How to use espionage missions?

[unmerged(205575)]

I can't figure out how to fire espionage missions (steal blueprint etc.) in AoD. I understand the espionage budget, and the counter-espionage missions seem to be triggering automatically. But I have never ever managed to send off an espionage mission on my own. Even if I have plenty of spies, when I select the mission it asks to confirm, I say OK, the mission turns green and... nothing happens. Ever. Even after waiting months and months.

So I guess the green means this is the active mission that the automated espionage tool will keep trying. First I figured it is waiting to fill the espionage budget to "full" before embarking on the mission. But no. Even when the espionage budget is "full" (current # of spies less than or equal to the budget), it never actually launches the missions. Successfully or unsuccessfully. Once the budget for that country is full, it just moves on to send spies to other countries, or more likely counterespionage. No missions are being launched at any point.

How on earth does it work? The manual explains absolutely nothing about this. Is there a FAQ for espionage?

 

[Pal]

Did you assign enough money to espionage? It will happen automatically every now and then. I have all majors on "steal blueprint" and put a lot of money into espionage, netting me a successful theft of knowledge every month on average (during 1938+).

Maybe you have to turn on event notifications? The message settings are very messed up at the start...

 

[unmerged(205575)]

Did you assign enough money to espionage? It will happen automatically every now and then. I have all majors on "steal blueprint" and put a lot of money into espionage, netting me a successful theft of knowledge every month on average (during 1938+).

Maybe you have to turn on event notifications? The message settings are very messed up at the start...

I tried with several countries, including the US, investing all my money into espionage. Nothing. I could not see any event notifications set to ignore in the message settings.

 

[Iberville]

Also helps to research encryption/decryption to boost your chances. Also it starts slowly, but a the game progresses stuff happen. Ministers influence that too, and the number of spy in a given country. You know you have to click on '+' to set spying priorities, right? (in the 'intelligence' tab) The more spies you send the better the missions will succeed.

Message settings are not 'events' you determine which messages you want to see or not in 'menu/options' or by right-cliking on the log or a box message and then on 'settings'.

 

[unmerged(205575)]

Well they are firing now, not had a successful one yet (apart from naval intelligence, very useful for Japan that) though that may be because Japan has no good ministers for intelligence. But I do wonder how the espionage assistant decides when to activate a mission? Does it depend on the level of funding? Am I correct in assuming the intelligence works just like it did in HoI2 "under the hood", and the AoD style intelligence is just bolted on top of that so that the money gets invested and the spies sent automatically for you? If so then I could see how it takes a while to accumulate, say, the money needed to attempt a coup.

 

[Mjarr]

1. Have enough funding for spies. Having some 'unnecessary' extra doesn't hurt.
2. Find the country (left side of the screen, espionage tab) on the list you want to prioritise. Press the + button to increase spying priority and - to decrease it. Increasing funding + giving single country high priority tends to concentrate in there most of the time.
3. Select the country and what intelligence mission you want to focus on. Now just wait for the results, depending how many spies gets in the country among other things.

With around 5-7 spies you should have over 10% naval intelligence odds and practically speaking decent success few times per month as an example. Sometimes even in a single week.