Breaking the Soviet spy defense

[Lynx190]

How difficult is this supposed to be on average? Before restarting my failed Romania game I decided to do a test run to see how effectively I could raise SOV threat at the start (doing nothing but sending spies at max speed). After the first month of 100% counterespionage I had SOV stuck at 1 spy, switched to 3 threat/1 counter and over the next two months raised their threat to 3 while barely losing any spies, their spy defense never made it back above 1. So I thought "Awesome!" and started a real game.

Now it seems like the AI was just jobbing on the test run and got serious when I was playing normally. My spies were dropping like flies, had to shut down research just to replace them at times, and I couldn't get them below 3 spies after months of 100% counterespionage, and I finally quit in disgust.

Tried again this time skipping research from the start in order to get my 10 spies in before theirs built up too much, but in the blink of an eye they're up to 5 and won't budge; I don't lose spies but neither do they over the first month. They end up making it as high as 7 before I knock them down to 3 after months of 100% counter, but again that's it; and the instant I put even 1 point in Raise Threat I start losing spies like crazy.

This is just maddening because SOV is the only real candidate for lowering my effective neutrality; France and UK won't work well as a democracy and I'm not about to break everything by raising GER threat early (not that they'd be any easier than SOV anyway).

 

[misterbean]

How difficult is this supposed to be on average? Before restarting my failed Romania game I decided to do a test run to see how effectively I could raise SOV threat at the start (doing nothing but sending spies at max speed). After the first month of 100% counterespionage I had SOV stuck at 1 spy, switched to 3 threat/1 counter and over the next two months raised their threat to 3 while barely losing any spies, their spy defense never made it back above 1. So I thought "Awesome!" and started a real game.

Now it seems like the AI was just jobbing on the test run and got serious when I was playing normally. My spies were dropping like flies, had to shut down research just to replace them at times, and I couldn't get them below 3 spies after months of 100% counterespionage, and I finally quit in disgust.

Tried again this time skipping research from the start in order to get my 10 spies in before theirs built up too much, but in the blink of an eye they're up to 5 and won't budge; I don't lose spies but neither do they over the first month. They end up making it as high as 7 before I knock them down to 3 after months of 100% counter, but again that's it; and the instant I put even 1 point in Raise Threat I start losing spies like crazy.

This is just maddening because SOV is the only real candidate for lowering my effective neutrality; France and UK won't work well as a democracy and I'm not about to break everything by raising GER threat early (not that they'd be any easier than SOV anyway).

You need a lot of Leadership to play this kind of game against the Soviets. For Romania, Yugoslavia is a much better target. They last until after France falls, and they have about as much LS as you do.
I always make sure to check which minister is in place as well. A Mininster Of Security who raises coounterespionage by 10% will make it very hard to break them.

 

[Secret Master]

Some things to keep in mind when spying on major powers:

1) Totalitarian states such as the Soviet Union and NSDAP Germany have a significant bonus to counter espionage. This is why I prefer spying on the putative democracies like France, Britain, and the USA. Obviously, this does not satisfy all foreign policy goals, but it is something to keep in mind when it comes to tech stealing.

2) Major powers, including the Soviets, have more leadership to throw around on various activities than most minors. So, if you are planning to spy on the Soviets for any reason, you are facing an uphill battle even in terms of resources.

3) Your goal when trying to spy on a major power is to kill their spies, not do other things. It might take 6 months, but you want to maximize spies in their country (10) and set them to 100% counter espionage. Once you have reduced the target's defensive spies to 4 or lower consistently, you split up the duties of your spies between killing enemy spies and whatever your real purpose is. At no point should you stop killing enemy spies, or they will build up a wad of 10 again and it's back to watching your own spies die off in droves.

4) Faction leaders are immune to coups, even if the button lights up. Don't waste time influencing their politics. (This includes Germany, the Soviets, and UK at the 1936 start.)

5) I understand you are trying to raise threat, but consider this: as a minor, your impact in this regard may be minimal. From your position in Eastern Europe, Germany's decisions and military build up, plus Soviet actions, may render your attempts to increase threat somewhat obsolete. Even if you can enact better laws a couple of months early, or get in the Axis a couple of months early, consider whether it is worth the cost in leadership. You might come off better tech stealing from a democracy or couping another minor to take them out of a faction so you can invade them.

 

[Forster]

SM, do you ever sleep?
On the subject of raising threat, does the German ai use spies to raise the Soviet Union's threat like a human player would?
Also, Lynx, I have never played Romania, but you might be able to lower your neutrality by starting in custom game mode, but I don't know if it would be enough.

 

[Lynx190]

From what I understand, raising threat on the Allies is relatively ineffective for Romania (for purposes of lowering neutrality), being a democracy themselves; although I considered sending spies to France anyway for tech stealing. And my first game I wasted my leadership futilely trying to raise threat on BUL and YUG, who go up maybe 0.2 per month. I wanted to raise threat to be able to declare war early instead of waiting for Danzig, but I do see your point; Germany's threat hopefully should be high enough after Danzig to let me go to war between then and Barbarossa.

The thing is, that trial attempt I did, I was able to raise Soviet threat quite effectively in just a few months (at that rate I'd have my neutrality at 0 by the end of the first year); it did seem absurdly easy compared to what I expected, but it got me thinking the worst-case scenario couldn't be THAT bad. But in these subsequent attempts I struggle to make a dent in them even at 100% counter, then even once they're finally down I lose lots of spies when putting 1 tick of threat and keeping 3 ticks counter. I wouldn't have even bothered trying in the first place if that test run hadn't horribly misled me.

SM, do you ever sleep?
Also, Lynx, I have never played Romania, but you might be able to lower your neutrality by starting in custom game mode, but I don't know if it would be enough.

Well, I could do that, but then it would just be cheating, especially for a country that has other legit options like Romania does. I mean, despite my restarts I don't intend to keep savescumming until I beat the Soviet spies, if it simply doesn't work I'll just give up and change my plans to prepare for war in 1939.

 

[1alexey]

SM, do you ever sleep?
On the subject of raising threat, does the German ai use spies to raise the Soviet Union's threat like a human player would?

Human would raise threat of GB.

 

[Lynx190]

I decided to do another, lengthier espionage test (first 3 years doing nothing but spies), and concluded it really doesn't seem worth it to bother with the SU. It's simply impossible to keep their spies reliably shut down like France; I got them down to 0 spies a couple times several months in, and they still made it back up to 5 despite keeping counterespionage going the entire time (couldn't knock them down from 2 for a while and then they added 3 spies at once). Later kept them at 0 for all of Jan '37 then they still jumped up to 3 in February, etc. Managed to achieve the target 15+ threat by Aug '37 but at the cost of numerous spies. Then tech stealing for the next 2 years yielded only Battleship Construction, yippee.

On the other hand, I found that I could get Hungary's threat up by 0.5 a month at 1 counter/3 threat, way better than BUL or YUG; if I can sustain that from the start of the game I could get them to 15 threat by mid-'38 way more cheaply than versus the SU. Although Hungary's government does make them pretty effective at killing my spies, but they simply can't replace them overwhelmingly fast like the Soviets (most of the spies I lost were due to not messing with them until '38 when they had 6 waiting for me, obviously doing it from the start would be a different story).

Sadly, Germany's threat didn't go up as fast as I hoped; they were at 12.5 towards me after the Treaty of Munich, but barely even budged after the First Vienna Award and claiming Memel despite threat skyrocketing with their neighbors. I'm still kind of confused how threat calculations work; for example, Bulgaria was finding RepSpain more threatening than the SU even after I raised Soviet threat a bunch (their Soviet threat was the same as South American countries), yet raising Bulgarian threat makes the Soviets feel twice as threatened by them than Romania does.

 

[21oliver]

I sometimes play games as Germany where I raise threat on the Soviets (in some cases they are a better choice than GB in terms of sending minors my way). I never use counter espionage, at least as a Major. Ive found its more effective simply to keep producing spies, even against the Soviets. I am willing to invest enough LS to keep 10 spies at all times. As a minor its obviously a different story.

 

[Forster]

Human would raise threat of GB.

True, but the human should also be raising the threat of the SU and Fr until war breaks out, at least I do.

 

[Lynx190]

I sometimes play games as Germany where I raise threat on the Soviets (in some cases they are a better choice than GB in terms of sending minors my way). I never use counter espionage, at least as a Major. Ive found its more effective simply to keep producing spies, even against the Soviets. I am willing to invest enough LS to keep 10 spies at all times. As a minor its obviously a different story.

Good to note for when I play Germany. As for my Romania game, I ended up just sending spies to France and the UK; the UK never kills my spies unless I were to let them build up a massive amount of counter, although they get annoying by being hard to keep killed off. France of course was easy, except that I think some German spies slipped in and started killing mine; lost 4 at the start of '37 all while France was at 0 counter.

And I finally figured out what was going on with threat (for the most part); turned out that my faction alignment was the main factor, NOT my government (with Romania being the rare case of a democracy aligned to Axis at the start). As a result it turned out to be easy to build threat on the Allies at the start and hard with my neighbors. When I was doing threat-raising experimental runs, around May of '37 the Allied threat would come to a screeching halt while threat on HUN/YUG/BUL would take off; took the longest time for me to figure out what could be causing it until I realized I hadn't bothered aligning to Axis like I would in a real game and would always pass the halfway point between the factions at that date.

The proximity factor still has me puzzled though; some Axis-aligned countries in Europe feel no more threatened by France than ones in South America. Hungary makes some sense since it's landlocked, but Bulgaria in particular gets virtually no threat from either France or the SU, they find RepSpain more threatening (during the SCW) than anyone else.