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

[Mindel]

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


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.


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?


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?


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.

This post is nothing but an endless repeat of the same complaint: "I can't live without being spoon-fed perfect information".

Which goes to show just how important espionage would be in this game if information were properly hidden.

 

[grommile]

Which goes to show just how important espionage would be in this game if information were properly hidden.

If information were properly hidden, then you'd have pretty good passive intel on anyone who shares a trade node with you, or whose trade node feeds into yours.

You also wouldn't know a whole bunch of things about your own country, and you'd have to wait months to know the results of your military campaigns overseas, and...

Ultimately, realism about information handling is so hilariously compromised that you need to justify your argument in terms of "why is this more fun than what we have?"

 

[Mindel]

If information were properly hidden, then you'd have pretty good passive intel on anyone who shares a trade node with you, or whose trade node feeds into yours.

You also wouldn't know a whole bunch of things about your own country, and you'd have to wait months to know the results of your military campaigns overseas, and...

Ultimately, realism about information handling is so hilariously compromised that you need to justify your argument in terms of "why is this more fun than what we have?"

This is why I'm proposing to hide information about other nations rather than information about your own nation.

The latter might be considered needlessly cumbersome, but the game is fundamentally about competition and war between nations, so having a fog of information between them makes sense.

 

[cuendillar]

Another way entirely would be to add a new, powerful spy interaction:
Betray Gate - Instantly get a full wall breach during a siege for 10-20% network. This would then be cheaper if retaking your own cities (due to sympathetic citizens) and significantly more expensive if the enemy is doing counterespionage against you (since preventing that is a top priority in any besieged city).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The latter might be considered needlessly cumbersome, but the game is fundamentally about competition and war between nations, so having a fog of information between them makes sense.

He was asking for mechanical sense not logic that doesn't consistently apply in EU 4's world. AI would struggle with it, unless given more cheats than it already has in this regard.

Even so, a total rework for espionage would be interesting if it fits EU 4's scope. It's notable how the group itself has deviated away from being totally spy-focused just to be useful, and a lot of that comes down to the clunky way diplomats interact with investments into espionage and how poorly it scales. Its baseline is even more ridiculous than the baseline forcelimit/money nations have just for existing, but after a point there's nothing you can do to get more diplomats, make claims faster, or (without significant rework) scale up information available. To the point that a trio of Siberian clan councils can easily network better than a rich superpower, unless you rework the thing a lot.

 

[agonistes]

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.

I completely agree too much information is available to the player. I can see Ottoman forcelimit, mampower, and national ideas? Income?

Not only would limiting base knowledge add an element of challenge to the game, it would create opportunities to improve upon espionage and diolomacy.

 

[Mindel]

I completely agree too much information is available to the player. I can see Ottoman forcelimit, mampower, and national ideas? Income?

Not only would limiting base knowledge add an element of challenge to the game, it would create opportunities to improve upon espionage and diolomacy.

Exactly