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Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Dang. So how much of this lean to covert ops was intended and how much is just taking advantage of random events?

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Snollygoster
Dec 17, 2002

what a scoop

Glazius posted:

Dang. So how much of this lean to covert ops was intended and how much is just taking advantage of random events?

I was always going to go heavy into covert ops, thanks to the Subtle diplomatic trait and the ability to improve ARC's starting espionage bonus. Soul-Discerner Training and the Subset Curse quest came as surprises and pushed my covert ops edge from "incredible" to "holy poo poo lmao." I wasn't kidding when I said Artifact rewards were better than many Wonders you could build. I was hoping for something like Warp Spire, which increases yields by 50 percent for domestic trade, or Drone Command, which lets you work an additional two tiles around your city beyond your total number of citizens. What I got instead was so much better.


Klingon w Bowl Cut posted:

I actually have this game, and have been considering LPing it for a while, so I may actually do just this. Spoiler: you will probably come back to a boiling wasteland.

Also, yours here is looking great! I'm always glad to see the Beyond Earth love spreading, and the narrative format is my favorite kind of Let's Play. :capitalism:

Thank you very much! Let us know if you pull the trigger on LPing that game. I have never, ever been able to finish Fate of the World's 200-year scenario. I can win the 100-year game, but everyone ends up poor and India turns into the Krogan homeworld.

Andy Waltfeld
Dec 18, 2009

Snollygoster posted:

I was hoping for something like Warp Spire, which increases yields by 50 percent for domestic trade, or Drone Command, which lets you work an additional two tiles around your city beyond your total number of citizens.

If you're intentionally going down the Purity/Supremacy hybrid road as your previous Affinity gains indicate, you should get some of the goodies that lean toward Drone Command as you start hitting +Production techs. Pretty sure two of the Artifacts I cashed in for that were Old Earth rewards for fairly simple quests about ~60 turns in from where you are now.

And Drone Command is so useful for games where you make an amphibious Planetfall oh my godddddd. Keep your borders to a tidy minimum + sprawling buyouts for resources, stack Specialist buildings, and watch the synergy madness from the right Virtues roll in as your Food production is entrusted to drone pops instead of actual pops.

Stephen9001
Oct 28, 2013
I look forward to seeing just how broken your covert ops becomes. Hmmm... if you max out your personal trait and subtle... that would be 75% faster, combine that with your other gains of 10% and 25%, and you get 110% faster! Meaning you can do covert ops in straight up a bit less than half the time! That is going to loving rock!

I can only imagine how much energy and science your covert operatives are going to bring in...

my dad posted:

I wonder if it's additive or multiplicative.

I'm not sure... But I would guess additive, but remember, the wording is "are done this % faster" not "takes this %less time" which means that 100% faster means done in half the time, not instant. Still, going to be doing so many ops, he'll be able to steal city's before long. Hmmmm... with enough operatives, he could attempt to steal everyone's capital at the same time! That would be one of the most hilarious domination victories ever. Still, not sure how you would justify that in the narrative. Anyway, I look forward to the next update.

I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.

Stephen9001 fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Feb 21, 2016

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous
I wonder if it's additive or multiplicative.

Snollygoster
Dec 17, 2002

what a scoop
The next update is going to be a few days late: a bad storm ruined my swamp internet and it'll take a few days for a technician to come and fix it.

Stephen9001
Oct 28, 2013

Snollygoster posted:

The next update is going to be a few days late: a bad storm ruined my swamp internet and it'll take a few days for a technician to come and fix it.

Sorry to hear that, but I look forward to when you get your spy agency up and running.

I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.

Citizen Kane 13
Apr 2, 2011

Service Guarantees Citizenship

Would you like to know more?
Seems someone else already got their own spy agency up and going.
Sabotage

But seriously, that sucks. Hope that tech is able to get your net back up before they disappear into the swamp forever.

Snollygoster
Dec 17, 2002

what a scoop
Part 9: Thinkfluencers

“Tin! How’re you doing, son?”

Phan Tin paused in Central’s concourse at the sound of Martin Ballarin’s voice. The ARCadia executive closed the distance between them, out of breath. Ballarin had put on weight from the strain of managing ARC’s trade between burgeoning colonies.

“I’m well, Mr. Ballarin,” Tin said, and he meant it.

“How’s your mother?” (Thank God you found a job. Your parents’ marriage was hanging by a thread.)

“She’s fine, Mr. Ballarin.” Tin’s smile flickered. He flicked his eyes away from Ballarin’s face to an ARC logo on an advertisement. The stylized Eye of Providence in the center seemed to stare back at him. “She’s been in a lot of meetings. I would imagine they have something to do with the latest from Khrabrost.”



“I can imagine,” Ballarin said. “I’ve got a conference call about it in two hours. Thank your lucky stars you don’t have to sit in on it.” (We’re one epidemic away from a collapse. If Vadim Kozlov wants us dead, there’s not much we could do about it.)

Tin gave Ballarin a commiserating nod. “It’s not all bad, Mr. Ballarin. I saw the release about the contract with Keagungan.”

That won a small smile from the older man. “As long as Franco-Iberia and INTEGR let us sail through to Keagungan’s skunkworks, I think we’ll have a sustainable relationship. They’ve sent over some incredible tech demos.” Ballarin gave a sage nod. Tin planted his feet against the river of anxiety flowing from ARCadia’s head honcho.

Keagungan is Malay for “greatness.” It is an applied sciences skunkworks that makes autonomous, domestic systems and converts military tech to civilian use. This information is buried in the game’s code, but is nowhere to be found when you play, even in the Civilopedia. In game terms, a trade route with Keagungan gets you Culture and Science points.

“I’ve didn’t want to keep you, Tin. Just wanted to say hello. Tell your mom I said hello, OK?” (Whatever you’re taking, I hope you stick to it. You seem almost normal.)

“OK, I will, Mr. Ballarin.” Tin showed his teeth to Ballarin in a farewell and went on his way, down a side corridor, down another, into an older section of the habs, cordoned off for renovations. Security staff pretended not to watch.

Amazing that Tin’s parents spent the founding years in sardine cans like this, he thought. He closed a metal door behind him. He turned off the lights and logged into a computer on his desk. This machine, he was told, came from Old Earth.

He leaned in toward a lens on the machine, let it scan his eyes. He cleared his throat.

“Archangel,” he said, into a microphone. Access granted.

ARC’s first spymaster leaned back in his chair and went to work.

---



In Beyond Earth, the spy agency building unlocks after you research Computing. You start with three agents. These can either sit in your own cities for counter-intelligence, stay at HQ to boost a national security project (one of a small list of buffs to your field agents, your overall Health score, or similar things), or to travel to foreign cities to spy on them. In truth, you can win Beyond Earth by ignoring espionage, unless you’re playing a multiplayer game against someone who knows how to abuse it.

---

“With respect, Ms. Fielding, you’re taking a cavalier attitude with the Slavic Federation. It puts my employees at risk.” Ballarin’s face was one of several on the display in CEO Suzanne Fielding’s office. One of many pinched, worried faces.

“I understand that, Martin. Consider also: Within recent weeks, Kozlov also declared war on the colonies of Brasilia, INTEGR and Franco-Iberia. We’re in good company. Cold war is an American and Slavic tradition, after all.”

That won her some nervous chuckles from the others. Not from Ballarin.

“I’m glad you think this is funny, Ms. Fielding,” he said. “It’s my employees out there in convoys. I won’t have them shot and killed because Kozlov thinks he can run a railroad better than ARC.”

“If Kozlov escalates this into physical violence against our convoys, then he will have crossed a line and ARC will make an appropriate response,” Fielding said.

“My employees are not a trip wire!” Ballarin shouted. “Ultrasonics scare off aliens, but they won’t stop bullets.”

“Please trust me, Martin,” Fielding said. Her face and voice projected out to a dozen displays throughout ARC’s colonies, to administrators and vice presidents and task force leaders. They heard the frost in Fielding’s voice. The words came out as an order.

When I said Kozlov is belligerent, I meant it.

Administrator Penny Prickett gave her report, the Firaxite Will Solve All Of Our Problems portion of every conference call. The other participants didn’t bother to hide rolling their eyes. Axiom was on the verge of a breakthrough with the polycrystal. When properly cut, her researchers found the stuff could function in small quantities as a superconductor that required only a cursory amount of cooling.

Prickett’s firaxite evangelism had two basic problems: first, it was a time-intensive project, and Axiom spent a prohibitive amount of time laying down infrastructure, roads and farmland around the settlement, doing the unglamorous work of surviving ARC’s frigid new home. The second problem, the conference members decided, was that firaxite could not cure the sick, nor fill warheads aimed at Khrabrost.



Of note: the worker in the center of our territory between Central and Axiom is building a petroleum well on an oil deposit. Mankind, its seems, cannot escape the need for petrochemicals and plastics. In Beyond Earth, we use oil to launch satellites into the air. Developing oil tiles also boosts our Resources and Production.

“Any news for the health authority?” Fielding said. “Last month you said you had a team testing new indoor air filters.”

Prickett’s shoulders hunched. “Yes, about that. It seems the project lead, uh, defected.”

Every face on Fielding’s monitor grimaced.

“Defected,” she said.

“Thomas Arbogast,” Prickett said. “Very promising, very bright young man. Very… uh, colorful letter of resignation. It seems he took data from some of his projects, including the air scrubbers, with him. Our IT team says he also, uh. He made copies of ARC’s health records.”

Prickett didn’t seem to know what to say. The conference muttered to themselves. Ballarin ran his hands down his face. Fielding let Prickett twist in the silence that followed.

“Imagine my displeasure,” Fielding said.

The CEO of the American Reclamation Corporation dismantled Dr. Prickett without raising her voice. Everyone on the conference call saw Prickett crumple, close to tears. Fielding laid out Prickett’s failure of leadership like a teacher would diagram a sentence. Subject, verb. Mistake, consequence. While Fielding spoke, her gaze flicked down to an incoming private message from Tin.

“Thomas made contact with Khrabrost,” it read. “He’s in.”

“Good,” Fielding typed, continuing her meeting.

---



ARC would come to despise Thomas. The young man was only too happy to be Vadim Kozlov’s useful idiot. The Slavic Federation broadcasted ARC’s stolen health data and urged the people of Tau Ceti E not to buy its contaminated goods or eat its toxic food. Thomas became a small celebrity in the Slavic Federation, playing bit parts in films or public bulletins that needed someone to play the part of an ugly American.

Tin’s other agents avoided the limelight, but each of them approached their marks like pilgrims fleeing. It was an easy sell: ARC’s colonies were just the latest in a long list of failed company towns. Central, Axiom and Vanguard were of a piece with Pullman or the Anton Menlo Project. Damita admitted to amused INTEGR scientists that ARC would not have survived its early years without discovering a capsule with an INTEGR-designed solar collector. Radcliff arrived, as did many others, to gawk at Polystralia’s Stellar Codex and to experience thriving culture on the frigid world.

In the limelight or the shadows, ARC’s agents were immensely popular with their new hosts. They made friends in confidants. They learned everything. They told the Archangel everything.



The Slavic Federation thrived because its research had taken a deep dive into genetics and xenobiology. Immunizations and widely-adopted gene therapy helped its second-generation residents to flourish on a new world. As a consequence, the Federation had to back-fill as they expanded - Kozlov’s engineers had yet to network its computers to an Old Earth standard.



In Freeland, Radcliff discovered the Commonwealth of the Pacific’s “little helpers” - widespread, civilian adoption of robotics, semi-autonomous farming and mining equipment, and other machines that freed Polystralians to live in comfort. Hutama’s scientists had discovered a more efficient way to machine firaxite crystals. Radcliff befriended a researcher who insisted Polystralia was testing quantum computers and robotic defense systems.

If you’re familiar with Civ 5 or Beyond Earth, take a close look at these screenshots. The Steal Science missions SHOULD cost north of 20 turns to complete.

In Eintracht, Agent Damita searched for something else. Or someone.



“What is the Culper Lodge?” Tin typed to CEO Fielding once. No response.

“Can they be trusted?” he tried, much later. The answer came in the dead of night.

“Conditionally. We’ll talk.”



The Lodge has very real roots in American history, a spy ring created under orders from George Washington and named for Culpeper County in Virginia. They send you messages urging you to build a spy agency, and then to extract a foreign operative from a city. Success gives you an extra covert agent.

In those heady, early days, stealing secrets was easy for the synesthetes. Radcliff caught low-hanging fruit at first, “sharing” the Polystralians’ advanced understanding of physics and robotics. Much of Tin’s work involved pulling stolen research from blind drops and rewording it in a way to make it seem like the ideas had come from within ARC.

Axiom’s science teams, stymied for years, seemed to turn a corner. ARC’s administrative elite believed it was because Fielding had put the fear of God into Dr. Prickett. And if Axiom’s most famous scientist questioned the provenance of her teams’ breakthroughs, she kept her thoughts to herself.





After our first Steal Science missions complete, our three agents come back with 36 science each. That comes out to about 18 science a turn, a 50 percent boost in our research capability. I could not conduct covert ops this fast without my insane espionage bonuses. Every successful mission increases a city’s intrigue level and unlocks more types of covert ops. My chicanery has only begun, as Damita shows here:



Tin stood up and stretched his legs in his cold, dark office. When he sat down, he saw a new message waiting at a blind drop.

“They’re all right, you know. ARC is a mess. We could go anywhere else and thrive. Why are we doing this for Fielding?”

Tin typed his response.

“You are doing this for me. And no one in this whole world will ever understand you like I do.”

Stephen9001
Oct 28, 2013
So... You're doing espionage in less than half the time it normally takes? drat, can only imagine how crazy it'll be with maxed out relevant traits. I imagine at that point you'll be able to do steal science in only 4 or 5 turns, which is crazy good. Can't wait to see just how much good poo poo your agents (or is it operatives?) bring in.

I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Is there a Hunter-Killer Algorithm equivalent in this game, or some way to get your spies shut down? Though I imagine with your advantage that's prohibitively hard to do.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Glazius posted:

Is there a Hunter-Killer Algorithm equivalent in this game, or some way to get your spies shut down? Though I imagine with your advantage that's prohibitively hard to do.

There's a building that limits the maximum intrigue level in a city to 4 (or maybe 3, I don't remember exactly), which stops the WMDs but nothing else. There is also one wonder which makes espionage impossible, but only in the city where it's built.

Snollygoster
Dec 17, 2002

what a scoop

Glazius posted:

Is there a Hunter-Killer Algorithm equivalent in this game, or some way to get your spies shut down? Though I imagine with your advantage that's prohibitively hard to do.

Covert ops are not guaranteed successes - some of the more advanced ones carry a greater risk that you'll fail, get caught red-handed, or have an agent killed. (Your spy headquarters "grows" a new agent after a few turns if one is killed.) The quick and dirty way to counter spying is to station your own spies for counter-intelligence at cities with rising Intrigue. There are some other hard counters. The Human Hive wonder makes covert operations impossible in the host city, as society has turned into a groupthink, lockstep nightmare. The All-Seer satellite will boot spies out of a city and prevent it from increasing in Intrigue for as long as the satellite is in orbit. The Surveillance Web building will reduce the maximum intrigue level of a city by 2.

Honestly? The higher-intrigue operations can be gimmicky. If you go hard into Harmony, you unlock the ability to attract a siege worm toward an enemy city... but by the time you get this ability, even basic military units can rip siege worms in half like phone books.

Right now it's more valuable for me to mash Steal Science to try and catch up to Polystralia, or Recruit Defectors so I can save money on jump-starting new cities by buying new buildings outright. Espionage is a good way to slingshot to the head of the pack midgame. With ARC, it's less of a slingshot and more of a rail gun.

Bobfly
Apr 22, 2007
EGADS!
Hm. Apparently 80% faster mission completion is the maximum available?

Prince Orcus
Mar 1, 2016
Espionage is either super lucrative because you dove deep into it like we are here or it's the occasional lucky bonus when you remember to use it.

Even if all we do is spam Steal Energy and Steal Science the quick returns are going to be insane. Add in some lucky Steal Tech and Defectors and we will be golden. Defectors in particular will be really useful with Slavic and Brasillia as neighbours.

Siegkrow
Oct 11, 2013

Arguing about Lore for 5 years and counting



RIP LP.

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Gideon020
Apr 23, 2011
I sincerely doubt that.

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