OK so I was a republic res/business. Spies are important to me so I allocated about 1/7 land to industrial with 100% spy output.

So this C country tries 2 spy opps on me. They have about twice my networth and and 5000 acres to my 4000 acres. Both spy attempts fail so he just walks in and takes my land anyway.

After spying on him I see he does indeed have like 10X jets then my turrets. I also notice he has like $20 million on hand so I try bomb banks. I have like 50K to his 40K spies.

Rediculously both attempts fail, despite that my SPAL is much higher then his. So basically he knows he can take land from me and I can't retaliate. Effectively making me his b***h.

Does anybody know these equations for spy ops? What are you supposed to do in situations like this? I was so angry I terminated my country.

Did you try single spy ops? Cause i noticed if you go one at a time you fail way more than going 10 at a time.

Plus you have -10% Military effectiveness as a Rep: not sure but your spies might be considered as military for the malus.

don`t get mad, get even
he may have had a third spy attempt get through, you just can

oops I meant to say...
he may have had a third spy attempt get through, you just can`t see it. I would say most of the better players don`t hit blind- you could have many nukes...
You can watch your spy count, and if a few mysteriously disappear, then you were spied on.
Harmful spy ops are not that effective imo, I wouldn`t bomb banks unless the guy had +1B cash- also, number of attempts are limited. Demoralize is good to weaken a big target for a retal, but you can expect an answer back from the other guy.
Spies do not get the Rep`s -10%

I spied on him back. He had like 10K less spies and no spy tech.

The problem is when I failed the burn cash op, he knew I did not have many more spies then him, so I couldn't hurt him. Since he already knows he has more military, and this is a small game, I'm now basically his favorite target.

The only real solution for this is to go spies and nukes, which is draining. If I could hurt him with spies, and know when I would succeed, things would be different.

this thread is full of misinformation... to clarify a few:

Not true, your spy count won't change from ops on your country, regardless of success or not.


Not true, harmful ops are waaay overpowered on all servers, but particularly the slower servers.


I think he knew this already, from spying you before his initial attack...


You can and will hurt him. You gave up after TWO ops though. Also, protip, but they were the wrong ops... think about how he produces his income in order to hurt him.

Id like to ask why my generic country spy ops wouldnt work on the tourny server. Unless "Declaring war"

GDI.
As a member of GDI, you will receive the protection of GDI forces. No country more than twice your size or less than half your size will be able to go to attack you without first formally declaring war.

10k spies different, 1k land different, your SPALs were pretty even, so failing 2 ops is pretty understandable. You needed to just do more ops, or run some more turns to create more spies and then run more ops. Spy ops are very very strong and not that hard to get through. Also, don't bomb banks if the guy only has $20m on hand. If you'd succeeded you probably would have blown up $800,000 or something meaningless like that. Of all the things I've heard of people deleting their country for, failing two spy ops is a new one.

Also "he failed two attempts and walked right in and took my land anyway." He probably succeeded a third attempt before attacking.

>.>
SPAL = Spies per Acre of Land

So having more spies then him and having less land gives me a definite adavantage.

My SPAL = 50000 spies / 4000 acres = 12.5
His SPAL = 40000 spies / 5000 acres = 8

Its possible he sold his spies on the private market but I find that unlikely.

@ afaik

Since I'm pretty sure he didn't sell any spies he never at any time had a higher SPAL then me. So I'm certain he did not spy before attacking.

1) They are unprofitable. If you have too many, lower production and produce something else instead.

2) He would have known how many spies I had.

3) Spies are useful.

Its been a long time to since I last played, but it used to be a flat equation for success or failure. Is it now a probability for success for each op?

is there a way to not blind attack based off of their net in tourny?

It's never been a flat equation in the way that the worse SPAL person never gets through, and the better SPAL person never fails. Sometimes your ops will fail, sometimes his ops will succeed, and intel ops are one of the easier types to get through. He almost definitely failed his first two attempts and succeeded the third.

in tourney this would be very hard and i doubt anyone takes the time to do it. its easier with eestats

It's easy in tourney with no def allies to double someone up, but it's also easy to just get through one spy op which is all you need. Might as well just get the op.

But it wouldn't let me do a country spy op, thats where im confused

That was answered already.

If you can't spy on someone, you can't attack them either. You can't do anything to them, except in cases where you can declare war.

The reason is GDI and humanitarians, like h2orich said. If someone is more than twice your size, you need to declare war to do anything to them. This gets past GDI. But if they're 8x your size, then it's simply not allowed, no matter what, because it's not seen as good to have countries that far apart in size fighting. Humanitarians will intervene.

This is specific for the Tourney server, by the way. Other servers work differently.

Hm, ill double check on a person one rank below me tomorrow. seems legit though

OK so this gets us back to where we started. Does anyone know the mechanics for all this?

@blid I'm not sure why you feel so confident he spied. He had ALMOST twice my net and was a commie against my republic. He probably figured it was a calculated risk that he'd get away with and he did.

Because he attempted to spy, so he probably was going to spy. Because people don't usually give up after two ops. Because it would make sense for him to get through by at least his third attempt considering your respective SPALs. Because people usually don't attack blind if they can help it.

I can't believe you deleted your country because you failed two bomb bank attempts. That cost you 2 turns (meaningless) and maybe 4000 spies (pretty insignificant). I think that's the most trivial cause I've ever heard of for anyone deleting their country.

Anyone who tries to use the bomb banks op in tourney ought to get deleted.

even with a spal 5 or 6 x worse than your target, you can do an immense amount of damage using spy ops. if i wasn't so lazy i'd dig out the relevant page in the primary thread from last set where gogy hammered pretty much everyone with one of the worse spals in teh server.

The real solution is to make sure you have good allies. There are players in the game that have SPALs of 40:1 or better. Find one and ally with him

I have about 7 spy allies on Tourney and have one slot available, send me a pact. I have 55 SPAL.

bonus

Is there any negative spy ops in tourny?
because i see some people with 900k plus in spies lol