URGENT! an exploit that can be used to find economic power without espionage.

[Colonizor48]

Step 1. Use the trade deal function with the AI
2. Find the resource you want to know how their monthly income.
3. SPAM the ever living heck out of the button to add resources to their side. Do this untill it doesnt go up anymore. Shift/ctrl can be used to make this way faster
4.The number. At which you cant do so anymore is their income for that resource
5. Repeat for all resources.
6. Know their exact income without any espionage whatsoever.

 

[Ryika]

Well yeah, that's not a new thing.

Diplomatic Power will also still reveal the AI's relative power compared to you, and a lot more if you understand the formulas behind the numbers.

 

[Colonizor48]

Well yeah, that's not a new thing.

Diplomatic Power will also still reveal the AI's relative power compared to you, and a lot more if you understand the formulas behind the numbers.

You would need intel to see that normaly. This can be done with 0 intel.

 

[mial42]

Step 1. Use the trade deal function with the AI
2. Find the resource you want to know how their monthly income.
3. SPAM the ever living heck out of the button to add resources to their side. Do this untill it doesnt go up anymore. Shift/ctrl can be used to make this way faster
4.The number. At which you cant do so anymore is their income for that resource
5. Repeat for all resources.
6. Know their exact income without any espionage whatsoever.

This doesn't tell you quite as much as you think, since all it will tell you is their net income. What matters much more is total income; eg an empire with +2001 CGs/month income and -2000 consumption will look exactly the same as one with +1 income and -0 consumption. This is why base economic power depends on total income and does not count expenditures.

It's also an enormous PITA and the numbers will constantly change, so I don't think anyone would actually bother doing this (with the possible exception of alloys, which is the only reason people do this in 2.8 anyways. But this still won't tell you much past early game once everyone has serious alloy expenditures and different alloys: fleet power ratios).

 

[Ryika]

You would need intel to see that normaly. This can be done with 0 intel.

Sure, but it's only a small amount of Intel and gives you a lot more information about their actual relative power and size, not just the snapshot of their current income which may vary greatly depending on the situation. Their current fleet size is very easy to compare directly through Diplomatic Weight for example, and with some experience, you can easily extrapolate how many pops they have. Well, you kind of know that already anyway, since they all start in the same year you do, and an advanced start is rather easy to recognize.

The simple reality is that the devs don't seem to have a problem with experienced players collecting this information indirectly, since they've being rather consistent at not hiding it too much.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Doesn't the victory screen also show a but too much in terms of relative power... I really hate score board mechanic like this. They reveal too much information you should just not know. I at least would like to option to hide the victory screen as sometimes you come across it by mistake.

Information should be there but never be entirely accurate and you should need Intel and covert operation to find out real details about a potential adversary. Sure, trade and alliances should reveal allot about another empire by nature of access to civilian information. But military information should still be hard to come by.

 

[methegrate]

Doesn't the victory screen also show a but too much in terms of relative power... I really hate score board mechanic like this. They reveal too much information you should just not know. I at least would like to option to hide the victory screen as sometimes you come across it by mistake.

Information should be there but never be entirely accurate and you should need Intel and covert operation to find out real details about a potential adversary. Sure, trade and alliances should reveal allot about another empire by nature of access to civilian information. But military information should still be hard to come by.

I think I'd be more worried about this kind of thing if the player could actually use this information.

Military information, sure. Knowing how strong they are, where their fleets and star bases are, you'll make decisions based on that. But the strength of their economy or technology? I'm not sure how I would use that. If I know what another empire's economic power is, what decisions will I make based on that? At best it feels like a proxy for just knowing their military strength (i.e. how strong is this empire).

 

[Colonizor48]

Doesn't the victory screen also show a but too much in terms of relative power... I really hate score board mechanic like this. They reveal too much information you should just not know. I at least would like to option to hide the victory screen as sometimes you come across it by mistake.

Information should be there but never be entirely accurate and you should need Intel and covert operation to find out real details about a potential adversary. Sure, trade and alliances should reveal allot about another empire by nature of access to civilian information. But military information should still be hard to come by.

Yeah the victory screen should not show anything about another emprire without high intel.

 

[gigabytemon]

Doesn't the victory screen also show a but too much in terms of relative power... I really hate score board mechanic like this. They reveal too much information you should just not know. I at least would like to option to hide the victory screen as sometimes you come across it by mistake.

How do you come across a victory screen "by mistake"? Just set the victory year to some arbitrarily large number that you'll never reach, like 9999.

Yeah the victory screen should not show anything about another emprire without high intel.

The screen at the end of the game? Where it doesn't matter whether you know much about the empire or not? If it's a victory screen, then that means the game has ended already, no? And if you want to continue, you could just, you know, not read what's on the screen and close it.

 

[Ixal]

Sad to see that PDX seem to have fumbled Intel by not hiding all information everywhere.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

How do you come across a victory screen "by mistake"? Just set the victory year to some arbitrarily large number that you'll never reach, like 9999.


The screen at the end of the game? Where it doesn't matter whether you know much about the empire or not? If it's a victory screen, then that means the game has ended already, no? And if you want to continue, you could just, you know, not read what's on the screen and close it.

Do you really think it is the end game screen we talk about... it is the part where the game list all the Empires Victory Score and rank all the empires... it gives away too much relevant information and Intel should obfuscate this list as well as all other information.

Diplomatic power should also be hidden until you have experiences it and often just show the amount and not break up how much they get from what unless you have Intel on it.

 

[Miesha]

How do you come across a victory screen "by mistake"? Just set the victory year to some arbitrarily large number that you'll never reach, like 9999.

Friendly reminder that its possible to access the victory screen scoreboard during gameplay by going into the Situation Log and selecting the victory screen tab at the bottom of the window, thereby getting all the information you want about all empires mid-game. It's an easy misclick too since you often go into that log to check missions and anomalies.

 

[mial42]

Friendly reminder that its possible to access the victory screen scoreboard during gameplay by going into the Situation Log and selecting the victory screen tab at the bottom of the window, thereby getting all the information you want about all empires mid-game. It's an easy misclick too since you often go into that log to check missions and anomalies.

It doesn't give you the one really important thing: fleet power. Obviously fleet power is related to tech/eco, but there's no one-to-one correlation.

 

[methegrate]

It doesn't give you the one really important thing: fleet power. Obviously fleet power is related to tech/eco, but there's no one-to-one correlation.

I think this circles back to my concern. I'm not sure there's any intelligence that's relevant other than fleet/military power.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in on intelligence being the backbone of this system. I think that any espionage system needs to be based on gathering intelligence and using that information to make better decisions than your opponents can. That's certainly much better than the traditional 4x version of RNG-based sabotage and tech theft.

It's just that I'm not sure what decisions you can make based knowing another empire's economy, internal politics, technology, etc. I feel like that's the missing piece here.

 

[mial42]

I think this circles back to my concern. I'm not sure there's any intelligence that's relevant other than fleet/military power.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in on intelligence being the backbone of this system. I think that any espionage system needs to be based on gathering intelligence and using that information to make better decisions than your opponents can. That's certainly much better than the traditional 4x version of RNG-based sabotage and tech theft.

It's just that I'm not sure what decisions you can make based knowing another empire's economy, internal politics, technology, etc. I feel like that's the missing piece here.

For me, the things I want out of intel/espionage are flavor (not seeing everything from day 1) and tech stealing (I actually like it, especially if it doesn't damage the target empire. The game needs more tech catch up mechanisms, and IMO this would hit the sweet spot of fun-to-do and relevant without being annoying to be targeted by), so I'm not too worried about intel aside from fleet power not being all that relevant. You are right that pretty much the only thing that actually matters about another empire is fleet power, but that's been true as long as I've been playing, and at least now I won't know for sure if I'm stronger or weaker then everyone else without putting in some effort (which might slow down by usual military conquest snowballing, since it will be harder to precisely target the weakest neighbor as soon as my war ends).

 

[TrotBot]

How do you come across a victory screen "by mistake"? Just set the victory year to some arbitrarily large number that you'll never reach, like 9999.

you can just disable the victory year entirely, I do

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Just so you folks are aware, the score screen does block information if you lack sufficient Intel on another empire.

 

[Olterin]

Just so you folks are aware, the score screen does block information if you lack sufficient Intel on another empire. View attachment 703806

It notably still shows the overall total score, from which some information can be inferred. Still, that's miles better than having that screen show all the things, so that's mostly a relief to hear!

Edit: at a minimum, it wouldn't hurt to show an estimated range of score instead of a clean number, that way there's uncertainty. It's not like people need to know the exact (victory) ranking of everyone during the game for free.

 

[A2ch0n]

It notably still shows the overall total score, from which some information can be inferred. Still, that's miles better than having that screen show all the things, so that's mostly a relief to hear!

The overall score is neccessary to determine your position. I really hope that wouldn't be hidden!

 

[Olterin]

The overall score is neccessary to determine your position. I really hope that wouldn't be hidden!

You can still be given your own position, but why should you be given the relative position of other empires without having at least some intel on them?