Setting Up Co-operative government

[ppccctu]

I understand that one possible use of your spies is to set up a future co-operative government in a country you plan to conquer, thus making resistance in that country less of a problem after your conquest. How exactly does this work? For example, do you first need to establish a spy network in the target country (I'm guessing that you do)? How many spies will you need for this mission? How exactly does it help you later? Is it worth the effort required?

 

[Hoi Neuling]

The Questions are the Answers in some Point.

1. You need an Agent to establish an Network.
2. The Networks works with 35% (Civilian Infiltration) and most other things at 50 % (like the Co-Op-Government).
3. Then you need 2 Agents to establish the Co-Op-Government, which have to wait until the request is done.
4. After you choose the 2 Agents then first you have to give the requested ressources (mostly Civ-Industry, some Infantry-Weapons and Infantry-Special-Ressources) before the Mission of the Agents can start.
5. To work out the request faster turn every Army-Buildup and not needed things on Red and the Agency-Ressources on Green.

 

[Zauberelefant]

You may have gathered from this that you better have 3 spies in total for that, to not lose the network between missions.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

Yep that´s the Problem you have at the Beginning. You can only do 2 Things:

1. You build up the Training-Thing where you get +1 or +2 agents and have for 30 Days 10 Civ Industry lesser which you need for buildup
2. You use your 3 Agents you have already with 2 from the Agency and 1 from the Minister

If you use a Mod you can get 4 Spys with the Point 2 Buildup for the Beginning + later 2 from the Training-Center for the Moment.

We will see what get changed with the new Country Pack DLC and Patch 1.10 "Collie" which should come this year and sometime next year between earlyest April to latest December with the big DLC "Unknown" incl. Patch 1.11 "Barbarossa".

 

[FLUX2226]

Yep that´s the Problem you have at the Beginning. You can only do 2 Things:

1. You build up the Training-Thing where you get +1 or +2 agents and have for 30 Days 10 Civ Industry lesser which you need for buildup
2. You use your 3 Agents you have already with 2 from the Agency and 1 from the Minister

If you use a Mod you can get 4 Spys with the Point 2 Buildup for the Beginning + later 2 from the Training-Center for the Moment.

We will see what get changed with the new Country Pack DLC and Patch 1.10 "Collie" which should come this year and sometime next year between earlyest April to latest December with the big DLC "Unknown" incl. Patch 1.11 "Barbarossa".

I do hope for key changes to espionage. It feels tailored to playing as a spymaster UK and focusing on occupied France, hardly offering anything useful in other situations.

A few suggestions:
>Rework the spy master to no longer be the key for being able to use espionage properly, rather have it give you small bonuses.
>Drastically increase the amount of spies but have the amount scale with your strength. Up to 4 operatives for every country with a sufficiently upgraded intelligence agency, up to 8 operatives if you have a beefy economy (e.g. 50+ free civs).
>Make the Illusive Gentleman advisor less mandatory.
>Cut operation times in half and add an agency upgrade to reduce the impact of enemy counterintelligence, costing 10 factories for each level. Passive defense is a cheap upgrade and so far has no counterplay.
>Allow sabotaging resources/factories on core territory. You can outfit your operatives with plastic explosives but for some reason they need local partisans to blow things up (and without high compliance you hardly get any resources anyway so who cares if your occupied provinces have reduced resource extraction).
>Remove the "Prepare Collaboration Government" operation entirely and replace it with a *non-DLC* way of reducing resistance and quickly increasing compliance. As of right now, the DLC is almost mandatory for specific major powers while screwing over minor nations that can't afford to run an agency and operations. A collab in northern France as Germany bypasses all occupation modifiers from Free France and guarantees instant high payout, while a Balkans Dominance Romania gets hammered by resistance and is almost forced to puppet.

 

[ppccctu]

The Questions are the Answers in some Point.

1. You need an Agent to establish an Network.
2. The Networks works with 35% (Civilian Infiltration) and most other things at 50 % (like the Co-Op-Government).
3. Then you need 2 Agents to establish the Co-Op-Government, which have to wait until the request is done.
4. After you choose the 2 Agents then first you have to give the requested ressources (mostly Civ-Industry, some Infantry-Weapons and Infantry-Special-Ressources) before the Mission of the Agents can start.
5. To work out the request faster turn every Army-Buildup and not needed things on Red and the Agency-Ressources on Green.

Thanks. Sounds pretty much like the "lots of work" to do I imagined it would be. I'm guessing it's not worth the effort for a small country like Belgium, but it might be well worth it for France. Does that sound right?

 

[ppccctu]

Yep that´s the Problem you have at the Beginning. You can only do 2 Things:

1. You build up the Training-Thing where you get +1 or +2 agents and have for 30 Days 10 Civ Industry lesser which you need for buildup
2. You use your 3 Agents you have already with 2 from the Agency and 1 from the Minister

If you use a Mod you can get 4 Spys with the Point 2 Buildup for the Beginning + later 2 from the Training-Center for the Moment.

We will see what get changed with the new Country Pack DLC and Patch 1.10 "Collie" which should come this year and sometime next year between earlyest April to latest December with the big DLC "Unknown" incl. Patch 1.11 "Barbarossa".

Good point. Actually, I don't mind those game rules that cause you to decide between 2 alternative strategies, as long as the there is a rough kind of balance (good and bad) in whichever choice you make. That's good design, in my humble opinion. I played UK in my last game, and I was rather spoiled with my Intelligence Agency (I think I stole 4 techs from Germany and created a resistance nightmare for them elsewhere), so I'm sure I will feel "impoverished" as Germany by comparison.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

Yep, the Devs are doing more with the last big Improvements for the Game (Espionage, Tech etc.). That was mentioned in the yesterdays Dev Diray. But not to much in 1.10 "Collie" and the second Country Pack DLC. The very big improvements will come first with 1.11 "Barbarossa" and his unknown DLC.