This might be too little too late, but I've been playing the new Game of Thrones game and it got me thinking about how much I enjoy it's vision of espionage compared to how other 4x games typically handle it.

In a typical 4x game, you have an espionage "structure" that generates "points" that you just throw at either internal defence or enemy military/science/economics.

It can be useful and strategic but I always found it rather boring because in the end, all the good stuff is happening behind the scenes.

Now compare that to Game of Thrones where you recruit underhanded agents, send them into enemy territory on specific missions, and it results in controllable outputs.

For an example, let us say that I really want to keep my opponent from leveling up his weapons technology. In most 4x games the best I can hope for would be to dump a bunch of points into "espionage" and then point it at enemy science and hope a random number pops up that triggers an event that says "your spy blew up a lab".

In GoT, if your opponent is flooding the game with diplomats and winning over all the neutral people, you recruit a spy, send him specifically to the opponents HQ to be recruited as an envoy. Then when your opponent recruits his next envoy, it's really your spy. This not only negates his ability to make new alliances (in a really sneaky and cool way) but you also get to see his side of the map because he is controlling your guy, essentially, so you can see what he is moving him around to, where he is focusing etc.


I think that kind of espionage system would be far better and more integrated iwth the rest of the game then just another resource to manage. So a quick idea would be that instead of even having "espionage" as a independent screen, instead you could build a "Spy Ship" that would always have a cloak ability for all races. This spy ship could be sent on a variety of missions.

You could point him at one of your systems and have him "patrol it" to try and detect other spies and counter enemy espionage attempts. You could send him to an enemy system to monitor it. He would essentially orbit the planet and beam down now and then to perform espionage or sabotage activities. Finally, you could point him at the enemy capital to attempt to infiltrate their military. If successful, one of the enemy's ships would be revealed to you on the Fog of War and you would get to see everything it can see. It would reveal map squares and fleet movements in a much more engaging way then "wait for esiponage event #114 to be generated"


So in my initial scenario of "wanting to ruin my enemy's research" I would point my spy ship towards a planet I've identified (or guessed at) being a strong research hub for my opponent, have him infiltrate the system and then have him go down and try and blow up the enemy structure.

*Note: mission results should involve RNG so as not to be too overpowered. Perhaps a new resource instead is "overall internal security" that would prevent the difficulty of different missions offset by your espionage research/structures + agent skill level.

One of the nice things about this system is that it actually would have a strategic element to it because you have such finer control over your agents. If you are Klingon and are fighting Romulans and Cardassians, in BotF every turn you would get a dozen events "This blew up." "This gold was stolen." "This research was destroyed." And other then building dozens if not hundreds of espionage structures and manning them, there was nothing you could do.

With this way, even if your security was inferior you could tighten up security in specific areas. Want to protect your main battle fleet from exploding, invest in a team of spies to go with them. Your finances threatened? Guard your banks. You could compensate for their superior technology with sheer manpower. If you only have a 5% chance of stopping their agent then 20 agents protecting something should have a good chance of actually protecting it.

On the flip side, a race that has decided to invest heavily in espionage doesn't have to rely heavily on the RNG-gods to trigger espionage events, they can direct them specifically at the enemy's production or research or ships or whatever.


Traditional espionage structures would either provide static bonuses to either system/ship/general security or provide bonuses to your spies. An "Advanced Cloaking Research" building gives them better "stealth". The "Phoenix Facility" from BotF would instead give a bonus to espionage while the Obsidian Order or Tal'Shier structure might (among other things) provide a big bonus to sabotage.

This would also alter how some of the minor races work. For example, the Yridians could have a "minor race spy ship" that they could employ against an attacker, or if you're the klingons chances are the Yridian "spy ship" will be many times better then your own.

Espionage, in fact the whole Intel system, has been revamped. I think you're gonna like it

Curiosly, I've been reading GoT, and have been checking the TV series. I should take a look at the game I guess.

A little off topic: The game is...enjoyably frustrating?

As mentioned, the AI/other players can replace your characters with their spies/traitors so from your viewpoint, your assassin is killing people, your envoy is getting alliances etc. etc. but in reality, they aren't.

On your view, on your status screens etc. it will look like you're winning. But you aren't. And when you finally figure it out it can be a horrifying feeling depending on how long it takes you to figure it out. I had a game where literally 1/2 the map was "false" information because my opponent(s) had replaced almost all of my agents with their own. I went from "appearing" to be clearly in 1st place to clearly being in last place.

Fun, but understandably frustrating as well.

Also, a bit of a downer but towns aren't named as such :( So on the grand Westeros map there are towns where they should be towns, but they're not named King's Landing, White Harbor etc. nor are your agents "named" so you can't move Sansa or Arya around on the map. During the campaign there are a few named characters but they mainly just stand around and give you orders.

Oh yes...what Iceman says is true. The intel system has been revamped. I don't know the specifics yet of how Mike intends the full-fledged system to work, but I have a development build of the game that I think you just might like. You'll just have to wait and see when the game is ready for its next release.