A simple way to turn espionage into an important part of the game: don't make every piece of information automatically public

[Mindel]

The reason why espionage in EU4 feels worthless is because so much important information is made public that every nation effectively functions as if it already has perfect intelligence on everybody else. We can see how large everyone else's army and navy are, and the AI knows this as well. We know exactly what are the chances other nations will accept alliances or royal marriages, or honor call to arms. The AI knows exactly when we are weak or our allies will dishonor defensive calls, so it knows when to spring the attack.

Spying would be an essential part of the game if we simply removed this information from the public and made its access conditional on having a high enough spy network. Precise opinion and acceptance numbers should be replaced with general indicators such as "likely", "unlikely", "cordial", etc. Precise army and navy numbers should be hidden as they are in multiplayer, and replaced with general force limit estimates based on total development.

This level of uncertainty should be the default way of operating in the game. If more precise information about a specific country is wanted, then this should require the work of building a spy network to see those precise acceptance values or army numbers.

Spying would then become a serious part of diplomacy and warfare. It would make players want, as nations do in real life, a safe margin of error before calling allies into wars in case they may narrowly refuse. The AI would also do the same before trying to attack the player.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

Agree for the most part. But making diplomatic actions chance based or not showing the exact value of acceptance/rejection will create untold frustrations. Many hard starts require quickly allying some major power to prevent annexation, if a nation showing 70% ally acceptance chance rejects you just wasted your diplomat for several days for no reason. It was like that in the past before that was changed.

For army, navy, force limit, income the game can show a range of values which trend more and more towards the accurate values the higher the spy network is. 50 spy network should be sufficient for accurate knowledge.

I think unlocking all the diplomatic actions from the start would be good. I thought about using infiltrate administration on a blob while it is engaged in another war, see where it's armies are and if possible declare war and snipe some provinces. But it is unlocked so late in the game that there is no point of using it on any nation as I can confidently defeat their whole army.

 

[Mindel]

Agree for the most part. But making diplomatic actions chance based or not showing the exact value of acceptance/rejection will create untold frustrations. Many hard starts require quickly allying some major power to prevent annexation, if a nation showing 70% ally acceptance chance rejects you just wasted your diplomat for several days for no reason. It was like that in the past before that was changed.

I'm not suggesting that diplomatic acceptances be changed in any way from how they are done now. It would be deterministic and based on a precise number. All I'm suggesting is that this number be hidden and be replaced by a vague label.

This vague label is the only thing subject to some randomness, representing your diplomats' best guess. But there is a chance they could be misreading the signs.

For example, if a nation will barely accept an alliance (+1 reasons) from you, then the label should read "on the fence" say 60% of the time. But 20% of the time it might be mislabeled as "very unlikely" and 20% it might be "very likely".

Similarly, the AI should behave according to its guesses as represented by the labels it sees. So sometimes you might get an unexpected alliance offer from an AI who overestimated your military strength, say.

For hard starts this would be a non-issue as you would presumably be so familiar with the set-up that you would already have a clear plan about who to ally and when to do it. So you can just dismiss the labels whatever they say.

 

[Mindel]

Here are more examples of public things about other nations which should be hidden and require some intelligence to uncover:

- Ruler stats and ruler personality

- Information about military leaders such as their stats and traits

- Military units

- Technology level

- Idea groups and the number of ideas they have advanced in the group

Some of this information should be fairly easy to access such as tech level and which idea groups (the number of ideas advanced should be harder).




In this framework, I would propose that everyone should come with a default level of intelligence on other nations depending on location and other basic interactions such as trade. Since this information is not necessary acquired in a hostile way, I will distinguish it from spy networks and throw out some sample numbers (say from 0-100) to give an impression of how it would work. Here are some examples:

- All the nations of Western Europe should probably get a baseline intelligence level of say 10-15 on each other just on the fact that they are in regular commerce with one another. Similarly with other regions.

- The nations of the HRE should get a slightly level of intelligence (say 25) with one another, being part of the same community.

- Being neighbors should give you some intelligence, although this should not be too high if the border is very minor.

- Similarly, nations which share very active trade nodes should also gain intelligence on each other. If they are in a trade league, this value would be much higher.

- Finally, allies should get substantial intelligence on each other.

But there is no reason why Castile should know anything at all about which ideas the Timurids have taken, so their starting intelligence level should be 0 for a nation on the other side of the globe. At intelligence 0, you would not even know what tech level these other nations are at or which idea groups they have chosen.

Then your intelligence level towards X would by default by the maximum (not the sum) of all of these passive values, unless you actually send spies to actively increase it. These passive levels will tell you some things but not everything.

Past some threshold (say 50) is where you begin to collect information of a sensitive nature which cannot be gotten without active spying, such as unrest levels of their provinces, stats of their generals, and so on. Most important of these would be the precise numbers deciding diplomatic acceptances.

 

[Brynjar]

Spying would be an essential part of the game if we simply removed this information from the public and made its access conditional on having a high enough spy network. Precise opinion and acceptance numbers should be replaced with general indicators such as "likely", "unlikely", "cordial", etc. Precise army and navy numbers should be hidden as they are in multiplayer, and replaced with general force limit estimates based on total development.

So you basically want to make relation management a lot more micro intensive? That sound like an effective way of ruining the game.

But there is no reason why Castile should know anything at all about which ideas the Timurids have taken, so their starting intelligence level should be 0 for a nation on the other side of the globe. At intelligence 0, you would not even know what tech level these other nations are at or which idea groups they have chosen

There is also pretty much zero reason why I as a player would care about what tech level and ideas the Timurids have while playing Castile. By the time I could have cared, I'll be too strong for it to matter.

- Being neighbors should give you some intelligence, although this should not be too high if the border is very minor

What is a "minor" border? If an OPM is fully surrounded by another nation, is that a minor border? How about 30% of its border?

- Ruler stats and ruler personality

Why would it be good gameplay to have to do in game chores to get knowledge of things that doesn't matter at all in most cases?

Then your intelligence level towards X would by default by the maximum (not the sum) of all of these passive values, unless you actually send spies to actively increase it. These passive levels will tell you some things but not everything

You are basically suggesting to limit an important part of the gameplay (opportunitism) for what to me sounds like pointless micro in most cases. That sounds like a less fun game. In other words, it sounds like a terrible idea to spend dev time on your suggestion.

 

[Lavilledieu]

You're underselling espionage. Siege ability, tech cost reduction, making claims,.... they are valuable.
The main problem I see with espionage, is that the more niche uses (stealing maps, infiltrating administration, supporting rebels) aren't that good. The first one requires you to have units adjacent to the region, which is absolutely annoying and greatly hinders the usefulness. I've never done the second one, wouldn't know why I would, maybe in multiplayer it's slightly more useful. The third one barely does anything, takes a lot of money and spy network.

I am absolutely against hiding information. Immersion-wise, it makes much sense. Gameplay-wise, it means more waiting and a staler game and more feels bad moments. For example, you'll be making a spy network in a nation to know whether you could attack them. What happens then? Oops, too powerful, let's not attack them. Great, now you've lost years preparing a war you won't fight. At least those years were fun? Nope. Stellaris has this spy network system and I dislike it.

 

[Mindel]

You're underselling espionage. Siege ability, tech cost reduction, making claims,.... they are valuable.
The main problem I see with espionage, is that the more niche uses (stealing maps, infiltrating administration, supporting rebels) aren't that good. The first one requires you to have units adjacent to the region, which is absolutely annoying and greatly hinders the usefulness. I've never done the second one, wouldn't know why I would, maybe in multiplayer it's slightly more useful. The third one barely does anything, takes a lot of money and spy network.

I wasn't talking about the espionage idea group. But in any case, you are arguing that this idea group is valuable precisely for the parts of it which don't do espionage. Which demonstrates just how non-existent espionage is in this game.

I am absolutely against hiding information. Immersion-wise, it makes much sense. Gameplay-wise, it means more waiting and a staler game and more feels bad moments. For example, you'll be making a spy network in a nation to know whether you could attack them. What happens then? Oops, too powerful, let's not attack them. Great, now you've lost years preparing a war you won't fight. At least those years were fun? Nope. Stellaris has this spy network system and I dislike it.

Then don't build a spy network. Just attack. Take the plunge. Nations did this all the time in real life. Sometimes it didn't work out. But that's the extra risk you take if you want to conserve time and resources.

This doesn't make the game stale at all. In fact the element of surprise and risk makes it more interesting. You only think it's stale because you want perfect assurance of victory before you attack, yet you complain about having to invest resources to gather intelligence beforehand to make sure.

 

[Brynjar]

I wasn't talking about the espionage idea group. But in any case, you are arguing that this idea group is valuable precisely for the parts of it which don't do espionage. Which demonstrates just how non-existent espionage is in this game.

You do realise that building a spy network also gives siege ability, tech cost reduction, AE reduction and claims by itself? You don't need espionage ideas to get those bonuses.

This doesn't make the game stale at all. In fact the element of surprise and risk makes it more interesting. You only think it's stale because you want perfect assurance of victory before you attack, yet you complain about having to invest resources to gather intelligence beforehand to make sure.

It's not about having perfect assurance of victory. Requireing several years of planning to that decision process basically demolishes any realistic ability of making "surprise attacks". Sometimes the window for war declaration only lasts a month, if you haven't planned by fabricating claims, no cb has a significant cost already. Requireing such a spy network to get information could have worked if you only had 1-2 potential targets, but with 10+ potential targets it would just be a chore which ruins the game completely.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

I'm not suggesting that diplomatic acceptances be changed in any way from how they are done now. It would be deterministic and based on a precise number. All I'm suggesting is that this number be hidden and be replaced by a vague label.

This vague label is the only thing subject to some randomness, representing your diplomats' best guess. But there is a chance they could be misreading the signs.

For example, if a nation will barely accept an alliance (+1 reasons) from you, then the label should read "on the fence" say 60% of the time. But 20% of the time it might be mislabeled as "very unlikely" and 20% it might be "very likely".

Similarly, the AI should behave according to its guesses as represented by the labels it sees. So sometimes you might get an unexpected alliance offer from an AI who overestimated your military strength, say.

For hard starts this would be a non-issue as you would presumably be so familiar with the set-up that you would already have a clear plan about who to ally and when to do it. So you can just dismiss the labels whatever they say.

Hiding the acceptance chance would have the same effect. Suppose the game says, France is somewhat likely to accept an alliance. You would keep trying for alliance to no avail, unaware that even at max improve relations France has -2 acceptance chance from opinion of your country and you would need to royal marry first to have another +25 relation, or that you and France desire the same province in which case you can renounce the province as vital interest.

I view the act of sending a diplomat so secure an alliance as the finalisation of talks and culmination of ongoing diplomatic efforts, rather than sending the diplomat without any prior knowledge whether the receiving country would accept of not. In the current system +1 reason to accept is all you need to ally, no difference between +50 and +1. If the game says France is on the fence (actually they have -1) then trying even 1000 times won't work and the game saying very likely is straight up lying.

Misinformation and disinformation is fine with spying where enemies and neutral countries don't want you to know what they are up to. But diplomacy in general isn't based on guesswork of diplomats but a series of honest, face to face talks.

Also, if the espionage system is changed, I would like ruler personalities to make an impact on enemy strength assessment like it does for AI. Say an enemy nation has 100,000 strong army. If your ruler is cautious it would show as 110,000 - 130,000 unless you have a high spy network. If your ruler is well advised or tactical genius it would show 90,000 - 120,000. If your ruler is bold fighter then it may show enemy nation has 5% - 10% lower discipline, on account of underestimating the enemy.

 

[Mindel]

Hiding the acceptance chance would have the same effect. Suppose the game says, France is somewhat likely to accept an alliance. You would keep trying for alliance to no avail, unaware that even at max improve relations France has -2 acceptance chance from opinion of your country and you would need to royal marry first to have another +25 relation, or that you and France desire the same province in which case you can renounce the province as vital interest.

I view the act of sending a diplomat so secure an alliance as the finalisation of talks and culmination of ongoing diplomatic efforts, rather than sending the diplomat without any prior knowledge whether the receiving country would accept of not. In the current system +1 reason to accept is all you need to ally, no difference between +50 and +1. If the game says France is on the fence (actually they have -1) then trying even 1000 times won't work and the game saying very likely is straight up lying.

Misinformation and disinformation is fine with spying where enemies and neutral countries don't want you to know what they are up to. But diplomacy in general isn't based on guesswork of diplomats but a series of honest, face to face talks.

Also, if the espionage system is changed, I would like ruler personalities to make an impact on enemy strength assessment like it does for AI. Say an enemy nation has 100,000 strong army. If your ruler is cautious it would show as 110,000 - 130,000 unless you have a high spy network. If your ruler is well advised or tactical genius it would show 90,000 - 120,000. If your ruler is bold fighter then it may show enemy nation has 5% - 10% lower discipline, on account of underestimating the enemy.

If you offer alliance 1000 times and the country doesn't accept any of them, then you can probably make an educated guess that you haven't crossed the threshold and something else is blocking you. In any event, labels would presumably update regularly, so it would be very unlikely to say "very likely" 1000 months in a row if the reality is "on the fence" the whole time.

A huge part of diplomacy is about intuiting what the other side wants even if they don't say it.

As for personalities, I assume the AI is already programmed to act something like its personalities. But I doubt that doing this to human players will have much effect. Humans are smart enough to recognize that if they have a ruler with a cautious personality, then they will know if the game is designed to give military overestimates and compensate accordingly.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

If you offer alliance 1000 times and the country doesn't accept any of them, then you can probably make an educated guess that you haven't crossed the threshold and something else is blocking you. In any event, labels would presumably update regularly, so it would be very unlikely to say "very likely" 1000 months in a row if the reality is "on the fence" the whole time.

A huge part of diplomacy is about intuiting what the other side wants even if they don't say it.

As for personalities, I assume the AI is already programmed to act something like its personalities. But I doubt that doing this to human players will have much effect. Humans are smart enough to recognize that if they have a ruler with a cautious personality, then they will know if the game is designed to give military overestimates and compensate accordingly.

And how would it help without knowing what is blocking me? The current system of showing all modifiers relating to diplomatic acceptance works best and prevents wastage of time. And I don't think diplomacy is about trying to guess what others want without them telling you, it's not lovers' drama. It's negotiations upon negotiations with countries you have common interests with.

As for personalities it would not always fudge enemy statistics, but sometimes, and would increase or decrease the range of numbers between which the real value lies. The uncertainty can be removed by building a spy network. In practice it would sometimes discourage you from taking on an evenly matched opponent or sometimes delaying the conquest of a lesser enemy.

 

[Mindel]

And how would it help without knowing what is blocking me? The current system of showing all modifiers relating to diplomatic acceptance works best and prevents wastage of time. And I don't think diplomacy is about trying to guess what others want without them telling you, it's not lovers' drama. It's negotiations upon negotiations with countries you have common interests with.

If you want precise numbers of each contributing factor, then you should build an intelligence network to find this out. There's not much randomness to it.

Negotiation is about figuring out what the other side wants, and how badly they want it. This is not "wastage of time" unless you consider all negotiations a wastage of time and are wondering why everyone doesn't just divine what everyone else wants and instantly come to an agreement.

 

[Mindel]

As for personalities it would not always fudge enemy statistics, but sometimes, and would increase or decrease the range of numbers between which the real value lies. The uncertainty can be removed by building a spy network. In practice it would sometimes discourage you from taking on an evenly matched opponent or sometimes delaying the conquest of a lesser enemy.

Another reason why this is a bad idea is that it has nothing to do with intelligence gathering at all. Your ruler being cautious doesn't give any reason for your agents to be reporting overestimates of enemy armies back to the court.

You basically want the game to supply misinformation to the player to make them act in a certain way just because their ruler has a certain personality. This is no different from mislabeling a 17k enemy stack in the field as a 20k stack (which would achieve the effect you want), and just as obnoxious. It also really has nothing to do with espionage, and it makes no sense for a nation's agents to deceive their own ruler in this way.

Maybe a better idea would be to have this happen if other countries infiltrate your administration too much.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

Diplomatic actions are not "blocked" by one thing, even now. Opinion is a sum of various numbers. If you are not being accepted, that's because the number is not high enough. If you find a different way to raise it over the threshold, then does that make the thing you did "unblocking" it?

That said, if you want precise numbers of each contributing factor, then you should build an intelligence network to find this out. There's not much randomness to it.

Negotiation is about figuring out what the other side wants, and how badly they want it. This is not "wastage of time" unless you consider all negotiations a wastage of time and are wondering why everyone doesn't just divine what everyone else wants and instantly come to an agreement.

Some actions are a no-go for certain situations. A diplomatic ruler may tolerate you claiming several of their core interest provinces and still ally with you, while a militaristic ruler would not even tolerate one. Allying with a nations rival is -50 alliance acceptance. If you break alliance with a nation to ally with its rival then the rival which showed very likely to alliance rejects you you are left high and dry.

Suppose you are allied with Ottomans and want to ally with Mamluks, Mamluks has -25 total acceptance and -50 from allying with Ottomans. So if you want Mamluks more than the Ottomans you break alliance with Ottomans and are guaranteed an alliance with Mamluks. If you have -5 total acceptance you can use royal marriage to improve relations by 25 and send gifts till you overcome the modifier. Then you can keep both nations as allies. If there were vague estimates like "very likely" or "on the fence" you would not know what is impeding the progress and try out all methods (wasting money sending gifts, wasting your diplomats time and diplo slot royal marrying and improving relations) when the only thing required would be to break your alliance with Ottomans.

Negotiating is not figuring out what the other side wants, it is what you are willing to give to get what you want. And negotiations are always happening in the background. Open the diplomatic macrobuilder and you can see some countries are always willing to ally with you (because you are much stronger than them or you share common rivals). Some countries require various levels of improving relations/building trust etc. Some countries will never ally with you because they want to annex your whole country. The negotiation is overcoming negative reasons with positive ones, and then send a diplomat to finalise the deal. If the country already has positive reasons then the negotiation is already done/not necessary and you can proceed to finalisation.

 

[Mindel]

Some actions are a no-go for certain situations. A diplomatic ruler may tolerate you claiming several of their core interest provinces and still ally with you, while a militaristic ruler would not even tolerate one. Allying with a nations rival is -50 alliance acceptance. If you break alliance with a nation to ally with its rival then the rival which showed very likely to alliance rejects you you are left high and dry.

Suppose you are allied with Ottomans and want to ally with Mamluks, Mamluks has -25 total acceptance and -50 from allying with Ottomans. So if you want Mamluks more than the Ottomans you break alliance with Ottomans and are guaranteed an alliance with Mamluks. If you have -5 total acceptance you can use royal marriage to improve relations by 25 and send gifts till you overcome the modifier. Then you can keep both nations as allies. If there were vague estimates like "very likely" or "on the fence" you would not know what is impeding the progress and try out all methods (wasting money sending gifts, wasting your diplomats time and diplo slot royal marrying and improving relations) when the only thing required would be to break your alliance with Ottomans.

Negotiating is not figuring out what the other side wants, it is what you are willing to give to get what you want. And negotiations are always happening in the background. Open the diplomatic macrobuilder and you can see some countries are always willing to ally with you (because you are much stronger than them or you share common rivals). Some countries require various levels of improving relations/building trust etc. Some countries will never ally with you because they want to annex your whole country. The negotiation is overcoming negative reasons with positive ones, and then send a diplomat to finalise the deal. If the country already has positive reasons then the negotiation is already done/not necessary and you can proceed to finalisation.

Except that rivalries are public so you would instantly know that an alliance with the Ottomans is giving you a -50 for Mamluks. So in fact a label such as "on the fence" would tell you immediately that breaking the alliance with Ottomans will give you the Mamluks. It has nothing to do with hidden information, really.

If you want to massage it more closely and ally both, then of course you should have to expend resources to tease out exactly how much they will take.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

Another reason why this is a bad idea is that it has nothing to do with intelligence gathering at all. Your ruler being cautious doesn't give any reason for your agents to be reporting overestimates of enemy armies back to the court.

You basically want the game to supply misinformation to the player to make them act in a certain way just because their ruler has a certain personality. This is no different from mislabeling a 17k enemy stack in the field as a 20k stack (which would achieve the effect you want), and just as obnoxious. It also really has nothing to do with espionage, and it makes no sense for a nation's agents to deceive their own ruler in this way.

Maybe a better idea would be to have this happen if other countries infiltrate your administration too much.

It is not because your agents are lying to you, rather they have a highest and lowest range, and your ruler based on his personality over or underestimating the enemy.
And this with no or little spy network. If you want more accurate information you can build your spy network to say 40 and it will give accurate numbers, build spy network to 60 it will give force composition (infantry/cavalry/artillery ratio), build it to 80 it will give exact positions of armies (basically infiltrate administration).

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

Except that rivalries are public so you would instantly know that an alliance with the Ottomans is giving you a -50 for Mamluks. So in fact a label such as "on the fence" would tell you immediately that breaking the alliance with Ottomans will give you the Mamluks. It has nothing to do with hidden information, really.

If you want to massage it more closely and ally both, then of course you should have to expend resources to tease out exactly how much they will take.

How much is the difference between "on the fence" and "very unlikely"? -50 reason can be overcome with breaking alliance with the Ottomans. -120 reason because Mamluks desire your provinces is impossible. -5 reason is pretty much negligible. The exact values need to be shown. Experienced players know allying with their rivals is -50 and can do the math on how to overcome it. New players would have know idea what to do if the game showed vague information like "reason: -allied with their rivals." They would break their alliance with the Ottomans while it was possible to get both because the total modifier was -5 anyway and there was other ways to overcome it.

Let's be real, in which case there are chances of getting misinformation? Two nations putting forward their demands on the negotiation table or both spying on each other to assess each others power. And building alliances and proposing royal marriages are diplomats' jobs and not covert actions or espionage (even though both require the same envoys).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Needs to untether espionage from diplomat usage and have another mechanism for investing into espionage, spy network etc. Bottlenecks too much on the diplomat time otherwise.

 

[Mindel]

One nice outcome of implementing hidden information in the game is that AI nations should no longer grant military access to everybody who asks, since this amounts to letting a foreign power walk in and count exactly how large your army is.

 

[vaLor-]

I half-agree and half-disagree with just about all these suggestions (except that spies should be kinda-different from diplomats). It's an interesting idea but would be difficult to execute without being incredibly unfun in practice