Espionage: Run Ops to Misrepresent Your Tech/Economy/Military

[Hastet]

Would love to see an espionage operation where you manipulate how a target empire views you.

You could, for example, run ops to make yourself look stronger and deter them from declaring war on you. In this case, your military/tech/economy could end up looking 'superior' to the target empire.

Or you could do the opposite by running ops to make yourself look weak. You could bait your enemies into attacking you, allowing you to spam claims in the defensive war without incurring a threat penalty.

 

[The Founder]

I agree this should be a option but I think it already is.
Having a high encryption makes it impossible for the enemy to know your true strenght (I just had a massive decryption gap workign against me, so I can confirm it works that way).
It allows you to deceive the enemy in both directions - strenght and weakness - and the AI has to account for this Uncertainty.

I made a suggestion of tying useable diplomatic power to how much you "Disclose" of your forces:

Using high diplomatic weights should require disclosure

"The Whole Point of the Doomsday Machine is Lost if You Keep it a Secret!" My idea is that in order to use a high diplomatic weight from fleets, you would have to grant everyone a certain minimum amount of intel on your military. And the same...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

That would make it more of a choice.

And another one to use Sensor Data for Intel Purposes/as a Diplomatic tool as well:

3.0 Suggestion - Sensor Converage should improove Intel

I know, it is propably to early to make suggestions, but I had one Idea and wondered what others thought about it: Having Sensor Coverage of another Empire, should give a bonus to Intel/Espionage. The more of their planets and Systems you have...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Hastet]

I agree this should be a option but I think it already is.
Having a high encryption makes it impossible for the enemy to know your true strenght (I just had a massive decryption gap workign against me, so I can confirm it works that way).
It allows you to deceive the enemy in both directions - strenght and weakness - and the AI has to account for this Uncertainty.

I made a suggestion of tying useable diplomatic power to how much you "Disclose" of your forces:

Using high diplomatic weights should require disclosure

"The Whole Point of the Doomsday Machine is Lost if You Keep it a Secret!" My idea is that in order to use a high diplomatic weight from fleets, you would have to grant everyone a certain minimum amount of intel on your military. And the same...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

That would make it more of a choice.

And another one to use Sensor Data for Intel Purposes/as a Diplomatic tool as well:

3.0 Suggestion - Sensor Converage should improove Intel

I know, it is propably to early to make suggestions, but I had one Idea and wondered what others thought about it: Having Sensor Coverage of another Empire, should give a bonus to Intel/Espionage. The more of their planets and Systems you have...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Not knowing something is very different from knowing false information. High encryption simply keeps your rivals in the dark. My suggestion revolves around feeding false information--projecting strength when you are weak, and projecting weakness when you are strong.

 

[The Founder]

Not knowing something is very different from knowing false information. High encryption simply keeps your rivals in the dark. My suggestion revolves around feeding false information--projecting strength when you are weak, and projecting weakness when you are strong.

I just had a scenario in a game:
1. I lost large parts of my fleet (fighting Cosmozeans)
2. The Rival Empire was now relatively "Overwhelming" in miltiary
3. The intel on a enemy dropped below the "Stale" state
4. Even after rebuilding my fleet, it stayed stuck on "Overwhelming". The game seems to store the last evaluation, not the last fleetpower.
5. They attacked when our fleetpower was actually almost even (he had 2 fleets, I had one with equal power). So any true evaluation should have read me "equal" to "superior., yet the AI still attacked.

Does that sound like what you wanted? Loss of intel tricking the enemy into thinking your fleet is way weaker then it actually is?
Or do you want a operation that changes the enemies stale evaluation to Superior/Inferior?

 

[Hastet]

I just had a scenario in a game:
1. I lost large parts of my fleet (fighting Cosmozeans)
2. The Rival Empire was now relatively "Overwhelming" in miltiary
3. The intel on a enemy dropped below the "Stale" state
4. Even after rebuilding my fleet, it stayed stuck on "Overwhelming". The game seems to store the last evaluation, not the last fleetpower.
5. They attacked when our fleetpower was actually almost even (he had 2 fleets, I had one with equal power). So any true evaluation should have read me "equal" to "superior., yet the AI still attacked.

Does that sound like what you wanted? Loss of intel tricking the enemy into thinking your fleet is way weaker then it actually is?
Or do you want a operation that changes the enemies stale evaluation to Superior/Inferior?

The latter, where your enemy's perception of your military will be superior/inferior depending on what ops you run. If you don't want your enemy to attack, run an operation that makes them think you have superior military. If you want to goad your enemy into attacking, run an operation that makes them think you have an inferior military.

I think the AI attacked you because it a) possessed accurate information and thought it could fight you, b) was acting on old information and thought you were easy pickings, or c) had insufficient intel on you and just decided to yolo to see what they can get away with.

 

[The Founder]

The latter, where your enemy's perception of your military will be superior/inferior depending on what ops you run. If you don't want your enemy to attack, run an operation that makes them think you have superior military. If you want to goad your enemy into attacking, run an operation that makes them think you have an inferior military.

I am seriously worred about the AI being easily duped by this.

Back in the age before alloys and 1/System Starbases it used to be all the rage too:
1. Disband most of your fleet
2. Antagonize a AI a to attack you
3. Quickly rebuild your fleet from your dozens of spaceports
4. Fight a "defensive" War against a Inerior enemy.

The AI considering your Economic power too, helped.
But only alloys being the Military resource made that almsot impossible to pull off (too slow to re-build the fleet)
However with this operation, you could trick the AI without even having any danger or lost resources to yourself.


I had two suggestions that might make it not quite as viable:
One would make it a lot less viable for any Empire trying to throw it's Fleetpower around Diplomatically:

Unpopular opinion: Empire wide growth is a welcome change

Reading a lot of comments, you'd think that the change to pop growth is a nightmare. Having played to the year 2300+ so far i think people aren't adapting to the change in mechanics and are still trying to grow each planet individually and then...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

While the other makes it harder to pull off, if the enemy can just scan half your empire:

3.0 Suggestion - Sensor Converage should improove Intel

I know, it is propably to early to make suggestions, but I had one Idea and wondered what others thought about it: Having Sensor Coverage of another Empire, should give a bonus to Intel/Espionage. The more of their planets and Systems you have...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

But I fear even with that much limitations, it might still be too easily abused.

 

[Hastet]

I am seriously worred about the AI being easily duped by this.

Back in the age before alloys and 1/System Starbases it used to be all the rage too:
1. Disband most of your fleet
2. Antagonize a AI a to attack you
3. Quickly rebuild your fleet from your dozens of spaceports
4. Fight a "defensive" War against a Inerior enemy.

The AI considering your Economic power too, helped.
But only alloys being the Military resource made that almsot impossible to pull off (too slow to re-build the fleet)
However with this operation, you could trick the AI without even having any danger or lost resources to yourself.

Hm. How about introducing consequences to failed ops?

If an empire's encryption is too high compared to your codebreaking, your op will take a long time to finish and runs the risk of failure with each month. such a failure will alert the target empire to your shenanigans, who will begin establishing a spy network to investigate what's really going on in your empire.

If an enemy empire's codebreaking is too high compared to your encryption, then a simple 'gather intel' op will reveal the *actual* strength of your military despite your attempts to obfuscate such information.

Long story short, obfuscation ops are not guaranteed to work 100% of the time. They will fail against high-encryption targets, and empires with high codebreaking can ferret out the truth of your empire's economy/tech/military. This will give empires with good espionage civics/ethics an intelligence edge over empires that focus on raw military strength at the expense of encryption and codebreaking.

 

[The Founder]

We can not tie it to Encryption and Decryption. All it needs is a bit of planing ahead to get around it.
Players can trivially plan ahead.
AI can not plan ahead at all.
Rememnber, the Adversary here is a General Intelligence called a "Human". They are tricky to stop for abusing everything

My best idea to avoid too extreme abuse:
- If they fall for your deception and declare war - but later learn the real value - they are given a chance to just cancel the war there and then
- if you rejeect their request, it is treated as you being the attacker and them being the defender from that point. Which means you need to be able to do offensive wars, to even be able to reject it
- they can of course choose not to end the war - because they are still roughly even in power - at which point the war just continues as it is
It is hacky. It would be damn hard to justify even with a GC. But at least it could avoid the issue for extreme cases.

 

[Hastet]

We can not tie it to Encryption and Decryption. All it needs is a bit of planing ahead to get around it.
Players can trivially plan ahead.
AI can not plan ahead at all.
Rememnber, the Adversary here is a General Intelligence called a "Human". They are tricky to stop for abusing everything

My best idea to avoid too extreme abuse:
- If they fall for your deception and declare war - but later learn the real value - they are given a chance to just cancel the war there and then
- if you rejeect their request, it is treated as you being the attacker and them being the defender from that point. Which means you need to be able to do offensive wars, to even be able to reject it
- they can of course choose not to end the war - because they are still roughly even in power - at which point the war just continues as it is
It is hacky. It would be damn hard to justify even with a GC. But at least it could avoid the issue for extreme cases.

I beg to disagree, especially since it does not make sense from a lore perspective for an empire to 'give up' just because they realized the intel was bad. Nor did the aggressors just change their minds when the deceptions were made known. It's like the Allies canceling their invasion after the Germans realized they got duped on D-Day, or the Americans packing up and leaving when they didn't find any WMDs in Iraq.

The AI in Stellaris is not the most competent, I know. However, I don't think it will be impossible for the AI to get tweaked in order to recognize and react to bad intel.

For example, they are militarily superior while you are militarily inferior. You run ops to project yourself as militarily equivalent. The AI has ambitions on your territory and thus establishes a spy network. It's slow going, but they eventually get enough intel on your empire to at least realize that you're running an ops of some kind on them. They become suspicious--especially when you declare an offensive war on one of your weaker neighbors.

The AI will then run odds, deciding to attack a few months after you declare your war.

Another example: you are militarily superior while they are militarily inferior. You run ops to project yourself as militarily inferior. The AI has ambitions on your territory but has actually 'seen' your fleet strength when you sent your fleet to clear up a amoeba/drones/crystals near their borders. They have a bastion near that border with an observation post, allowing them to see a couple of systems into your territory. They become suspicious and establish a spy network. It's slow going, they eventually gather enough intel to support their initial suspicions that you are making yourself look weak.

The AI will then run odds, deciding to withhold their attack until they can get more accurate information.

If the AI DOES attack and gets burnt for it, they simply surrender and lose a couple systems. They then invest in better encryption and codebreaking, establish a spy network in your empire, and make sure to keep themselves as informed as possible. Other empires will also notice your deception and will begin beefing up their encryption/codebreaking.

Long story short, you can only pull off a 'great deception' only once before the other empires start paying attention to you. You'll have to lay low for a decade or two until the galaxy shifts their spies to higher-priority targets. And even then, your primary rivals will do their best to ensure their intel on you is up-to-date as possible.

 

[The Founder]

I beg to disagree, especially since it does not make sense from a lore perspective for an empire to 'give up' just because they realized the intel was bad. Nor did the aggressors just change their minds when the deceptions were made known. It's like the Allies canceling their invasion after the Germans realized they got duped on D-Day, or the Americans packing up and leaving when they didn't find any WMDs in Iraq.

You say you disagree, yet you totally agree with what I said:

It is hacky. It would be damn hard to justify even with a GC. But at least it could avoid the issue for extreme cases.

The AI in Stellaris is not the most competent, I know. However, I don't think it will be impossible for the AI to get tweaked in order to recognize and react to bad intel.

But any such tweak would mean the AI no longer falls for the Operation, making it pointless to run.

This opeartion has a incredibly swingy effect.
It can be either:
- entirely useless and not worth spending infiltraiton on
- totall op, making it the only operation that truly maters at all
With a very low chance to even landing close to a middle ground.

We had the same problem with Defense platforms prior to Solar Spaceports. They were either:
- not worth building at all
- worth building so much that you spammed them, making them OP
They needed to scrap the entire System, limit it to 1 Starbase/System and have a limited amount of defense platform "slots" per Starbase. Anything else just kept failing invariably.

Some things in game devleopment just are that way. And there is no fix, other then avoiding the problem in the first place.

 

[Hastet]

You say you disagree, yet you totally agree with what I said:



But any such tweak would mean the AI no longer falls for the Operation, making it pointless to run.

This opeartion has a incredibly swingy effect.
It can be either:
- entirely useless and not worth spending infiltraiton on
- totall op, making it the only operation that truly maters at all
With a very low chance to even landing close to a middle ground.

We had the same problem with Defense platforms prior to Solar Spaceports. They were either:
- not worth building at all
- worth building so much that you spammed them, making them OP
They needed to scrap the entire System, limit it to 1 Starbase/System and have a limited amount of defense platform "slots" per Starbase. Anything else just kept failing invariably.

Some things in game devleopment just are that way. And there is no fix, other then avoiding the problem in the first place.

This is why I tacked on this part after your suggestion:

[Long story short, you can only pull off a 'great deception' only once before the other empires start paying attention to you. You'll have to lay low for a decade or two until the galaxy shifts their spies to higher-priority targets. And even then, your primary rivals will do their best to ensure their intel on you is up-to-date as possible.]

You'll be able to dupe an uninformed and unprepared empire with low intel once. The AI will then adjust, dedicate resources to counter your operations. Your neighbors could also notice this, establishing spy networks in your territory to see if you're really as weak or as strong as you claim to be.

You will not be able to keep pulling such deception off all the time, which should balance false information operations. They won't be useless since they'll work well against high-military, low-intel targets who haven't planted spies in your territory. There is a high chance of failure against an empire running 'gather intel' operations on your empire, but you could still benefit from false intel operations if the RNG gods favor you.

False info operations likewise won't be abusable since a victim of false information will turn around and start running 'gather intel' operations on your empire. You could win big once, but your rivals will no longer be caught flat-footed the second time around.

 

[The Founder]

This solution depends on something as complex - and prone to error - as the AI to do something sensible. That is not a good start for any balancing mechanic.
When this fails - and it is only a question of when, not if! - the operation will become OP. We already had a lot of Dev time wasted on those kinds of design mistakes, no reason to add more to the pile.

If you were given a debuff "Pulled Fleetpower Illusion" that gives all Rivals a "+1 Intel Level on your Fleet power" for 20 years?
That could work. It would be:
- simple
- reliable
- entirely intrinsict to the operation (just add the debuff after the war starts)
- does not require a specific action on the AI to use
Just about the thing a balancing feature should have

 

[Hastet]

This solution depends on something as complex - and prone to error - as the AI to do something sensible. That is not a good start for any balancing mechanic.
When this fails - and it is only a question of when, not if! - the operation will become OP. We already had a lot of Dev time wasted on those kinds of design mistakes, no reason to add more to the pile.

If you were given a debuff "Pulled Fleetpower Illusion" that gives all Rivals a "+1 Intel Level on your Fleet power" for 20 years?
That could work. It would be:
- simple
- reliable
- entirely intrinsict to the operation (just add the debuff after the war starts)
- does not require a specific action on the AI to use
Just about the thing a balancing feature should have

That's actually a pretty good solution, from both a lore and practical perspective. Much better than triggering a ton of flags for the AI to consider.

If your false information op succeeds, the target empire will view your fleet power as 1 level weaker or stronger depending on the op you ran. [Pathetic > Inferior > Equal > Superior > Overwhelming if going for strong, or vice-versa if going for weak].

This 'fleetpower illusion' op lasts for 20 years. If you declare war after a successful 'fleetpower illusion' op, the effect ends. Your rivals and neighboring empires get the "observed successful illusion" buff that grants them ACCURATE intel on your fleet power for 20 years.

If the op fails though, your clumsy attempts at falsifying information backfires--revealing information about your fleet movements. Your rivals and neighbors get the 'observed failed illusion' buff that grant them ACCURATE intel on your fleet power for 20 years.