Rethinking bribing & counterintelligence feature

[Darkcity]

I think espionage feature - unit bribing to share the vision, is the least used feature in gameplays. Some people don't know about and people who knew never used it. There are many reason to it inclduing higher cost of doing so (500 food and 500 metal) and less benefit to do so. I have two suggestions here.

• Cost reduction: We should reduce the cost especially metal cost. It should be something like 200 food and 100 metal. 
• Type of unit to be bribed: Only working units should be bribed, it will exclude female workers. 
• Unit swithching side: If u bribe a unit there is X% chance (let's say 50%) that unit will become your unit. The converted unit be like your newly produced unit.

Gameplay scenarios:

1. When player attack after p3, they will use this to use this to get visibility for their surprsie attack or raid attack. They will resreach it because now it affordable.
2. Sometime its not easy to raid people, to make it a little interetsing it will have some impact although not too much on raiding. 
3. If u have over flaoting res but can't through defense, you can use extra resources to bribe and converered units will casue some distraction to break through defenses.

Impact: We would like to see both Espionage and counterintelligence being used in gameplays, atleast by decent players. 

[rossenburg]

9 minutes ago, Darkcity said:

I think espionage feature - unit bribing to share the vision, is the least used feature in gameplays. Some people don't know about and people who knew never used it. There are many reason to it inclduing higher cost of doing so (500 food and 500 metal) and less benefit to do so. I have two suggestions here.

• Cost reduction: We should reduce the cost especially metal cost. It should be something like 200 food and 100 metal. 
• Type of unit to be bribed: Only working units should be bribed, it will exclude female workers. 
• Unit swithching side: If u bribe a unit there is X% chance (let's say 50%) that unit will become your unit. The converted unit be like your newly produced unit.

Gameplay scenarios:

1. When player attack after p3, they will use this to use this to get visibility for their surprsie attack or raid attack. They will resreach it because now it affordable.
2. Sometime its not easy to raid people, to make it a little interetsing it will have some impact although not too much on raiding. 
3. If u have over flaoting res but can't through defense, you can use extra resources to bribe and converered units will casue some distraction to break through defenses.

Impact: We would like to see both Espionage and counterintelligence being used in gameplays, atleast by decent players. 

sounds fun to me 

[ette3]

15 hours ago, Darkcity said:

I think espionage feature - unit bribing to share the vision, is the least used feature in gameplays. Some people don't know about and people who knew never used it. There are many reason to it inclduing higher cost of doing so (500 food and 500 metal) and less benefit to do so. I have two suggestions here.

• Cost reduction: We should reduce the cost especially metal cost. It should be something like 200 food and 100 metal. 
• Type of unit to be bribed: Only working units should be bribed, it will exclude female workers. 
• Unit swithching side: If u bribe a unit there is X% chance (let's say 50%) that unit will become your unit. The converted unit be like your newly produced unit.

Gameplay scenarios:

1. When player attack after p3, they will use this to use this to get visibility for their surprsie attack or raid attack. They will resreach it because now it affordable.
2. Sometime its not easy to raid people, to make it a little interetsing it will have some impact although not too much on raiding. 
3. If u have over flaoting res but can't through defense, you can use extra resources to bribe and converered units will casue some distraction to break through defenses.

Impact: We would like to see both Espionage and counterintelligence being used in gameplays, atleast by decent players. 

nice idea, but the thing is, you can only bribe traders not units. I wish its possible to bribe units and convert them, everyone will snitch xD

[Freagarach]

I like the implementation of @Grapjas more, to be honest. It makes the stats of your enemy units invisible, until you research espionage. I'm not sure what to do with bribing itself then. But I guess that is what this topic is about.

[Darkcity]

48 minutes ago, Freagarach said:

It makes the stats of your enemy units invisible, until you research espionage

Hmm, thats a good suggestion too. What about doing it when Player first time research espionage? This way we can incorporate both the suggestions.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

15 hours ago, Freagarach said:

I like the implementation of @Grapjas more, to be honest. It makes the stats of your enemy units invisible, until you research espionage. I'm not sure what to do with bribing itself then. But I guess that is what this topic is about.

This to me has no real bearing on the game. It doesn't matter to me if the enemy spearmen have +1 attack, as I'll use ranged units against them regardless. It could be one of the effects if researching Espionage in addition to unlock Bribery though. 

[Grapjas]

⚙ D4745 Espionage rework - Hide diplomacy and stats of enemy units (wildfiregames.com) (for reference)

21 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It doesn't matter to me if the enemy spearmen have +1 attack

That's far from the only thing, and that can be important.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Grapjas

[thephilosopher]

It seems to me that the natural way of incorporating the bribing of units would be to carve out mercenaries as being the main (or only) unit susceptible to bribery. The game already tries to incorporate an element of this by requiring that mercenaries cost metal to train. And that's based on solid historical evidence. Making them susceptible to bribery would also be based on historical evidence, and it would also complicate strategies that over-rely on the use of mercenaries (which would definitely improve A25, imo).

[Gurken Khan]

Right. There's no historical precedence of traders being susceptible to bribery.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

19 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Right. There's no historical precedence of traders being susceptible to bribery.

If anything, we have plenty of evidence of bribery and treachery among the class of people from which we pull the game's "heroes."

Edited July 30, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Grapjas said:

That's far from the only thing, and that can be important.

As a player, I don't think it would affect my strategy at all to know that the enemy spearmen have 8 attack instead of 7.

[Gurken Khan]

20 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

If anything, we have plenty of evidence of bribery and treachery among the class of people from which we pull the game's "heroes."

[Yekaterina]

I would recommend making mercenaries susceptible to bribing as well. On top of that, I think we can add a feature which converts an enemy unit to our own, for example someone who walks into a crowd of enemy and shout "wololol" and changes the affiliations of units near him.

[Grapjas]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

As a player, I don't think it would affect my strategy at all to know that the enemy spearmen have 8 attack instead of 7.

Yeah but try 50% damage increase over your un-upgraded army. Wouldn't pick that battle.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Grapjas

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I don't think enemy health bars should be hidden. It is nice to know what units you have already damaged and its not very friendly to beginners to not see the health bars.

I am on board with everything else tho.

[Gurken Khan]

3 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I don't think enemy health bars should be hidden. It is nice to know what units you have already damaged and its not very friendly to beginners to not see the health bars.

I would absolutely be against removing enemies' health bars.

To clarify: ofc I think traders would be first in line to be susceptible to bribery.

I also like the idea of being the higher bidder for a merc, thus taking them over. Not by wolololo. Ideally they'd have a stealth countdown (1 min?), so they can do some actual scouting and withdraw.