Played a few hours of La Resistance. My opinion regarding the espionage system.

[Alfnett29]

Hello.

First of all, I haven't bought the expansion yet, but had the chance to try La Resistance for several hours. This is how I feel it compares to my standard HOI4 experience.

This post is specifically regarding the espionage system, not the focus trees or the new resistance/compliance system.

Although I welcome the addition of spies, there's quite a few things which I found just straight up annoying:


RESCUE MISSIONS
Every few months an agent gets captured, which forces you to stop everything in order to rescue the agent. That means, out of three spies as Germany, two are now useless. By the time I rescue the agent, all previous network progress has been reset. It's just an annoying circle of pop up messages, me pausing the game, sending agents on rescue mission, losing all network progress, resetting once rescued, rinse and repeat. It feels like a chore. Most agents are not worth being rescued anyway, since they take forever to level up, you only have to do it because of how long they'll be taking an agent slot otherwise.

I'd much rather the chance of agents getting killed be increased and that of being captured fairly reduced. Plus, it should require no network at all to attempt to rescue an agent. Instead, the chance of success should be affected by how large the network is, rescuer level and skill, etc. Time in captivity should also be cut short, 90 days for instance.


USING CIVS
Although I generally enjoy the abstraction of Civilian Factories in this game, I do not think they should be the currency used for expanding your espionage network. Your network buildings/bonuses should depend on political power investment and on its own currency, similar to Command/Army/Naval/Air XP.

You'd then be able to use that XP to buy skills for your existing spies, acquire new spies, or improve your espionage capabilities, thus giving the espionage system proper opportunity costs. Right now it doesn't really matter what you choose to improve and in what order since you can fill the whole thing fairly quickly when playing as Germany (so I assume it's the same for other majors).


OTHER NUISANCES
- I really don't think the number of spies should depend on the size of the faction, though perhaps you should get a bonus to network building speed and effectiveness of other passive missions depending on the size of your faction and on the size of the espionage capabilities of each country in the faction. The bonus would only apply when spying on countries outside your faction and it should probably have a cap, e.g. 20%.

Cheers.

 

[SAmaster]

Yeah, I think espionage is going to need a rework in the next major patch, because as is, only a handful of nations can really take advantage of the mechanic.

It seems to me the proper number of spies is four, or at least three- however the vast majority of nations, that is to say those who aren't leading large factions, are only going to get two- maybe three if they have an illusive gentlemen (which takes up an advisor slot you could use for other stuff). Personally I think the solution is simple- just give every nation one spy to start with regardless of if they have an agency- so with full upgrades each country has three spies which will allow them to do any mission.

It really sucked for me since I played as Poland for the La Resistance, figuring it would be appropriate, but not only was having three spies really limiting, after I became a government in exile, I couldn't do most of the missions, since I lacked any civilian factories, or military factories for things like sending guns or support equipment to the resistance- meaning I was in the weird position of not being able to contact the polish resistance AS Poland. I think the solution there is to allow governments in exiles to get a couple off-map factories at max legitimacy so they have more options (for one I also couldn't use what was left of my airforce because nobody would lend-lease me oil, and I couldn't buy any oil either).

I also agree- I feel networks should die off more slowly- I don't see why they should be completely reset after every mission- and no nation except maybe Britain will have a spare spy there just to maintain intel networks. Likewise- I also feel intel on a nation should decay much more slowly in general, and should also start off higher- even without dedicated spies, most nations can reasonably ballpark a countries military capacity from publicly available information- and if intel starts at only 5%, well that's going to really screw over minors who can't invest into spies all that well can they? It's gonna be hard for say a country like the Netherlands to figure out what nations have what and spec out their military accordingly. Similarly- if I have 100% intel on the German navy in 1940, even if I abandon all spying on the country, I should still be able to reasonably figure out how many ships they still have in 1941.

It almost feels to me that everything to do with spies and intel in La Resistance was made with the developers expecting you not to want to use it- I think they even said in a dev diary they were very surprised that people playing as minors were trying to get spy agencies up and running.

 

[BeauNiddle]

The big problem with spy systems in strategy games is they are either completely underwhelming or completely broken. This is because the designers either make the bonuses to weak it's not worth the opportunity cost or they are so strong the only optimal play is to focus on spies. Paradox know this (not least from their other games)

Paradox's solution to this design problem was spy masters - powerful spy abilities but locked behind one per faction (and expensive cost for agency upgrades). To make it usable it's very easy for the player to become spymaster if they are in a faction, rather than requiring the spymaster to be head of the faction.

What you're complaining about is a clearly laid out design decision. They're not going to change it.


Every nation gets 3 spies with illusive gentlemen. That's enough to do the basic missions. If you want to do all the missions become a spymaster as the game intends.

As for getting captured I think I only had 3 spies captured during the whole war - it's a bit luck based but also be careful in nations with large amounts of counter-espionage

 

[podcat]

The big problem with spy systems in strategy games is they are either completely underwhelming or completely broken. This is because the designers either make the bonuses to weak it's not worth the opportunity cost or they are so strong the only optimal play is to focus on spies. Paradox know this (not least from their other games)

Paradox's solution to this design problem was spy masters - powerful spy abilities but locked behind one per faction (and expensive cost for agency upgrades). To make it usable it's very easy for the player to become spymaster if they are in a faction, rather than requiring the spymaster to be head of the faction.

What you're complaining about is a clearly laid out design decision. They're not going to change it.


Every nation gets 3 spies with illusive gentlemen. That's enough to do the basic missions. If you want to do all the missions become a spymaster as the game intends.

As for getting captured I think I only had 3 spies captured during the whole war - it's a bit luck based but also be careful in nations with large amounts of counter-espionage

We have changed capture chances a bit in 1.9.2 BETA. less capture chance now and more risk of going underground. There are a bunch of other tweaks also to operations and such.

as for spy counts, I doubt we will change it further, as you say above its a way to keep things useful but not game breaking. We either break the game letting minors do whatever they want or make everything toothless. The spymaster compromise lets you still get a lot of benefit from spies, but you cant do it all. I think maybe we could have had a game setting to allow more spies, but its easy for modders to add and if I see those mods become popular we can consider it in the future. I get its a fantasy people wanna be able to do, but getting wrecked by Albanian spies couping Germany being possible without an insane amount of work and focus just makes things impossible to balance.

 

[Feltan]

W.R.T. the whole spy/espionage system.

I don't hate it. But, I don't much like it either. While HOI4 strives for a realistic/historical flavor in most of its features, this feature seems like a child's dumbed-down sub-game rather than a historical aspect of WWII.

The crypto part is probably the best/most realistic -- representative without being annoying or too complex. The Agents and Operations are straining for credibility; this simply isn't a good representation of human intelligence gathering or covert operations.

If the entire DLC went away tomorrow, I wouldn't miss it much. It may appeal to women and children, but my guess is that most HOI4 players are entirely underwhelmed.

Regards,
Feltan

 

[SAmaster]

Albanian spies couping Germany being possible without an insane amount of work and focus just makes things impossible to balance.

Well Podcat, if that is the concern, shouldn't the solution be to up the spy count for the really dangerous missions like coups? Meanwhile having three spies allows you to infiltrate a nations government more easily for those intel bonuses, which are just giving you basic information and shouldn't be overpowered, or getting in contact with resistance networks- perhaps you could just make it cheaper to contact the resistance if it's your cores resisting (so that way France has an easier time contacting the French resistance than say Britain or Albania would), and missions like stealing technology wouldn't be OP for minors since they tend to have a cooldown of a couple of months from start to finish in exchange for a single tech-bonus.

That way if minors all had three spies (and keep in mind a lot of minors like say Tibet or Albania wouldn't have the economy to build an intel agency for several years anyqay) that way they aren't constantly throwing coups, or influencing nations, just gathering intel or getting the occasional tech bonus.

 

[Riekopo]

The espionage system would be a lot more interesting in my opinion if there were 50 or so historical missions instead of the 3 or 4 there currently are.

 

[Vlad123]

my two cent: My idea is based on a mod, X industries (total or civil) earn you +1 spy slots. This way strong (and wealthy) nations can have a good number of spies and do damage. Example when you become majors (50 industries if I remember correctly) +1 spy and so the initial majors have 4 basic spies

 

[sekelsenmat]

as for spy counts, I doubt we will change it further, as you say above its a way to keep things useful but not game breaking. We either break the game letting minors do whatever they want or make everything toothless. The spymaster compromise lets you still get a lot of benefit from spies, but you cant do it all. I think maybe we could have had a game setting to allow more spies, but its easy for modders to add and if I see those mods become popular we can consider it in the future. I get its a fantasy people wanna be able to do, but getting wrecked by Albanian spies couping Germany being possible without an insane amount of work and focus just makes things impossible to balance.

I like the new spy system a lot, but could a popup or top notification appear when a mission is over? I forget the spies every single time and when I notice they wasted 2-3 months sitting around...

 

[Gefallener_Held]

My thoughts:

There are some things that have continuing counter-measure, eg encryption, counter-espionage. So once all of the measures are taken it is just a matter of time. The mechanic needs to include a way to continually invest in counter measures, because it is a never ending process.

Re collaboartion governments, I am not really sure what they are supposed to represent. The Quisling regime or General Government in Occupied Poland had nothing to do with German Intelligence measures. There should also be an action you take to set up collaboration government AFTER capitulation.

In Expert AI, one is effectively forced to do collaboration governments because the Disjointed Government feature is removed. Again, not really sure what this is supposed to represent. France did not surrender when they did on account of German intelligence activitiies.

Other things--for countries like Germany, there needs to be a way to catch up to UK. There needs to be an altenrative way to create an intelligence system that can match that through other means. How is unclear to me.

Finally, the names and portraits suck. Most of them do not look of the historical era. Half the time as Germany I get some broad named Jessica. Many of the seducer types look like grandmothers or librarians...

 

[SAmaster]

Other things--for countries like Germany, there needs to be a way to catch up to UK. There needs to be an altenrative way to create an intelligence system that can match that through other means. How is unclear to me.

Germany historically speaking had the worst intelligence service in the war. Every spy in the UK was made into a double-agent, and they never really accomplished anything on an espionage front. The reason for this is because the guy in charge of the Abwehr was left over from the days of the Weimar Republic, and actively despised Hitler- and tried to recruit as many anti-fascists as he could into the organization- he was one step away from actively sabotaging the Nazis at every turn. For whatever reason they never took the intelligence agency seriously as an arm of warfare, and didn't really try to fill the ranks with fascists like they did with the airforce, army and navy.

If anything Germany should start with a debuff with regards to spies. Granted that wouldn't be that fun, and would be rather unbalanced. Maybe it could be offset with a buff to their encryption representing the Enigma, one that the allies would have to do a few missions regarding smuggling out an enigma machine to counter it.

 

[Gefallener_Held]

Germany historically speaking had the worst intelligence service in the war. Every spy in the UK was made into a double-agent, and they never really accomplished anything on an espionage front. The reason for this is because the guy in charge of the Abwehr was left over from the days of the Weimar Republic, and actively despised Hitler- and tried to recruit as many anti-fascists as he could into the organization- he was one step away from actively sabotaging the Nazis at every turn. For whatever reason they never took the intelligence agency seriously as an arm of warfare, and didn't really try to fill the ranks with fascists like they did with the airforce, army and navy.

If anything Germany should start with a debuff with regards to spies. Granted that wouldn't be that fun, and would be rather unbalanced. Maybe it could be offset with a buff to their encryption representing the Enigma, one that the allies would have to do a few missions regarding smuggling out an enigma machine to counter it.

Point taken, but there should be a way to avoid that, just as there is a way for playing as France to avoid Fall of France, etc.

 

[podcat]

I like the new spy system a lot, but could a popup or top notification appear when a mission is over? I forget the spies every single time and when I notice they wasted 2-3 months sitting around...

yea I can agree here. I tend to have them set up on missions so they go back to those when done, but a regular alert would be useful for when they go back to just counter intel.
We do have a small alert on the agency button itself when there is a completed operation though, but I agree its not as visible:

The reason for this is because the guy in charge of the Abwehr was left over from the days of the Weimar Republic, and actively despised Hitler- and tried to recruit as many anti-fascists as he could into the organization- he was one step away from actively sabotaging the Nazis at every turn. For whatever reason they never took the intelligence agency seriously as an arm of warfare, and didn't really try to fill the ranks with fascists like they did with the airforce, army and navy.

Its not just Canaris. They had lots of different agencies competing and impeding each other and playign politics (this book I thought was pretty good on the topic, and it covers a lot more on german intel gathering: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1542740.Hitler_s_Spies).

Re collaboartion governments, I am not really sure what they are supposed to represent. The Quisling regime or General Government in Occupied Poland had nothing to do with German Intelligence measures.

Well someone had to contact Quisling and arrange things in a not completely open manner. Historically it was Hans-Wilhelm Scheidt I believe which was some form of foreign diplomatic liaison for the nazi party. We could have done a system that relied on diplomacy and was still covert but imo this is getting stuck on specifics and would just muddle up the gameplay separation. We meant for it to be a quite broad abstraction of various more autonomous collaboration to cover stuff from action to reduce unity on the defense to supporting a qvisling coup to the reichskommissariats in a more dynamic manner

Half the time as Germany I get some broad named Jessica. Many of the seducer types look like grandmothers or librarians...

no accounting for taste

 

[safe-keeper]

RESCUE MISSIONS
Every few months an agent gets captured, which forces you to stop everything in order to rescue the agent. That means, out of three spies as Germany, two are now useless. By the time I rescue the agent, all previous network progress has been reset. It's just an annoying circle of pop up messages, me pausing the game, sending agents on rescue mission, losing all network progress, resetting once rescued, rinse and repeat. It feels like a chore. Most agents are not worth being rescued anyway, since they take forever to level up, you only have to do it because of how long they'll be taking an agent slot otherwise.

I'd much rather the chance of agents getting killed be increased and that of being captured fairly reduced. Plus, it should require no network at all to attempt to rescue an agent. Instead, the chance of success should be affected by how large the network is, rescuer level and skill, etc. Time in captivity should also be cut short, 90 days for instance.

I don't own La Résistance either, so take my views with a grain of salt, but yes, sending your remaining spies on a mission to rescue a captured spy sounds like something out of James Bond more than something in an otherwise pretty serious wargame. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I suppose it should be a rare event, and should probably also be incredibly hard to pull off.

I also don't know how often the heads of spy networks were compromised or captured to begin with. In EU4, you can send your diplomats to build spy networks, essentially making them work like spies in HOI4, I suppose, but they are never captured when the target learns of the spy network, the network is just shrunk in size to 25, and you have to start building it again.

Yeah, I think espionage is going to need a rework in the next major patch, because as is, only a handful of nations can really take advantage of the mechanic.

Works as intended, and to be honest, I don't really mind. It reminds me of how in EU4, you need certain national ideas to really use spies effectively, or to explore and colonize the world. It's not meant to be something anyone can just decide to do. When you think about it, it's like how only a few countries can really churn out warships, or build and maintain a significant number of tank divisions.

The number of spies is pretty limited for the same reason.


Edit:
Question: when a spy is captured, can you replace him or her, or are you stuck with one spy doing nothing until you rescue them? Because if so that's a weird implementation. If you lose a spy to capture, you should be able to simply recruit a new one and put that person in the captured spy's slot. I seem to recall reading that you can't dismiss spies once they're hired, but surely you should be able to replace one that's captured.

 

[safe-keeper]

yea I can agree here. I tend to have them set up on missions so they go back to those when done, but a regular alert would be useful for when they go back to just counter intel.
We do have a small alert on the agency button itself when there is a completed operation though, but I agree its not as visible:
View attachment 572834


Its not just Canaris. They had lots of different agencies competing and impeding each other and playign politics (this book I thought was pretty good on the topic, and it covers a lot more on german intel gathering: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1542740.Hitler_s_Spies).


Well someone had to contact Quisling and arrange things in a not completely open manner. Historically it was Hans-Wilhelm Scheidt I believe which was some form of foreign diplomatic liaison for the nazi party. We could have done a system that relied on diplomacy and was still covert but imo this is getting stuck on specifics and would just muddle up the gameplay separation. We meant for it to be a quite broad abstraction of various more autonomous collaboration to cover stuff from action to reduce unity on the defense to supporting a qvisling coup to the reichskommissariats in a more dynamic manner


no accounting for taste

Honestly, I wonder if HOI4 needs that little box in EU4 that gives you updates you can click on to see them as pop-up boxes. For HoI4, it could primarily show things going on in your own empire, like a ship completing construction, spies completing their missions, and so on.

 

[podcat]

Question: when a spy is captured, can you replace him or her, or are you stuck with one spy doing nothing until you rescue them? Because if so that's a weird implementation. If you lose a spy to capture, you should be able to simply recruit a new one and put that person in the captured spy's slot. I seem to recall reading that you can't dismiss spies once they're hired, but surely you should be able to replace one that's captured.

the slot is locked until their fate is decided or it would be easy to ignore. Capture is part of defense since spies are rare, so what is happening here is that the nation defended itself and you lost active spy time vs them. You can put more spies to get the captured spy out which is faster but uses more resources, or let them get executed after interrogations end if you dont want to use your other spies for it. At this point you can hire another spy to replace them.

 

[porta80]

Played a few games now trying to understand this.
Short call: nearly useless

From now on i just get 5 lvl ups at the start to have 2 agents then later on i do the decryption and encryption tasks i hardly use the agents they get caught way to often so if i do i just let them do networks or mostly counter espionage nothing else anymore... ic costs and so are just way to high to realy get a benefit of this.

Edit:
After some more games i need to say the colaboration is really powerfull not to say way next to OP. thats really worth it especially for the axis and other nations going offensive and willing to conquer.

 

[Major Malfunction]

We have changed capture chances a bit in 1.9.2 BETA. less capture chance now and more risk of going underground. There are a bunch of other tweaks also to operations and such.

as for spy counts, I doubt we will change it further, as you say above its a way to keep things useful but not game breaking. We either break the game letting minors do whatever they want or make everything toothless. The spymaster compromise lets you still get a lot of benefit from spies, but you cant do it all. I think maybe we could have had a game setting to allow more spies, but its easy for modders to add and if I see those mods become popular we can consider it in the future. I get its a fantasy people wanna be able to do, but getting wrecked by Albanian spies couping Germany being possible without an insane amount of work and focus just makes things impossible to balance.

The problem also is that early game is all about CIC boosting to later boost MICs. And since spies can provide boost via stealing blueprints sending them to anything but stealing them is a waster. Of course we are not talking about RP runs, but some kind of meta, where gaining as much CIC as early as possible and boosting +% to construction valued above anything else. SO from my experience, people build 5 upgrades to Spy Agency to get second agent and won't touch it until late game, making entire agency part somewhat abandoned or roleplay thing

 

[SAmaster]

When you think about it, it's like how only a few countries can really churn out warships, or build and maintain a significant number of tank divisions.

Yeah, but Paradox doesn't try to impede you from building warships- infact the ship designer in Man the Guns is rather freeform in giving you the options to design whatever type of ship you want for whatever type of warfare you expect- so the only real issues are how advanced your naval tech is and your industry. It's not like they went 'well Ecuador wasn't really a naval power in WW2, so we're just going to not let them research super-heavy battleships'. Meanwhile every nation did have an intelligence network to some extent. I understand for balance purposes not all spy agencies should be treated equally, but I feel like every nation should be able to start with their foot in the door so to say- like say a nation like Tibet wouldn't be able to afford a spy agency as is- if they start off with 1 open spy slot, they can at least build up an intel network on whoever they want to be at war with if only to figure out how many soldiers and planes they have, or they could play defense.

Also- I do think that there should be an option to leave captured spies to their fate so you can open up their slot. Perhaps the trade off is that the enemy nation can extract the full amount of intel out of him, that expires past a certain value (because a captured spy isn't going to know of new developments back home while captured).

And since spies can provide boost via stealing blueprints sending them to anything but stealing them is a waster.

I've been wondering if stealing blueprints should be nerfed. To my knowledge no nation would straight up copy the design of a foriegn nation- unless they were doing things like purchasing licenses (which is represented seriously). Nations would usually have to consider domestic production problems and change designs accordingly. So it'd make sense if instead of a 100% research bonus it was more like 75%.