Brainstorm: How should we improve/fix Espionage system

[Frederick_Will]

Who said anything about the defenders being the ones doing the treachery? More than just the garrison lives in the fort.

As for a few other comments, treachery has always been a big part of siege warfare, whether it's bribing someone to open a gate, like Bohemond did at the siege of Antioch in 1097, faking orders of surrender, as Baibar did at Krak des Chevaliers in 1271, using secret agents to infiltrate the city prior to approach, like the Mongols liked to do, or someone inside the castle flat out betraying the defenders, as a monk did in 1676 at Solovetsky Monastery. Some form of deception or treachery should be in the game's model of siege warfare, unless you want to argue that this is covered by the die rolls (fill in your own story why you had an early breach). And it seems to me that the nearly entirely useless espionage idea set is a good way to model it.

You could even expand on the idea in other ways than making a breach, it could be a % to siege ability, making it faster and adding another way to counter act the defensive bonuses than can get pretty high late game. Another option is to increase the odds of a successful phase. Your insiders "show" you the best way to make a breach, sabatage supplies, encourage desertion, etc. I feel like you could run with this pretty well.


As for those saying that if you are caught fabricating, that the process should end immediately.(without you getting a claim) how would you balance it? Several issues come to mind. How do you expand as odds are you will be caught, and the odds increase in the mid to late game. Do you rely on missions? Outside of the ones against rivals and ones given a country(like france getting one on savoy) you wont get many. and how would it effect a "non popular" country(meaning you don't have many events or missions specific like other countries. ex france).

How will wars be when you can only take one or two provinces with claims, and anything extra will hurt you in AE and MP. What about other CBs? If you drastically make conquest a lot harder via the change to how you get claims, that will make other CBs like the one in religious very big.(almost OP compared to the "new" form of way to get conquest claims) Do you have to wait for the CB at the end of expansion? or imperialism and nationalism before you can mass expand?

These are just something that come to mind. I would hope anyone proposing changes to it can come up with a way to somehow balance it all out. Otherwise you may just end up with a nerfed way to get claims, drastically slowing any expansion.

 

[Andrzej2]

To really give espionage some importance they should improve rebels. Each rebel faction should have their own treasury and manpower pool, after conquering province they should be able to recruit new units. They should also coordinate their movements with other armies. Now we can easily destroy even same kind of rebels one after another. This shouldn't be possible. Rebel armies should behave almost like armies of states - they should join forces, attack your army when they see it's weak (now when rebel army moves to another province you can move 4k troops to siege what they conquered previously and they don't care) and even chase you army further from their goal provinces.
That kind of intelligent rebels would be worth supporting. Now it costs too much, all that money you send goes nowhere.

 

[Titanius Puffin]

Most idea groups exist to strengthen/enable certain strategies in the game. These strategies are generally useful and frequently powerful.
Right now, I don't think the Espionage idea group as strengthens a certain strategy enough - particularly compared to the colonisation and expansion ideas.

The definition of a better set of espionage ideas, to me, are ideas that I would choose instead of offensive ideas, or innovative ideas, or even colonial ideas.
The strategic option on offer has to be very compelling, at least in certain circumstances.

I like many of the suggestions discussed so far, but I'd like to offer another one:

Discredit Territorial Claim

I'm thinking there should be would be a war of words (and spies) well before there is an actual war, with the aggressor trying to establish their case for war, while the defender trying to discredit it. This wouldn't completely prevent a power from declaring war, but it would cut down on the likelihood by increasing the cost of declaring war.

In this spirit, the espionage option to 'Discredit Territorial claim' as part of espionage ideas might be useful. This would be a kind of diplomatic defence against powers that claimed your provinces. Once an antagonist claimed your province, it might be possible to eventually discredit that claim (hopefully before they declared war). This would nullify their CB. The action would be useless if the enemy had actual cores. Against mere claims however, it would make you less reliant on armies to defend your territory.

You might even discredit their claim as it was being fabricated. if you were notified that a foreign power was caught fabricating a claim (I'm sure we've all had those notifications) you might initiate a counter-operation immediately (if you have available spies/diplomats). If successful (and quick) enough the claim would be discredited before it was finished. The enemy would then finish the process only to find that their effort had come to naught. Thus the enemy wouldn't even get a window of time to declare war without penalties. You might even add another prestige/AE penalty to a claim what was discredited before it was finished (everyone likes public executions in this era don't they?).

Discrediting or preventing other pretexts war might be interesting too, but since the 'fabricate claim' option is pretty much universal combating that operation seems most important. With this kind of diplomatic defence, one would be less reliant on armies (and navies) to defend oneself. You'd still need them, but you might be able to ward off a few threats without them.

I see this as a defensive tweak to the espionage ideas set, and a reason one might invest in espionage ideas over other kinds of ideas.
I think there should be offensive tweaks to espionage too. I'm just offering this as one potential change.

[edit] If you wanted to make this operation seriously powerful, you might be able to discredit claims in foreign territory (maybe with an efficiency cost). Want to prevent being called into war to defend an ally? Remove the claims on their territory. Want to halt the expansion of a rival power? Work to erase their claims too. You wouldn't be able to destroy claims as they were being made, so they would get a time window in which to attack, but you might frustrate them if they weren't quick to take advantage.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to tie claim fabricating to espionage. It would change what is in effect a free CB to the subject of an espionage arms race between nations - you would have an incentive to invest in dip tech, espionage ideas, and spy defense buildings in order to protect your borders.

Claim fabrication rates could remain somewhat close to the current state if your espionage abilities match the enemy - that is, if you're at the same dip tech and your spy offense modifiers match their spy defense. But if you, for example, want to prevent a big neighbor from getting a free CB on you, you could invest in espionage ideas, spy defense advisors, and spy defense buildings in your border provinces.

 

[eroskos]

I posted the following in another forum and it seems to fit well with some of the suggestions here.

So many great ideas here, and not all of them are overhauls (though adding an actual spy agent sure is).
I like ticking effects for spy bonuses/maluses, but I could see solid one time effects if we’re talking about Espionage ideas. Particularly if it becomes an idea group for mid- to late-game. So sabotage reputation might always be too powerful if it’s -50 but if it ticks up to 50 over 2 years? (basically the same way improve relations works).

1) autonomy could be affected by spies, but also DOMESTIC autonomy: spies use propaganda to reduce your own province autonomy. (as suggested by comments by Krazjan & yerm above)
2) Support rebels should be a spy action, not a diplomat action. Just feels more fitting to incite rebellion with an undercover agent, not official gov’t representative.
3) Stealing technology or stealing specific type of points -- just getting a boost in one mana type would be worth it for crap monarchs. (I realize this conflicts with National Focus function and would not advocate nerfing Nat Focus or overpowering countries with espionage “Steal Military Points" and Nat Focus Military -- but maybe there's some potential here?)
4) An unused spy could increase nation’s diplo reputation (similar to "not using a merchant to collect in a trade node” gives a bonus)
5) Reducing AE would be interesting
6) Investigate Privateers -- increase the chance of discovering who sent the privateers?

I find it hard sometimes to conceive of non-wartime activities when people ask for them in the forums, so the suggestions here are compelling to me.

from thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/espionage-improvement-brainstorming.849130/

 

[Metz]

Any other comments?

 

[NetherViking]

I like the idea of just making the espionage ideas more useful. I am open to the idea of having the espionage features implemented into regular play too and maybe the espionage idea could just make them really shine. I don't really have strong feelings about it actually other than the idea group is near dead weight at the moment.

I do want to say that i like that mercenary boosts are spread out amongst ideas as they are. You can get more usable mercenaries without having to commit an entire idea chain to it. It currently speaks to how universal their use was.

Ironically that same virtue probably should be applied to the espionage actions when I think about it. I doubt too many states were not engaged in subterfuge.