Espionage idea addition

[SirGregMac]

Watching the Emperor feature stream with Groogy, the first one from a few days ago, I noticed something at the bottom when he went to declare war, a summary of inf/cav/art and manpower totals at the bottom was displayed, as I was chatting with a friend, Richy, who I recently got into EU IV, he mentioned something that sounded like a great idea for that summary info, an espionage idea that allows those numbers to be fake, either much smaller or much bigger than reality to bait someone into a war where you can trounce them or scare someone away when it would've been easy for them otherwise. It's an idea based on reality, there's plenty of instances where an army was able to make themselves seem to have larger numbers than they actually had or even spreading false information specifically to ward off those trying to plan an invasion.

I don't know how well it would work for MP, but for SP I think it would make espionage a bit better of an idea set, maybe even making it easier to get accurate info. I know that info is in the ledger and this is a summary of that info, but it sounded like a decent idea when he mentioned it.

The summary is at the bottom of the Declare War tab shown:

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

Watching the Emperor feature stream with Groogy, the first one from a few days ago, I noticed something at the bottom when he went to declare war, a summary of inf/cav/art and manpower totals at the bottom was displayed, as I was chatting with a friend, Richy, who I recently got into EU IV, he mentioned something that sounded like a great idea for that summary info, an espionage idea that allows those numbers to be fake, either much smaller or much bigger than reality to bait someone into a war where you can trounce them or scare someone away when it would've been easy for them otherwise. It's an idea based on reality, there's plenty of instances where an army was able to make themselves seem to have larger numbers than they actually had or even spreading false information specifically to ward off those trying to plan an invasion.

I don't know how well it would work for MP, but for SP I think it would make espionage a bit better of an idea set, maybe even making it easier to get accurate info. I know that info is in the ledger and this is a summary of that info, but it sounded like a decent idea when he mentioned it.

The summary is at the bottom of the Declare War tab shown:

View attachment 585976

These numbers are taken from the ledger and there is a setting to turn off the ledger but I am not sure if you have to for Ironman compatibility? When the ledger is turned off though you can only see these numbers once you have used the Infiltrate Administration action. You could argue that if you have the ledger turned off and you go for Espionage Ideas, the added foreign spy detection and diplomat to perform counter-espionage would mean your enemies would be unlikely to be able to see how many troops you really have, and your network construction buff means you would almost always be able to Infiltrate Administration on your rivals. It all really depends on the ledger being on or off though.

 

[Canute VII]

I think ironman should disable the ledger.

EDIT: at least in hard and very hard difficulty

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

I think ironman should disable the ledger.

Careful, not too loud, many players are quite attached to that little book known as the Ledger. From watching the YT'ers play with the Emperor update it seems that in some of their games they have the Ledger locked and in others they don't, but I am not sure what the exact circumstances are since I don't believe any of them are playing Ironman mode yet.

 

[MadDoctorScientist]

I think ironman should disable the ledger.

EDIT: at least in hard and very hard difficulty

I believe the counter-argument there would be to just not use it if it is not for you, but you do have a fair point. It is just that keeping track of how strong or weak you grow overtime is useful for improving one's skills.