How many spies does one need?

How long is a piece of wood?

Depends what your doing. Depends how many acres you are. Depends if your in a tag or in a solo server. Depends if your all explore or LGing.

10-20 spal (spies per acre) stops most players getting op about your country but no spal stops those who really want to grab you.

icic, isn't that too much? So for let's say 1000 acres, you need 10,000 spies?

How much does it vary from server to server?

Are harmful ops more difficult thn normal ones?

I'm a newbie sorry for all the questions

I usually just keep making them until I win a good amount of my spy operations

Well, first off, you should understand how spies work. There's something referred to as SPAL (Spies per acre of land). You can find out this number by your land divided by how many spies you have. It's this number that influences your overall spy strength (and spy tech will obviously intensify this).

What your SPAL should be really depends on the server you're playing and what your intentions are. If you're in a more aggressive environment, I would say you probably want an SPAL of at least 50, and maybe a bit of spy tech to sweeten the deal.

Gzisimon2: Welcome to Earth Empires. Newbies are always welcome, and ask as many questions as you need too. If anyone makes a stupid comment, ignore them.

So, as Genera Earl says, your example of 10,000 / 1000 = a SPAL of 10.

If the server has just started, having 10,000 spies after a few days is probably a little excessive, but on a server like alliance, having a low SPAL might be a good thing, whereas on Primary, having a lot more if probably a good thing. Honestly, it depends on how far into the reset you are, and what server you are playing. Just like General Earl commented.

Again, it depends on preferences, but, I think 50 SPAL is to much. If you keep failing operations, then more spies, if your totally rocking everyone, then you probably have too much and can cut back production.

I have not heard anything about harmful ops being harder than non-harmful

if you plan to get alot land then higher spal helps on keeping that land.

Thanks Navisis.

One more question...

How many tech points does the spy op espionage steal?

Is stealing tech points as bad as sending more than 1 landgrab?

Actually harmful spy ops are usually looked upon worse than a land grab (unless you're already at war, in an alliance). Doing it can get you killed fast.

There is a formula for how many tech points you steal, but it's very small and probably not worth it. I don't know the equation for exactly how many points.

like gen. earl said stealing tech points ain't worth of time, when I did it at years ago I got maybe 100ish points per operation (10) and knowing how other spy ops like cause dissension relates to spier's stuff you might need alot tech points on yourself to get any reasonal amount of tech points stealed.

yeah i tried the espionage it steals so little...

this is helpful information. thanks to those who answer these types of questions.

it would be better to cash or explore your turns, really as any strategy, than to spend the turns stealing technology.


Stealing technology is 100% a waste of turns, nuff said!

still i do miss the old days of being able to steal tech from dead countries

unless those dead countries were techers (pref. big) then waste of time.

Don't waste the turns.

^^^^

Pan countries were great for that

aie they were, sexy techs

100+ Spal,you're Golden!,especially if you are attracted to VERY FAT cashers with 100's of Million$ in their bank :)

keeping 100 spal on 100k-1m acre country ain't that easy.

Based on experience, its better to keep a higher than average SPAL early, especially if youre not a commie who can pump up your spy count easily.

If you don't, as a landgrabber, you might end up in a situation with high acreage and when you start failing a sizeable amount of your spy ops, the loss of spies will only make your success rate decline even further getting into a cycle of increasingly failing spy ops. And then, it becomes really tough to get out of that cycle, unless you are willing to let a few days go by without significant land gain, which is counter productive.

I've learnt that the hard way this set in a server im unfamiliar with.