I originally intended to discuss this unit in the context of the Spanish cards for its improvement. But I decided to address the topic separately because spies aren’t exclusive to the Spanish civilization, and I doubt everyone wanted to read the Spanish thread. I’m not going to share my thoughts on this for now (in case anyone didn’t read my previous thread) to avoid confusing anyone. First, I’d like to hear the community’s general ideas for this unit.
Thank you for starting the thread @WolfishICE.
I’m unsure spies should exist in their current form.
A while ago Portugal was given a melee combat card in age 3 after Dragoon combat was made to no longer impact hussars. The card buffed Hussars, Pikes, Halbs, and Spies. They all got +15% hp, and the first 3 got +15% attack. Spies got I think +10 damage on their melee attack. Portugal also has the Agents card for (like 50%) more hp, LoS, and a rifle (charged) attack.
I feel like it took a bit, but someone realized these cards made Portuguese spies rather silly. They only had 15 melee attack, and the rifle did very little damage to most things, but they had ranged armor and they have so few tags that they were essentially unable to be countered except by artillery and Lancers. While the build never became mainstream, an uncounterable unit is kinda a problem, one with over 300 hp and a cost of less than 150c that has stealth and no real counters.
The spy was once heavy infantry, but that was a serious weakness that made them unusable. The issue is that the spy is being asked to counter all forms of Merc, which means it needs to not be countered well by any merc. The problem is mercs exist in every unit class from cavalry to infantry to artillery.
For some approximant history: Spies were actually not in the game at one point. Mercs only came from shipments and were noticeably similar to imperial versions of the unit they were most similar to, only with a higher cost and 50-100% higher population costs. These mercs were a powerspike card that wasn’t repeatable. You send it, get 10 jacked skirms or 7 dragoons and try to keep them alive because they add a lot of punch to the rest of your army. When fighting age 3 units the reality was simply that they outclassed the whole field.
The TWC expansion added the Saloon, a place to buy outlaws and Mercs. Both sets of units were rather distinctive in their respective roles. Outlaws were cheap but used a lot of population space. This made them a supplemental unit for age 2 fights where your civ may lack something you haven’t unlocked yet, but while good for their cost, their pop cost was so high they would need to be phased out later. Mercs were a lot cheaper on the pop, but they cost a lot of coin, and they had relatively few upgrades. I believe spies were added at the same time, though they were quite bad and pure merc builds weren’t really a problem. Training Mercs was cost prohibitive and mercs began to fall off hard against Guard units due to the lack of guard upgrades.
DE changed this, a lot really. They added Sweden, which historically used Mercs to supplement their small population. It made sense that their unit roster would have holes that would need to be filled and so Imperial mercs need to be a thing. They were given to all the Euro civs and Spies were buffed to try to compensate.
Two solutions:
Option 1: Remove the Merc Contractor age up. Some civs will get the ability to buy “Imperial x” techs at a barracks, stable or church for a merc unit from a card or unique church tech. Sweden and German may get a “Imperial German Mercenaries” tech for Jaegers, Black Riders etc as both have a historical claim to being Merc civs. No one else can get more than 1-2 of these techs which cost 1500 coin and wood. Then limit most cards that allow you to train mercs outside of Taverns and limit how much training time reductions help mercs. German can have a -15% merc train time on Merc combat and Sweden can have a similar on on the age 4 German mercs card to partially refund this.
Option 2: Mercs need a penalty against spy-class units which should be kept as hyper specialists that are trash against literally everything else in the game due to low attack stats. This is a fair lazier solution, but at least it gives some counterplay. Also need a church tech so they can be trained at Barracks. Make Assassins and Agents into Church techs too, and have something similar for Native scouts and some new Asian spy unit.
If you go for the first option spies maybe able to turn into a cheap stealth scout with no bonuses and a lower cost.
Probably not perfect solutions, but the Portuguese experiment I think shows why you can’t meaningfully buff their base stats. They need no real counters but you can’t really have a generalist with no counters.
Stealth in general is completely neutered the way it works now. Revealing by proximity for every single unit is way too harsh, especially for melee units. It should have a short delay before revealing (~3-5 seconds) to let you either slip past or get into position.
Spies should also have a multiplier against outlaws (Think private detectives like Pinkertons).
Adding a few gimmicky abilities via cards and such could be interesting. Something like Hausa’s Tsetse Sabotage ability would be fitting. Or maybe the ability to briefly sabotage a gate and let units through.
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Perhaps if each civilization had its own unique spies, it would be worth creating them; this, combined with adding new technologies at the church to upgrade them, would make their use more frequent in skirmish maps and multiplayer mode. As it stands, spies are vastly underutilized, which is why players rarely use them.
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Spammable imperial mercenaries are the issue, since spies are limited to a single building.
Dutch shouldnt have mercs at barracks, that should have kept as a sweden feature
Otherwise, natives can train them from TCs but in such a few number without a card (which doesnt help a lot in the limut either) and by paying a scarce resource for that civs.
Finally, asians without them and without proper anti infantry artillery are hopeless vs them.
3 Likes
Looks like they’re actually cooking up some stuff which addresses this.
<string _locid="130548">Wolf Troopers</string>
<string _locid="130549">Improves the bonus damage of Disciples against Outlaws, Mercenaries and Native auxiliaries.</string>
@Kingfisher1787 @Ekdal1378 @M00Z1LLA @zeppelino24
Before nerfing mercenaries, I suggest fixing the spies first and seeing what happens.
I THOUGHT ABOUT SPIES AFTER THE BATTLE WITH THE HARQUEBUSIERS
I had a fight with a mass Harquebusiers when I was playing Malta. In a narrow passage with two outposts, depots, and three commanderies, I spammed Dragoons. The fight was tough and grindy. I won with a 2:1 casualty ratio in his favor, but he ran out of gold and I didn’t.
Even though I won, I wondered if there was any way to make this fight easier against a guy who just kept pressing the Harkebusier icon and Z for 10 minutes.
And then I remembered the spies. I started trying to use them in other battles. So, 10 spies faced 12 Harkebusiers and melted down after killing one.
I’ll share my observations from other tests below.
IN A MIXED ARMY, SPIES SIMPLY DIE BEFORE THEY REACH THEIR TARGET
Your opponent isn’t an idiot. If they see you have the Agents card, they won’t make a full Highlander limit. You’ll be faced with a ton of different units, all mixed up, and even hard micro won’t help you. You spent 2200 gold on an army of 20 spies that accidentally picked off 3-5 mercenaries and died. 4 Falconets don’t care what kind of mixed army the enemy has. They’ll kill everyone. The same applies to regular civilization units. So I question the takeaway about the potential dangers of increasing spies damage. They shouldn’t be this weak, just not cost-effective enough to use as regular troops. The Spy’s current base damage is 5. The Pikeman’s is 8. This is insane for a unit that only kills a specific target and costs 110 gold each.
SPIES ARE EXCESSIVELY SPECIALIZED
First, you’ll always lose tempo because you’ll be waiting for your opponent to choose a deck to figure out whether you need Agents or not.
Currently, we have multipliers against heroes (which are weaker than a regular musketeer) and mercenaries ( in terms of frequency, it’s like a unit that only counters pikemen and nothing else). If we leave things as is, nothing will change. I suggest adding Outlaws, Natives, Buildings (or just walls), Artillery, and maybe Vills. This way we’ll be able to use spies in the game, rather than against two specific builds out of 150.
TRIGGER-SHY
Spies should use their charged abilities against all units, like every other unit in the game.
For comparison, I’ll show the difference in damage between the Spanish infantry and the spy with all the boost cards and Unction at max.
I also saw somewhere that after the DLC, revealing stealth will not reset the unit’s order.
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It’s really not a late game problem. Late game Falcs or other artillery handle them fine because they do have the infantry tag.
Ports were previously able get them to 285 hp with a 20% RR and like 15 hand attack (in age 3). While those stats don’t seem particularly impressive, that’s on a unit with no counters and with stealth. You also had a 10 Spies card which became very good given that (10 spies is worth almost 1500 res in age 3 which overshoots the normal age 3 shipment value by about 50%).
I don’t think the build was op, it needed 2 cards just to the spies up to those stats, which is kinda slow. It did get nerfed though. If we simply increase their base damage it speeds up builds like that a lot. At some point they start to do fine vs things they shouldn’t, like skirms or anything with a low melee attack.
I bring this up because units without counters are dangerous. They go entirely against the game’s design.
What could be a decent idea (I say could because it could create unforeseen issues) would be simply adding a ranged attack with 12 range and 10 damage on a 3 RoF (same multipliers as melee). The idea being it’s the same DPS without the disadvantage of needing to get into melee. That’d help against a lot of melee mercs that nuke spies due to high DPS.
Edit:
Part of this could still be used with the ranged attack suggestion. Assassins and Agents could be church techs for their respective sets of civs at least. Both techs could also potentially add them to the barracks. If we’re adding a normal ranged attack you probably should skip the nerf on mercs against spies though. At least for initial testing.
I’d like to clarify further. All unbalanced spy builds are related to age 2, as was the case with Britain and its 8 spies. Because starting with the Veteran upgrade, any soldier can handle them just fine. The simplest solution would be to remove spy shipment cards until age 3. That would solve the problem.
I doubt anyone could spam 30 spies at 110 gold each from a single church at age 2. By the way, we could also raise their cost if they increase damage. Back to 125.
I’m still against making all spies a copy of the upgrade from the US Revolution. I’d like them to be affected by cards that increase melee damage. I think the developers intended for spies to be a support for melee builds. I’m also definitely against moving them to the barracks for everyone. Only those for whom it could be historically justified.
Regarding church upgrades, I’d prefer a classic deck-based upgrade, with the expectation that the player will use spies for more than just combating mercenaries.
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere. They could give them a sniper-type ability, like the Ghost in SC-2 (either as a default ability or with an upgrade). A special shot that costs coins in proportion to the target you’re aiming at (only effective against mercenaries and heroes).
https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Ghost_(StarCraft_II)
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Hmm, I really want to see how this how souped-up Portuguese spy would fare against actual Imperial Age musketeers.
I saw a video of 40 fully carded Russian spies going up against 40 fully carded Caroleans. The Caroleans won without losing a single unit.
Every civ getting a unique spy like how the Ottomans have the Muhbir would be an interesting idea. However, it might be hard justifying a unique spy unit for every civilization, much less figure out concepts for each spy.We would need a name for each one too, and don’t think the name “French Spy” would cut it for a French unique spy unit. Doesn’t mean we can’t try and come up with some concepts…
I was looking up the French cabinet noir… maybe Cabinet Noir Agent could work. Secret du Roi could be a name for the French spy upgrade card. Cabinet Noir Agents would have higher health than other Spy units of other civ, like how Coureur des Bois have more health than regular villagers.
No. You might not be aware of the build I was referring to, but it’s simply not the case that they can’t be a problem in age 3. Ports can reach age 3 before the 7 minute mark and given the number of civs and unit compositions there are absolutely ones that won’t work well against uncounterable units with a decent melee attack.
Is there a translation error? What does 30 spies have to do with anything I said?
You are right about the coin cost though. I remembered it being higher.
I’m not sure that’ll work. You need the versatility to counter anything within the merc class, that’s everything from Harqs with over 100 melee damage and high ranged AoE damage to Jaegers which get to shoot at you from behind other units.
Fair enough I guess, but some civs get to spam mercs from barracks and only having one building to make spies from is pretty iffy.
Err… if you make spies useful for fighting other units you will definitely end up with issues. They essentially have no counters…
In Imperial, musketeers are going to destroy them. Also the upgrade card that allowed for the interaction I was referring to was nerfed. It mostly caused issues vs low-melee units like Skirms where they acted Hussar-like given the damage soaking and melee attack. Stealth also allows you to kill artillery when the armies are small enough.
I already explained it to you. If you don’t make the spy useful in ANY GAME, no one will ever build a single one. Because even your overbuffed mercenaries are beatable by regular soldiers due to their poor cost effectiveness.
How many spies would your hypothetical Portugal need to have to defeat a full army of musketeers and hussars?
The Papal Zouave also has no counter; it’s a fully-fledged combat musketeer with a rechargeable sniper ability. I don’t see Italy achieving a 100% win rate.
Obviously you aren’t going to use them vs units with a high melee attack and few bonuses… but using stealth to get up next to ~10-15 skirms and like 10 Dragoons with 10-15 spies to snare and absorb damage for like 10-15 skirms shooting from the back line is easy. Btw, are you intentionally setting up straw-men just to tear them down? I’ve brought up the lack of tags on Spies multiple times, obviously it’s the biggest concern vs the roughly half of unit compositions that use units reliant on multipliers.
A unit which can’t come out until age 4 when people can easily have cannons, not to mention which comes in small batches that run through the shipment queue… sure, totally the same thing…
That’s right. That’s exactly what I mean when I say I want more widespread use for spies. And by the way, even with 10 damage, they still won’t be able to kill anyone in that crowd you described, not to mention that at a range of 2 from any enemy unit, they instantly lose invisibility. That is, the situation you described is very difficult to reproduce.
And as far as I know, at age 3, there are also cannons, as well as lancers, grenadiers, and a bunch of other units that are counter infantry. And at age 2 there are melee units.
Even such a monster with 525 HP, 40% ranged armor, 52 damage from a shot, 105 damage from an ability, with an aura for damage absorption and HP regeneration doesn’t create problems at age 4, but a spy creates problems at age 2?
Of course. It’s very easy to spam spies from the single church and drag them across the map to the battlefield. They’ll just come in an avalanche.
Easy fix:
- Give every mercenary a huge penalty vs spies and similar units
- Remove the limit creation of native scouts
- Unnerf stealth, it wasnt needed
- Slow down mercs train time and buff spies one.
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They get the same amount of upgrades for one card as Spies get from one Agent card and 2х Assassin cards. They also have the native unit tag, meaning they also get all the upgrades of native units, including quantity and discounts. You can stack a build limit of 40. And they cost 90 wood (even less because there are discounts) instead of 110 gold.
How many native Scouts do you need to be able to fight properly?
The thing is, why they should have a limit?
If im fighting a dutch spam of highlanders from different points of the map I should be able to train as many counters I want.
Wood is more expensive than gold, specially for natives that lack factories.
They should be able to counter mercs without cards.
There should probably just be a dedicated native spy unit so the Native Scout doesn’t have to fill that role. They feel very wrong for that job.
I think they’re now twice as powerful as European spies because they’re cheaper, can be built in the Explorer, Embassy, and TC, not just the Church, and have a ton of buffs and discounts. And they get a buff for one card equal to 2.5 European ones, although Europeans only get either an agent or assassin.
And here’s where Kingfisher’s concerns become justified. The most important thing here is not to overbuff. I’ll suggest the same thing as last time: add multipliers and increase damage, but be careful with the endless number of buffs and discounts.