Hi everyone! Today we will start going through the Espionage features announced at PdxCon in greater detail. First off is the hub of everything - Your Intelligence Agency.
The Agency
The Agency is something you need to construct on game start if you plan to involve yourself in the shadow war that will be running now. We recommend at least an investment in defence eventually to help protect yourself even if you do not plan to dedicate resources to offensive operations. Notice that I said ‘construct’? The Agency will take up several of your factories for a while to be created. Civilian factories is the closest we have to a money budget so we felt this was the most appropriate cost to use. When you decide to make the agency you are free to name it (a historical name will be suggested) and you can also pick from a mix of historical logos as well as generic made up ones (surprise - a lot of agencies did not advertise themselves to heavily).
In the Agency you can recruit Operatives (more about them and what they can do in a future diary), work on cryptology (also a topic of a future diary) and upgrade the different branches of the agency as well as update training or develop new gadgets to help your Operatives.
Branch Upgrades
Just like the creation of an agency it will cost you some industry time to develop its capabilities. The time is always the same, but the cost itself can vary with how powerful the option is.
Lets have some examples of the many options:
The Spy Master
If you have enough upgrades and are in a faction you can become the faction’s Spy Master.
This is the logical path for people who want to lean heavily into espionage to get the most of it. There can only be one spy master per faction and the main advantage of being a spy master is that it will let you run a lot more Operatives (how many depending on the size of your faction). We felt it was mostly historical that only the really big nations truly invested in this, but the most important reason was balance. A lot of spy systems in games fall down on the fact that people can spam you with agents so you either end up super annoyed or the system needs to be toned down to where it’s no longer impactful and fun. In a historical HOI game given this rule, we have then set us up with 3 potentially powerful agencies: Allies, Axis and Comintern.
See you all next week when we take a look at further espionage topics
The Agency
The Agency is something you need to construct on game start if you plan to involve yourself in the shadow war that will be running now. We recommend at least an investment in defence eventually to help protect yourself even if you do not plan to dedicate resources to offensive operations. Notice that I said ‘construct’? The Agency will take up several of your factories for a while to be created. Civilian factories is the closest we have to a money budget so we felt this was the most appropriate cost to use. When you decide to make the agency you are free to name it (a historical name will be suggested) and you can also pick from a mix of historical logos as well as generic made up ones (surprise - a lot of agencies did not advertise themselves to heavily).
In the Agency you can recruit Operatives (more about them and what they can do in a future diary), work on cryptology (also a topic of a future diary) and upgrade the different branches of the agency as well as update training or develop new gadgets to help your Operatives.
Branch Upgrades
Just like the creation of an agency it will cost you some industry time to develop its capabilities. The time is always the same, but the cost itself can vary with how powerful the option is.
Lets have some examples of the many options:
- Naval Department - This is one of the basic branches that improves your intelligence gathering in that field. It will ensure that you get the most out of any naval intel you get.
- Passive Defense - This boosts your agencies counterintelligence rating which together with Operatives help you defend against enemy Operatives.
- Invisible Ink - Improved ways of sneaking intel back through letters or other ways through writing. It means your Operatives will be generating more intel when active somewhere.
- Suicide Pills - Captured Operatives will now have a final way out limiting leaks of intel to the enemy
- Diplomatic Training - Operatives learn to operate among high society and politics and would no longer dream of ordering their Martinis stirred. This one helps with missions such as diplomatic pressure and control of foreign trade (yup.. future diary)
- Cryptology Department - this sets up a department of math wizards and crossword puzzlers. Why shall be covered in a future diary
The Spy Master
If you have enough upgrades and are in a faction you can become the faction’s Spy Master.
This is the logical path for people who want to lean heavily into espionage to get the most of it. There can only be one spy master per faction and the main advantage of being a spy master is that it will let you run a lot more Operatives (how many depending on the size of your faction). We felt it was mostly historical that only the really big nations truly invested in this, but the most important reason was balance. A lot of spy systems in games fall down on the fact that people can spam you with agents so you either end up super annoyed or the system needs to be toned down to where it’s no longer impactful and fun. In a historical HOI game given this rule, we have then set us up with 3 potentially powerful agencies: Allies, Axis and Comintern.
See you all next week when we take a look at further espionage topics
Rejected Titles
- HOI4 - Mirai Nikki
- This dev diary will auto-destruct after being read, please stand back.
- Popping pills & blowings stuff up with government funds!
- Renamed to iAgency for the Mac version
- The Department of Ungentlemanly Warfare (™)
- There is no department called Military Intelligence because we don’t do oxymorons
- We didn’t manage to make the icon for Commando Training be a man being hit in the nuts, but based on our research 50% of the training seems to have been this.
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