RFC: Fly-by observations (and mini-bugs) concerning Espionage about unciv HOT 8 CLOSED

Also I think we need to keep in mind that the move to button associated with each city will need to open a panel which allows the player to choose which action the spy will take. Moving a spy to a city-state for example would have the options of rigging the election and executing a coup which happens immediately (we might want to change that to be next turn for save scumming reasons). The coup option needs to show a success rate percent I think.

How much of this were you planning to fix? (So we don't double fix a problem)

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Oops, I though that I had fixed that in one of my PRs.

And I didn't check your outstanding ones... No, https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv/pulls/tuvus none sounds like there's spies in

counter-intelligence should commence immediately

OK

What should the solution to this be?

isIdle ignores Surveillance -> you do get the guidance on new spies only, or if you keep 'em in their hideout still once per turn. feels right in play IMHO.

alternative move button that allows the player to select cities on the map

Too much hassle. screenStack, dangling callbacks need clearing on unusual reactions, hell. Fine if you can go look at the situation from in there, as simple as can be and helps maybe a tiny bit.

I use espionage on my phone and it doesn't seem to have any problems

Good mocking. I meant physical keyboard connected and what can we do to make that screen as well-usable without touch or mouse as, say, save or load... Idea brainstorm... So far: Needs some visual feedback option to make arrow keys navigate spies, and so far that's a Scene2D stack that doesn't go to the effort to highlight. Straightforward to do but a lot of drudgery to code.

I haven't touched that yet.

Sure, but I meant - does some intuitive sorting come to mind, better than what will seem after a few deaths like randomness? Me no like alphabetic, boring. Seniority would be cute, but necessitate changing killSpy to remove and re-add - or keep an additional field. Or... ?????

Xander Lenstra did

...May his studies progress smoothly and his interest soar above such trivialities as kotlin games.

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Oh - forgot one: How to operate that screen via Keyboard... Do we need "cursors", a moveable highlight depending on context??? Or is there some easier way?

Another one: I guess spies are ordered by age on the left side, initially, but deaths keep their place and are filled in - is that for the best?

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How much of this were you planning to fix

Anything above "but any input would be nice on" is already done

choose which action

Yesssssss..... Methinks that model is extensible enough. There's enough screen room¹... Either combo a Radio option group into a button wrapper widget or refactor the class Thing : Button into a class Thing : HorizontalGroup<Button>. Complicates keyboard op even further of course.

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Oh, that was a <details> up there - all right!

But in the meantime I created console civ addpolicy, gave the Iroquous Police State, then modded a "[+50]% spy effectiveness [in all cities]" onto my China. Now a Spy in Onondaga could display...

... and yes +50% and -25% makes exactly +12.5%... 1.5f * 0.75f == 1.125f ...but that will probably not be a welcome sight 🙈 🦧 .

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(I said) but I'd tend to make rank 0 have zero "skill modifier"

I meant the lowest rank and it just hit me that's no good at all - it would make an "undefended" city the same as one defended by a rank 1 spy. Will need to rethink before I push that branch... maybe write down all edge case probabilities using the original formula and go from there. Later, much later. I still think an unexperienced spy against an undefended city should have zero chance for "undetected" - see how all that scales on the kill end.

Or maybe switch to a classic D20 RPG model with critical successes at 20 and critical fails at 1? Then animate those 3D dice on the Gdx surface...

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Chances for steal tech results with current formula. Each cell is (undetected success, detected success, recognized success, killed for failure). Diplomatic repercussions incurred on third and last result (but AI afaik ignores them).

So, what do we want the extremes to be - those I marked bold? That would be an option: Decide on desired edge case statistics and tweak formula to match - the rest will fall in place.

Next - speed. Depends on tech cost, tech output of the city the spy is in, with two spy ranks mostly making up for all available defense - Constabulary + Police station + National Intelligence Agency = 65% defense vs. 66% bonus for 2 ranks. Only available in one city rest get 50%. So they can steal roughly as fast as you can research - per spy. Against 3 AI in the Modern era you will have zero tech lead within 10 turns, using all countermeasures available. Gets a little better when you manage to build the Great Firewall first - down to 8/3 turns per spy per tech minus kill rate - which is only good if you got <=spy_count cities... Or crank science output to zero in all cities you can't station one of your spies in. Can't imagine original Civ5 was that bad.

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I think that looks good, A rank 1 spy has a %76 chance of success with no defender. While at the same time having a defending spy has value so players should want to defend their biggest cities.

Next - speed

This seems like you are calculating an extreme case here. From what I read each Constabulary, Police station, National Intelligence Agency should cancel out a single spy level.

Also, the AI isn't very good at scouting right now so it isn't as good at finding city-centers to put spies in later.

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