. I personally don't use spies that much because I rather use a military unit that have stealth, that way I can ambush and win battle more easily.

I guess the only real disadvantage is being stuck to an ambush and being forced to fight or retreat. Also, the AI is caught in this same problem all the time. If you train a couples of envoys and let them roam around the map the amount of grievances you will get is absurd.

So yes, I agree with you 100% when it comes to adding a feature that allows us to have more control of ambushes.

And yes, playing in Nation difficulty allows you to have spies and not worry so much about the upkeep cost since that by playing in that difficulty you will be able to have a decent economy, but to be fair, when you have good economy you can do pretty much anything in the game. I guess that my concern about the upkeep is driven by the fact that I torture myself playing the game in the higher difficulties and having literal no income a lot of the times.

Yea well, admittedly I don't have that many spies as most of them have been killed in their own stupid ambush attempts, haha, so this is what they have been allocated to do. And I mean it can be worth it sometimes just to have that extra access on a resource so you don't incur the production penalty of 25% so there is that too. 

Yeah I have noticed that my poor envoys tend to get absolutely destroyed if they step outside of my own territory, which is hilarious actually. Poor guys- more dangerous to be an envoy in this game than a frontline soldier, lmao. 

Haha, well I do understand enjoying a good challenge as well! I think I will try some higher difficulties after this campaign is over, I have a pretty significant Fame lead and I seem to be fielding units none of the AI can compete with - so that takes a bit of challenge out of the game for sure- but it has been an enjoyable difficulty to learn the game on! I'm still learning a lot of lessons even now. 

robothedino wrote:

Another issue I think the current system raises is the ridiculously powerful effect of lining up a series of stealth units around your border, with a proper army within reinforcement range. Because the ambushing side can reinforce, but the ambushed side cannot, then you can achieve an overwhelming force advantage against anyone who dares to stray over your border, and as long as you wipe them out on the first round of combat (which shouldn't be hard), then you can wash-rinse-repeat as much as you like. The entire stealth system probably needs an overhaul, with more of a direct comparison of the detection of individual units with the stealth of individual units rather than a territory-wide value that attrits their stealth. More to say on this in the future!

Very solid points you got there. I have a tangental complaint - and that is that you should have a choice in whether or not your reinforce or not with units - and if you choose not to - it shouldn't take away the movement points of those units.

Yesterday I had a situation where my prowlers triggered an ambush- which prevented my entire fleet from moving on the next turn- even though they didn't even take part. The worst part is that it was another case of an ambush where I didn't want to attack the target. They just walked by. So not only did I do an ambush I didn't want - it also took away the movement of my entire fleet. So yea- right now I'm thinking the stealth system needs an overhaul too. :)