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Covert Operations - Making Spies Great Again

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun-Tzu


If you're like me, you're probably a bit underwhelmed at the Espionage capabilities in the base Civilization V game. I miss many of the fine capabilities of spies in previous versions of Civilization – a capability that added a lot of depth, color, and interest to the overall game.

Covert Operations – Making Spies Great Again is a Civ V mod that provides a "game within a game," that expands the role of intelligence, bringing additional capabilities to the existing Espionage framework. It provides a player 15 new missions for spies to attempt on foreign soil, in order to help a leader achieve their geopolitical goals.


New Missions:
1. Conduct Recon: Find out more about your enemies, to better plan their destruction!
2. Poison Water: Reduce their population, make them suffer!
3. Spread Rumors: Destroy the harmony of their city, slowing down their progress!
4. Sabotage Unit: Damage, even destroy units when they least expect it!
5. Pillage Terrain Improvement: Destroy the fruits of their labors!
6. Assassinate Great Person: Eliminate their specialists, to slow the growth of the realm!
7. Sabotage Production: Send them back to the drawing boards to start building over again!
8. Steal Gold: Take their gold and put it to better use yourself!
9. Spread Plague: Even better than poisoning wells – plague spreads to other connected cities!
10. Destroy Building: Burn their shelters to the ground – perhaps even an important one!
11. Recruit Partisans: Find malcontents, then bribe them to rebellious service!
12. Spread Propaganda: Destroy even more of the harmony in their city!
13. Cause Resistance: Force the city into wide-spread resistance – no one works today!
14. Create Anarchy: Force resistance to every city in the realm – no one works anywhere today!
15. Nuclear Suitcase: Release a storm of destruction all around the city!
16. Steal City: Take the ultimate risk – steal the enemy's city under his very nose – then hold on at all costs!


Most of these missions can be launched against City States, but not all of them.


Process:
- Every few turns, you will be notified when you are able to launch a Covert Op
- The number of turns between missions varies, based on Game Speed and Difficulty
- If you are able to launch a mission (and want to), open the "Espionage Overview" popup window
- Determine which spy you want to assign the Covert Op
- Select the operations you want to attempt, then press the "Confirm" button
- The mod will determine what effects there are, if any (oft times the mission fails…)
- The mod will then determine what the target civ things about your operation
- The mod will then determine what other civs thing about your operation

There are several possible reactions:
- Minor tut-tutting from the international community
- Major tut-tutting from the international community
- Denunciation from the target civ, and/or their allies (and friends)
- Declaration of War from the target civ, and/or their allies (and friends)
- Global Declarations of War from civs across the map (if they know you)


Design Considerations:
- Some civs are more aggressive launching Covert Ops than others, based on their specific settings
- You must have a spy in the city you want to attack, and those spies must have an established network
- Higher ranking spies perform better than lower ranking ones
- If the defending civ has a spy in a city, they will resists attacks better, and raise the possibility of an international response, and the severity of the response
- Having a spy and certain buildings in a city, as well as units near the city will improve your ability to defend against Covert Ops
- Missions usually cost Gold to conduct - bribing a city to rebel can be surprisingly expensive...
- Attacks against larger cities cost more than attacks against smaller cities
- Attacks become more expensive as you progress through Eras
- If your attack is successful, there is a higher probability of a more serious response


Espionage Posture: Various factors improve the EP of a given city: the presence of a friendly spy, friendly units (including civilian units), and certain buildings. All of these factors improve the EP, which means better defense against Covert Ops launched by other civs. Improved EP also helps better identify attackers when you experience a Covert Op.

Buildings that improve EP: Armory, Arsenal, Barracks, Castle, City Walls, Constabulary, Courthouse, Krepost, Military Academy, Military Base, and Police Station.

These Wonders improve EP even more than normal buildings: Forbidden Palace, Great Firewall, Great Wall, Heroic Epic, Himeji Castle, Mughal Fort, National Intelligence Agency, Palace, and Walls of Babylon.



Rules Changes:
- Spies now appear in the Classical Era, not the Renaissance. This means most civs can now receive 8, while England will get 9 – assuming they have completed the National Intelligence Agency wonder
- Spies now have a visibility of 2 tiles instead of 1
- Spy ranks have changed. They are now: Agent, Senior Agent, and Spymaster


Please Note: Version 5 appears to be pretty stable, especially since it fixes the problem with the "Escape Key" on the Espionage Overview. I believe this error was the source of much of the previous instability. However, it might still be a good idea to go into the "Options" menu, and under the "Interface Options" tab, set the "Turns between Autosave" to 1. Hopefully, you won't have any problems with this, but just in case…


Also, this mod replaces the "EspionageOverview.lua" UI, and will be incompatible with any other mod that needs to replace this file. Fortunately, I haven't found many mods that do this, so hopefully it won't impact too many players.


Direct Download: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/covert-operations.26667/


Acknowledgements: Much of this mod was inspired by Tomatekh's "Great Spy" mod. My intent is to build on the good things in that mod, but streamline the workings of the spy missions. Instead of the human player maneuvering units on the map, while the AI attacks virtually, and with a perfectly good Espionage UI already in place, it seems like a natural next step to layer on additional capability to the Espionage Overview – and better balance out the inter-workings of the new operations that spies could now accomplish.

As we all know, the AI doesn't need any help lagging behind human players, so by tweaking the settings of the mod, they use these new capabilities as efficiently as the human player does. In fact, they have a few buffs that mean they actually have a small advantage. Appreciate the suggestion by Havox79 to drop the units entirely. Made the mod much more streamlined and balanced!

Also - much, much appreciate for all the solid support техникакошка provided during testing!